The glare of the judgmental deer
Not too long ago, my wife and I were out for a walk and, as we went down Schoharie Plank Road, I turned and saw a deer staring at us. He or she (too early in the season to tell) was standing in a shredded, destroyed section of land that will eventually become another road to a housing development nobody wants or needs.
The trees were ripped from the ground; the earth was torn up and even the weeds were dead. The deer stood in the middle of the devastation and stared at me with a look that said, “Hey man, what the hell?!” And I didn’t have an answer for him really.
We’re living through what has been termed late-stage capitalism and it’s pretty much like a form of Stage 4 cancer that’s ripping through our country and our planet. I read an observation recently from an American ex-pat (a smart person who left the country to live in a saner place) who returned and observed that virtually every aspect of American life is now for sale.
Words and phrases such as side hustle, monetize, grind culture, and ROI (return on investment) now routinely enter conversations that take place everywhere from school playgrounds to street corners.
Every inmate, er — citizen, is now desperate for ways to maximize output, capitalize on time investment and basically squeeze every possible cent out of every action and waking moment. Why?
Two reasons, I think. One, the cost of everything has been rising faster than my blood pressure every time I turn on the news. And at the same time, billionaires have made it a point to keep wages as flat as possible. Ironic in that CEO salaries are now 280 times the average worker whereas they were more like 20 times in the 1970s. So, they keep stealing from us and raising prices and we must keep trying to find ways to make more money to simply survive.
The second reason is because many people have bought into the big lie that the true ambition for all Americans is to be rich. And that is truly an insidious lie constantly pushed by the mass media, social media, movies, TV shows, and popular culture that glorifies wealth and materialism as the ultimate form of human achievement. I call bull excrement on that one.
Look at life in Altamont. Folks who have chosen to live here generally appreciate the lack of traffic, general level of quiet, and focus on community. It’s a pretty, little village set in a lovely space surrounded by green and the Helderbergs in the distance.
But in the 30 years I’ve lived here I’ve seen several greed-driven trends change things rather for the worse. Much of the green space that forms a buffer between us and the vast, endless hellscape of suburban Builderland is being eaten away as rapacious developers tear up the land to build ever more ugly McMansions on once virgin land (hence the angry wildlife).
That has led to our water/sewer bills going higher even as our water quality drops due to high demand from all the new homes. If the plan to bring us water from Builderland’s water system succeeds, I suspect we’ll be lost forever.
Perhaps the only possible benefit to us getting water from the town might be a lowering of our bills and less manganese in our water. But I’m not holding my breath. A lack of water is all that’s keeping the monsters at bay.
The other problem besides needless land rape is the increase in rents by greedy landlords who like to blame rising taxes but are really driven by the “passive income” trend that drives rent up. In the old days, landlords usually based rents on the cost of owning the home, taxes, upkeep, and so on and thus rarely exceeded the 30 percent of gross income that has always been accepted as reasonable.
Now, it’s all about maxing out the rent to max out the passive income. Add to that billionaires buying up rental properties and residential homes to rent them out at over-market rates and you have a recipe for disaster.
I spoke to a young woman who works as a public-school teacher in New York City and got her apartment in a lottery. Her current rent is upwards of $3,000 per month. It’s not that crazy in Altamont yet but rent on a simple one-bedroom apartment can easily exceed $1,200 per month.
All this greed isn’t good for anyone. We’ve created a society that isn’t livable, sane, healthy, or sustainable. But for the psychopaths at the top, none of that matters because they own everything. And they’re so mentally ill and insulated from reality that, unless we radically revamp our tax system and identify them as what they are, mentally ill wealth hoarders and thieves, we’re doomed.
We live on a small planet with finite resources that we all must share and if a tiny group of financial predators controls most of those resources, we’re screwed. The system they have created is based on limitless growth on a planet that can’t sustain that. If things in Altamont and things on the planet keep on careening forward at this rate, our children and grandchildren won’t have a livable planet, and rent will be $12,000 for an outhouse.
The lie that development and progress are good for everyone is wearing thin. I think a permanent moratorium on new nonaffordable housing is in order. Also, no one person should be able to buy up large chunks of contiguous real estate like what has happened in the center of the village.
We all share the planet; we all need to really share it equally. Allowing wealthy people to control our lives and our village life simply because they have enough money to buy real estate makes no sense in the long term.
I don’t want to have to explain to random deer why their habitat has been destroyed so one old white guy can buy another sports car. That’s not why we’re here folks. We’re here to live decent, sustainable lives in a way that leaves the village and the planet better than we found it.
I don’t want to have to explain to my granddaughter why she can’t live her life in Altamont if she chooses because the whole village was sold off to condo developers.
Life isn’t about he/she who dies with the most toys wins. Real life is about living a life that enriches you and those around you spiritually, psychically, physically, and emotionally. Keep your yachts, Porsches, McMansions, and portfolios folks; I’m going for a bike ride in the woods while there are still trails left.
Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he was born genetically opposed to greed as religion.