Forbes says self-reliant homesteaders are "delusional"

Posted: Aug 5, 2017

It’s always interesting reading when someone smug and sanctimonious writes a clueless diatribe about another group of people being smug and sanctimonious. So when I saw that an economist for Moody’s and Forbes had written an op-ed calling self-reliant homesteaders “delusional,” I knew I’d be in for some misinformed hilarity. The article, entitled, “Dear Homesteaders, Self-Reliance Is a Delusion” was published a couple of days ago on the Forbes website. You’ll be forewarned that the article won’t be deep in the first paragraph, when the author presents his claim to knowledge about self-reliant living comes from the fact that he is “a big fan of shows about doomsday preppers, homesteaders, survivalists, generally people who live off the grid.”.... Since his entire argument is based on the tv programs he watches, the author doesn’t understand what self-reliance means to those of us who aren’t reality television stars. It means: •We provide a lot of our own food because we prefer to know where it comes from. •We raise our own meat because we object to the way factory-farmed animals are treated. •We use our own sources of power because maybe we’re green at heart or maybe we just prefer not to be tied into the “smart” grid. •We learn to make our own products for cleaning, bathing, and making life pleasant because we don’t want to bring chemical toxins into our homes. •We’d rather skip the middle man and spend our time actually making the things that most people work for hours to purchase from someone else who made them. •We are far less likely to spend time at the doctor’s office because a) we aren’t huge fans of pharmaceuticals, b) we can take care of small things ourselves, and c) our healthier lifestyle means we tend to be less likely to be ill. (Although this isn’t always the case – even self-reliant homesteaders can get sick. And when we do, we use our insurance or we pay for it with savings. Just like everyone else.) •We don’t need as much money because we just don’t need as much stuff. But to someone who buys all of their food and other goods from the store and gets all of their medicine from the pharmacy, it can be difficult to understand the satisfaction that comes from evading those places. ;