http://www.mindfully.org/…legal1esp03.htm
Richard Nikoley pointed me to this excellent essay by Polyface Farm’s Joel Salatin. It is one of the best things I’ve read in quite some time — a complete indictment of government interference with just wanting to be free. Joel suggests that eventually the noose will tighten too much and a cycle will assert itself once more, throwing off these heinous chains to freedom, individuality, diversity and independence. I hope he is right.
Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government’s business? Bureaucrats bend over back-wards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it’s time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.
One reply on “Joel Salatin’s “Everything I want to do is illegal””
I just got finished reading one of Salatin’s books (“Folks, This Ain’t Normal”) and it left me envious of his ability to put my feelings into cohesive, intelligent, well-formed, thoughtful words. He is able to express the ideas that I always knew I had but just couldn’t explain. His arguments are very convincing and, well, the things he says just make sense.
I know he has a lot of fans (and I first heard of him because he was in the Food, Inc. documentary) but I wish more people could hear what he has to say. If more people could just become more aware of some basic concepts about food and liberty that he explains, I think it would change our society (for the better).