I don’t think it’s about denying the difference between subsistence living and moderate wealth, so much as prioritizing a framing that identifies the systemic issue of capital rather than a comparative placement on an arbitrary scale.
It’s not that those comparisons don’t exist, it’s just less important than the shared relationship to capital, and happens to distract from what’s actually meaningful.
It is very common in the US to use foam boards with z furring channels to insulate agaist concrete or similar materials, but using furring channels with just about any type of insulation would work (foam is the most efficient, though). You can then fasten drywall or your typical wall covering to the channels and paint as normal.
Just about any solution will reduce your occupiable space though, or protrude on the exterior. Most jurisdictions in my area are ok with encroaching a few centimeters for the purpose of higher energy efficiency, but I have no idea about your situation.
Preface: I am an architect based out of the midwest, so I don’t have much direct experience with crawlspace rennovations or construction specifically, but I have worked with lots of wood construction and delt with water infiltration regularly.
Absent more detailed information (i see your other comment describing the wood piers and wood rot, but there’s still some ambiguity), I think it’s worth pointing out that concrete foundations are not the only way to prevent future wood rot.
Typically you see rot in conditions where:
There has been flooding under the house
there is moisture seeping up through the ground underneath the crawlspace
there is humidity in the air that is saturating the wood
The reason you’re seeing wood rot under your house is not because you have wood foundations, it’s because moister is not being properly controlled. Having not had experience on this particular situation before, I couldn’t tell you how you could approach replacing a wood foundation with a concrete one without demolishing the existing structure. It’s possible it could be done, but it’s almost certainly more expensive and won’t solve the water infiltration issue anyway.
I would reccomend determining the source of the water first.
If there’s flooding, install a drainage system (or repair/upgrade the existing one)
If there’s water seeping in from the ground, replace/install a vapor barrier
If it’s a humid environment and it’s not being controlled, mitigate the humidity by insulating, sealing, and ventilating/dehumidifying the space
You should not have problems with wood piers/posts if properly done. If you’re still determined not to use wood piers, I would ask your contractor about using CMU instead of the wood posts. keep in mind, though, that this won’t solve the issue of water presence and you would still likely have problems in the future if you don’t mitigate it.
Before listening to Joe Rogan, my dad was a Reagan-era fiscal conservative, and now he regularly talks about how the WEF is a conspiratorial group trying to bring about the “great reset”, how COVID was both a hoax and also a bioweapon meant to disrupt western capitalism, and how BLM is a terrorist Marxist group who supports abortion as a means to destroy the nuclear family. I largely credit Rogan (and other ‘apolitical’ gateway pundits like him) for my father, and millions of other men, taking a hard turn right into reactionary politics.
They had a bunch of protests during 2020, and a couple of those protests got out of control (Kyle Rittenhouse famously murdered several protesters at one). The conservative news space spent the next 6 months painting them as a Marxist terrorist group and a lot of people bought in to that framing.
That’s a fair assumption, but i could count the people in my life that know what 4chan is on one hand. They should do another survey with only terminally online people
They do that anyway, but the whole wage market shifts upward because of the non-exempt regulations. The whole reason we even had a middle class to loose was the labor laws established from union strikes and labor reform in the early 20th century. The only reason you have a weekend is because of those laws. Regulation like this is the first step toward improving labor down the board.
ofc we should also raise min wage and/or establish universal benefits to head off automation and other productivity improvements, but those are bigger reforms.
That’s not really true though. The majority of workers in the US are non-exempt full-time employees, which means employers are required to pay overtime for anything over 40 hours. Lowering that threshold will mean those 8 extra hours are more valuable and will hold wages steady.
Edit: Actually, I was just looking into it, I think this claim is unsupported. Looks like climate change will cause a 5-25% less than what it would have been, but that’s as compared to the projected growth of yields due to improved technology and resources. So the picture is a little more muddy but still impactful.
Climate change isn’t really something you can deny anymore if you work in ag, and a lot of small-town conservatives have a close relationship to farming (not trying to stereotype, just speaking to my experience in Iowa). Yields have been declining basically every year for the last 10 or so, with wind, drought, and flooding being the top reasons. Temps in the central US reached the highest since the great depression and the dust bowl. For those people, denying the existence of climate change is basically saying you’ll do nothing to help farmers suffering from decreasing yields. It’s not a harmless “anti-woke” opinion anymore, it’s actively harmful to the material conditions of a lot of republicans.
That’s not to say it isn’t really interesting watching them dance around it. They’ll probably try to say, “yea, it’s real, but there’s no point in cutting back fossil fuels at this point. Here’s more farming subsidies to help with your decreasing yields”, and i’m betting that it will still be very effective for their base.-