[fock]

Maybe we should reevaluate wether it's actually necessary for a free and democratic society to have these distanced families as a norm. The societal model you describe essentially evolved in lockstep with capitalism (people moving into cities/generally moving for work) and I'm not totally sure that it has to be this way. We could just live more regional and still be free and democratic as well! Indeed, currently it looks like rootlessness proclaimed by you and others as the preferable lifestyle will take away our freedom and democracy with it.

[verisimi]

Of course, we don't have democracy. We don't contribute to the thousands of decisions that are made. We have 'representative democracy' where we choose someone (once every 5 years) to make all those decisions for us.

We should re-evaluate what? The reality that the system we find ourselves in, means that families are distributed? Would you force people back together into the same region?

[brudgers]

The freedom of movement is a marker of political liberty.

Some people (but by no means everyone) are better off away from their family and the town where they grew up.

Imagine that you are the fourth generation to move far away from your patents, as I am. There is not some community in which I have generational roots…and it was the prospect of conscription by the Tsar’s army that started it all. Not capitalism.

For me, employment someplace far away was the way out of where we weren’t from and that wasn’t for us.

Some people have a reason to stay. Those reasons are sometimes the reasons for other people to leave.