County Thought They’d Win
The Crime of Solvency: When the State Mandates Debt
In the twisted logic of the modern municipality, there is no greater heresy than the refusal to consume. We live in a system that is predicated on the perpetual churn of debt, mortgage, and taxation, and anyone who steps outside this cycle to live simply and freely is treated not as a pioneer, but as a parasite. This dynamic is exposed with brutal clarity in the courtroom exchange regarding a man, his RV, and his ten acres of land. The county is not suing him because he is a nuisance; they are suing him because he is free. They are suing him because he has cracked the code of modern existence—living debt-free on his own terms—and the system cannot abide a man who does not owe it money. The county demands he spend $200,000 on a house he does not want, solely to increase the “tax base.” It is a naked display of government extortion that reveals the terrifying truth: you are not a citizen to these people; you are a revenue unit, and if you are not maximizing your yield, you are in violation of the code.
The conflict begins with the county’s assertion that “Code 14 requires a permanent foundation.” This fetishization of the “permanent foundation” is the cornerstone of the control grid. A house on a foundation is immobile. It is easily assessed. It is easily taxed. It is easily seized. An RV, by contrast, is a symbol of fluidity. It can move. It represents an escape hatch. The county hates the RV because it represents a lifestyle they cannot fully capture. By demanding a permanent foundation, they are demanding that the defendant shackle himself to the earth in a way that benefits them. They are attempting to force him to pour concrete not for his structural safety, but for their administrative convenience. They want to turn his home into a stationary target for their assessors.
The defendant’s rebuttal is the voice of sanity crying out in a wilderness of bureaucratic madness. “It ain’t vacant, judge. I got solar. I got a well. And it’s paid for.” These three sentences should be the definition of the American Dream. He has energy independence. He has water independence. He has financial independence. He has achieved what millions of people spend their lives chasing, yet the county calls his land “vacant.” To the twisted mind of the planner, land is “vacant” until it has been encumbered by a bank loan and a permit. The presence of life, of utility, of ownership means nothing to them without the accompanying architectural submission. They look at a man with solar panels and a well—technologies of self-reliance—and see only a lack of taxable square footage. It is a profound insult to the very concept of development. He has developed the land to suit his needs; the county is angry because he didn’t develop it to suit their budget.
“I drove 3 million miles for this freedom.” This statement provides the critical context of the man’s life. He is a truck driver, a modern nomad, a man who has spent his life moving the goods that sustain the very society that is now trying to evict him. He understands the value of mobility and the weight of debt. He has seen the country from the windshield of a rig, and he has decided that he wants a patch of earth where he can rest without a mortgage hanging over his head. For the county to look at a man who has worked that hard and tell him he isn’t living “correctly” is an act of supreme arrogance. They are invalidating his life experience. They are telling him that his definition of freedom is illegal because it doesn’t involve a thirty-year interest payment to a bank.
The county’s demand is explicit and horrifying: “You’re not forcing me into $200,000 of debt just to pour concrete.” This is the crux of the tyranny. The government is claiming the authority to mandate consumption. They are not saying he can’t build; they are saying he must build, and he must build to a specific price point. Where does the Constitution grant the local zoning board the power to force a citizen into financial ruin? If he doesn’t have $200,000, he would have to borrow it. The county is essentially acting as a marketing agent for the mortgage industry. They are manufacturing demand for construction loans. It is a form of economic enslavement where the price of owning land is the obligation to go into debt to improve it for the state’s benefit. It is the logic of the feudal lord telling the serf he must upgrade his hovel so the lord can charge more rent.
Then comes the admission, the slip of the tongue that reveals the soulless void at the center of the county’s argument: “It lowers the tax base for the neighbors.” There it is. The truth. They do not care about safety. They do not care about “Code 14.” They care about the money. They are worried that if this man lives cheaply and freely, his neighbors—who are likely drowning in mortgages and high property taxes—will feel cheated, or that the “value” of the neighborhood will dip, slightly reducing the county’s annual haul. They are prioritizing the theoretical asset value of the surrounding properties over the actual human rights of the landowner. They are using the police power of the state to enforce a price floor. They are essentially saying, “You must be this rich to live in this town.” It is class warfare disguised as zoning. They view a man living within his means as a threat to the collective delusion of the housing market.
The accusation that he is “camping” is another linguistic weapon. “We can’t have people camping, your honor.” Camping implies transience. It implies a recreational activity, something temporary and unserious. Living on your own ten-acre tract with a well and power is not camping; it is residing. By using the word “camping,” the county attempts to diminish his claim to the land. They try to frame him as a vagrant or a squatter, rather than a landed proprietor. They want to associate his RV with homelessness or instability, rather than what it actually is: a deliberate lifestyle choice of efficiency. On ten acres, an RV is invisible to the neighbors. It is a speck in a field. The idea that his “camping” is harming anyone is a fabrication. The only thing it harms is the ego of the neighbor who spent half a million dollars on a McMansion and hates seeing someone happy with less.
The judge’s reaction is a glorious reinstatement of the primacy of property rights. “On 10 acres. That’s not a campsite. That’s an agricultural homestead.” The judge understands scale. If this were a quarter-acre lot in a subdivision, perhaps the “camping” argument would hold some water regarding density. But on ten acres? The man has a kingdom. The judge reclassifies the land use from the pejorative “campsite” to the dignified “agricultural homestead.” Words have power. A homestead is a place of production, of roots, of history. By granting it this title, the judge elevates the truck driver from a transient to a settler. He recognizes the solar and the well as the infrastructure of a homestead, not the accessories of a weekend trip.
“He owns the dirt. He can sleep on it.” This simple sentence cuts through the Gordian knot of municipal code. It is a return to first principles. What is the point of owning land if you cannot occupy it? The county wants to sever the link between ownership and occupancy. They want ownership to be merely the right to pay taxes, while occupancy is a privilege granted by the building inspector. The judge rejects this. Ownership implies the right to exist in that space. Whether he sleeps in a mansion, a tent, an RV, or under the stars, the dirt is his. The state’s interest in how he shelters himself on his own private, secluded property should be zero. The judge recognizes that the man’s body belongs on the land he paid for.
The dismissal of the eviction order is a victory for sanity, but the fact that the county brought the suit is a warning. It demonstrates that the administrative state views frugality as a crime. They view self-sufficiency as “blight.” They want us dependent on the grid, dependent on the banks, and dependent on their approval. This truck driver, with his three million miles of wisdom, saw through the scam. He realized that the “American Dream” of a big house and a big mortgage is actually a trap, and he opted out. The county tried to drag him back in, to force him to conform to the cult of the “permanent foundation.” They failed because a judge remembered that the foundation of this country is not concrete; it is liberty.
However, the threat remains. The “tax base” argument will not go away. Municipalities are addicted to revenue. They are constantly expanding, constantly hungering for more. They look at undeveloped land not as nature or open space, but as “underperforming assets.” They look at the RV owner as a “leak” in the revenue stream. They will continue to pass codes and ordinances designed to outlaw the simple life. They will raise minimum square footage requirements. They will ban “temporary structures.” They will harass the off-gridder until he either complies or sells to a developer who will. This case was a battle won, but the war against the autonomous individual is being waged in every zoning meeting in America.
The judge’s final instruction—”Go with dancer”—is likely a transcription error for “Go with answer” or perhaps a colloquial dismissal, but let us interpret it in the spirit of the truck driver. He is free to go. Free to drive his rig, free to park on his land, free to live without the crushing weight of the $200,000 debt the county tried to strap to his back. He walks out of that courtroom a free man, but he leaves behind a county attorney who is seething, not because justice wasn’t done, but because a revenue source escaped. The system hates nothing more than a man it cannot milk. The truck driver is a hero not because he fought a war, but because he fought the bank and the bureaucrat, and for one brief, shining moment, the “dirt” won over the “code.”
