Here's an idea that came from one of my instructables subscribers. It's exciting to see people change the way they see housing, even if they are doing it within the confines of the global sustainable slavery agenda. Global NGOs are the main avenue for spreading good information, and we may have to take Gertee into the dialectical fray before all is said and done.
This whole thing about Soft Development Plans smacks heavily of British-Israeli imperialist elitist propaganda (they're going to "remake the lifestyle niche" of half the world's population):
This whole thing about Soft Development Plans smacks heavily of British-Israeli imperialist elitist propaganda (they're going to "remake the lifestyle niche" of half the world's population):
"Our goal is simple - to remake the "lifestyle niche" of the smallholder organic farmers who comprise half of the human population into something which is healthy, prosperous, stable, environmentally benign, and includes health care and health maintenance, access to energy and education, and many other improvements. The bedrock of this transformation is appropriate technology deployed as whole systems, not as the stand-alone stepwise improvements of the past which have had such mixed success. "
http://hexayurt.com/
My personal feelings are that gertee offers more of a home atmosphere and makes for better long term housing, but I will reserve judgement until after I spend an Alaska winter living in a hexayurt. I know 4 foot walls are uncomfortable for me, a 5'3" woman, and am guessing it would be mighty uncomfortable for a 6' man. Maybe half the world's population is under 4'? I'm also dismayed to see that alternative housing is part of a "bigger" vision for people without homes... tied together with education, health care and health maintenance... it's almost an Obamination.
Hi. I'm Vinay Gupta, the inventor of the Hexayurt. Interesting take on the project...
ReplyDeleteYou might enjoy "Infrastructure for Anarchists" which is a talk I delivered at a squat in London on municipal infrastructure financing and the role of government. Communitarian? I'm fairly sure you won't think so...
Infrastructure for Anarchists link
Hi Vinay, thank you for taking the time to visit and share the link. I read your disaster plan and I'm sorry if you'd rather be seen as an Anarchist, but some of your ideas for Americans refugees could easily be seen as communitarian.
ReplyDeleteIssuing every American a disaster relief card and registering and GIS mapping every home willing to host a hexayurt during an emergency are right in line with the goals of COMPASS, LA21 plans and Community Oriented Policing, not to mention the assistance it provides to the 2010 GPS Census.
Is there some way your plans can work without requiring a national database of every American to make it work? And where has America ever gone wrong in responding to a disaster, besides during the disasters the feds took over? I look at track records and results. The more Americans depend on others for their personal safety the more people die needlessly. We are not a nation of children who need a schoolhouse evacuation plan, that's total Fabian hogwash.
Vinay, couldn't you at least design something people can build a fire and cook in? What is home without a hearth? Isn't feeding ourselves essential to rebuilding our lives? Why build us cramped little bedrooms when you might build comfortable homes for the same effort and cost?
How do building real yurts compare to hexayurts? If you're going to build an entire manufacturing base for the project and Americans are going to pay for it and be stuck with it, wouldn't you want the most bang for your buck? Yurts are open source information too.
Well, the basic math is that a retail yurt is $5000 or so, and a Hexayurt is $100 of plywood and you put it together with screws. Everything comes from the commercial supply chain.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, I don't really fancy doing nuclear cleanup without a government to help. That doesn't mean I support the general approach taken by the government, but within a Constitutional framework, there's a lot they are useful for.
Of course, you'll note I said *within.*
As for my own politics, I'm http://leashless.org org - not an anarchist. Something new.
Come on Vinay, the US Constitution is based entirely in property rights for the common man. How can you be within that framework if your entire premise is that we cannot own the land or ourselves, that even our bodies can only be "leased" from the Earth (from its self appointed stewards)?
ReplyDeleteI'm on page 19 of your Manifesto for Freedom, where you say "regional land use assemblies set local agendas-not global." That's not your idea, is it? It comes directly out of UN Local Agenda 21.
Now the bit about our bodies being rented from the Earth is new to me and looks like a creative way of eliminating my inalienable right to life, but again, this concept of my rented life exists WAY outside Constitutional parameters.
You are right about "Leased land is subject to rational environmental regulations." In todays Twistspeak "rational" means based in the Hegelian dialectic, and anything based in the Hegelian dialectic doesn't have to make any sense.
On page 11 you claim "How we define or decide about rights changes over time too." US law that protects the rights of individuals cannot "change over time." Rights enumerated in the US Bill of Rights became fixed and permanent law; they are the foundation for legitimate government here and not subject to change, ever, no matter how many communitarians say they are.
Putting politics aside, I'm curious to know how long you lived in your hexayurt model and where.
Also, the retail cost you quote is not the wholesale cost of a yurt. It takes 40, 2x4x8s to build a 16' frame, at $2 a board that's $80. Tarp roof and wall covers, zip ties and ropes cost another $100 for low end materials, and plastic pieces and fabrics can be salvaged off construction sites and found at garage sales across America.
I saw lots of links that looked like you may also double the wood on the walls and stand the 4x8s sideways making the wall height 8 feet as opposed to 4? I read the safety page at ecowiki but I didn't see a model with a stack. Do you have a model that works with a woodstove or an open fire?
Hm. In your costing for a conventional yurt, how much do you expect to spend on the covering tarp or canvas?
ReplyDeleteStoves in a hexayurt are no different from any cabin. If you want an open fire (so inefficient!) you cut an opening at the roof.
As for the rest, where do you want your environmental legislation to come from? How do you propose preventing your neighbours from dumping dioxins in your water supply?
As for the body, its matter obviously came from the earth and returns to the earth. You rent it. That's pretty much self-evident. That it is yours while you live in it (or *are* it, if you're a materialist) is also fairly obvious. But property in the sense of land hasn't meaningfully belonged to the people in a long time - not since we started poisoning our neighbours with chemical plants etc. Good fences may make good neighbours, but there's no fence good enough to render those kinds of poisons inert.
Would be interested in knowing how you'd handle polluting industries.
Vinay