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Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

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Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#41

> European Yellowstone That makes it sound like national parks were invented in the USA and there are no national parks in Europe ... So when a new store opens outside of the US it's called European Wallmart?

yellowstone is literally called the first national park in the world so...yes?

To cite sources:

>> On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed The Act of Dedication law that created Yellowstone National Park. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park#Hi...

I believe the Yellowstone claim is based on the fact that it was the first park explicitly declared for the benefit of the public by a federal government.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ

What are the pros and cons?

Pros (imo): Daily essentials not-yet commodified, can access amazing produce for cheap. Geopolitically stable, crime is mostly petty or white collar. Nature.

Cons (imo): no progressive tax rate, effective ~50% tax on income unless you want to do tax evasion (Romanian past-time), very likely to die on the road as public transit is in a state of disrepair, choice of healthcare between expensive and inefficient private sector, or a public sector where you have to bribe your way to not contracting infections while getting treated for something else.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#43
post #8

[flagged]

> isolate it from capitalism?

...and subject it to... what? Capitalism is an economical system centred around private ownership of means of production and a market economy. There are other economical systems to choose from like (national and international) socialism, communism, feudalism and mercantilism. Would any of those do better than capitalism and if so, why? Socialism and communism have shown to fail miserably where it comes to protecting nature as can be witnessed from the devastation of nature in the former Soviet Union [1] and in Mao's China. Feudalism and mercantilism don't seem to offer much hope either. What, then?

I understand that it is popular to say that 'capitalism is bad' but I'd like to learn of the alternative which offers better outcomes.

[1] https://archive.org/details/destructionofnat0000koma

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a frequent reader of r/europe, Americans have FAR from the worst reputation for tourists within Europe, it's not even close. At least among larger countries, they might actually have a better than average rep.

Better than who out of curiosity?

Probably british youths on holiday, they are pretty notorious. This demographic of american is just as bad but can only afford to get belligerent domestically in florida or south padre isle during spring break, much less afford a flight to europe.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a frequent reader of r/europe, Americans have FAR from the worst reputation for tourists within Europe, it's not even close. At least among larger countries, they might actually have a better than average rep.

Better than who out of curiosity?

The ones that get slammed the most that I've seen are probably the Brits, Russians, and Chinese. Apparently Brits are notorious for getting super drunk and fucking around. Russians are known as being really entitled and rude (and sometimes aggressive IIRC), and there's Chinese tourists also being rude and ignoring rules in huge packs.

The stereotype of American tourists is that they're ignorant and loud (and bad dressers), but also friendly, curious, great tippers (which makes Americans very popular among hospitality workers), and mostly rule-abiding. Though the bad ones are often REALLY bad.

Best reputation is the Japanese. Almost everyone says they're super polite and respectful.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#46

Of particular note is that there are a ton of bears in Romania, much more than in other European countries, with something like 60% of all European brown bears. [0] Glad to see that someone is attempting to preserve this. 0. https://www.mossy.earth/rewilding-knowledge/romanias-brown-b...

There are more bears than the land can sustain. Go to any tourist (or non tourist) spot in the mountains and they'll come down and steal from your garbage in town.

Look up Brasov. It's a reasonably large touristic town and it regularly gets bears at the periphery.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#47

Visiting Romania :) Living in Romania :(

Living in Romania is not that bad if you make enough money but living there with the median income is complicated that's why many of us are living abroad.

Quality of life has increased dramatically since the 90s though.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#48
post #8

[flagged]

Because capitalism will get its greedy claws in there one way or another. It's either this or logging operations.

What do you understand by capitalism?

Is it people delivering products and services, asking for whatever price the market is willing to give, such that they can make ends meet?

I'm from Romania and I've always been fascinated by privileged westerners complaining of capitalism, when capitalism is the entire reason for why you're privileged. That, plus the hard fact that our communists didn't give a shit about preserving nature or brown bears. Actually, our former dictator was going bear hunting, one if his favorite pass times, and wasn't satisfied without a killing spree with dozens of bears as victims. There are videos of it available. And nobody could do shit about it, because we had no rule of law. For the rule of law, you actually need capitalism, but many of you haven't lived the collective trauma that we did, so that kind of lesson tends to be lost in time.

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a frequent reader of r/europe, Americans have FAR from the worst reputation for tourists within Europe, it's not even close. At least among larger countries, they might actually have a better than average rep.

I'd love to see the research behind that. I don't know where Americans rank, but I wouldn't guess we rank high.

From what I've read: American tourists in Latin America fucking suck, but the ones that go to Europe or Japan are largely fine.

Anyway, it's easy to find threads about tourists on r/europe or r/askeurope: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/6zq6lu/which_for...

Re: Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because capitalism will get its greedy claws in there one way or another. It's either this or logging operations.

What do you understand by capitalism? Is it people delivering products and services, asking for whatever price the market is willing to give, such that they can make ends meet? I'm from Romania and I've always been fascinated by privileged westerners complaining of capitalism, when capitalism is the entire reason for why you're privileged. That, plus the hard fact that our communists didn't give a shit about preservi…

I'm from Vienna. The reason I'm privileged is the legacy of Red Vienna and the Austromarxists, who built the social housing and the modern welfare state that makes Vienna the most livable city in the world.

Your communists sucked, for sure. But that was a personnel issue more than it was an ideological one.

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