I have had much of my thinking preoccupied with the heart-rending dream of a little farm in the country. A serviceable house with room for a library and classroom for my little ones (I collect books); a small house for creatures that make eggs, meat, and milk; a shop building where I can push a plane and beat on hot steel; and a little Mediterranean-style windmill that spins a chunk of granite to grind my wheat into flour for my wife to beat into loaves. It rends the heart for the speed at which it fades.

I could build such a place myself in five years or so, but even to begin or “get permission” (permitting) would cost more than I am likely to make in all the years remaining to my useful working life.

I spent the better part of twenty years in various trades — construction, mostly, but also cabinetmaking and tool-and-die. As the best I ever got from that was herniated disks and the “self-employment tax,” I did what I could to earn my keep with my brain rather than my back — been at that for almost a decade with little success.

For most of that time, it has struck me as absurd that most of my labor was wasted like heat in a poorly maintained machine. I think I may have profited from 20% of my labor — at best — for all the costs, taxes, punishments, and generally confiscatory parasitism to be found in the “land of the fee.” I could employ some terribly pedantic scholarly sources to demonstrate this fact — that most of our labor is stolen between hand and mouth — but that has always proven to be a waste of time.

I would like to offer three solutions — none of which will be enacted, and such is the pity of the world we know. If........

© American Thinker