Is the slogan "consenting adults" an adequate foundation for all economic regulation?

[happyslug]

11. But the average distance between neighbors in rural America is closer to 10 feet than 10 miles

The average size of a farm in 2007 is 418 acres, or less then 3/5 of a mile across. Only 3.7 % of all farms are over 2000 acres, or less then 3 miles across. Thus in most of Rural America we are talking about a 1 or less between homes (and in most of Rural American, most people live on small lots or in small towns and commute to work on the larger farms, thus higher population then the mere number of farms per square mile would indicate).

People have little understanding of distance, for example a typical eastern County (I.e. East of the Rocky Mountains) is only 20 miles square. In the Mountains of the American West and Alaska you can have tens of miles between homes, but then in such places almost all of the land is US Government owned.

Furthermore even in such places, a fire starts in a home miles from someone else, but it spread to the nearby forest and becomes a major forest fires that can go hundreds of square miles, burning hundreds of homes that are tens of miles away from each other.

Sorry, proper home constructions helps even in Rural Area. The main reason we have the perception that such incidents occur less in rural America is the result of two factors:

First, it is easier to report of a major fire in a major city then in a rural area, Given the number of people in a city you can have the same number of fire as in the rural areas, but it is reported more often for the fire location is easy to get to by more news team then the fires in rural locations.

Second, The rate of fire PER HOME and PER PERSON is about the same in rural or urban America (in fact I heard it is LESS in Urban America do to sticker enforcement of fire codes), but five fire in New York City makes New York City sound like a fire hazard, while the same number of fires per the same number of homes and people in Rural America are dismissed as individual fires in five different Communities.

Furthermore the need for fire and other safety codes is actually stronger in Rural America than in Urban America, Urban America generally has ready access to fire and emergency teams, while Rural America may have to wait hours for less equipped fire and safety teams (And this is one of the reasons rural forest fires get out of hand so quickly, in urban areas the Fire Department put out such fires before the fire become uncontrollable, but in rural areas fire departments often do not arrive till long after the fire is out of control).