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Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

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Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#81

Post by danaris »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #29

Some countries have really high housing prices and housing scarcity right on a border with another country where this isn't the case. You can get 30-40% differences just by moving a few km on the borders of the Netherlands. The reason this isn't that popular is that by moving like that you get to deal with different jurisdictions and tax systems. Particularly the social systems different countries have are very diffe…

> the coming revolution of autonomous driving

...is going to take another 20-30 years, if it arrives at all.

It's become very clear in the years since the promise of "self-driving cars in six months!" failed to materialise that the level of computer vision and processing required to operate self-driving cars on arbitrary roads (as in, not in very specific areas in the American Southwest, where the weather is very consistent) is much, much higher than we thought.

Until we can be pretty damn well guaranteed that a self-driving tractor trailer is not going to see a road under construction and either continue going straight through—killing lots of construction workers, and possibly causing a massive explosion if it's carrying fossil fuels—or swerve off the road into someone's house, no matter how poorly the correct lane to drive in is marked...

And that self-driving vehicles will be able to keep in lane at least as well as humans can when there's 8cm of snow on the roads...

We're going to need to accept that the answer to "shitty commute" has to be public transport, or remote work.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#82

Post by danaris »

outime wrote: post #21

People move to where they can make a living. Globalization has largely killed farming as a viable livelihood (in most of the EU at least), it's simply not profitable enough unless you have a massive amount of land/cattle or have invested heavily in automation (usually both). Without that important sector, it's doubtful the trend will reverse unless cities become literally unlivable or there's some kind of miracle in…

The trend will reverse once we have enough people in positions of power both able to recognise and willing to admit that remote work is, for at least 75% of office jobs, at least as good as onsite work. (Not "without tradeoffs", just "at least as good, overall".)

Sadly, this is going to have to be at least a generational change, as the current people in power are deeply entrenched in the mindset that "managing people" means "ensuring butts are in seats", and that they are neofeudal lords overseeing their techno-serfs, which they can only feel good about if they can go aggravate them in person.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#84

Post by spwa4 »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #24
yoz-y wrote: post #6

Not enough software engineers converting to farming? Shocking. If anything else, for me the main issue in France is the dearth of doctors in rural areas. So even the romantic idea of retiring in quaint village is predicated on not getting sick.

Farming continues to be automated. Farms continue to be bought up for way more than their worth (farmland in the U.K. goes for 100-200 times the rental value) as part of wealth concentration.

True, but that is not the problem.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#85

Post by sixtyj »

higeorge13 wrote: post #38

Same in Greece, the countryside and even the islands are dying or declining. Everyone is moving to Athens or nearby big cities. Even most greek islands have become huge only-summer resorts and a large airbnb, most of their villages are almost empty during the winter. There are various reasons but the most important ones are that a big majority of properties has been bought by foreigners as vacation homes and there is…

It is sad what you mention.

The commoditisation, clustering and gentrification of landscape and living is world-wide phenomenon.

At Corsica FLNC fought with bombing against hijacking of landscape by vacationers. But xenophobia solves nothing.

Revolution? Slow collapse? Some way out of the cities and back to the countryside? Idk. Time will tell.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#86

Post by spwa4 »

squishington wrote: post #71
muzani wrote: post #53

Something strange happens when people get wealthy and advanced enough. Cost of living rises, workload increases, it becomes unaffordable to have kids. 30 years later, everything is empty. Places like Australia have plenty of land but, nah, everyone wants to live urban where housing prices are insane or inherited. Food costs often go down in developed countries, cheaper than developing ones. Maybe they're so low that…

I grew up in regional Australia. All of my friends from there moved to the city because they wanted careers. Myself included. My friend who stayed there still works in farming and lives just above the poverty line, and can't compete for a rental so he lives in a shack in a paddock. House prices there also became ridiculous after the pandemic.

Indeed. This is policy. House prices rising generates a lot of money for the government for a lot of reasons so they try to stimulate it, so they can spend more "with less taxing". The biggest factor here is the central bank lending to banks lending you mortgages (so the high house prices effectively become a tax. You will pay either through loan repayment or rental), the second factor is "seignorage" on the total value the central bank loans out (the government can spend effectively 4% of total money lent out loan for free, more if they also cause inflation)

Governments do this in all sorts of ways, including the big one: making this the only real risk-free but effective way to save up and have a bigger pension at retirement (so any change to this system will take a LOT of money out of the pockets of old people, who often can't replace it anymore)

But if you made mortgages either have real risk for banks or stopped funding them through central bank loans ... house prices will crash down. And having inflation is simply a choice. We could choose otherwise.

The problem with changing this is that it will require a permanent reduction in government spending or a permanent (big) raise in tax. Both are non-starters.

What this does over time is it makes labor that has low productivity, such as farming, less and less realistic if you want a decent life. It is a ratchet that forces the population to make more and more money over time ... or face destitution. It's been an extremely powerful way for countries to get rich.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#87

Post by metalman »

here in Nova Scotia there are many rural comunities with NO children and where all of the adults are over 40. many small rural homes are torn down as it reduces the tax/maintenance burden on the owners who are city dwellers now, and use a travel trailer to visit. there are comunities on the map that no longer physicaly exist, except for perhaps one empty house, or literaly nothing recognisable as a town remaining, just named streets on a map, and trees where they, apairently once were. our city (singular) is booming, and the larger towns within the magic 1 hr drive from the city are also booming, but much of the rural landscape is bieng abandoned. but perversly, the final phase of twinning the trans canada hyway through New Brunswick has revealed an unknown phenominon where it is impossible for people to drive for 6 hours through scrub spruce and not stop and build a Wallmart, and so the trans Canada is slowly becoming a very long, very narrow strip mall, with sections several hundred kilometers long through ontario and quebec finnished, no homes or schools or hospitals mind you, just endless retail oportunities

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#88

Post by d3vnull »

higeorge13 wrote: post #38

Same in Greece, the countryside and even the islands are dying or declining. Everyone is moving to Athens or nearby big cities. Even most greek islands have become huge only-summer resorts and a large airbnb, most of their villages are almost empty during the winter. There are various reasons but the most important ones are that a big majority of properties has been bought by foreigners as vacation homes and there is…

This tendency started long before airbnb and foreigners started buying a "big majority of properties".

People have been moving to cities for decades now. Many of humanities recent developments make much more sense at scale so people are going to places with that scale. Some prefer a quieter environment and don't move but most people rather have opportunities, jobs, services, etc and all that is made much easier when lots of people are concentrated in a smaller area.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#89

Post by squishington »

spwa4 wrote: post #86
squishington wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in regional Australia. All of my friends from there moved to the city because they wanted careers. Myself included. My friend who stayed there still works in farming and lives just above the poverty line, and can't compete for a rental so he lives in a shack in a paddock. House prices there also became ridiculous after the pandemic.

Indeed. This is policy. House prices rising generates a lot of money for the government for a lot of reasons so they try to stimulate it, so they can spend more "with less taxing". The biggest factor here is the central bank lending to banks lending you mortgages (so the high house prices effectively become a tax. You will pay either through loan repayment or rental), the second factor is "seignorage" on the total va…

I think the benefits will be short lived. The long term outcome is a new class division (asset inheritors versus pure wage earners with no inheritance). This is a terrible outcome for society. I'm not convinced high house prices generated a lot of wealth for governments. Government debt is higher than previous decades, and government asset ownership is lower. I think this has been a bad strategy.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#90

Post by wink »

danaris wrote: post #82
outime wrote: post #21

People move to where they can make a living. Globalization has largely killed farming as a viable livelihood (in most of the EU at least), it's simply not profitable enough unless you have a massive amount of land/cattle or have invested heavily in automation (usually both). Without that important sector, it's doubtful the trend will reverse unless cities become literally unlivable or there's some kind of miracle in…

The trend will reverse once we have enough people in positions of power both able to recognise and willing to admit that remote work is, for at least 75% of office jobs, at least as good as onsite work. (Not "without tradeoffs", just "at least as good, overall".) Sadly, this is going to have to be at least a generational change, as the current people in power are deeply entrenched in the mindset that "managing people…

I'd love to have statistics on how many people can not work remotely because their partner can't work remotely. Maybe starting with how many jobs are office jobs that don't require f2f would be a good sample, but I've never seen such numbers.
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