Government Is The Problem. As Usual.

 h/t CW

Reference please the above pic from CW's daily timewaster site.

Yes, we're sure it's an idyllic place, with gorgeous views, and tucked right in amidst Nature on all sides. Which is rather exactly the problem with it. If we were to name such a homestead, on the order of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, we would name this architectural act of insanity contrary to all common sense Kindling. Calling it Kingsford might be a wee bit too on-the-nose.

My absolutely curmudgeonly response:

"In a canyon, with a wood shake roof. And dead leaves all over it. Might as well just stack full gas cans against the outside walls. And violating just about every other survivability measure in a wildfire zone.

And some fall, the tearful owner will be "Shocked! Shocked, I say..." that's it's about to become a monument to human stupidity during a major brushfire.

This is why some areas should be declared unbuildable, all fire protection withdrawn completely, home insurance legally denied in perpetuity with the full backing of the state, and the entire area redlined from ever receiving a penny of federal disaster relief.

If you can absorb the cost to rebuild it every ten or twenty years out of your own pocket when it inevitably burns to the ground, ROWYBS.

Otherwise, once it burns down and the owner can't eat the cost to put it back, rebuilding permits are denied forever, and it reverts to permanent wild habitat by eminent domain, and the owner given $1/acre.

Now show some rich stupid jackhole's house perched over the waves and built beyond the mean high tide line that gets surf-pummeled by storms every generation or so."

And then, inevitably, Anonymous Yahoo (funny how they're almost always Anonymous, i'n'it?) pipes up:

"But also we are totally opposed to government intervention in people's private lives! Do we know that this property is in a location where brushfires are common? Seems like you want to confiscate these people's property based on a picture. But again, small government and "don't tread on me" or something"

 

To which load of halt-witted codswallop we reply:

"1) "Totally opposed"? No. Never said any such thing. You conflate "minimal" with "anarchy" at risk to your own argument, with a heaping helping of reductio ad absurdum. Best wishes with that approach.

2) Those are oak trees, growing in a canyon. Brushfire city. Period.

3) I don't want the property confiscated until Reality makes it obvious it never should have been built upon to begin with.

It was jackassical government greed that let some mid-century idiot build there in the first place, to maximize the county's taxable property value. Which then requires more brush crews to save it, and more roads to maintain to get to it.And then more disaster funds when it repeatedly gets burned up.

Government created this problem.

Smaller government would start by ripping out the paved road that gets there, closing the nearest fire stations, condemning the land, and turning it into permanent natural habitat. But that breaks five or ten government rice bowls, and gets entitled idiots all riled up. 

I've only seen this about 5M times in my lifetime in this state.

If some idiot wants to build his own private road, or make do by getting supplies in and out by pack mule, and carries the liability for such an idiotic house out of his own pocket, that should be the only way that place gets built.

Dollars to donuts the owner also gets all bent up when coyotes eat his pets, and mountain lions start eyeing his kids, and screams to Uncle Government to "do something". Then pisses and moans when the local fire department tells him that with trees and brush 20' from the house, they've already written it off when a fire breaks out. And he's likely the first in line at the trough when they declare a "disaster" (as opposed to "natural causes x human stupidity", which is also the plot recipe for every episode of Rescue 9-1-1, USCG: Cape Disappointment, and 57 other reality-based shows) once his house is a charred chimney surrounded by ashes.

It was big government that started such nonsense, A to Z, in the first place. Like people along the Mississippi found out a few years back, some places shouldn't have houses on them, ever, unless there's an annual stupidity tax on the property equal to 100% of its assessed value.

If government withdraws all services to such parcels save tax assessments, and cancels utility easements, which currently start a goodly number of brushfires up there in competition with lightning (you could look it up) the problem self-corrects within years, if not months, with no further effort nor public expenditure.

That's minimal government.

Your ball.

For a vivid exemplar of this sort of stupidity right now, google "Rancho Palos Verdes landslide zone", and read up about the latest batch of entitled idiots with more money than common sense, currently pissing, moaning, and harrumphing that gravity has annoyingly reasserted itself in their multi-million-dollar cliffside neighborhood, and demanding that government somehow stop it, and/or recompense them from public funds for their idiotic residential choices.

Boo frickin' hoo."

QED, podex.

Doubtless we'll be seeing further examples from FL and the Gulf Coast in a day or three as well, crying about "How dare Nature impinge upon our desire to build substandard houses in stupid places! Government should pay us for being that dumb!" in 3, 2...

We apologize to CW for buggering up his site with the second entry, or having to. Should he choose to zap all of the above back and forth into oblivion, we wouldn't blame him. His house, his choices. Which is why we moved it here, in case he does exactly that.

The annoyance at idiots who build such houses where they don't belong, purely out of presumption on the public's funds and good wishes, deserves calling out, which is why we have done so.

Ditto the air-headed thoughtlessness of Anonymous Yahoo's asinine riposte. But the lack of critical thinking which underpins such opinions bespeaks that the left end of the IQ bell curve continues to be over-represented both in real life, and on the internet. As always.

As my father pointed out more than once, "You could get rid of all the horses in the world, but you'd still never run out of horses' asses."

UPDATE: And here's the latest edition of The Stupid People's Gravy Train