Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#121

Post by barbecue_sauce » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #110

chx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what the most energy efficient people moving device is? The counterweight elevator. It's true. Cramming a village worth of people into a highrise, surrounding it with walking distance amenities is by far the most efficient, environment friendly way of supplying said populace. Yes, you need trucks to stock said stores but then again, no matter where they live you'd still need those trucks and this way a) e…

Bollocks. It takes amazing amounts of oil to get the cheap stuff to the cities. The only reason these are more 'efficient' is because of arbitrary pricing - if we placed a higher value on oil-consumption, in terms of cost to the Earth, the cheap plastic junk wouldn't be being subsidised by our childrens future. I know its not a popular opinion, but the things that take so much oil to make and transport and deliver to…

>>instead of driving to a shopping mall (air conditions) to buy it from a source originally half a country away

You should realize that population density makes it much easier to avoid driving long distances to get things, as distribution points can be centrally located. You seem to have an issue with vehicle-dependent suburban sprawl, which is justified, but ultra dense walkable "New Urban" cities are much better at resource distribution than rural communities.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#122

Post by barbecue_sauce » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #111

volkl48 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that is false. A person living in a big city uses drastically less resources and energy than a rural person does. Less/no driving, smaller more energy efficient dwellings (apartment blocks = way more efficient heating/cooling), vastly less infrastructure per capita , etc.

Nonsense. Factor in all the oil that was used to build the resources the city dweller depends on, and to maintain those resources. Factor in the sheer energy waste of cities. An honest appraisal cannot lead to the conclusion that cities are good for us, energy-wise.

If you factor all of that in, it is less.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#123

Post by ng12 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #97

samstave wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was dumbfounded just the other day when i learned that tokyo is 38 million... So basically that one city has the population of caifornia. If i were a wantrapeeneur id be seeing what app services tokyo specifically from and economic and cultural perspective as if you can monitize just fraction of tokyo businesses......

Tokyo is not a city. It's a metropolitan area and one of the 47 prefectures in Japan. It contains a bunch of special wards, towns and cities inside it with their local governments. The special wards of Tokyo are even called cities in English by the wards themselves. One example is Shibuya City: http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp

Greater Tokyo is roughly the same size as the LA metro with 3x the population.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#124

Post by rebuilder » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #89

mmjaa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I completely disagree with you. Having travelled the world, I feel the worst thing we can do is continue with the big cities. They need to be dismantled, and replaced with smaller, lighter, more local communities that do not require so much energy to maintain - very big city requires immense resources to keep it running, every single day. More rural living is what will save us, imho.

Do you know what the most energy efficient people moving device is? The counterweight elevator. It's true. Cramming a village worth of people into a highrise, surrounding it with walking distance amenities is by far the most efficient, environment friendly way of supplying said populace. Yes, you need trucks to stock said stores but then again, no matter where they live you'd still need those trucks and this way a) e…

Cities provide services much more efficiently than rutal areas, but people in cities tend to consume much more. I've only seen one analysis of the issue, but the effect of that increased consumption was surprisingly big.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#125

Post by dropofwill » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #107

pavlov wrote: post #4

”The company recently got a boost after Gwyneth Paltrow flagged one of its villages on her website as a good Christmas present.” I thought this was a joke, but clicking on the link reveals that a $172k village in Spain was indeed listed in “gift ideas” alongside such more traditional items as a $7700 Hermès surfboard. As fitting a portrait of our present era’s wealth distribution as any. Future generations may look b…

Good grief; this has been the case for as long as there have been people. Rich people and extravagant gifts aren’t some kind of new invention. Not everything has to be a commentary on class struggle or some kind of Marxist validation. And the world isn’t burning; it is more prosperous and has higher standards of living as well as the lowest absolute poverty than any other time in history. Life expectancy has never be…

The WHO still considers hunger the greatest public health threat (more than AIDs, malaria, etc.). Starvation is far from a solved problem.

Just because things are slowly improving doesn’t mean we can’t critique the status quo.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#126

Post by rdl » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #79

vram22 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you rent the property out you should be able to cover the debt service. (Obviously it exposes you to Portuguese RE risk, as well as EUR currency risk, and requires good credit Does that mean you are planning to get a loan to finance the purchase of the property?

Good question. Maybe the plan is to mortgage other properties elsewhere where they actually live to finance (at least in part) the operation?

You can get ~50% mortgages I believe, internationally, particularly if you have other assets to secure it with (some banks I work with will do crypto lending, at least for BTC)

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#127

Post by w1nst0nsm1th » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

nasmorn wrote: post #113

glup wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya I just buy a new one when my current one runs out of juice.

There is a story from my home town Vienna that a certain celebrity would come to the phone shop ever 2 weeks buying a new battery. That continued for a few months until some clerk asked her what she did with all of those and she was thus introduced to charging. I know what you are thinking now. The battery lasted 2 weeks!!!

What I'm thinking is : why so much time before the shop workers asked about the batteries ?

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#128

Post by rdl » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #78

rdl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I am planning to get Portuguese residency through property purchase along with some friends, although we might not go for rural. Only need to spend 14 days/yr there, though. It is a 350-500k EUR investment. If you rent the property out you should be able to cover the debt service. (Obviously it exposes you to Portuguese RE risk, as well as EUR currency risk, and requires good credit, but a 500k piece of propert…

Might you have sone links or literature on this program? Someone above mentioned it required you to be there for 180 days a year. I'd be interested in learning more. Also what is the 150K fee alternative you mentioned?

150k is St. Kitts, Grenada, Panama, etc. programs.

The Portugal program is "Golden Visa". https://www.google.com/search?q=portugese+golden+visa&oq=por...

I'd rather do the Euro 250k to the arts thing if I were just looking for a single fee to pay, but I think the RE model works better. There's also an investor into companies model, but I don't know the startup market there.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#129

Post by rebuilder » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #38

If you want a village plus broadband, buy one in Romania. Still in the EU, less developed (but for this scenario, who cares?). Heck, it's probably going to be cheaper!

Moving to a small rural village comes with significant downsides. Say you have kids. How's the daycare? Is there any? Can they get a good education? Can you trust basic infrastructure to be there in the future? A lot of these places are dying.

Then there's the issue of community. If you're going to settle somewhere, you probably want friends. You want your children to have friends. As a foreigner moving in, working remotely, you have very little going for you in terms of getting integrated. Even if you do put in the work to become a member of the community, you're not guaranteed to fit in. When you move to a big city and have a job there, you'll meet people and find a niche that fits you. In a small village, that's much harder.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#130

Post by lovich » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #112

geoka9 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very big city requires immense resources to keep it running Because they have immense numbers of people living in them? Anecdotally, living in a high-rise building, I am amazed how much more inefficient living in a single-family house is. From unused space and heat loss to the accumulation of junk in the garage/basement/backyard and constant ongoing maintenance of everything, it just seems to be so much waste of re…

>Because they have immense numbers of people living in them? Because those people do less to support their own survival locally, and therefore cities require immense intake of energy and resources every day, in order to maintain that lifestyle.

>Because those people do less to support their own survival locally

That seems to be a critical modification what you originally said. Are you trying to argue that humanity can keep its current quality of life in a less resource intensive manner by spreading out, or are you arguing that we should decrease our quality of life and go back to creating food and goods on our own?

If you take city dwellers and put them all in rural areas, 90% of them are not going to start farming enough to keep themselves fed or farm at all. They are just going to order the food from somewhere else and have it shipped to them, only now the shipping will have to travel a much wider area to get to everyone