Back to the land

[rotting bones]

2. The food to feed one person can be grown by themselves in a couple of jars. This is either a deliberate lie or this person is in for a rude awakening sooner or later. They also told me hydroponics and similar urban agricultural ideas are scams.

Just to be clear: With the methods of traditional agriculture, you need at least a football field's worth of land to prevent one person from starving.

[Travis B.]

And everyone being a subsistance farmer certainly is not an efficient use of land. The most efficient use of land would be to have as a maximal portion of the population as possible living in big cities with public transportation and all, with a minimum amount of land used for intensive agriculture, and leaving a maximal amount of land to nature.

Things I've been told by the eco-left:

1. Cities harm animal movement. I think degrowth people are imagining that we're arguing the whole world should be one big city rather than existing populations being concentrated in urban areas. The people I spoke to before had a lot of difficulty imagining what I was getting at, even though they cited academic papers at me.

Of course, these people obviously don't understand that agriculture is not nature and going "back to the land" means more land being used for agriculture and thus less land being left to nature. They also don't understand that concentrated urban areas are by far the most efficient way of getting people to use the least land possible.

3. Urban constructions get heated very easily. The electricity to cool them down harms the environment. Traditional societies have never lived in such structures. Clearly they were not familiar with the high rises of Yemen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam By this point, I was tired of arguing with them.

And of course, there is a simple, modern, green solution here -- solar panels on every roof, to power air conditioning (and incidentally solar panels generate the most power at precisely the time when air conditioning is most needed).

[Travis B.]

2. The food to feed one person can be grown by themselves in a couple of jars. This is either a deliberate lie or this person is in for a rude awakening sooner or later. They also told me hydroponics and similar urban agricultural ideas are scams.

Just to be clear: With the methods of traditional agriculture, you need at least a football field's worth of land to prevent one person from starving.

And, of course, traditional agriculture is woefully inefficient, meaning significantly more land is needed to feed each individual person. Those who insist on going back to it either want to turn the biosphere into one massive, inefficient farm or want people to starve en masse.

[rotting bones]

Of course, these people obviously don't understand that agriculture is not nature and going "back to the land" means more land being used for agriculture and thus less land being left to nature. They also don't understand that concentrated urban areas are by far the most efficient way of getting people to use the least land possible.

They cited a paper about a design for a country settlement where humans manage natural resources similar to indigenous tribes. They thought citing that paper ended my entire career. I couldn't understand why they thought everyone had to live in the same kind of community. Their psychology seemed to be: This type of community is scientific. Therefore, everything else is a scam. (Just a guess.)

And of course, there is a simple, modern, green solution here -- solar panels on every roof, to power air conditioning (and incidentally solar panels generate the most power at precisely the time when air conditioning is most needed).

They hated solar panels. They thought running any power cools down your room, but creates ambient heat which harms the environment. I didn't know people like this still existed in 2026. Captain Planet was more sophisticated than this. Did they listen to fascists complain about leftist stereotypes and think, "Yeah, I wanna be that person!"

[Ares Land]

I'm sad but not surprised that you've had bad experiences with stubborn leftists with weird ideas. (You'll meet these in any left wing current, I'm afraid.)

Some of those people might be arguing for subsistence agriculture but I'm not. To give a rough summary: given various issues with soil artificialization, fertilizers and the like, I believe agriculture should be less intensive. That’s a huge step already. There"s no need to take it further (if you recall the donut picture, you have to stay within the biosphere's limit and provide for human needs. Of course subsistence agriculture doesn’t meet these criteria).
It’s not a matter of hectares: intensive farming takes up huge areas anyway and besides farms can and do wreck with the water tables way beyond their land area.

Less intensive agriculture feels like a step backward compared to large quantities of industrial fertilizers; but I believe it rests on better scientific understanding.

I'm really not bothered by cities in themselves and I'm a little puzzled by the twin notions that everyone should be living in the city, or that no one should. Shouldn’t people choose where to live? (Within the realm of possibility of course.)

Dense cities aren’t objectionable, urban sprawl is. Similarly some patterns of rural life are more sensible than others.

I think having around 85% of Americans live in a city.
Getting down to 75% (a figure I give as an example: it’s not a target bumber or anything) would be a huge change but definitely wouldn't mean abandoning New York City.

[Raphael]

I'm sad but not surprised that you've had bad experiences with stubborn leftists with weird ideas. (You'll meet these in any left wing current, I'm afraid.)

As someone who goes by the names "ruler of Seattle" and "ThoughtSlime" put it on social media:

People who become right wing because they get annoyed by leftists are weak willed, most leftists are annoyed by leftists every single day.

[zompist]

And of course, there is a simple, modern, green solution here -- solar panels on every roof, to power air conditioning (and incidentally solar panels generate the most power at precisely the time when air conditioning is most needed).

They hated solar panels. They thought running any power cools down your room, but creates ambient heat which harms the environment. I didn't know people like this still existed in 2026.

So, I spent half an hour looking at Internet discussions of this. No one bothered to do realistic figures. But there seems to be agreement on these points:

1. A/Cs mostly transfer heat from inside to outside, so their overall effect is minimal.
2. There's a lot of worry about power generation, but Travis is talking about in-home solar panels which eliminates worries about fossil fuels.
3. Nonetheless the A/C is a machine and any use of energy generates waste heat. Probably not a big factor, especially compared with other sources of urban heat like dark pavement. Still, making them more efficient, and no bigger than needed, would be smart.

I'd also note that it's cheaper to cool or heat a 20-unit apartment building than 20 separated houses. (This is along the lines of what Travis is saying about the efficiency of cities.)

[malloc]

I think having around 85% of Americans live in a city.
Getting down to 75% (a figure I give as an example: it’s not a target bumber or anything) would be a huge change but definitely wouldn't mean abandoning New York City.

You must also consider the social impact of ruralizing the US to that extent. Given the well known conservative tilt of rural areas, it might well prove counterproductive. Those people probably won't share your enthusiasm for protecting the environment. There are other ways of reducing environmental impact, such as reducing meat consumption (which would also reduce needed farmland) and other forms of consumerism.

[Ares Land]

I think having around 85% of Americans live in a city.
Getting down to 75% (a figure I give as an example: it’s not a target bumber or anything) would be a huge change but definitely wouldn't mean abandoning New York City.

You must also consider the social impact of ruralizing the US to that extent. Given the well known conservative tilt of rural areas, it might well prove counterproductive. Those people probably won't share your enthusiasm for protecting the environment. There are other ways of reducing environmental impact, such as reducing meat consumption (which would also reduce needed farmland) and other forms of consumerism.

Yes; there are plenty of questions. Why are people conservatives (sometimes very far to the right) in rural area? Is there anything we can do about it? I think we should try anyway; A political system with extremely liberal cities and extremely conservative countryside isn't going to be stable long-run.

When progressive voters move to conservative areas, do they change political opinions? I don't think they do. I think it'd be better to have more diversity, including diversity of political opinions in rural places.

It's really not granted that urban areas are progressive anyway. I don't know about the US; here in France it's true but with many exceptions: there are many cities that lean right or far-right. The only really safe stronghold seems to be Eastern Paris - a FN stronghold in the 80s; which shows this is a tendancy that isn't stable over time.

[Nortaneous]

Before modern economic growth, the way for people to better their lot in life was to win land by conquest. I suppose that's one way to do back-to-the-land, but it doesn't sound like a good one.

Economic growth no longer works as a way for people to have better lives. There's a matter of diminishing returns. And inequality as well - only a select few benefit.
Also, at which point do we consider that our lot in life is good enough - in material terms at least?

What do you mean it no longer works? The diminishing returns are far off. There are challenges - urbanization means there's less land with jobs, and policy choices mean it's nearly impossible to put more housing on the same land, for example. But plenty of people have jobs their parents couldn't have imagined, and much remains to be done. 3D printers, for example, are more accessible than ever, and someday we'll have 3D printers for clothes. (If the software industry dies, I'll learn robotics and try to do this myself. I'm 6'5". I can't just walk into a store and buy a shirt.)

Part of the reason for the appearance of stagnating living standards is that we choose to allocate our increasing surplus in ways other than lowering costs. A 1980 car would likely be much less expensive in terms of hours at the same job than it was in 1980, but you can't buy a 1980 car new for any price - cars are required to have more safety features now, and safety features have costs.

I think having around 85% of Americans live in a city.
Getting down to 75% (a figure I give as an example: it’s not a target bumber or anything) would be a huge change but definitely wouldn't mean abandoning New York City.

You must also consider the social impact of ruralizing the US to that extent. Given the well known conservative tilt of rural areas, it might well prove counterproductive. Those people probably won't share your enthusiasm for protecting the environment.

What? "Those people" are the ones who choose to live in the environment. Why wouldn't they want to protect it? The trouble is that protecting the environment has costs, and rural areas are often poor.

[Ares Land]

What do you mean it no longer works? The diminishing returns are far off. There are challenges - urbanization means there's less land with jobs, and policy choices mean it's nearly impossible to put more housing on the same land, for example. But plenty of people have jobs their parents couldn't have imagined, and much remains to be done. 3D printers, for example, are more accessible than ever, and someday we'll have 3D printers for clothes. (If the software industry dies, I'll learn robotics and try to do this myself. I'm 6'5". I can't just walk into a store and buy a shirt.)

Alright, let's see!

Real GDP per capita for the US was 70,000 per capita for 2025, as compared to 50,000 for 2000. That's a pretty impressive growth.

The poverty rate in the US was 11% in 2000. The poverty rate is.... 11% in 2025 (it's actually been higher than that in the interval.)

The usual counter to that statistic is that the poverty rate is defined as a relative measure. Maybe being poor in a country that's wealthier overall isn't so bad?
To counter that, let's look at some other figures. The richest American men have a life expectancy 15 years longer than the poorest (the gap is 'only' 10 years for women). So it looks like being poor still sucks.

Housing? The home price to income ratio was around 4.2 in 2000; in 2025 it's 7.11.

Health? National health expenditure (in constant dollars) was 1.37 trillion in 2000. In 2025 it's 4.87 trillion. To be fair, life expectancy has increased and infant mortality is lower. As I've pointed out above, it doesn't apply to the poor -- which is probably a reflection of those high prices.
Mental health, though? I've come across stats such as these:
"The rate of individuals reporting symptoms consistent with major depression in the last 12 months increased 52 percent in adolescents from 2005 to 2017" - "The rate of young adults with suicidal thoughts or other suicide-related outcomes increased 47 percent from 2008 to 2017 (from 7.0 percent to 10.3 percent)."

Transportation? The average yearly cost of owning and maintaining an automobile was around 7300 dollars in 2000; now it's 11500 (assuming constant mileage/year).
Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled were at 1.53 in 2000, 1.14 in 2025 so some of that cost might be safety features.

Food then? The prevalence of very low food security was at 5.4% in 2024, actually higher than the 2001 figure (3.3%)

We can finally reach a conclusion: we've had a 40% increase in GDP (real GDP per capita, so adjusted for inflation and population growth) from 2000 to 2025, for a standard of living that is essentially the same. (For every item that improved, we can point at another that deteriorated, and vice-versa.)
We can lay the blame on (depending on your political preference) either liberals or conservatives; no matter the proximate cause, for the past 25 years, the US has been unable to translate GDP growth into a correspondingly better life.

This post is not US bashing and this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. I've picked the US as a country everyone is familiar with. You can look at the statistics for just about any Western country and reach similar conclusions.
It's not doomerism either. Americans standards of living in 2000 or 2025 are pretty comfortable, if you looks at them with a broad geographical and historical perspective. What it means is that, past that point, we all work hard to keep that growth rate high with very little payoff.

[rotting bones]

How do I put this? Since the Back to Land ideology is not a plan for everyone, it's not universal. Particularly, it doesn't apply to me, and I'm very probably in the majority. Since it doesn't apply to the majority, we are not excited about it. Since the majority is not excited about it, we are not going to put our busy lives on hold to go out and vote for it. Since the majority is not going to vote for it, the fascists will win an election where the Back to Land ideology is its primary contender.

Like I said, I'm not opposed to some people going back to the land. It's just unsuitable as a plan to base a mass movement on.

[Ares Land]

But I don't want a back to the land ideology, or a universal ideology, or - gods help us - a mass movement. Haven't universal ideologies and mass movements done enough damage already?

Or, to put it differently, it's a political issue, but not a good issue for electoral politics.
What I would like is for people to stop using growth as the one relevant indicator, and consider other ways to think about prosperity.

One thing I didn't realize before starting this thread is that people expect a single way of life that applies to everyone. Some of what I said does, such as thinking about environmental limits, or about those limits as they apply to farming; other things really don't.

I'd rather not talk about the fascists again, but they're on everyone's mind and, well, I can relate.

So how is that useful against fascism? It allows you to think more clearly, and realize how fake their views and their alleged 'successes' are. You can see, for instance, that the GDP growth under Trump is fake prosperity. You can also realize that if some social program negatively impacts GDP, well, then who cares? That GDP growth doesn't help you in any way (provided you live in one of the richer countries, of course.)

[rotting bones]

Or, to put it differently, it's a political issue, but not a good issue for electoral politics.
What I would like is for people to stop using growth as the one relevant indicator, and consider other ways to think about prosperity.

One thing I didn't realize before starting this thread is that people expect a single way of life that applies to everyone. Some of what I said does, such as thinking about environmental limits, or about those limits as they apply to farming; other things really don't.

I'd rather not talk about the fascists again, but they're on everyone's mind and, well, I can relate.

So how is that useful against fascism? It allows you to think more clearly, and realize how fake their views and their alleged 'successes' are. You can see, for instance, that the GDP growth under Trump is fake prosperity. You can also realize that if some social program negatively impacts GDP, well, then who cares? That GDP growth doesn't help you in any way (provided you live in one of the richer countries, of course.)

Given that there are sustainable models to urbanization too, all you're saying is that you want to live in the countryside. Who's stopping you? I support your right to live in the countryside. American conservatives pretend to love rural people. You won't get pushback from that quarter on the core policy being argued for here, only on the motivation of degrowth.

But I don't want a back to the land ideology, or a universal ideology, or - gods help us - a mass movement. Haven't universal ideologies and mass movements done enough damage already?

Interesting that the eco-left gets grace for its mistakes, but the radical left doesn't. The eco-left produced its own share of terrorists. The main difference is that the middle class goes for eco-leftism, which limits their numbers.

Without a mass movement, how will you win elections? Should I just die before the fascist assault? Why do you think quietists advise you to retreat from politics to preserve your innocence? All of it is either this mass movement or that mass movement, this damage or that damage. There is nothing else in politics. The material world consists of a series of "damages", the absence of damage being a fantasy of static continuance that exists only in the human imagination.

This doesn't mean we can't do better. Personally, I'm against representative democracy because I think direct democracy under constitutional rule is less damaging. But as long as we're stuck with it, not having politicians fight for the left is how we're headed towards fascist global domination.

What results do liberals have to show for their meekness? It's too late to wait another 50 trillion ages for liberals to find the next moral path forward. The only thing quietists get wrong is that inaction is itself a choice. By refusing to inflict damage on fascists, you are valuing your innocence over the lives of their victims. Even if we lose, inflicting damage on the enemy will make them think twice before mounting their next attack.

You can choose to follow my advice or not. Either way, whatever you have been doing for the last few decades doesn't work. In all countries everywhere, 21st century masses now believes that the best path forwards is oppressing minorities, mainly Muslims. Even the Muslims are killing Muslims. This represents a total failure of mainstream leftist politics. (In case you think I'm just saying things I heard on media, I was denied housing today because my name sounds Muslim.) Give up and try something else. Please, I'm begging you. Before you have to become even more innocent than you already are.

Just stop pushing for less and less popular ideas in politics as the world drowns in fascism. If you can't stomach the alternative, at least be principled in your quietism and stop attacking people who are actually trying to fight the fascists. Even if you don't care about Muslims, think of the environment. At this rate, the world might end before Capitalism plateaus by hitting its true physical limits.

[Ares Land]

What can I say? I think the disagreement comes down to a simple thing, I'm not a radical leftist.

The problem I have with radical leftism is no other worldview is valid or worth considering -- any objection is probably 'liberal', and 'liberal' is close to fascist, or at least borderline criminal.

That doesn't improve my view of the radical left.

[Torco]

You can choose to follow my advice or not. Either way, whatever you have been doing for the last few decades doesn't work. In all countries everywhere, 21st century masses now believes that the best path forwards is oppressing minorities, mainly Muslims. Even the Muslims are killing Muslims. This represents a total failure of mainstream leftist politics. (In case you think I'm just saying things I heard on media, I was denied housing today because my name sounds Muslim.) Give up and try something else. Please, I'm begging you. Before you have to become even more innocent than you already are.

i agree with the general sentiment that the fascists are coming, and that lukewarm liberal technocracy and impotent moderate mewling of "ñeeee, both sides have ideas, i'll just stick with no ideas, no politics, no nothing, and trust in democracy and institutions" will not stop them and that, indeed, their rise depends on non-fascists taking this very stand. that being said, you may be being a bit hiperbolic in the details here, my dear bones. in a lot of countries muslims aren't an issue many people care about. we may be here falling into a kind of eurocentrism, or anglocentrism, or some other centrism. i really don't think the masses in all countries are joining the muslim hatred party. though certainly in many.

for reference, in mine, basically no one has a lot of position about muslims. santiago has all of two mosques. i live near one and it's pretty cool, and they have the courtesy of not blasting their speakers four times a day. it does not look full anytime i drive or walk past.

[zompist]

In all countries everywhere, 21st century masses now believes that the best path forwards is oppressing minorities, mainly Muslims.

[...] in a lot of countries muslims aren't an issue many people care about. we may be here falling into a kind of eurocentrism, or anglocentrism, or some other centrism. i really don't think the masses in all countries are joining the muslim hatred party. though certainly in many.

Eurocentric? You may be forgetting that rotting bones lives in India, and that serious anti-Muslim bigotry is rampant there.

(I'm not sure why he was so mad at a French guy though.)

[Torco]

true, which is why i go 'some sort of centric'... ¿countries-with-muslims-centric maybe?

edit: on the topic of anti-muslim sentiment in india, i once worked alongside an indian guy who came to chile to do some classes and whatnot. i was in charge of taking him out to dinner, since he didn't speak any spanish, so when i asked him "pork or beef, which one do you not eat?", he got weirdly offended, like it should have been obvious that he was in fact hindu. this is a relevant question, since chilean street food features a lot of both. later did i realize he got offended cause i suggested he might be a muslim, or look like a muslim, or sth like that.

[Raphael]

Regarding conservatism in rural areas, just saw this on Bluesky. From Sarah Taber, whose Bluesky bio starts with "Small farmer, ex-farm worker, crop scientist. Here to talk food, farms, & money."

A very serious Rural Politico once told me "Dems have to go to farmer meetings! We gotta be where the people are!"

I was in fact in a farmer meeting at that very moment!

So I live-texted him the meeting. They were complaining that they want indentured workers that they don't have to pay or feed.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zo4loy ... vkfu4jtc2z

[rotting bones]

for reference, in mine, basically no one has a lot of position about muslims. santiago has all of two mosques. i live near one and it's pretty cool, and they have the courtesy of not blasting their speakers four times a day. it does not look full anytime i drive or walk past.

https://ispu.org/reports-and-analysis/latino-views-2/

Global trends can of course instantiate differently in different countries. Some Latin countries even sheltered Nazis after their defeat.