…revealed by the pandemic. The latter two are particularly important.
[Update a while later]
Related: A litany of useless laws have been exposed as well.
[Update a while more later]
The coming age of dispersion.
We’ve been wanting to get out of the city for a long time. Most people don’t realize how large and empty the American west is, including California itself. New technology is going to make it increasingly possible and affordable to live comfortably off the grid.
The big problem with exiting the urban sewer is broadband. The cable and telcos were allowed to default on that, so I was stuck with noisy copper wire dial-up and expensive HughesNet. We got DSL only two years ago. Musk may solve that.
Drilling wells and solar systems aren’t cheap either. Even collecting rainwater is a large upfront expense. And composting toilets aren’t for everyone.
I suppose it would depend on your definition of “large upfront expense,” but putting in a well and septic field in a never before inhabited rural property would be lost in the noise of building a house there. The fact is, every rural property that’s had a house on it in the last75 years already has septic and well, and since 1930 or so, is on-grid. When I bought my derelict property in 2009, I had the well and septic cleaned and recertified, which cost a few hundred dollars apiece. The biggest expense was rendering the house inhabitable (which I did on my own for minimal expense but a lot of personal labor). If you really went the new property, off grid route, even solar would be lost in the noise of shipping in building materials (and labor if you’re not up to it). They make very nice in-house composting toilets that can be installed in a conventional bathroom. Of course, you do have to have a use for the compost. Mine goes down the septic field, and I buy compost for the gardens. Squeamish, I guess.