Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 190 posts

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#171

Post by ido »

Ntrails wrote: post #170
paganel wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wondering if I’m not the only person who’s not locking his smart-phone. At the same time I’m also making sure to never leave it out of sight and I have no Internet banking. I also have my WiFi network at home open, have had it for more than 10 years now.

I never used to lock my phone, but with fingerprint unlock the effort went away and so left it on.

At least apple’s implementation of it is so flawed it seems to require me to retry at least once >50% of the time.

Their face recognition however is amazing and works even in shitty conditions (such as dim light).

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#172

Post by [deleted] »

paganel wrote: post #159
village-idiot wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems unnecessarily risky to me.

It makes me not put on my phone things that I consider sensitive, like any of my CC details (the Apple account is connected to a spare debit card which hasn’t had any funds on it for quite some time), no sexting, no nude photos etc. I consider that a positive (and that’s why I thought a guy like Bezos would have been smarter than he really was, you cannot trust any electronic security thing when there’s literally a p…

[deleted]

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#173

Post by ido »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #163
AdrianB1 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your situation is still rare in Romania. Also consider how far are you from the closest hospital (if you are far from Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi or Timisoara you are too far), a decent school for your kids, a decent place to go out (not the village pub where alcoholics waste their lives) and so on. One can live like a monk, but not raise a family in a small village or even a city like Petrosani (very nice area, but zero a…

> a decent place to go out (not the village pub where alcoholics waste their lives) If you are in your early 20s and going out every night, then a village might suck. But I’m older now, and for the one or two times a week I meet friends, I just cycle down to the train station, put my bike on the train, and in an hour or so I’m in the city. Even when I just want a coffee for myself, there is a small town nearby with t…

    Are you religious or something? The vast majority of 
    my social circle either does not want children, or 
    wants 1 child much later in life. So, no reason that 
    such people who prefer a quiet life cannot spend at 
    least a few years in the countryside now.
You may be surprised to find a lot of people on HN are already “much later in life”. Also, from the experience of several friends of mine who had a lot trouble- if you want kids you should start trying before the future mother is 40.

We were lucky to be very fertile/healthy but we also started having kids in our early 30s.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#174

Post by vetinari »

kaishiro wrote: post #147
mmjaa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where is your neighbor getting their butter?

Probably from a cow milk and a bit of manual labor. Making butter is not a rocket science.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#175

Post by bawana »

Are these villages truly for sale? Or do you have to pay a ton of taxes, fees, (or as in Vancouver, BC - a foreign investment tax),etc? If they could be made into tax free municipalities-then great.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#176

Post by lovich »

mmjaa wrote: post #157
lovich wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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? Both. We should spread out, gain more local independence in terms of energy harvesting, and we should also change our lives to be not so dependent on massively energy-hungry ac…

Like the other posters in the thread have concluded. I don't see how you could be correct at all. Everything you've described in terms of energy inefficiency is something that describes suburbia. Cities have large energy requirements but that's due to the number of people there, they don't have high energy requirements per capita.

If you can show some math that shows how having a few thousand people in walking distance of a few restaurants has a higher energy requirement than spreading those same few thousand people around the country and having them stay fed _without them farming their own food_ then you might start to have an argument here but for now this seems in the realm of impossibility

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#177

Post by NonEUCitizen »

rdl wrote: post #9

I'm sure there are plenty of people who can work remotely who would love to live in a place like this, if it were either turnkey or at least if there were some collective action organization. Makes even more sense in Portugal, though -- you could live in a place for 182 days/yr, after putting 350k euros investment into it, with a grant of portugese citizenship. I'm sure there are similar villages/properties in rural…

You don't get citizenship. You get residency with a path to citizenship.

https://www.henleyglobal.com/residence-portugal-golden-resid...

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#178

Post by yellowapple »

porknubbins wrote: post #149
rebuilder wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your definition of city is anywhere not rural, (ie the suburbs) then I could see consumtpiom being higher since there is more stuff to buy. But living in a big city I consume much less resources because of basic facts like every item inside my small apartment has to be physically carried in by me and I have no car. I go to Costco sometimes and people with cars easily get 10 - 20x the weight of goods.

Right, but how often are they going in to get those goods? Being able to transport more in one go means being able to take less frequent trips.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#179

Post by yellowapple »

rorykoehler wrote: post #69
jankotek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone hates humans ;-)

Why did you say that?

Not the GP, but I'd say humans are not meant to be cooped up in these piles of boxes we call "cities".

I've lived in both rural and urban areas, and strongly prefer the former; the latter may be more "efficient" mathematically, but at the cost of a substantially-worse quality of life in my opinion.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#180

Post by yellowapple »

chicob wrote: post #100
rdl wrote: post #9

I'm sure there are plenty of people who can work remotely who would love to live in a place like this, if it were either turnkey or at least if there were some collective action organization. Makes even more sense in Portugal, though -- you could live in a place for 182 days/yr, after putting 350k euros investment into it, with a grant of portugese citizenship. I'm sure there are similar villages/properties in rural…

That always seems a good idea for those not living in the interior. It is an urban myth to imagine one can easily move to the interior and then, by means of instantaneous willpower, cope with the most ruthless solitude. I've heard my share of stories about city people moving to the countryside to start living off their organic orchard. But when we stop dreaming and look around, people who were born there are going aw…

> It is an urban myth to imagine one can easily move to the interior and then, by means of instantaneous willpower, cope with the most ruthless solitude

Urban myth, sure, but to me that sounds like heaven.

Post reply on HN