Death by Dollar General

The North will rise again!

There is a vast realm which few of the successful citizens of our nation care to think about. It is a place which the Sunburned Exiles rarely visit, in some case they have not returned for generations. I refer to the lost cities and districts of the Upper Midwest. Here we characterize the afflictions of this region, and how the solution to these problems will be key to establishing the New Cantons. It is well known that the economy of large sections of the rural United States has been hollowed out due to the effects of centralization. Neither the State nor Industry can be held fully responsible for what has befallen this region, the root of the decay is the idea that centralization is itself an unalloyed good. There are several practical examples of these trends, most notably the disappearance of independent businesses and the centralization of school districts. This is partly due to small businesses being replaced by chain stores in larger municipalities, as well as school consolidation. These factors have lead to a steady and persistent depopulation of these regions.

The hypercentralization of the twentieth century has also made lives increasingly unpleasant for those citizens who pursue their fortunes in the major metropolitan areas. Due to the concentration of good jobs in a few metropolitan areas, real estate prices rose without limit. The Sunburned Exiles, once proud homeowners, are increasingly living their entire lives in rental units, the ambitious as well as the lazy. They are certainly not enjoying the unprecedented prosperity of their fathers before them. However they perceive the rural Northern regions they left behind as impoverished and remote, incapable of providing the way of life they have come to enjoy, despite the availability of land not inferior to some of the best national parks at very

reasonable prices. For this reason they see a return as almost impossible.

The advent of remote work offers the opportunity to alter this unpleasant state of affairs. As high-speed internet becomes available virtually everywhere in the nation, there is no logical reason why the professional class must be housed in the environs of the glass palaces. This peculiar arrangement is already outdated, and has persisted into the Twenties only at the behest of crooked mayors and sunk real estate costs. It is a rather difficult problem to solve, as our whole mode of urban development has been adapted to the needs of the daily commuter. Indeed, the system of zoned suburbs is no longer suited to present economic realities.

Therefore, a new mode of development must be created. The region is dotted with small towns which have in earlier times served as regional centers and could certainly do so again. Furthermore, these nuclei could form the basis of a society more functional that that which currently prevails in sprawling suburbs. At present, many places in the Upper Midwest are divided into plots of eighty acres or more, and are therefore currently optimized for large scale agriculture.

I propose the subdivision of these plots which comprise much of the Midwest into plots which while smaller than full sections are still large enough to maintain a prosperous homesteading lifestyle. Five acres should be enough to maintain propane heating, off-grid electricity and water. To work around the dearth of developers in these regions, the initial developments would consist of manufactured houses erected on these plots. These need not be trailers, there are now models which are made to resemble Cape Cod, log homes and many other styles. Indeed, the cost of a log home and five acres of land in the Upper Midwest is roughly equivalent to that of a typical two bedroom house in the Sun Belt. As the public schools in this region are not noted for their excellence, I would strongly recommend that this first group of settlers either be homeschoolers themselves or willing to found their own schools. However, given the number of abandoned school buildings, some of which are brick and multiple stories, this should be very feasible. In Michigan and Wisconsin, charter schools are legal and at least somewhat common. As Professor Axlerod has suggested, a high quality private school could serve as a draw for a initial wave of home buyers. The towns themselves would be developed as commercial districts which could in time offer the comforts of life the Sunburned Exiles have come to expect. It is these towns which would form the nuclei of the New Cantons.