Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#101

Post by grzm » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:24 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

I don't think the point your parent is making hinges on the definition of city. The Tokyo metropolitan area is smaller and more populous than than all of California. One can refer to LA or New York as cities and mean to include their metropolitan areas. Washington, DC is a separate political jurisdiction which is usefully and colloquially referred to as a city as well.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#102

Post by rihegher » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #99

rihegher wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a house in a nice village close to constansa with fiber would do. But for us that don't know much of the country or langages it not so easy to find

I strongly suspect that every estate agent in Romania, as well as at least one person in every office of RDS (the fiber-based ISP) speaks English comfortably. Foreigners shouldn’t have much difficulty compared to certain other European countries.

Thanks, yes it make sense, but i like to check listing with pictures to see if i like the style of the houses before calling an agent.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#103

Post by volkl48 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #84

rorykoehler wrote: post #42

Am I the only one who sees depopulation of rural areas as a good thing? It's an opportunity to rewild large parts of the continent. We don't need humans dominating every last square metre of the globe. That's part of what is causing most of our problems in the first place.

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.

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.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#104

Post by heliodor » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

General opinion seems to be that this is a bad thing but I disagree.

Modern life offers us much more than we'd get by being farmers. We also need fewer farmers because of automation and large-scale farming.

People want to move to urban areas. Let them, and don't judge.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#105

Post by volkl48 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

hatchnyc wrote: post #59

Reading this just made me think, imagine someday, perhaps a few hundred years, if the world's population were to rise even higher briefly and then dramatically fall simply due to falling birthrates. The ruins of a worldwide infrastructure of abandoned towns and cities built for 10 or 20 times the current population would probably seem very eerie.

Recent book came out arguing fairly persuasively that we're basically there and you're going to see unprecedented depopulation in many areas by the end of the century. Title is Empty Planet - the shock of global population decline.

Places like China are potentially going to shrink by hundreds of millions of people this century.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#106

Post by geoka9 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #84

rorykoehler wrote: post #42

Am I the only one who sees depopulation of rural areas as a good thing? It's an opportunity to rewild large parts of the continent. We don't need humans dominating every last square metre of the globe. That's part of what is causing most of our problems in the first place.

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.

> 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 resources for the benefit of 2-4 people living in it.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#107

Post by briandear » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

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 been higher: the world isn’t burning and unlike the time of Marie Antoinette, people aren’t starving in the streets. Our poor people are actually fat. Poor people during that time actually starved to death in some cases.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#108

Post by mojuba » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

heliodor wrote: post #104

General opinion seems to be that this is a bad thing but I disagree. Modern life offers us much more than we'd get by being farmers. We also need fewer farmers because of automation and large-scale farming. People want to move to urban areas. Let them, and don't judge.

Was my first thought too, but villages not growing into towns is also an indication of a different problem: it's a demographic disaster of declining birth rates.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#109

Post by geoka9 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #67

Scoundreller wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the providers are starting to market 5G, but the data pricing is so terrible, 3G is more than enough and still requires ample rationing. I have to be careful not to stream too many podcasts. Forget music or video.

At least we have decent wired service in Canada. Out on the farm you can get unlimited gigabit service for under $100/month.

I can't get that in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood in a major city (in Canada).

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#110

Post by mmjaa » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:10 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…

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 the people, are there so that city people can live another day without pitching into the abyss.

Rural living is better for the Earth. If I can walk to my neighbour and get butter, instead of driving to a shopping mall (air conditions) to buy it from a source originally half a country away, please explain to me how this is 'more energy efficient'. It makes no sense whatsoever, unless one is simply so enamoured by the luxuries of city life that one can't see the forest for the trees.

Cities are expensive to build, maintain, and they are destroying our future. Abandon!