I can’t imagine being this deferential towards the government
That just wouldn't fly here in my part of the States. A building would get burned down.
I know it's a double edged sword, but the freedom to do what I want with my own space really is something I take for granted.
The shower is outside on the back patio. The shower is fitted with hot water from the conventional water heater plumbed from the house. The shower is surrounded by a stainless steel privacy screen and a lot of really tall tropical plants. It’s the one feature that friends and family seem to like the most about the cottage. But the county authorities said it was completely illegal.
First, the county inspector cited the raw sewerage that was being released into the environment. By “raw sewerage” he was referring to warm soapy water. The “environment” in this case was my rural back garden. The remedy was to plumb the outdoor shower with a drain that carried the “sewerage” into the septic system for safe disposal. I had this work done at some considerable expense that I struggled to afford at the time. Then the inspector was invited back to final the plumbing permit. Unfortunately he cited the project for another violation instead. It seems that rain water was able to drain into the outdoor shower and enter the septic system which was a code violation. He couldn’t have told me this earlier? Evidently inspectors shy away from proscribing holistic solutions. Instead they just look at what’s in front of them and check off boxes on their clip boards. It’s up to the property owner to understand and comply with the impenetrable codes on their own. So I covered the outdoor shower with a simple roof that prevented the rain from entering the drain (completely ruining the whole concept of a tropical outdoor shower). When the inspector returned this too was a code violation since a covered structure with plumbing constitutes a second dwelling unit on a lot that is only zoned for one unit. I removed the roof from the shower in disgust. Finally a sympathetic neighbor said he had a similar problem with his outdoor shower and solved the problem by re-labeling it as a hose bib on the permit documents. I plugged up the shower drain with concrete, removed the shower head, and invited the inspector back to approve the hot and cold hose bibs inside the little privacy screen on the back patio. In fifteen seconds he was able to check off the little boxes on his clip board and there were no more problems with the outdoor shower. A sense of relief and calm washed over me. But it only lasted for ten seconds. The inspector then said he couldn’t sign off on the building inspection because this house didn’t have a shower or bath tub…
source: https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/building-cod...
I expect building codes and nonsense like that in cities. But not in farms.
Maybe “proactive rule following”.
Alternatively try living in an area with a high risk of fire. Leaving your back yard to grow wild could easily create a huge tinderbox. There are fire resistant plants suited to e.g. dry summers, but invasive stuff that's ill-suited to dry summers is just as happy to take root.
FWIW I said raptors, not hawks. So yeah. Owls, vultures, hawks, osprey, falcons, we get them all out here. When they eat a poisoned rodent they'll likely die. Scavengers that eat the dead birds will also get sick. It's bad all around. Deer are already overpopulated. None of what this person is setting out is particularly good for any of the animals. These are wild animals that are perfectly capable of finding their own, healthier, safer food.
It's like with the monarchs. Folks should be careful about where they plant milkweed in part because of the disastrous effects it can have on their migration. The same thing can happen with vertebrates like migratory birds.
There's a reason why feeding wildlife is pretty much universally condemned: it's bad for the animals.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/idkt_feedingwildlife.htm
https://www.audubon.org/news/to-feed-or-not-feed
https://dec.ny.gov/nature/wildlife-health/do-not-feed-wildli...
https://outdoor.wildlifeillinois.org/articles/revealed-the-d...
Some people think it's best to just avoid the drama and ask first.
Bill's got my back. If there was a problem, he'd be the first one to tell me _how_ to work around it, and since I'm the kind of guy to want to make things easy for everyone I live around, he'd probably be the first one to help do it if I needed it.
Who knows? What I do know is you will solve nothing by pretending it's petty and for sheer prideful lack of imagination can't bring yourself to pick up a phone and spend 3 minutes asking questions.
It's government. You pay for it. Why you wouldn't expect it to be useful to you is beyond me.
They don't protect us from crime via police, they beat and imprison us if we stray from their stated path, and we have no choice to not participate. Yes we can technically choose to move to another king's domain and be serfs there. To be fair even this highly regulated legally and not an easy option for many.
Honestly, we're way passed due for a revolution. The government has become a self serving and self perpetuating machine that uses people rather than serving them.
One of the pleasant surprises I had, immigrating from the US to Australia, was discovering how much more responsive the government is to the populace, even at the municipal level. The big difference is that, here, virtually everyone votes in all elections at every level of government because it is considered a legal responsibility of citizenship, just like jury duty and taxes. This means that time-poor, lower-class single parents have exactly the same voting power as retired busybodies, and that makes a HUGE difference to how smoothly and fairly everything operates.
We have federal and state holidays that specify that those government employees have those holidays, but private employers aren't required to do anything on those days (there might be some states that impose requirements, but certainly not a majority).
https://www.sars.gov.za/tax-rates/income-tax/rates-of-tax-fo...
And yes it's "progressive", but I'm rounding up for arguments-sake due to all the "other" taxes that aren't individual income tax. Fuel levy, sugar tax, VAT, import tax (err "duties"), cigarette tax, employment insurance tax, property transfer fees/taxes, estate taxes, capital gains tax, etc.
Either way... 50% is big, but so is 40%, or 30%. Doubly so in South Africa because we have no choice but to pay for a lot of supposed government services using post-tax income (due to this being a failed 3rd world state that doesn't provide actual services). E.g. healthcare, security, fire, insurance, etc.
Cherry on top: Only 5-10% of the population even pays income tax here. So no it's not paying one's fair share, this is a giant socialist wealth-redistribution system where a good chunk gets carved out and given to the high-ranking government priesthood and otherwise connected individuals. The scraps make their way to underfunded government services for the real poor serfs to maybe get some benefit out of, unfortunately. The reason I mention this, is that it's the same in other governments, they're just less blatant about it. It's only in these extreme examples that people see the nature of what's going on, and how they are actually slave-labour for the government. Well... at least only 50% of their labour /s.