While I'm a "live and let live" kinda guy, I still think this is kinda stupid:
The people aren’t really tiny, but their homes are — 150 to 200 square feet of living space, some with gabled roofs, others with bright cedar walls, compact bathrooms and cozy sleeping lofts that add up to living spaces that are smaller than the walk-in closets in a suburban McMansion…While you're in this house, saving Mother Earth as well as a buck, maybe you'll want to follow Jimmy Carter's advice and put on a sweater, too.
If these affordable homes — which maximize every inch of interior space and look a little like well-constructed playhouses — are the dream, they represent a radically fresh version of what it takes to make Americans happy.
Anyway, this observation couldn't be more correct:
Barbie’s Lowered Expectations House. Put that thing in Flyover Country and cue the Palin jokes. Put it in northeast DC and it magically becomes a fashion statement.
It’s odd… You only read stories about how great it is to be poor, how empowering it is to settle for less, when a Democrat is president. If a Republican was in charge, would WaPo be doing stories about how awesome it is to live in a breadbox?
2 comments:
The comparison that immediately popped into my mind was that of hippy-dippy agricultural communes.
Swept away by the sort of romantic view only someone who has zero experience with agriculture could have, the communes started with a wave of romantic rhapsodizing about being close to the earth and drawing forth your daily sustenance via your own, honest labor, blah, blah, blah.
Then the reality of agriculture started to sink in, that it's hard work that doesn't end and pays poorly. Absent the media coverage that attended their creation, the communes then began to disappear with most lasting two years or less.
The first paragraph of the story at Daily Caller you linked nails the attraction:
how awesome it is to lower your standards
People who'd never consider living in a micro-house, let alone building one, can enjoy a highly-valued sense of moral superiority by singing their praises. For the hard core willing to make the considerable sacrifices necessary to living in a micro-house, they're in nirvana; they get to sneer at anyone who isn't willing to make a personal commitment to saving the earth.
Between the hypocrites and and the hard core there'll be a number of folks who get in knowing they can always get out - the dilettantes and in five years Youtube videos will appear as amateur journalists investigate these quaint anachronisms and the defiant people who cling to them.
Some Americans would be happy with less. I would be.
http://freecabinporn.com
Maybe not this small, but interesting:
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com
These are works of art:
http://beaverbrook.com
http://www.mountainliving.com/article/450-square-foot-cottage
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