He has since died but for years I had a wealthy friend who had a large farm (After he retired, he leased it to another farmer). He lved on a country road a few miles from town. Realizing that under the local land rules he was not able to chop off some of his land to build some homes to sell, he was very much against Oregon's strict rules.

Then one day I asked him that if his neighbor across the road wanted to build some condos would he like it? He grimaced. Of course not, he said, it would change everything about this area.

Our world, our country, our towns, our countryside, are all filling up. Without ground (ha!) rules we would have a chaotic hodge podge