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Perhaps I'm just being an Alaskan, but I fail to see what is so great about a peaceful agrarian society. I would much rather live in a peaceful society that hasn't ripped the land to shreds, aka "tamed" it. For this reason I much prefer places like Lothlorien or Rivendell, where there is peaceful civilization, but also where the land has been left fairly undisturbed.
I do not think we should see a bygone era of pre-industrialization farming as a wonderful golden age of humanity, a time before the land was laid to waste or whatever, if the land has been farmed it has already been laid to waste, it's as simple as that.
Tolkien seems to have considered pre-industrialization England as the true England, when really he should have been looking back to a time before humans had ever laid eyes on the place.
For these reason, I cannot say that I would consider the Shire to be a utopia, or at least not one I would care to live in.
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