On 7/30/2012 8:27 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Jack Skolasky" wrote in message
The question illustrates why the demographic trend is for the
country to become more urbanized. Hicks who want to live far from
civilization pay a price in lack of amenities and inferior services.
Besides redneck wheel balancing, you probably also could methods for
DIY hillbilly root canal and - of course! - colon cancer screening,
but the results will be typically bad.

The services are only "inferior" if you haven't learned the
alternatives. I have friends who lived for years without mains
electricity or running water. I loaned them a generator but they
didn't use it much. They were neat and well-dressed when they went out
and if you met them you'd never know.

My grandmother had a rural do-it-yourself book printed in 1820 that
lamented how everyone had moved to town and forgotten the old
self-reliance.

"Self-reliance" doesn't mean doing everything for yourself. There are
gains from exchange, both among nations and among individuals.

Years ago, a colleague criticized me for not doing my own car repairs.
To him, it was just unarguably a mark of virtue to fix his own car, and
he regarded those who didn't as morally deficient - "sinners", in a way.
I asked him, "Do you do your own dry cleaning, too?" He didn't have
an answer.

My only point in my original reply in the thread is that if you're going
to live in the sticks, you are forced to choose between doing a lot of
things for yourself that others conveniently and relatively cheaply hire
out to have done, or to travel long distances to get done. I think
trying to figure out how to balance your own wheels is just absurd.