[HN Gopher] Bad Manors: The McMansion as Harbinger
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Bad Manors: The McMansion as Harbinger
Author : samclemens
Score : 45 points
Date : 2023-05-10 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thebaffler.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thebaffler.com)
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses
|
| And when those ranch-style houses were new, architecture snobs
| were decrying them as as soulless cookie-cutter crap.
|
| Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion",
| don't buy one.
| User23 wrote:
| As always, we must consider the actual alternatives and not
| just our imaginary ideal scenario.
|
| What is the alternative for the relatively large population
| looking to start families in a neighborhood with a good school
| district and child care on 1-2 working to middle class salaries
| while building some equity?
|
| Can you point us to someplace where there is quality,
| affordable, and aesthetically pleasing new home construction
| happening at scale?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been
| something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized
| in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class
| salary" should be able to buy one.
|
| Growing up, no one in my family lived in a new construction
| home, nor did any of my friends.
|
| New construction needs to happen to increase aggregate supply
| to deal with incremental increases of demand. That supply
| though, may be more high end than median. Even this works
| fine because it means someone will buy a pricey new
| construction home rather than a cheap home and gut renovate
| it. The lack of new construction causes high income buyers to
| move further and further down market to buy-to-reno.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > One consideration is that "new homes" have historically
| been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so
| normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue
| "middle class salary" should be able to buy one.
|
| Yes, how dare the proles expect to live like the "best
| people".
| bombcar wrote:
| In many places (where building is still happening) the cost
| of new vs old construction is surprisingly close; so why
| not get a brand new 2023 house instead of that older 2003
| one?
| peteradio wrote:
| Because new construction is not necessarily built with
| the same materials and expertise as old construction.
| Good bones and all. Although I think you'd have to go
| back further than 2003 to get a meaningful difference in
| construction practices.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Early 90s is about how far back you have to go, around
| here, to get an appreciably better-built house. Solid
| wood trim and doors! Cabinets that don't fall apart when
| you so much as look at them! All in working-class houses
| of that age. I swear even the light switches feel like
| they're built better.
|
| As long as it doesn't have a wood-single roof. Those
| haven't been good since some time in the '70s. Demand
| shot up in the '80s and they built a shitload of houses
| with fancy "50-year" wood roofs, but there wasn't enough
| lumber of the quality required to make them _actually_
| last 50 years (both increase in demand and an ever-
| declining quality of lumber in general caused this, I
| think) like older wooden roofs did, so they all started
| leaking after like 10-15 years. But at this point most of
| those have been replaced with regular ol ' asphalt.
| bombcar wrote:
| That may be the case, but you have to take survivorship
| bias into account, and the vast differences in available
| equipment and materials.
|
| A modern double-paned house with R20 insulation and a
| well designed heat pump system is going to blow(er test)
| the doors off an immaculate mansion built in the 1900s
| with single pane glass and a gravity furnace.
| peteradio wrote:
| Survivors are the only ones on the market so its already
| accounted for I guess. I think I misread your original
| comment, are you saying price for a well-built new home
| is similar to pre-owned good bones?
| bombcar wrote:
| I was just noting that the prices are much closer now
| than they had been in the past (on a sq ft to sq ft even
| 10 years ago a 1970s house would be a good $50-100k less
| than a new house, though it was hard to compare because
| location, lot size, etc).
|
| In my experience, "good bones" houses are harder to find
| than people realize, and there are lots of things that
| can wear out over time that you don't realize until you
| have one wear out.
|
| For example, behold the glory of Orangeburg sewer lines,
| relatively common in some areas between the 40s and 70s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangeburg_pipe - a cool
| $10k+ when that finally eats it.
|
| "The old ones are better" is _sometimes_ true and in
| _some_ cases; for example, an old plywood sided house
| will handle sustained water intrusion much better than a
| modern OSB sided house, but modern siding may prevent the
| water intrusion much better. There are also things that
| _look_ really great but are actually disasters waiting to
| happen - river rock foundations, for example. A
| contractor friend once mentioned that the old victorians
| in our area were amazing except for the roof and
| foundation, both which can be annoyingly expensive to
| fix.
|
| Based on my personal observations, assuming you avoid
| asbestos and aluminum wiring, the houses _before_ the 80s
| are better than 80-2010s or so, especially 80-90s, as I
| 've seen many, many cases of those houses built with
| newer materials that clearly the builders didn't
| understand or care how to correctly install.
|
| That stuff can still happen on a modern house (hire a
| home inspector to inspect during build if you can) but
| they seem to have a better handle on how to do things
| right for the long-term.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| if it is, then great.
|
| but the baseline built in assumption that all home buyers
| should be able to afford new homes when people complain
| that new homes are too expensive is what misses the
| point.
|
| New homes are built on the expensive side because that's
| what allows developers to turn a profit in areas where
| development plots are scarce to come by. That is - where
| land is the constraint, why would a developer choose to
| have a lower ROI?
|
| Areas that new & old homes don't price too differently &
| there is still building happening are likely not in
| land/development/zoning constrained with undersupply.
|
| Also laughing/crying internally as you describe 2003 as
| old (from my 1970s home).. Never lived in a building that
| wasn't older than me..
| bombcar wrote:
| Heh my last few houses have pre-nuclear steel in them,
| since they were built before the bombs dropped.
|
| And yes, the "standard" (hard to call something a
| standard that only really existed for 50 or so years of
| the modern USA) of houses going out of style and passing
| down as starter homes, etc has been sadly disrupted.
|
| And many of those starter homes are now held out as
| rentals, which further distorts it.
|
| (We're actually in a "starter home" now and considering
| what the next step should be, and the vast improvements
| in energy, etc over the last 20 years alone is making me
| heavily lean toward building, especially as I can sit on
| the design and get something more reasonable for the
| cost.)
| User23 wrote:
| With a rapidly growing population[1] new housing isn't a
| "luxury good," but rather a necessity.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-
| states-res...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| McMansions are aesthetically pleasing to the average taste,
| which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism. If
| your taste is out of the mainstream, then it is harder to
| find houses, and they will be more expensive. There are the
| occasional attempts at the non-standard suburban subdivision
| style. I liked these:
|
| https://starlightvillagehomes.com/
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism
|
| Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their
| historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics.
|
| Really not sure where you're getting that from. If you go
| to areas in Michigan such as Troy, most of the houses are
| of a mid-century modern design similar to what you're
| sharing.
|
| The design language of a McMansion inherently lacks
| cohesion. Its not an elitist take to say "taking various
| design elements from 6 different eras of building and
| inflating them all up to 150% scale" is a bad design.
|
| If a design lacks any kind of symmetry, has windows that
| dont line up that are all different sizes, misplaced
| features, etc; its an ugly design. Not sure what else to
| say.
|
| Midwesterners are not immune to good design practice, and
| its bizarre to suggest that people outside of the coasts
| are incapable of making a cohesive design.
| User23 wrote:
| > Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their
| historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics
|
| Given that virtually all new construction in coastal
| cities is five over one crapboxes along with the
| occasional uninspired at best highrise, I don't see it.
| Certainly nobody is putting up what one might consider
| well built aesthetically pleasing mansions in downtown
| San Wherever.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| 5-over-1s are basically universal in the United States.
| You might see them more in coastal areas but that's
| because its where the population gravitates to.
|
| I don't like 5-over-1s either but they're a product of
| zoning laws that tried to legislate out more compact
| housing.
|
| I much rather have a couple duplex/quadplexes on each
| suburban block but a lot of folks really don't like that
| idea.
|
| Bring up the idea of putting a cafe or convenience store
| inside a suburban culdesac hell and people will lose
| their mind.
| User23 wrote:
| > 5-over-1s are basically universal in the United States.
| You might see them more in coastal areas but that's
| because its where the population gravitates to.
|
| Yes I'm aware. The point is that the coastal cities are
| not in fact trying to maintain their historic aesthetic.
| They're building the same crapboxes everywhere else is.
|
| This isn't a dumb flyover hicks vs sophisticated coast
| tech bros issue. It's an observable fact that
| architecture and construction virtually everywhere in the
| USA and the West in general has been garbage for over
| half a century. McMansions are just a symptom of a deeper
| rot.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, this is my takeaway whenever someone uses "McMansion" in
| a disparaging way - it's mostly to sneer at some "lower class".
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The lower classes don't live in McMansions. Unless it's one
| in an older neighborhood without an HOA that's been carved up
| into six rental units.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Did you not read the article? they are certainly disparaged
| because they're aesthetically discordant, but under that the
| more valid criticism is that they occupy huge amounts of
| space and are responsible for this vastly inefficient sprawl
| that plagues the country. If we filled the country with more
| aesthetically pleasing mansions, this sprawl and unmanageable
| infrastructure would still pose a major problem.
|
| I'd also take issue that it's lower class "sneering" --
| generally anyone below the upper middle class can't afford a
| McMansion... and that's still _most people_. Who are we
| supposed to be sympathizing with here? upper middle class
| people being bullied by the rich about their dumb houses?
| fossuser wrote:
| Sprawl is a problem, but I don't buy that this is the main
| reason people complain about McMansions (I live in a condo
| in a dense building fwiw due to personal preference so this
| isn't sour grapes).
|
| The people I know living in these large houses that were
| cheaply built with weird architectural accents were
| primarily middle class people in suburban areas with low
| cost of living and larger families. Often they grew up with
| less money and were the first of their family to do well.
| Typically they bought a house in some new development with
| a good school.
|
| The people I've heard complain the most about it are the
| upper-middle class people on the coasts that went to
| Stanford, I mostly only heard this style of complaint after
| moving to the bay and meeting people that grew up in these
| higher classes.
|
| It really comes across as a way to look down on the lower
| classes that "don't have good taste" dressed up as
| something more intellectual. Actual rich people (not upper-
| middle) don't give a shit, probably because they're not
| afraid someone will mistake their status for middle class -
| they just live in their estate in atherton and don't read
| articles like this.
|
| I don't like suburban sprawl either, but I have an allergic
| reaction to this kind of elitism.
|
| It's true - middle class people often don't know how to
| properly signal status because they didn't grow up in it,
| but how to properly signal it is also a moving target
| (intentionally) by those a little above them. I just find
| it tedious to watch.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > vastly inefficient sprawl that plagues the country.
|
| If efficiency were the only important metric, we'd all be
| living in dormitories with 3-shifts-per-day "hot bunks" and
| institutional kitchens.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| there's obviously space between "cheap mansion on an acre
| miles away from grocery" and "imaginary dystopia" - you
| could at least pretend to be commenting in good faith
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yep. Not everyone wants to pay $5,000/month to live in a
| jumped-up coat closet in a "trendy" part of Manhattan.
|
| Me, I live in a late '50s tract house and it suits me fine. I
| don't actually care what kinds of housing other people want
| to live in -- because it's none of my business. Manhattan
| coat closet or suburban "McMansion" -- whatever floats your
| boat.
| trgn wrote:
| It really is not. That's a made up defense.
|
| The people who devalue mcmansions largely do so because these
| houses are the material legacy this country is leaving, and
| it's objectively shit. They are an irresponsible way to build
| and organize neighborhoods.
| nluken wrote:
| I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. McMansions are
| defined by their attempts to outwardly demonstrate wealth,
| which makes deriding them easy but justifiable. Many of the
| kinds of homes the author discusses here are multimillion
| dollar properties. Yes, there's a little snobbery involved,
| but I don't find it classist to point out the irony in
| wealthy folks appearing cheap by yelling "LOOK HOW WEALTHY I
| AM!"
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Here 's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a
| "McMansion", don't buy one._
|
| Shopping for houses isn't like shopping on Amazon. You can't
| just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your
| choice in two days. If the only housing stock available/being
| built is houses you don't want to live in, whether they're too
| big, too poorly built, too ugly, not oriented on the lot right,
| not exactly where you want it, you're going to have to buy one
| anyway.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a
| lot of your choice in two days
|
| No kidding. And?
|
| > If the only housing stock available/being built is houses
| you don't want to live in
|
| These houses are exactly what their owners want to live in.
| Exactly. If the market demand weren't there, the contractors
| would be building something else.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I'll regularly go to estate sales in McMansions. It's really
| amazing to see.
|
| Master Bedrooms the size of my apartment that are mostly empty.
|
| Huge tall ceilings with poorly assembled trim to break up the
| monotony. Two extra large AC units needed to cool all that air.
|
| Basement bars that have gone unused for years, expansive
| basements with old kids toys laying about, so roomy that it
| feels almost commercial.
|
| So many extra sitting rooms just there as a place to put
| things. Its amazing how wasteful they are, how they basically
| just exist to say "look, big house". Nothing in them is
| practical, they're difficult to navigate because you need to
| make room for the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable
| loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in
| them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever
| have a comfortable viewing angle.
|
| I've seen the ugliest ceiling mural, attempting to emulate an
| Italian fresco with all the skill of a high school drug PSA
| mural.
|
| These homes just reek of desperation, like they've accrued all
| this wealth and have found themselves sitting at the back of
| the bus in "The Graduate", without any purpose and unsure why
| they fought so hard.
|
| Its really interesting seeing a bathroom with enough open space
| to store an old beetle, with 30 drawers under the acreage of
| counter top. Mostly empty but dispersed with normal human
| items, like they're trying so hard to make it seem like any of
| this was necessary.
|
| All of these places are devoid of any kind of design, it all
| feels like a simulacra of old wealth, like its what they
| "should" be buying and decorating with, but then you see
| personal items and realize they're no better than the average
| person, they have the same interests and hobbies, only now
| they're buried deep inside this dryrock dungeon, hidden away so
| they can appear high class and fancy.
|
| The worst thing about them? How cheap it all feels, and how
| much it feels like a normal house scaled up beyond any purpose.
| Sure the first floor may have some kind of granite tile, but
| every other floor seems to bow and give under your feet like
| you're on a rubber running track. Noises reverberate if there's
| no carpet, but if there is, it most likely came with the home
| and has not been taken care of.
|
| McMansions are an amazing symbol of the hollowness of seeking
| wealth. You could have a much nicer, bespoke and practical home
| if you wanted. For the money you could hire a real designer,
| real craftsmen to build your hardwood features or master
| plaster craftsman to make real ceiling moldings.
|
| Instead of ordering a steak from a fine restaurant, the
| McMansion is spending the equivalent money at a McDonalds.
| inconceivable wrote:
| if only you could decide on what other people could spend
| their money on, then the world would be such a better place,
| right? and, you seem to have no problem enjoying the
| downstream effects of their "estate".
|
| btw, that thing you're undoubtedly alluding to, the 1-story
| craftsman bungalow with custom woodwork and detached
| garage/shed, gravel driveway and on half an acre with a
| perfectly manicured herb garden and tomato beds is more
| expensive and probably located in a jurisdiction with much
| higher taxes.
|
| i live in a concrete loft which is basically the polar
| opposite of a mcmansion but can you enlighten me how i'm
| doing my entire life wrong also?
|
| different types of housing exist because people have
| different tastes.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I almost never find anything good at these estate sales,
| its purely for entertainment when I see a sign as I drive
| by.
|
| Most of the items there are really cheaply made and have
| way too high an asking price, or are well made but some of
| the tackiest design trends of the 80s/90s/2000s.
|
| I've already refinished one solid wood piece of furniture
| with the black splatter marks added to invoke a fake "old".
| Not doing that nonsense again.
| danaris wrote:
| And to contrast that, I've been friends with someone who made
| _significantly_ more money than I do (or likely ever will),
| and while their house was in a nice, upscale neighbourhood
| and was _somewhat_ bigger than mine, overall it was a pretty
| normal suburban design.
|
| What they had was _taste_ , and _good priorities_.
|
| Rather than put money into lots of space, or showy exterior
| features, they put it into the kitchen, and the bathroom. I
| was lucky enough to be able to stay at their house a few
| times (visiting the area for reenacting purposes--that's how
| I met them), and use their absolutely _palatial_ shower. They
| are also foodies, and love to cook good food and cook it
| well, so they made their kitchen both beautiful and
| functional. (They also make stained glass as a hobby; I have
| no idea how expensive that is, nor how it would compare to
| buying a similar piece, but they had installed some of their
| work in their own windows, which added to the class of the
| place.)
|
| I believe the difference between someone with a McMansion and
| people who own houses like that one is a sense of security in
| their own position in the world. McMansions are _entirely_
| about conspicuous consumption--about _showing off_ your
| wealth, so that you can brag about it and rub the noses of
| lesser beings in it.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > What they had was taste, and good priorities.
|
| Upper-middle-class sensibilities and attitudes, rather than
| middle.
|
| > They also make stained glass as a hobby; I have no idea
| how expensive that is, nor how it would compare to buying a
| similar piece, but they had installed some of their work in
| their own windows, which added to the class of the place.
|
| Pretty accessible, actually. My wife does it off-and-on and
| is always shocked at how much people charge for not-
| especially-well-made pieces at e.g. art fairs. The
| equipment and materials are cheap, as hobbies go. Buying
| decent finished stained glass pieces is expensive--but
| getting decent at making it's not all that hard and doesn't
| take too long, and the materials are cheap. It's one of
| those "very cheap if you DIY and count the hours as fun
| hobby-time, pretty expensive if you don't" things. It's
| _especially_ easy if you just use pre-made templates rather
| than designing your own, and there are tons of those cheap
| or free online (and nobody who doesn 't do stained glass
| will think anything of it).
|
| I think she only made a half-dozen pieces or so before she
| was roughly matching the quality of stuff we'd see at art
| fairs and such. Maybe 30ish hours to reach that level.
| Very-good tools might run you as much as $1,000 total, but
| you can get started for more like $150-200 (shop used for
| the grinder, especially). Glass is glass, it's not really
| that expensive when you're just buying sheets of it.
|
| The biggest pain with it is materials storage and little
| glass bits getting on the ground in the work area (and
| sometimes tracked outside of it...) making it kinda
| hazardous. :-/
| pookha wrote:
| I understand the allure...I need a McMansion to store all of
| my kids toys.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to
| overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting
| across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a
| comfortable viewing angle
|
| I'm rolling, LOL. Nailed it.
|
| My main problem with _living_ in houses built post-McMansion-
| influence (so, a great deal of what 's been built for the
| last 25 years or so) is how terrible the layouts are. You'll
| have 3,500 sqft but it feels about as usable and spacious
| _when you 're actually living in it_ as a well-laid-out
| 2,200.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I once rented a basement bedroom from a couple when I had to
| do an internship. The house was a ginormous McMansion just
| like you described. I would occasionally go up to the main
| part of the house and it dawned on me that the couple had no
| furniture. Just this giant 5000 square foot house with
| seemingly dozens of empty rooms. They had two patio lounge
| chairs in the family room and a cheap (for the time) TV, and
| that was pretty much all I saw. Imagine leveraging yourself
| to the hilt, getting a mortgage that two people had to work
| to pay (and still having to rent rooms to others)... simply
| to get a huge box made of cheap lumber and drywall, and not
| even being able to live in it like civilized people.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I once checked out a similar basement apartment for a
| friend. There were three or four bedrooms within this
| basement, taking up maybe 30% of the total basement square
| footage. The rest was absolutely unusable open space with
| tons of support beams breaking it up, and an extremely
| slippery granite floor. The kitchen was nice and you could
| theoretically see the TV in the "living room" zone, but it
| was like 30-40 feet away so it was too far to be useful.
|
| Just a big ole batcave under a giant home.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Selection bias though, right? Anyone who leverages up to
| buy a home and then has to rent out a part of it to a
| stranger is, probably, by definition, having cashflow
| issues?
| jollyllama wrote:
| Ever see a nice floor globe, or just the fake ones for
| storing booze in?
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Come to think of it, no actually. The items in these homes
| are so incredibly mundane its shocking.
|
| I like checking out the "Studies" or home offices out of
| curiosity. Typically they're adorned with various right
| leaning politco books of the last couple decades. Maybe a
| model boat.
|
| More often than not, the home offices are weirdly cramped,
| the computer desk shoved in a closet or weirdly placed in
| the middle of the room.
| jollyllama wrote:
| It truly is wasted on them. Even a boor like me would
| throw in some cheap vases, busts, imitation statues, etc.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Wealth is always wasted on the wealthy.
|
| If you're grinding, you don't have time to be creative.
|
| If you're creative, you don't want to grind.
| fossuser wrote:
| I doubt it's the equivalent money, the stuff you're talking
| about (hiring master craftsmen) probably costs 5x-10x what a
| large house built the way you're describing does.
| peteradio wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised. Maybe double and that's
| assuming same square footage.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I'm talking "turn of the 20th century business man" size.
| You could cut down the average mcmansion size in half and
| have an overall nicer house with fine materials and it'd
| still be bigger than most homes built before 1990.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Arguably worse than the house itself: owners who stay in
| precarious financial situations to pay off too much house.
| Yeah, it's their decision and they're probably learning a
| lesson, but...for what? Signaling to a select few people that
| they've made it? How is it worth the stress? Do they realize
| how time and effort they put into what is empty posturing?
|
| Little wonder why some people's midlife crisis is explosive.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I would argue that the problem with McMansions has less to do
| with their sheer size (though on the larger end, their size
| truly is ridiculous) and more to do with how badly utilized
| it all is.
|
| One of these days I hope to be fortunate enough to design and
| build my own house, and so it's a subject I think about
| frequently. I'd like it to be a bit larger than average, but
| the allocation of space is determined almost entirely on
| practicality. So for example, rather than having a cavernous
| reception/living room and a dining room that's rarely used,
| the ground floor would have a small living room with the
| extra space instead going towards a kitchen with ample
| counterspace to do serious cooking in (something that's oddly
| skimped on not only in McMansions, but also more traditional
| houses) and a mudroom at the entrance so guests have a place
| to put their bags, coats, etc and have room to take their
| shoes off without stumbling over each other.
|
| I suspect that there's demand for sizable, yet practically-
| designed houses like that but nobody's building them so
| people instead buy what _is_ being built.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > has less to do with their sheer size(...) and more to do
| with how badly utilized it all is.
|
| That's basically what I'm getting at. I've been in close to
| a dozen mcmansions, only one actually felt like it was a
| home rather than a catalogue ad.
|
| I don't think the average McMansion owner has any intention
| of utilizing the space, and I'd argue they're designed in a
| way antithetical to utilizing the space.
|
| Large open areas aren't suitable for living space unless
| you want a full living room in every room. If you were to
| say, convert one into an office, it'd be an interesting
| arrangement.
|
| They're basically designed with the kind of banquet you see
| in movies, in mind. Once the party is over, you just have
| empty space.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Large open areas aren't suitable for living space
| unless you want a full living room in every room. If you
| were to say, convert one into an office, it'd be an
| interesting arrangement.
|
| Oh my god, the move away from _having actual rooms_ is so
| awful.
|
| But as long as people keep falling for the "wow" factor
| (in real estate photos and on first-viewings) of big,
| useless open spaces and cavernous open
| living/dining/kitchen combo rooms and signing on the
| dotted line, it's what we're gonna keep getting :-/
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I agree with you here but I think you might be more
| horrified with the image I actually was trying to draw.
|
| These houses have distinct rooms(not open concept)a, but
| they're all so big that most of it is empty space.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Ah, yeah, that sucks too. A small count of enormous rooms
| where a larger count of normal-sized rooms would be _way_
| more useful.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I too want to design and build my own (modest) house.
|
| Maybe I should get cracking....
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Estate sales are commonly held by the estates of the recently
| deceased. So, there may be some bias in your sampling, since
| you're walking around the house of someone who was at the end
| of their life, not right in the heart of it.
|
| And, I'm not sure large houses are as wasteful as you let on.
| After all, the floor area of a room grows quicker than the
| perimeter does. A 100 sq ft room could have 40' of walls, but
| a room with 4x the area could only have 2x the length of
| walls.
|
| And it might just be my area, but there is no way you can get
| a bespoke home of equivalent square footage as you could a
| pre-built mcmansion.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| In this area, people will do estate sales when they move as
| well. These are very much alive families, maybe their kids
| have mostly moved out. Totally not dead people homes. Those
| are a lot smaller and quaint.
| bombcar wrote:
| Fun fact: the term "Victorian" for that type of house (IIRC)
| was intended to disparage them, as they were considered tacky
| and cheap.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| A huge part of the point here is that McMansions create
| unattractive, difficult to use, and costly to maintain
| infrastructure. And the residents who live in the McMansions
| aren't really the people who are bearing the full brunt of
| these costs.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| My favorite thing was a culdesac of McMansions that had a
| gravel entrance road.
|
| You could almost hear the arguments of "who will pay for it?"
| echoing the halls like a ghost.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The solutions to these problems are equally obvious: more
| density; preserving existing green space to allow for stormwater
| runoff; better public transportation to decrease reliance on
| cars; the decommissioning of urban highways; comprehensively
| transforming the energy sector in pursuit of a post-oil world;
| and, most of all, building affordable, livable, and--dare I say
| it--rent-controlled or even government-funded housing.
|
| All of these urbanist types always come to the exact same
| collectivist conclusions. It treats human culture as a
| mathematical optimization problem, which it isn't. Everything
| would just be _so much better_ if we all lived in 20 story
| 800sqft apartments and took the bus everywhere.
|
| I don't want to live like that. I want a car, maybe two for my
| family so that we can go where we want when we want. I want a
| home large enough to entertain friends, host holidays, and house
| my children. I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my
| saturday mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most
| other Americans want.
|
| There has to be a solution that doesn't involve the loss of
| individual autonomy, privacy, and freedom that we value in the
| US. I will not eat the bugs. I will not get into the pod.
| norir wrote:
| The American lifestyle you describe is going to end and
| probably sooner rather than later.
| robbyking wrote:
| I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most
| major US cities you _can_ have two cars, a yard with a lawn you
| can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and
| public transportation.
|
| I live in a working class neighborhood in a major coastal city
| and still have everything I listed above: I bike or ride the
| bus to work but a lot of my coworkers drive; I have front and
| backyards (with lawns!) but I can walk a few blocks to a
| commercial district with dozens of shops and restaurants. Not
| every city looks like Manhattan. Not even all of NYC looks like
| Manhattan.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in
| most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a
| lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing
| walkability and public transportation.
|
| My city qualifies! The house might even be pretty damn cheap
| and surprisingly big!
|
| But the schools will suck. You have to move somewhere with
| terrible walkability to get decent public schools.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| > I want a car, maybe two for my family so that we can go where
| we want when we want.
|
| You want a car because it's not possible to live in the US
| without them. So that's rational.
|
| > I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my saturday
| mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most other
| Americans want.
|
| Nope. I skipped out on "grass" a long time ago. Water costs,
| time expenditure, grubs in your lawn causing local wildlife to
| dig it up - yeah, I don't want that. And actually lots of
| people around me don't either.
|
| > I will not eat the bugs. I will not get into the pod.
|
| Ok pal. Nothing you say is going to be forced on you.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > I don't want that.
|
| Maybe you should give the same consideration to the tastes of
| other people?
| HEmanZ wrote:
| I think you're strawmaning, and extrapolating the worst
| possible argument from the broad statement. I've not seen
| western urbanists who are extreme. I think every one would say
| "ya, that sounds nice".
|
| For example, it's usually the conservatives that want to zone a
| town so that it's literally impossible, even with massive free
| market demand, to build anything but large houses on large
| plots. A hell of a lot of urbanists just want the government to
| stop telling them that they can't build a 4-plex or open a
| coffee shop on their property because it's not zoned for it, or
| doesn't have the government-approved-totally-well-thought-out
| number of parking spaces.
|
| Instead of spending 2 billion building a bigger highway, how
| about 1 billion to get people off of the highway in the first
| place?
|
| None of these restrict personal liberty.
|
| Only the ever terrifying Straw Man is about restricting
| liberties. Especially when it comes to land use, (most) actual
| modern urbanists are individual autonomy and freedom oriented.
| nluken wrote:
| I was excited to see that Kate Wagner was contributing to this
| most recent issue of the Baffler. A related article from the same
| issue discusses the cheapness of the construction in modern
| housing: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/construction-time-again-
| sisson
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| They're the Microsoft Word of houses. Famously, people only use
| 20% of Word's features, but that subset varies depending on
| whether the user is a legal secretary or elementary school
| teacher or whatever.
|
| McMansions have all the features - the 3-car garage, the almost
| commercial kitchen, the vast gathering spaces, the rec room, the
| home office, etc. Not everyone needs it all - but some car guy
| will demand that third garage spot or some foodie will demand the
| oversized Viking appliances or some family with multiple kids
| will demand the big play area, etc. This way these houses meet
| the needs (and way beyond) of 90%+ of the upper-middle to upper-
| class homebuyers, so they retain their value and are way more
| easy to sell than the weird custom 1800sqft home with 4-car-
| garage, or 1-bedroom condo with commercial kitchen, or whatever.
| m0llusk wrote:
| There are a bunch of issues bunched up together here. Large
| houses are not only possible with good land use patterns, but as
| older cities grow the average unit size also increases. When I
| was young we moved from a trailer into a huge old house. It was
| difficult to keep up properly and seemed to always need to be
| repainted, but having plenty of space and more rooms than we
| actually needed on a regular basis was hugely liberating. With
| careful planning, construction, and use of materials it should be
| possible for most of the population to live in relatively large
| residences. This might be beneficial enough to specifically aim
| for as we make social and technological progress.
| coldcode wrote:
| In my city a couple of miles from me is a new housing community
| with $1M houses; only a few different models are available,
| featuring minimal paint color options, all on zero lot line
| spaces, any closer together they would be one giant condo. A
| friend toured the model and reported how cheaply it was built.
| Yet they sold out. The average price of a house nearby is closer
| to $400k. I bet the developer made a fortune.
| carapace wrote:
| Check out this "Summit Park" development:
| https://goo.gl/maps/Eherg24AUS4V1aX67?coh=178571&entry=tt
|
| Someone finagled permission to build on Brotherhood Way and
| this is what they made. The houses themselves seem nice, but
| the neighborhood (if you can call it that) has a horror movie
| vibe to it.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Those are not mansions by any means - I see some multi-story
| homes typical of San Francisco. This is a peaceful little
| corner of the city, I'm not sure how you get "horror movie
| vibe".
| HEmanZ wrote:
| Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and that
| looks like a really nice little spot. Give it 30-50 years and
| people will have painted them different colors, and it won't
| look like a retirement home
| carapace wrote:
| > Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and
| that looks like a really nice little spot.
|
| Where? As in, where would you "throw" them? The buildings
| don't have space. There's nothing for a mile or more. This
| is a drive-in only development. (The road is called
| Brotherhood Way because there's nothing on it but churches
| and temples. Until they built this.)
|
| > Give it 30-50 years and people will have painted them
| different colors, and it won't look like a retirement home
|
| It's _really creepy_ there. It 's hard to convey, even
| google street view doesn't give you the full effect. Did
| you watch that movie "Vivarium"? It's the shape of the
| place. The way it's _just houses_ with no integration with
| the world outside themselves or even with each other.
| Packed together tightly, so tall that they block the sun,
| no space to expand. The park next door might as well be a
| million miles away. They are lockers for people, not homes.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I looked at some of these on Zillow. I see attractive,
| modern homes, in a lovely neighborhood with lots of green
| space, at a reasonable price by local standards. Looks
| like a good value to me.
| r00fus wrote:
| These are mega-townhomes, right?
| HEmanZ wrote:
| I disagree that the McMansion is back. Leave it in the
| 1990-2008-ish time frame. The "new ones" I've seen going up are
| genuinely better, have much more sensible layouts, and don't try
| the same goofy throw-design-out-the-window stuff the McMansions
| did.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| Remember that a 4000 sq ft house without a basement (common in
| the South) has around the same interior square footage as a 2000
| sq ft house with a basement (common in the North). The
| Southerner's house looks a lot larger from the street, but it's
| actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is
| therefore not a "mansion".
|
| Most of the "McMansion" photos I've seen criticized on
| architecture blogs are either middle-class houses from areas
| where basements are uncommon or cherry-picked examples of
| unusually bad design (many of which are actually custom builds!).
| danaris wrote:
| Wouldn't that be if it's a one-story house?
|
| If it's got a 2000 sq ft footprint, with one story above ground
| and one below, that fits your description, but I don't think
| most McMansions tend to be one story--if they're 4000 sq ft, I
| would guess that many are likely to have about a 2-3000 sq foot
| _footprint_ , with part or all of it having a second story
| (actually, rarely all, because a full-height foyer is a fairly
| common feature, from what I've seen).
|
| I obviously can't comment on what _you 've_ seen derided as
| "McMansions", but I've seen a bunch of the stuff on McMansion
| Hell specifically (the blog the author of TFA maintains), and
| in general I wouldn't say they fit what you describe. Or, at
| least, some of them may not have a _much_ larger livable square
| footage than a rural /suburban middle-class house, but they
| certainly _cost_ appreciably more, because that middle-class
| house is built in a more or less standard manner, and the
| McMansion has a three-stall garage, four separate sets of
| pillared porches on the front, and three bay windows (in three
| completely different styles).
| true_religion wrote:
| > it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest"
| house and is therefore not a "mansion".
|
| I think there's an issue with this premise. McMansions are not
| 'mansions' and the criticism stems from that fact. They are too
| small for the architectural features they try to cram into
| their facades (balustrades, numerous columns, far too many
| windows of awkward sizes). Also because they are small, they
| try to maximize the use of space leading to the exterior
| looking very weird due to overlapping roofs so individual rooms
| can be as large and tall as possible.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| My personal worry about so called McMansions is that people are
| buying the largest houses they can possibly afford, and the
| quality of the building is sacrificed for size. The costs of
| maintaining these enormous houses can sometimes be absolutely
| staggering. I worry that in years to come, entire neighbourhoods
| of these houses will simply fall into disrepair, as nobody will
| be able to afford the costs of fixing them as they age.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| In the 30's lots of large houses were divided into apartments.
| I'm thinking we're headed there again in some places. This time
| with McMansions being being divided into smaller units.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| This article has a lot of words but it doesn't say much and the
| title is misleading.
|
| tldr;
|
| Americans are building large, ugly homes out of cheap materials
| that have environmental impacts due to heating/cooling costs and
| distances required to drive.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| moby dick is the story of a guy on a boat who tries to hunt a
| whale
| nielsbot wrote:
| I get the joke but sometimes writing is bad
| nostromo wrote:
| It's odd how the complaints are never about actual mansions. No,
| it's only when the middle-class gets bigger houses do we have
| journalists handwringing endlessly about gauche they are.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Sure, they're gauche, but when you're looking for a place to
| raise a family that's near good schools, near a grocery,
| doesn't require a remodel or update, has room for you to work
| remotely, and you can't afford to just "buy land and build
| something that fancy magazine editors would approve of", then
| you're limited to "gauche McMansions". Could we live in a 2,000
| sqft house that was built in 1940? Sure! Would it cost us our
| savings and sanity to bring it up to code? Probably!
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Actual mansions are several orders of magnitude less common.
| pookha wrote:
| This has gone on for over a hundred years in the US. Victorian
| homes were greatly shit upon by the upper classes in the late
| 1800's.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Citation? Anything other than moaning about the emergence of
| a middle class?
| dmtroyer wrote:
| Never? Really? There's plenty of complaints of the 1% and their
| excess.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Being extremely concerned about appearing rich but having
| absolutely no idea how to do it is basically the defining
| outwardly-visible characteristic of the middle class (in a
| Fussellian sense of "middle class").
|
| McMansions are a perfect expression of this: trying to look
| bigger and fancier than they are while being extremely cheap in
| every way that matters, and getting _every_ "fanciness" signal
| all wrong. They're a common target because plainly-inept
| pretentiousness is very funny--it's a staple trope in comedy
| for a reason.
|
| It's not the size of the house _per se_ that draws comment on
| McMansions. It 's the intense and desperate but hopelessly
| misguided social signaling in their styling.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| There is a valid criticism of mcmansions but this article
| turned this into more criticism of the homeowners. I am sure
| that if suburban houses used a classical style they would be
| writing about the fascists who live in them or if the homes
| were brutalist how the style had sold out.
|
| But that said I think there is a valid critique of modern
| builders and homeowners in 2023. A family member's old home in
| a neighborhood they have lived in forever had a bunch of new
| people move in during 2021 and 2022 when interest rates were
| low. They brought giant lifted trucks that block sidewalks, put
| trailers and RVs and giant boats all over, tore down old trees
| to make way for chicken shacks and trampolines and plastic
| sheds. All of this violated the HOA contract but they know the
| HOA has a few hundred dollars to its name so they gave it the
| middle finger. Builders built new houses on odd empty lots that
| tore up landscape to add long driveways to get behind houses
| and now giant out-of-place houses overlook the backyards of old
| 100 year old houses.
|
| Builders don't care. That's why mcmansions exist in the first
| place. The homeowners don't care either. It's all perfectly
| legal but something still isn't right.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Isn't the typical McMansion people complain about $1M+?
|
| That's definitely not text-book middle class - which would be
| closer to the median house - which is less than half that
| price.
|
| There's not many places you're getting a 4 bedroom clown-house
| with a clown pool and 5 clown-y bathrooms and a 3-car clown
| garage for your 3 clown cars for $450k. And if you are, there's
| very few places this is a new-ish build.
|
| Most of the places you're getting something like this - it's
| like a 20+ year-old home in Montgomery Alabama or Akron Ohio or
| something... And usually this was once a nice house that
| someone renovated in the style of a clown for the McMansion
| buyer...
|
| You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion
| or you think the top 10% is middle class.
|
| In fairness, both of these are common conceptions - but I think
| they're both worth critiquing.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| > You're either considering the average suburban home a
| McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class.
|
| If wealth were normally distributed, then the top 10%
| definitely wouldn't be the middle class. However, the way
| wealth is distributed, the average earner in the top 10%
| makes about $173K in 2020 dollars. Which is a lot in
| Louisiana, but not so much in SF or New York.
|
| https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-
| increa...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You're not building a McMansion for less than $250 per
| square foot. And a McMansion is usually 3000+ sqft.
|
| In New York or LA or The Bay, you're not getting a
| McMansion for less than $2.5M.
|
| In Louisiana, you're not getting it for less than $800k.
|
| If anything - I think this pushes out who's buying a "real"
| McMansion probably closer to the top 5%.
|
| It's less affordable given where people live and how much
| more they cost where people make more money.
|
| Unless we're calling ugly 1800 sqft 3-bedroom suburban
| development houses "McMansions" - middle class people
| aren't buying them.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| > If anything - I think this pushes out who's buying a
| "real" McMansion probably closer to the top 5%.
|
| Yeah, I think you're right. I don't think America even
| has a middle class any more. The insanity of the housing
| market has really put that in stark contrast.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I do think it is very much a classism thing. Plant of
| "McMansion style" homes that Architectural Digest type snobs
| punch down on that are not $1M. Remember vast areas of this
| country have very cheap land.
|
| The demographics of people who enjoy writings like McMansion
| Hell skew much richer than the people living in that style of
| home. A McMansion style home in the burbs can cost about the
| same as a mediocre 1-2 bed / 1.5 bath in NYC.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Isn't the typical McMansion people complain about $1M+?
|
| The same style problems are heavily present in houses down to
| the high-$300k range around here. Straight-up visual
| gibberish, and not in the name of some kind of practical
| improvements as a trade-off--the contrary, if anything.
|
| Best I can tell, this has happened because complex facades
| and rooflines make a house look bigger. I've done a lot of
| house shopping over the years, and find that if I apply a
| McMansion-style-tuned eye to classically-styled houses, my
| guesstimate of square footage is consistently something like
| 30-40% low. Houses with a balanced and regular appearance and
| without a bunch of shit jutting out everywhere for no reason
| _look smaller_ --by a lot--than a same-size McMansion.
| [deleted]
| jmclnx wrote:
| The only thing I did not like about these is how close they were
| built to each other on a small plot of land. Plus all the trees
| were removed.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I know of a family who lives in a neighborhood like what you
| describe.
|
| They complain they never see any birds or wildlife when the
| nearest batch of trees is at least a half mile away.
| bearjaws wrote:
| The hilarious thing to me about these new neighborhoods, is you
| can easily find their 'end game' state by just going to one that
| was built 12-15 years ago.
|
| You will find the same story, brand new -> rusted out fences,
| broken lights, old pavement, irrigation problems.
|
| The maintenance of these communities is outrageously expensive.
| Without an HOA fee of $400-$600 a month, they rapidly fall apart
| (~10 years). Yet you typically see figures closer to $200 a
| month.
|
| Here in Central Florida, the second wealthiest "McMansion"
| neighborhood had to increase HOA dues and have a special
| assessment to finally pave its pot hole ridden roads. Mind you
| the dues are typically near $800 per month.
| nunez wrote:
| Kate is an amazing writer.
|
| I loved how seamlessly she floated between academic architectural
| review to "McMansion bad" comedy, with almost no effort.
|
| That said, I 100% agree. Mansions are beautiful and powerful in
| presence. McMansions are a blight and, in my opinion, incredibly
| cheap-looking cancerous blobs.
|
| I live in Houston, which has an example of both.
|
| River Oaks is our friendly "rich person" neighborhood. There,
| you'll see some _really_ nice looking custom big houses. Proper
| mansions, as it were.
|
| We recently moved from Richmond, an exurb about 45 minutes south
| towards the abyss between Houston and Mexico. Like Kate
| illustrated here, a McMansion neighborhood was right off of our
| exit. The houses are gigantic, but look incredibly, incredibly
| cheap.
|
| Funny enough, a large apartment complex is being built right by
| one of them. I wonder what that will do to their value.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| Why do you care if other people buy mcmansions? The sorts of
| neighborhoods where they tend to crop up already have a million
| identical cookie cutter houses anyways.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I don't care myself -- I'm living in one right now. Sadly the
| older homes in the city had only a single-car garage and I do
| woodworking.
|
| It does seem though like we're heading toward either trailer
| park or mansion.
|
| Seventy year ago they built real starter homes for newlyweds
| that did not yet have 2.4 kids. I'm not sure where those people
| go now. I have three daughters that are in their 20s now though
| so I guess I can watch and see.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _The vernacular is the mass-produced architecture of the
| everyday._
|
| This is not remotely what _vernacular architecture_ means. (And
| trailer parks are not vernacular architecture.)
|
| https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Vernacular_archite...
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The author probably wanted _vulgar_ , not _vernacular_.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Not likely:
|
| _I disagree with Hubka's rejection of the McMansion as a
| topic of vernacular study, but I agree that it is not quite
| vernacular, either. However, I think there are some things
| about the McMansion that can only be understood through a
| more vernacular framework, such as their ubiquity and the
| means by which they are built. McMansions are not usually
| designed by architects but by builders, most of them massive
| corporations like Toll Brothers, Pulte Homes, and Ryan Homes
| that traffic exclusively in master-planned tract communities.
| Like most vernacular architecture, the McMansion might best
| be considered a typology--an architectural configuration that
| adapts over time but remains generally stable._
| walthamstow wrote:
| > It is a type of architecture which is indigenous to a
| specific time and place and not replicated from elsewhere
|
| As a British outsider, it kind of does sound like trailer parks
| are American vernacular architecture. Why aren't they?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _The benefits of vernacular architecture include:
|
| Capitalising on local knowledge and traditions.
|
| Taking advantage of local materials and resources, meaning
| that they are relatively energy efficient and sustainable.
|
| Providing a vital connection between humans and the
| environment in which they live.
|
| They can be designed specifically with the local climatic
| conditions in mind, and often perform well._
|
| Vernacular architecture is associated with regional styles
| using local materials to build homes for ordinary people.
| Trailers are not any of the above.
| glompers wrote:
| I generally like the comments posted here by DoreenMichelle.
| I would cite the historic cobblestone or quarried Belgian
| Block pavements in American port cities like Philadelphia and
| Savannah as examples of locally available materials that were
| not local materials (many arrived as ballasts unloaded from
| the hulls of ships that were departing town heavier and more
| stable than they had arrived) but economic afterthoughts. Is
| it still a vernacular practice of local knowledge and local
| conditions that prevail in the built environment, if instead
| the citizens had simply used them as earthfill rubble to
| create new land out of wetlands? I would say no; practices
| that have left a trace only in being cheaper than other
| methods of earthfill don't meet my criteria for a vernacular
| practice, although they may have still been performed by some
| of the same families who would be continuing to pass down
| that pattern of form in that same tradition.
|
| On the other hand, if forestry and agriculture oriented areas
| of the USA find their local furniture and textile
| manufacturing tooling falling out of demand as furniture
| production goes offshore, is it possible to call it local
| knowhow if they repurpose those manufacturing plants to
| produce wood-framed, furnished turnkey mobile home trailers?
| It is still vernacular practice but at one remove, its nature
| changed by one layer (at least) of abstraction from a
| vernacular /tradition/, and its patterns denatured by that
| change as much as they were denatured by mass financing of
| managed mass production.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Architecturally speaking, the reason for the McMansion's
| persistence is that it is the path of least resistance for
| building a house of a certain size. It's hard to be efficient
| when forcing four thousand-plus square feet under one roof.
| Tailor-made architectural creations remain out of reach (or
| undesirable) for many people. The McMansion is a structurally
| stable, if visually clunky, formula. Contrary to almost four
| decades of urbanistic thought highlighting the need for
| walkability, density, and transit-oriented development, companies
| like Pulte Homes continue to construct McMansion neighborhoods
| near highway off-ramps and high-traffic arterial roads. They do
| this because people buy these houses and drive to work...
|
| Yeah, screw them for ignoring decades of urbanistic thought and
| continuing to buy houses they want and can afford. It's like
| they're not even considering what decades of academics and
| ideologues have been telling them to do with their lives. Does
| urbanistic thought not count for _anything_ anymore?!
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Ah, the good ol' "freedom trumps a well-functioning society"
| argument
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