Soda vs Cement

[BailOut]

Gene,

It is alway a challenge to debate with you. Not because of your intelligence but simply because you are so verbose. I always have to choose whether to go item for item with you and fill up several screens with quotes, or to just keep things general.

First let me say that you presume too much and know too little. Without going into a detailed biography I'll say that I grew up poor. Dirt poor. Patches on the knees, red beans, rice and tortillas, free school lunches and milk, etc. I used the military as a stepping stone, though my time there extracted a higher cost than I first realized. I never had the opportunity to go to college so I taught myself everything I know about IT by reading other people's books and by using their throwaway equipment. After 5 months of unemployment I drove out here to Reno on the last of our meager savings, which should have been used for the mortgage payment for the small house my wife and I had in Texas, to look for work. The gamble paid off. I got a good job that led to a great job, which is where I am now.

I commute the distance that I do because my company's main location is in an area that was already wealthy and is now outright exclusive, where no housing like trailers exists but if it did a single-wide on a dirt lot would start at $325,000. Besides, we bought my first house, using my VA loan guarantee, in Reno just 3 months before I was offered the position at Tahoe. There is nowhere effectively closer to live between my workplace and my place of residence.

I believe that you confuse advances to the human condition such as dry, warm, safe housing and electricity with the utter corruption of our food system. "Processed Cheese Food" is not an advance in food but a corruption of it. Organic food would not cost as much if it was all we had and would not seem as expensive if things like corn were no longer subsidized.

Have you noticed how obese the American poor are? We both know damn well it's not because they eat too much. It's because of what they eat, which in many cases barely qualifies as food.

As for vacations, this is the first time in my life that I have the opportunity, unless you consider the occasional authorized military leave. 35 years of nothing and now you would begrudge me this benefit, despite the fact that the only vacation I have taken that I could not drive to in less than a day was to see some family that I'd not seen in 16 years?!

You are reaching, my friend. Truly.

We do not have to kill ourselves or the planet in order to survive as a species.