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we all hear about kudzu being introduced as "erosion control" in the South but I don't think contemporary people understand on a gut level what that means
these are images from a 1930s pamphlet that endorsed kudzu, entitled "stop gullies: save your farm"
For context: erosion on that scale occurred as a result of our clear-cutting entire states. The land east of the Mississippi used to be covered in old-growth forest to an extent that we literally canât imagine anymore, because most of us have never seen a forest over 100 years old. It turns out if you remove all vegetation from a landscape, you end up with a bunch of loose soil ready to move downstream. A fast-growing plant that covers everything in dense vegetation sounds like salvation when youâre surrounded by 40-foot deep gullies that get wider with every rainstorm.
It must be emphasized that scientific agronomy began less than 200 years ago, with Justus von Liebigâs studies of plant nutrition, and went down many blind alleys in its first hundred years. Europeans had brought to the Americas crops and practices which were not suited to the land, and which they tried to make work by main force. They also brought ideas which did not suit the conditions, such as, that if land would not grow trees it would not grow crops.
Many people today would like to say, âthey should have taken guidance from indigenous practices!â But those practices succeeded in supporting perhaps four million people in the entire vast land area we now refer to as the USA and Canada, one per cent of the current figure. Worse still, the native peoples were constantly engaged in brutal and often genocidal warfare, which served to keep their populations down to the level that could be supported by their food supplies. Even people with no preâconceived notions of their own superiority would have questioned the value of such examples.
Today we live in a world of eight thousand million humans. In such a world, to protect biodiversity and leave any land at all untouched by human use requires intensive agriculture, interâregional trade in foodstuffs, refrigeration and other modes of food preservation, and the use of synthetic chemistry to substitute for nonâfood crops. The crucial question that we must face is this : is âsustainabilityâ, which means longâterm survival, only possible at a low level of material culture with small populations, or can we beat Parson Malthusâ game?
Do not be like the idiot above. They say that there were only 4 million people in the Americas before European colonization? Nope!
âthere is a general consensus that the Indigenous population in the Americas was nearly 100 million people at the time of Spanish contact.â
- Williams, Charlotte. 2023. 'Estimating Populations of the Americas pre-1492'. Dispossessions in the Americas. https://dia.upenn.edu/en/content/WilliamsC003/
Dispossessions in the Americas
And genocidal warfare? Iâm sorry?
The indigenous peopleâs of Turtle Island are people. Historically, our cultures have engaged in both warfare and peaceful diplomacy. In the tens of thousands of years that we have lived on that land has something that we may call genocide ever occurred?
Yeah, I mean, probably.
But there is no evidence of a pattern of constant warfare or genocidal behavior which is what the fuckwit above me claims. Perhaps they mixed up my culture and their own.
Next time you want to dismiss indigenous knowledge out of hand why donât you try getting your own fucking facts right? Before you call 100 million murdered natives and their descendants bloodthirsty savages?
Thank you very much for saying this and providing citation
I saw that someone had left this reblog that had some very incorrect claims and I wanted to correct them but I would have to look everything up and write up refutation to the claim
If anything, the 100 million number is an UNDER estimate.?? I know at least that in my state (Kentucky) pre-European populations are estimated based upon the amount of artifacts like projectile points... But the problem with that is...rivercane! (the native North American bamboo, which is discussed in another reblog thread, used to form its own ecosystems known as Canebrakes, which were the ecosystem that was destroyed to create these cotton plantations worked by slave labor.) River cane is so sharp and strong, arrows and knives for butchering could be made out of river cane no problem. (I've seen this handling the plant myself, you can easily cut yourself on splinters of rivercane)
rivercane was used to make furniture, bed frames, containers, roofs, all sorts of everyday tools, and it all would have decomposed back into the earth when it was done being used.
yknow when i was like almost 16 and i came out as trans a lot of people thought i was going through a phase. and im like yeah ok fair enough, i have felt this way my whole life but i obviously wasnt in a safe place to really tell anyone so ill give it time. 3 years later i started t and people were like "dont do that, youre just going through a phase, youll regret it" and im like ok well i havent transitioned yet so we'll give it time. but i still have people telling me its a phase, im doing it for attention, and ill inevitably detransition and im like look man its been 8 fucking years ok at what point are we going to be like "ok maybe hes serious"
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I love lying to my landlord. âWeâre currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease hereâ and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, Iâm gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that Iâm not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlordâIâm just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease Iâve ever signed. (Also, Iâve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether theyâre corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their assetâthe propertyâis a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time itâs sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.Â
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goalâand because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent moneyâtheyâre almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, itâs actually in their best interest to give you a better price.Â
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an âAVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAYâ sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says âFirst month freeâ? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says âcall for availabilityâ? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.Â
You have the least leverage if youâre a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that arenât even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if youâve already signed a lease and youâre in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so youâre stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if youâre a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and youâre being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, theyâre also probably going to have to put in some work to âturnâ the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, itâs still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. Theyâre probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know itâll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if youâre a prospective new tenantâif they canât get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, thatâs $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and theyâll never get it back. Itâs a perishable item about to spoil.Â
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number theyâll quote you for the rentâthe sticker price that youâve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, theyâve built some buffer into that number. Thereâs almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people donât!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Donât reply to their initial offer right awayâunless thereâs a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you arenât desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when weâre talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when itâs time to send out renewal offers didnât get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they couldâve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!Â
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)Â
Hereâs the tricky part. You need to write an emailâalways negotiate over email if you can, itâs too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isnât in writing means nothingâwhich simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, youâd delete those other hoesâ numbers forever! Hereâs the rough script I use every time:
â Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I shouldâve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number thatâs higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; youâve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and theyâre likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firmâin which case, guess what? You still didnât lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didnât mention it above because I just couldnât fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically âprice firm :(â, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, âactually, nvm, howâs $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?â
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
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For anybody not caught up: Tennessee just passed a new map that pretty much makes it so black neighborhoods have no power in local votes. Two things about this. While protestors were chanting "No Jim Crow", white Tennessee lawmakers were caught laughing on video. On top of this, Representative Justin Pearson and his brother KeShaun Pearson were arrested for trying to give their takes on the matter (which is not only their legal right but literally his job). If you give a shit about black people, help fight this. We can't allow a return to Jim Crow.
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