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I'm a third of the way through, so I'm speculating from what I've read so far. The author describes an endemic bear problem since colonial times. This was eventually mitigated by offering bounties for slaughtered bears, a growing human population and efforts to convert the land from forest to agriculture, thus robbing the remaining bears of their habitats. The land seems to have heavily reforested as economic prospects dimmed, allowing for a rebound of the bear population. And then the human population suddenly ballooned with the influx of libertarians, making bear encounters much more likely. In addition to that, a lot of the libertarians (mostly single middle-aged men) set up semi-permanent shantytowns, replete with the delicious detritus that you might imagine, basically drawing more and more bears in. I'm guessing that the hardcore deconstruction of infrastructure (roads & emergency services), will also play a role here. I'm looking forward to finding out how much more off the rails this story goes! I didn't read the original article the author built the book out of, so I'm going in relatively blind, and resisting the temptation to check the wiki article on the town.
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Nov 10, 2020 06:20
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The book is among the Kindle daily deals today here in the US, marked down to $4, for anyone who’s interested.
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Nov 15, 2020 17:52
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Yeah I just got to that bit as well and had a similar reaction. I didn't know the etymology of the parasite, which was interesting. The doctor sounds like a pre-Mengele colonialist turd though.
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Nov 18, 2020 06:57
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Its tenuous scientifically and I was initially thrown off by the chapter, but ultimately I found it to be an effective metaphor for libertarianism as a mind parasite that makes the individual behave in extremely deleterious self-destructive ways.
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Nov 22, 2020 07:30
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