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Sometimes I grow sad about what I do
I dislike that part of my income that is derived from assisting bureaucracies in crushing the last bits of freedom possessed by my fellow landowning citizens. Much of this regret comes from having lived longer and in a far less regulated environment than many who participate here. You can’t blame people for what they view as “normal” simply because that is the life they were forced to endure to this point. But, it is sad to witness the constant deterioration of individual capabilities by forces intent on ruling everyone else’s lives.
The percentage of our population who actually own real estate has shrunk over the decades tremendously. Thus the percentage those who don’t, but enjoy dictating what others must do, has grown tremendously. It is understandable that those who have never experienced the benefits (and costs) of real estate ownership have no concept of why those who do own real estate resent the unneeded intrusions and limitations. It’s a bit like people who have never raised children dictating EVERYTHING about the perfect method of raising a child. If you haven’t lived it, you don’t know **** about it.
Those who were raised in environments where everything is controlled by some remote power and have never had to stand on their own two feet are incapable of understanding the resentment. But, since that fraction of the population grows rapidly each year, it increases the feeling of urgency to repel any new categories of control.
I realize I’m a dinosaur in some people’s minds. I was five before we had a TV set in the house and it only was served by two stations. I was eleven before we connected to a public water supply and had indoor plumbing connected to a septic tank system that replaced the two-holer beyond the first chicken house. I was twelve before a paved road was at the end of our driveway. I was thirteen before I attended a school building with indoor plumbing and rest rooms. My first school served an area of maybe eight square miles and 25 kids. The families in that small rural area paid nearly the entire cost of running the school with practically no State or Federal funding as was common across the rural areas of the state.
Others, even in those same years, had ten thousand people and a couple thousand school kids within the same geographic limits with every road being paved and supported by sidewalks, drainage structures and every utility possible already connected to the residences. Someone else controlled every aspect of their lives. The parents paid taxes instead of being directly committed to the operation of all those support systems. They weren’t THEIR support systems, they were THE support system.
It seems like nearly every day I receive a call to do a survey because some bureaucratic mental midget has dictated some need for that to occur rather than the client wanting it done simply because it would be a reasonable thing to do. Common sense is no longer deemed common. Thus, we, as surveyors, are viewed as part of the evil, expensive, roadblocks to progress instead of as helpful providers of important information.
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