If the mixed capitalism and socialism model of Singapore - http://www.rollingalpha.com/2015/03/23/singapore-a-success-s... - is a free market then the US now is also a free market.

You now write "going back’ on a timeline of self sufficiency .. A hunter gatherer didn’t have markets". However, earlier you wrote "back to the times when we can have free markets AND a limited amount of protectionism AND self sufficiency", so you clearly weren't talking about hunter gatherers then.

FWIW, I think your view of hunter gatherers is idealistic rather than being based on (for example) archeological evidence. You write that they had "no supply chain or cold chain or transportation". Quoting http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/1-CompleteSet/MES-10-Tra... "Trade was widely practiced in all parts of the ancient New World, among societies of all levels of social complexity, from the earliest hunter-gatherers to late prehistoric empires like the Aztec and Inca." Quoting http://members.peak.org/~obsidian/pdf/connolly_etal_2015.pdf "This contrast suggests that obsidian toolstone procurement in the caldera during middle Holocene and later times was not simply an activity embedded into a complex of hunter-gatherer routines, but a targeted activity on a scale that suggests a commercial enterprise."

Quite clearly hunter gatherers had supply chains and transportation.

You write "Most of it has to go indoors." I quote the Wikipedia entry for CEA: "The economics of indoor farming has been challenging, particularly the price of electricity, and several startups shut down as a result." As the source reference for that quote points out, at https://finance-commerce.com/2018/05/people-power-costs-keep... , "It’s tough to compete with plants grown in dirt with free sunlight, after all."

Moreover, if we switch to a solar power economy, then your proposal turns sunlight into electricity (energy loss), into LED lighting (energy loss) into plant growth. That is, current indoor farming uses power which mostly comes from relatively cheap but non-sustainable non-renewables (70% of the power in the US comes from coal, natural gas, or petroleum.)

You write "I also feel that high density living has its advantages". This seems to contradict your earlier statement "I am not impressed by the arguments made by high density proponents. In my lived experience, it degrades quality of life."

Now you clarify that your experience is that of a post-war American city designed around cars. However, 'the arguments made by high density proponents' are specifically saying that car travel and designs like what you mention must be avoided. (Eg, in http://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/community-accept... - "With high-density
housing, stores serving neighborhood residents move in, allowing residents to walk to buy groceries or to the dry cleaner instead of driving.") So you do agree with them.

I mentioned NYC to show that your view of what society should be is not reasonable, in the senses that 1) it requires much more land area, with more duplicated resources (eg, water treatment facilities cannot be shared), 2) it reduces the diversity of experiences that people can have, and 3) the fact that millions of people live in NYC means that your views are far from commonplace.

You write "A lettuce grown in your hydroponic or soil kitchen garden takes less resources than one that is grown 3000 miles away and is transported and refrigerated and sold in a store and then people are paid to sell it to you and you have to bring it back home."

The failure of many hydroponic farms shows that your statement is not trivially true.

You know there are disadvantages to your model, right? It means that everyone currently living in an apartment now needs more space in order to grow those crops. That space is expensive, both because city land is more expensive than rural land, but also because the costs are not shared with anyone else. How much more expensive are the construction costs for everyone to have an extra hydro room? It looks like about $150/sq. ft. for the US and you're talking, what, 100 sq. ft. so $15000? Price of organic lettuce at a farmer's market is about $2, says https://thenaturalfarmer.org/article/price-comparison-of-far... , so that's 7,000 heads of lettuce. Now add in the price for the hydroponics equipment and power.

In addition, my time isn't free. These aren't turn-key operations you're talking about and it takes time to learn how to farm. Many of the people doing home hydroponics do so as a hobby so value the farming experience. Also, if I go on a trip for a month, what happens to my home farm? Sure, there can be farm sitters, just like there are dog/cat sitters, but that's also not cheap.

Finally on this point, I've lived in apartments with shared laundry machines, and houses with no laundry machines - we used laundromats. This suggests that your views on what are reasonable seem based on being rich - you have a farm in Silicon Valley - and living in suburban houses.

You write "If a city can grow". And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Again, the experience so far shows that it's not economical to do as you propose. It appears to be more economical to have farm areas with (sustainable) ag practices and ship the food to living areas/cities, even with the extra transport costs.

Is there justification for paying people a living wage to work on a farm? What about $20/hour plus access to good quality nationalized health care?

FWIW, there's also no justification to make a human work under a merciless boss. That is, your statement, which uses the word "make", implies a lack of job mobility and lack of social safety systems for the jobless more than something intrinsic to the job itself.