A friend shared with me the idea of preparing a place where anyone who needed a place to live could go. He intended it to be a place in the United States, differentiating it from a developing world opportunity to rise to greater temporal capacity. He intended it to be a working farm, differentiating it from the welfare programs practiced in the wealthy nations. He intended it to be a place that is self-supporting, but extremely frugal and simple, meaning people would not have any money, but they would have simple clothing, sufficient calories from simple food they were able to grow themselves, and simple dorms to live in. The place would run by the principles of heaven, which would include freedom from compulsion of beliefs.
As time goes by, I encounter more and more people who would prefer to live in such a place than the system that presently pervades the world. But it is clear to me that very few people would show up to such a place as this.
The religious would probably be the last to show up, as religious people believe their God will give them all the goodies of Egypt, but in greater abundance and with less work than required by those who do not profess believe in God. Their god is the devil, and what they will receive from him will be no different than the wages he has paid to his servants since the beginning: misery, sorrow, and chains.
Who would show up? The humble. The just. The pure in heart. Those who have been run out of the careers they diligently prepared for because they stood up to what they believed was right. Those who have found continually disillusionment in the broken promises of Babylon. The brokenhearted. The meek. The heirs of all things.
One of the challenges of setting up such places is the incessant regulations, taxes, and fees set up by every single state in the United States. There is no state that does not have property tax. As the future unfolds, there will be more and more people forced to leave their homes due to an inability to pay their taxes and mortgage-prescribed property insurance, both of which will escalate as fast as the inflated value of the homes they are attached to. All counties are continuously increasing the constraints and prohibitions of what you can and can't build on your own property, how much it costs to comply with their mandates, and how much they charge you for the permission to do so. Each of these barriers make it harder--and MUCH more expensive--to establish a place for people to live a simple subsistence life. To dwell in Babylon, one must work for gain. Without staying ahead of taxes and inflation, you will be unable to maintain independence. To stay ahead of taxes and inflation, you have to work in Babylon. Therefore, does anyone truly have independence? Or are we all slaves, even though very few realize it?
In pre-automation agricultural times, it was easy to get a 20-50 fold return on grain in the inhabited areas of the United States. When oil was discovered and put to use, it provided on the order of a 150-fold return on the energy required to harvest it. The return at the point of use has fallen to single digits due to several irreversible factors. The siren song of Babylon baited the entire world, most especially the United States, and now we are all entrapped. While our slavery doesn't seem so bad to most, what is coming will. Those who fail to see current problems in their true magnitude lack the eyes to see that the bad things that are possible and precisely what will actually occur. The foundations have already been removed. [1] [2] [3]
The United States has closed off the paths the righteous few would use to establish such places as I have described here, except through monumentally great sacrifice. It would require an enormous amount of money to purchase land and finance the initial capital required to sustain a group of people through the work of their own hands in the present environment. Whether they could ever produce sufficient to fund the payment of their recurring taxes is an open question, but one that cannot even be addressed without there first being enough people with enough money to donate to a cause guaranteed to be a total financial loss. After all, the present boundary of willingness to sacrifice seems to be reading a book or writing an Amazon review.
And so, in bondage the people shall remain, until those who have the means to do something about it decide to.