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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'

#101

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

Fricken wrote: post #56

>Several years ago, 80 bison were reintroduced two centuries after their disappearance from these territories... I had no idea there were bison in Europe. The provided hyperlink leads to an article about bison being reintroduced in Mexico. Here is an appropriate article about bison being rewilded in the Southern Carpathians: https://rewildingeurope.com/blog/free-roaming-bison-populati... .

Yes, there are some of them in various european countries.

https://www.eurowildlife.org/news/wisents-in-slovakia-the-po...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison

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

#102

Post by bombcar »

ethbr1 wrote: post #41
azulster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are national park-like things that existed before, but they were often technically owned by the King or somesuch.

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

#104

Post by Rinzler89 »

6502nerdface wrote: post #76
budududuroiu wrote: post #15

Visiting Romania :) Living in Romania :(

It's noticeably improving, though! Over the last 10 years or so, both their GDP per capita and household income per capita have roughly doubled. Now when I visit medium-sized cities there I am amazed to find latte-slinging coffee shops and craft beer-pouring gastropubs that would look right at home in Brooklyn.

>Now when I visit medium-sized cities there I am amazed to find latte-slinging coffee shops and craft beer-pouring gastropubs that would look right at home in Brooklyn.

True, but that's not an accurate measurement of the quality of life or income of the average Romanian. They're are just businesses serving an afluent urban clientele (mostly corporate/IT workers and other high income people) that's like what 10% of the național population or something but overly represented in much higher proportions in the big cities.

Go to the smaller cities or villages and you'll see a different picture: lots of people with precarious education, unemployed or making minimum wage in dead-end jobs and living paycheck to paycheck unable to afford to fix broken teeth, hospitals and schools falling apart, etc.

The country's still much better to live in (especially in the 5 big cities) than what the average of the planet has to deal with, but there's a reason why statistically it's at the bottom of the EU charts. Tech workers sipping gourmet coffee in the big cities are the exception but don't represent the norm.

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

#105

Post by WalterBright »

underlipton wrote: post #74
bavent wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I thought it was Terry Roosevelt. Do you have a source?

I don't know the history, but if it's anything like the public libraries here (and several other institutions), a lot of it would have been bankrolled by robber barons trying to secure their legacy and avoid taxation. In other words, guilting rich people and threatening nationalization of their wealth works.

> a lot of it would have been bankrolled by robber barons trying to secure their legacy and avoid taxation.

Do you have a cite for that?

BTW, donating to charity is tax deductible. For example, if I donate $100 to charity, I can deduct $100 from my taxable income.

My choices:

1. paying taxes: I pay $20 2. donating to charity and deducting it from my income: I pay $100

I'm $80 worse off financially by donating to charity rather than paying taxes. As a tax avoidance scheme, donating to charity doesn't deliver.

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

#106

Post by mhitza »

bad_user wrote: post #73
budududuroiu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not having a progressive tax is a feature, not a bug. If a progressive tax would be introduced, I'd either start avoid taxes in any way possible, or I'd seriously think about emigration. Because yes, the rich always finds ways to evade taxes, while the middle class gets screwed. And I'm also not interested in subsidizing the poor. The total taxes you pay on a regular work contract are around 41.5%, and much of that g…

> The total taxes you pay on a regular work contract are around 41.5%, and much of that goes to pensions.

With VAT on each purchase (unless you're not living month to month, and are able to set aside some of your income) the effective taxation is closer to 60%.

I don't want to go into the topic of why I think progressive taxation is better than what we have now, but I wanted to raise this point because many stop at the tax rate on their salary.

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

#107

Post by r00fus »

WalterBright wrote: post #103
maelito wrote: post #91

Please do this in France too. So much land, but agriculture everywhere.

People like to eat.

France is a major food exporter. Some of those lands could be re-acquired by the state for non-food uses.

Our capitalist world economy equates wealth based on extraction, not preservation. It really needs to be reimagined if we're going to be sustainable at all.

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

#108

Post by yosito »

WalterBright wrote: post #103
maelito wrote: post #91

Please do this in France too. So much land, but agriculture everywhere.

People like to eat.

Reminds me of a fast food slogan, "Ya gotta eat! Rally's!"... not exactly the most appetizing slogan.

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

#109

Post by s1artibartfast »

mlyle wrote: post #95
NikolaNovak wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand these arguments. You mean mastodon home,surely? They were there before bears! How about pterodactyl? How far do we go / where do we arbitrarily draw the line? I am all for ecology, preservation, being in sync with nature etc, but I find fundamentally flawed and dishonest arguments like these don't contribute to the cause. Over billions of years, every single species alive displaced some other speci…

I think he's just saying that if you move in somewhere where there were lots of bears.... don't be surprised when bears show up and are annoying.

The "surprise“ comes from the fact this was historically a solved problem. People simply killed the annoying predators and nuisance animals.

We are in a transition state of cultural values and expectations. People expect to being free from annoyances because that was the norm for hundreds if not thousands of years. The rules have changed around how we treat animals, but people have not internalized all the resulting impacts.

For what it is worth, there are still lots of places, even in the US, where the old solution is still in effect.

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