NTGNTP (6th Draft): CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE Part 1.9.1

9. On Centralized Control (strength v. weakness):

Central government control dictates agricultural, timber and mining policy. Consequently, rural populations have been made subordinate, and effectively held in check. Transportation networks have enabled access to even remote regions. Disasters, such as the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, forest fires, and flooding, have required Federal intervention to alleviate rural hardship. Economic measures have often benefited the rural populace while creating dependance on the system. Indeed, price supports and global economic strategy have favored larger operations, thus eliminating self-sufficiency. The small mining, logging or family farm operations have essentially ceased to exist. Rural electrification projects, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, have connected most rural residents to the power grid. The old-style wind vanes have almost completely disappeared from the American landscape. Hence, these people are compelled into the corporate consumer culture by exposure to mass media, such as radio and television. Electric utility sales require the bill be paid with money, rather than traditional barter methods, to power electrical appliances[22] and machinery. Heeding to the demands of efficiency, this situation has produced circumstances where entire regions are owned by a few large corporations, devoted to a single product. Any potential rural uprisings could be quelled by closing transportation hubs and waiting. People would starve from gross nutritional deficiencies in the corn fields of Nebraska (or the banana plantations of Central America). The price of unity: rural Americans have been relegated to a status similar to feudal peasantry.[23]

[22] These must be paid for as well. This requires currency obtainable only through the economic system, thus binding further. Competition with large scale operations require equipment debts. Many small midwestern farms were ruined by this cycle and foreclosed or forced to sell out to big business. Farmers mow are paid low wages to work land owned by their fathers. Resentment should be expected.

[23] Except with a few consumer goods and shiny toys.