I think people are getting their hopes too high expecting him to expire any day now. Actuarial tables for men give only like a 5-6% chance of death in a year for men his age. While he’s obviously not in peak condition, the average Americans those tables are based on certainly aren’t either and unlike most of them he does have the benefit of insane resources to throw at whatever medical challenge (ex. the experimental Covid therapy that saved his life when he got infected with that) and very regular scanning. Plus genetics is a factor and his dad lived to 93 while his mom got to 88.

Clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, the latter can open up deep fissures in it that act as channels for unfiltered water to flow down deeper than you may expect, leaving aside tectonic activity or other reasons that could cause such penetrations in the ground. The native plants also have impressively deep root systems that can provide similar gaps, and you may never know if it was there or not if the clay got wet again and sealed up the voids along with any presents washed down and absorbed into the clay matrix. It puts a lot of faith in Bo Taylor to break his back digging way way deep beyond the reaches of this above plus the necessary amount for scrubbing whatever waste may have gotten down that far… I agree it’s not especialy likely as far as bacterial infection alone, I just protest at the absolutely no risk formulation. There’s a reason bags of this stuff are sold as ‘novelty items’ rather than going through FDA approval.

How would you know that no animal had ever crapped over the clay deposit and had rain drift in durable, long-lasting bacterial spores from the waste whiøe the rain was on its way through the clay to join the groundwater? That a burrowing critter didn’t die just upstream in the ground of where you’re digging? It’s not terribly likely that those would get you sick maybe but ‘absolutely no risk’ is a high bar to clear.

Also there can be other sorts of non-obvious contamination like if there are trace amounts of heavy metals. Kaopectate got sued by California because the clay contained in their popular anti-diarrhea pills had traces of lead, such that the adult version pills would have fifty micrograms of lead a pop or six to twelve micrograms for children. For reference California currently mandates a warning slapped on if a product exposes you to half a microgram of lead per day. It’s difficult to know the provenance and full risks of stuff dug from a hole for a regular person. Even trained people with a lot on the line sometimes screw up and get people hurt.

Realistically red state depopulation is not happening by next census. There has already been substantial net migration towards red states since the last one and it would be quite a tall order to go back to the 2020 status quo in time let alone to substantially reverse those migrations. And the regressive policies of red states aren’t unknown; most people making those moves just consider them less as important than the housing affordability angle as evidenced by them still making those moves even as many are getting more extreme in policies. In theory it would be easy to game the electoral college if people moved in organized ideological ways but most people are moving for mundane kitchen table reasons rather than for their rights and ideology.

I’m not saying it’s unsolvable, just that it’s not solved right now which is why there is currently a stream of people going to red states that are building. That needs to be fixed to stop before that stream can be turned around. I want that solved so more people can afford to live in states that aren’t psycho! Red states have indeed not solved NIMBYism either but their advantage is that building single family homes in sprawl around major cities is easier under current zoning regimes than building up; they can still build that low hanging fruit since they historically were less desired places to live and had lower populations, whereas the best spots for that easy to build sprawl have generally already been built a while back in blue states.

Here’s the chart of vacancy rates. I considered new housing permits more relevant in the last post because people are putting money on the line that the house they’re building is worth it either for themselves to live in or to sell or rent to someone else, so generally that’s tied in with proximity to a local economic center. If considering vacant houses the problem is that say if the local mill shut down and the place has no jobs then maybe they have a ton of vacant homes after much of that community left but no one wants to live there since you can’t make a living. So ex. West Virginia has a huge number of vacant homes but they no longer have the economic centers that made most of them viable so people are generally still moving out rather than in. Whereas say the Carolinas have well developed economies in the areas where they are building & and are building at a huge clip so the large number of vacancies from new construction are desirable and many people are flooding in to buy those relatively cheap homes near decent jobs.

I agree that those laws can be changed and I would like that to happen. There is room for expansion still in blue states - not so much horizontally because generally any place that could be sprawled out within a long commute near a city with a decent economy has had that happen already. People also won’t move to houses built in the middle of nowhere where no jobs are available. But, there can be much more vertical, denser building. Even returning to historic densities would be a big help in buffing blue states politically (ex. Manhattan had a peak population of 2.3 million in 1910 but is now only 1.7 million.) But there is a big NIMBY problem to overcome before getting there since homeowners have big incentives to oppose new housing whatever the source, and those special interests have not disappeared just because the states are blue.

Below are two photos of internal migration by state and new housing permits per capita. Since housing is THE major cost in most people’s budgets there is a flow going towards where housing is cheapest. Some have actually coined the term “New Great Migration” as many African Americans are now coming to the South on net. This is buffing the political power of those states even while the politics are rather rancid.

Unfortunately most of our blue states have shot themselves in the foot by making it too difficult to privately build dense housing while also not using public resources to build densely in sufficient amounts either. Blue states were generally already nicer places to live so they filled up and sprawled out a while back after that it’s been harder to keep stapling on homes near cities with decent economies. Whereas most red states are a lot emptier and still have that room to sprawl out development near their economic engines… so that’s where the building happens and the people are drawn in by more affordable housing. Eventually red states will sprawl out too much and the low hanging fruit will be gone but for the time being they’re still building like crazy in places like South Carolina.

Population is growing and the household sizes have been shrinking so more homes are needed to house fewer people. But existing housing stocks decay and possibly become unusable if not cared for and constantly need to be replenished. If blue states want to grow their population they have to overcome interest groups and obstacles opposed to either making it easier to build housing or the government itself building housing in sufficient quantities.

Dang that was one of the three I was first introduced to as a kid. Teacher recommended using AskJeeves, Dogpile, or what she called her “personal favorite”, Google.

Not sure how Dogpile still exists