By Mark Shepard

A failed state is one that has either collapsed or that would collapse if not for someone else propping it up.  From Castro’s 1961 revolution forward, communist Cuba has been a failed state, for if it were not for the Soviet Union’s financial help, it would have soon collapsed.  Vermont likewise is heavily propped up by our federal government, mostly coming from the earnings of fellow citizens living and working in states operating according to a working economic model. 

Vermonters have not always held their hand out for someone else to fund their needs.  After the 1927 flood destroyed more than 1,000 bridges and hundreds of miles of roads and railroad tracks, the federal government offered Vermont financial assistance.  Though unthinkable today, Vermont of 1927 turned down the money.

This shift in thinking happened over decades, starting around 1970, with the building of Interstates 89 and 91, putting Vermont much closer to several cities.  Thousands of people from urban and suburban localities migrated in, including many disenchanted, yet utopian-seeking, hippies.  In a 1972 Playboy article, Taking Over Vermont, Richard Pollak encouraged a focused takeover of Vermont for a social experiment.  

My point is not to pit the urban against rural, but rather to show why urban thinking does not work in a rural setting.  The reverse is also true.

Although Vermont did not unfold exactly as Pollak imagined, thousands did migrate, bringing their urban area mindset and a determination to make Vermont into their idea of utopia.  Passing laws was relatively easy as it simply required taking control of the government. Making urban-style programs work in a rural state, without pricing out ordinary residents, has proved to be a daunting challenge.

In Urban areas the cost of public services spreads across dense populations. As people spread out, the cost per resident of government services rises.  Implementing urban-type services in a rural setting is so costly that only the richest of people can afford to live there.  It also extinguishes the wonderful rural life where most needs are met within the family and neighbors helping neighbors, leaving little for the government, and thus open to any responsible person, regardless of income.

Vermont’s government increasingly seeks federal money to sustain its programs. Governor Howard Dean (1991–2003) was particularly adept at securing federal funding, and the accompanying dependency. So, instead of addressing root problems, those elected tend to blame the federal government, whom they made Vermonters dependent upon.  Indeed, Vermont has been turned into a failed state.  The urban model simply does not work for rural Vermont, even with outside wealth pouring in.  The failed examples are many:

• School consolidation: Local rural schools have closed and replaced with huge district urban-modeled schools.  Elementary bus routes can exceed an hour each way. 
• Unskilled young people: Child-labor and minimum-wage laws restrict access to skill-building jobs that young people used to learn and earn from.  The result is an abundance of unproductive idle time and increased drug abuse and crime.
• Regulating toward denser housing: Vermont’s 1997 Act 60 education-financing law is a tool to push a more urban denser house model.  The two-acre limit for income-based property-tax relief makes owning more than two acres much harder for the average Vermonter.  Coupled with Vermont’s heavy and costly land-use regulations (Act 250 and 181) that make selling or developing a parcel unaffordable, has forced scores of Vermonters off their rural, sometimes generational, properties and into denser housing.  

Those who favor dense settlement may regard these changes as progress.  For those who value rural life, however, they represent the loss of a distinctive way of life.  That is a tragedy and an extraordinary political failure.  Rather than serving those they represent, politicians have systematically destroyed a way of life that actually worked.

Pollak presented his proposal as an experiment in federalism, where states could test different approaches and let results determine which worked best. But when outside subsidies conceal the costs, the experiment is no longer an honest test. Just as with Cuba, subsidizing ideas that don’t work has extended the pain for generations.

For Vermont to remain a place where people of modest means can enjoy rural life, it must abandon this utopian social experiment and return to the ideas that proved themselves in Vermont for centuries. That means freedom from the state taking over personal and family duties.  It also requires rebuilding the mindset of personal responsibility where citizens take care of themselves and their families and help their neighbors rather than waiting for the state to solve every problem.

In 2011 we sought and moved to a rural location in Virginia that fit with my small-farm rural Vermont upbringing, where we could own, manage and enjoy some acreage, for the second half of raising our four sons.   They are all responsible adults, instilled with the rural skills my parents instilled in me and my siblings.  Two of our four sons are married and raising their families nearby and wanting to give their children the same rural blessings.  This type of generational family life was and still is unimaginable for most in Vermont.  The costs are too high and the destructive ideas too plentiful.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.