this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
798 points (98.9% liked)
Political Memes
10107 readers
3260 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm way too old to be a Millennial, so I obviously can't directly sympathize, but the ridiculous prices today really trigger the introvert side of me. I have this strong desire to move somewhere that land is still very cheap and become a crazy hermit who lives in a shed or something.
Any time I have a piece of this feeling I'm reminded of the most underappreciated technological and society development: the flush toilet.
Its freakin' magic that usually requires a functioning municipality to run dependably and cheaply. I just don't think I can live a life long term without it.
You make a great point for a sane person, but it's unconvincing to a crazy hermit.
You can of have flushing toilets with a septic tank. It doesn't have to be an outhouse.
Yep. Grew up in a village. We had flushing toilets that flushed into a septic tank.
I agree you can have flush toilets without municipal water or sewage, but therea septic tank solution that subtract from the "easy" part I was referring to with the municipal sewage solution.
With municipal sewage I've never had to change a failing septic tank macerator or worry about a impacts to the leech field. This says nothing about the regular pumping needed to maintain a septic tank.
I’ve never had to get my septic cleaned or serviced in over twenty years. Flush an enzyme pack every three months, it’ll never build up to needing flushed unless required when selling one day. I’ve had to replace a well pump once, really easy one day job. I’m sure municipal water and sewage is nice but I’ve never had either, pushing fifty years old. I never realized anyone considered these things difficult or complicated, I’m an idiot and have never ran into anything I couldn’t service myself.
A septic system isn't that expensive nor hard to maintain. If you have access to well water you can run it near independently. Assuming electricity of course, which is often available even in places without sewer or water.
All you need is to occasionally pay someone to come and pump the tank
OPs scenario is paraphrased as "shack out in the woods removed from civilization". Getting the equipment and workers out to such a place would present the first challenge.
See, now we've raised the bar to not only requiring a sewage solution, but also dependable electricity and water source. This is why a functioning society is so valuable. It can provide easy and cheap access to dependable water, sewage, electricity, and skilled workers to build, install, and maintain the systems that let the toilet function without a second though.
See point #1.
I've seen people way out there be able to run septic systems. We're talking miles of dirt road through the mountains
Also have you even traveled the rural US? You can usually get electricity in the middle of absolutely no where. Thank FDR for that one.
Basically it's perfectly possible to meet the shack in the woods definition in either of our models. You can find a place without access to these things in a rural setting, but you also can.
Of all the things you might miss by moving to a rural area, this should be the least of your worries. There are places to take a shit out there. Have you ever heard of a septic tank?
Asked and answered by other posters.
toilets just require a water supply and somewhere to flush to
no need for municipal water supply and wastewater, though that does make it easy, but you can simply use stream water that gravity fills your well located water tanks, then flush into a septic container suitable for the location. or hell even hand pump the water up from a well - bicycles make great transmissions to drive pumps
My experience with living and depending on a well shows its anything but easy or dependable.
and anecdotally my experience and that of pretty much everybody I knew growing up says otherwise lol
I think you're proving my point. Geography can change the experience significantly. This could be because local agricultural producers also use wells for irrigation running a residence's dry (without drilling deeper), or the climate being more brutal on well pumps and pressure tanks. Quality of the water that comes out may vary drastically with pollution or runoff requiring more frequent home testing or treatment.
I'm not saying well water is impossible to live on, I'm pointing out that its a bunch of work and doesn't just "happen" like turning the tap on using municipal water.
Give me a compost toilet any day! A peaceful poo, often with a view. No mixing water with shit and then needing to separate them again. Why make more work out of nothing!? A well kept compost toilet is heavenly. Plus zero splashback - can't fault that. Keep water free of sewage!
I'm building a new building with a washroom and putting in a waterless toilet by choice. Flushing shit is kind of primitive if you ask me, a waste instead of resource, if you excuse the pun.
Not always possible in urban settings.
Look up a blackwater system. That's my goal if I ever can afford land
So long as there's gigabit internet and a hospital not too far away....
Density breeds access to infrastructure.
You can bet that in most cases, there will not be a hospital close by.
The asset-isation of housing will never allow for sensible urban planning
Ahem, commodification
Ah yes, this is a better word haha
Have home in the boonies, have gigabit fiber, have hospital <40min away if you're not flooring it.
Am also millennial... I guess we're the lucky ones, closing on a home like 6months before covid closed everything down, and politicians made some irresponsible decisions that made the housing market skyrocket.
Well it's telling that all of the rich investment banker types always eventually quit and start a hobby farm in the country.
The general feeling seems to be that agriculture was a good idea, but we took things too far with this whole civilisation thing.
You remind me of this Hitchhiker's quote:
Nah screw that. The issue is not enough cities, and the solution is certainly not further unsustainable sprawl
A hobby farm isn't sprawl.
I suppose it depends a bit. Most of the people who want a hobby farm also want the amenities that big cities offer, so the hobby farms tend to be at the edges of the outer-ring suburbs which could be considered sprawl. There's also working farms in those sorts of areas, but I'd not call that sprawl since those farms are using the land productively and in most cases were there long before the suburbs started encroaching on them.
A rural hobby farm out in the middle of nowhere I'd be less inclined to call sprawl.
A hobby farm is absolutely sprawl. I'm not going to go out here and say every farm is sprawl;but if your farm is just for hobby? Yeah absolutely. Though to be fair it really does depend on yields...
Moving onto abandoned agricultural land doesn’t count as sprawl if you don’t subdivide it and start growing food.
If mechanized, sure...
A bit inland in Dalmatia (Croatia) seems very cheap and you could have at least have your own wine and olives. Land directly at the coast is super expensive.
If you can dream it, be it.