ratsforhorses (u/ratsforhorses)

ratsforhorses commented on Estonia’s inflation hit 25% year-on-year in August, energy prices to blame estonianworld.com/busines... · Posted by u/possiblelion

gadders · 3 years ago

We physically can't build enough windmills to replace fossil fuels. They'd take up too much space.

I'm all for having renewables when the technology is ready, but it's not and high energy prices will start killing old people that can't afford to heat their homes.

ratsforhorses · 3 years ago

Maybe our economic systems have to be rethought? A tree is worth more dead than alive..... European economies have been accumulating wealth for centuries through colonization and exploitation of humans lifetimes... in the end what do you have? inflated real estate prices, overly mechanized agriculture producing basic junk foodstuffs, increasingly authoritarian political policies designed to restrict or bore people from contributing to civil society... this is leading to an existential crisis .... So many good films out there which capture the essence of the problem, that dreadlock guy who works? for Microsoft has a very good quote in "Social Dilemma" (1)

One suggestion would be politicians to be chosen by jury, for periods of say a year to lock them out of having so many fingers in lobbyists pies...

(1) https://files.fm/f/nm8vs6h5g

ratsforhorses commented on Greg Robinson fixed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, reluctantly nytimes.com/2022/07/11/sc... · Posted by u/wallflower

cdelsolar · 3 years ago

Why do you think companies exist? For customers…

ratsforhorses · 3 years ago

Who are their customers? Other companies... honestly when you take a bit of perspective, the need for companies to make a profit is a huge cause of the overuse of resources... indeed the lack of a social net in the US is probably the cause of it huge part in the world's pollution...as in China the ability to work less or not at all isn't encouraged by the system in place...and please don't get me started on if you don't work who's producing the (junk) food... in WW2 the British poor actually eat better thanks to rationing... maybe less meat, ice cream, bread would be good for the world and the more developed countries...

ratsforhorses commented on Explosion at US natural gas plant raises risk of shortages in Europe theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/frozencell

hdjjhhvvhga · 4 years ago

But does any public support for Russia still exist at this point? Do they have anything to lose? What we witness now is a sad farce where half of what they say are lies - there is no war, they are liberating their own citizens, everybody is welcoming them with flowers, etc. The peak of absurdity is when they "caught" some Ukrainian terrorists in Russia with copies of The Sims game instead of SIM cards.[0] At this point, who cares what they say? And, the other way round, why should they say what the public in the West is saying?

[0] https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/russia-appears-to-confuse-the-...

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

On youtube there's an American guy called Hinkle dishing out pro Russian viewpoint, I mean even Trump was a Putin apologist and under the veneer he's probably still got a grudge against Zelensky for his 2nd impeachment so I expect a lot of his believers hold similar twisted views... I mean even if on the surface people agree Putler is evil, many probably view the inflation of oil prices and their diminishing buying power (and their economy...whatever that means) as being caused by the said WAR rather than too much money being printed in 2020-21 to prop up all those poor airlines etc etc

ratsforhorses commented on Turkey’s inflation soars to 73%, a 23-year high, as food and energy costs rise cnbc.com/2022/06/03/turke... · Posted by u/TekMol

blub · 4 years ago

Assuming you’re talking about Poland and Romania, the consensus was that Russia’s initial plan would have been installing a puppet government.

So they wouldn’t have had Russia as neighbor, but a Russia-friendly country, just like they did for most of the rather brief time Ukraine existed as an independent country. Or another Belarus, which Poland at least is already neighboring.

I get why these countries are nervous but Ukraine’s very very different from Romania or Poland or any other EU country.

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

Honest question , how are they "very different from Romania or Poland"? Do you mean bigger? Also hypothetically if Belarus wanted to join the EU (after a regime change ofc) what would your objections be?

ratsforhorses commented on Ask HN: SWE who started an organic farm in Europe, where did you go? · Posted by u/recvonline

bckygldstn · 4 years ago

Rising prices are bad for all but the most wealthy

* It’s bad for people who don’t own a house, which disproportionately impacts the poor and the young.

* It doesn’t really help homeowners either: their property taxes go up but the increased land value will just be spent on the increased cost of a new property if they move nearby.

* So the only way to realise increased land value is to move outside the local market. This turnover reduces the community of a neighbourhood, and creates pockets of dull old homogeneous people with no shared history.

* The only real way to benefit from rising prices is to invest in property, further concentrating wealth among the wealthy.

* Treating one of society’s most important assets as an investment has a ton of negative side effects, like poor utilisation due to land banking, cheaply finished low quality buildings rather than ones that vest serve their occupants, evictions, further increased community turnover.

* It’s a self perpetuating cycle, as the wealthy investors vote, lobby, and just straight up are politicians.

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

I completely agree, I think the problem with "agricultural" land is that due to WW2 (in western Europe) we jumped too quickly in the 50's from a largely rural society to mechanised farming to pick up the slack from all that surplus war production and lack of (killed off) manpower. The wealthy have used the captive cheap labour force to fill it's offices, factories and rental tenements... Governments have made bigger farms a priority and as in NZ they have become the playthings of hedge funds and corporations (where ironically a Maori once told me something that still sticks with me as profoundly one of the best ways to manage land, telling me "in our living space people have their houses but it's communally owned land, ie " your house, our land") To certain extent our society is focusing on using farming largely for "junk" food, ie wheat and other grains for bread and bakery, corn for glucose syrop, rapeseed for oil used in biofuel, palm oil, sugar beet... and of course, meat and diary... (i heard something like 60% of straw is burned in Germany...) rather than focusing on letting people produce fruit and vegetables in small-scale holdings... Here in Romania a lot of people still live in the countryside (40%?) government is sidelining people selling on the street or in markets and the westernized , yuppified youth is being sucked into the glamour and anonymity of huge supermarkets full of too much stuff but so convenient...

ratsforhorses commented on Turkey’s inflation soars to 73%, a 23-year high, as food and energy costs rise cnbc.com/2022/06/03/turke... · Posted by u/TekMol

im3w1l · 4 years ago

Is Erdogan the kind of man that can see when something is not working and reverse course?

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

He's old, autocratic and in power, also hugely trying to appeal to the (rural) "believers" ...so I don't think so... I think you have to be a special kind of honest when being a believer to admit you may be wrong.... and besides power is hugely corrupting, maybe a lot of the problem is patriarchy... I mean women are so beautiful they represent a danger (vulnerability ) to the hold men in general have on power... Funny how many young expat Turkish men in Germany seem to admire him (sad too) but that's anecdotal

ratsforhorses commented on Ask HN: SWE who started an organic farm in Europe, where did you go? · Posted by u/recvonline

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

I'd also like to throw you some links... https://elpocito.wordpress.com/

Pfaf.org plants for a future

Ic.org intentional communities

Basically "unproductive" land is/should be cheap, being out of the hustle and bustle of city life is great for clearing your mind, travel to a warmer climate (or snug it down) in the winter, consider it'll take you about a decade but your barren land can become a real cornucopia... There's a feel good film out there called "the biggest little farm"https://youtu.be/UfDTM4JxHl8

ratsforhorses commented on Ask HN: SWE who started an organic farm in Europe, where did you go? · Posted by u/recvonline

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

There's a guy who made it big in Silicon valley and bought 150 hectares near Cluj , north west Romania, he's built/building 28 houses with a school and afaik there's a agricultural component attached... curious if he's using ecological insulation (compressed sawdust, hemp, wool) or ecological plumbing, heating systems... seems a good intent but such initiatives have a tendency to push up local land prices :-( I have no idea how much his houses cost but since people have been going to Europe as "cheap" labour and especially since the banks have gotten involved in lending money for real estate purchases , prices have been going through the roof... https://youtu.be/VCBIyvYtMBI

ratsforhorses commented on Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down · Posted by u/RBBronson123

gremlinsinc · 4 years ago

This sounds awesome, I want to do something similar, only with housing for people with bad credit, or records, or anything really that makes keeping housing rough.

My grand idea is creating an intentional community with some glamping areas for cashflow, a community garden, shared tools and worker space with 3d printers, recreational vehicles, brooms, rakes, etc...things you really don't need to 'own', and cut back on too much consumerism. The idea being if you had 2 city blocks and everyone was related or at least friendly and built a huge garage to share items they maybe use infrequently, how much space would that free up for more people to live, or to work on a hobby or something?

My idea is build a homestead, in an area where zoning and building codes allow, maybe use some earth-friendly building methods like earth bag homes, there's an awesome youtube channel called My Little Homestead where they basically built free standing buildings as 'rooms' for each of their kids and it's basically like their own studio apartment. Each one cost < 10k, and is something you can live in any time of year.

If you could build like 50 of these things, you could maybe house 50-100+ people and maybe just charge like 300/person 100 per child, and build bigger buildings as needed for larger families, etc. Rinse and repeat across the USA and bring rent and home prices down because you'd flood the market with cheap homes anyone can afford. The glamping section might have 5-10 spots each bringing in 50-200 per night throughout the year.

The community would be gated, and protected well, and work best probably for those who could work online or from home, or willing to commute as it'll probably be in a rural area.

They might not even be places you'd want to stay in forever, but great starter homes to live in while you save up money for something bigger or build up some investments or passive income sources.

Alternate to earth bags, we also could use tiny-homes which are roughly 50k per pop, possibly less if we manufacture them from kits.

I just have no idea how or where to begin to launch something like this, or if the brilliance is just in my own head, or if people/communities would actually find it valuable.

ratsforhorses · 4 years ago

I love the idea, living in Europe I had the opportunity to squat in my younger years and the fun of living with others while having the opportunity to transform the house we lived in was extremely empowering... have you ever heard of Hundertwasser , his houses seem similarly exciting ...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser

Ic.org is a good place to visit to see what exists and you could emulate, it was started from a community called Twin Oaks that has quite a radical approach :-) I learnt about it from a book called "Is it Utopia yet" picked up in of all places Nuremberg... honestly agricultural land is cheap (2k a hectare) in non productive places and vegetable gardening or just plain planting stuff for lols like from "plants from a future" (pfaf.org) interspersed with a couple of weed plants should cover expenses... strawbale housing, adobe or trailer parks are much cheaper options at least initially... Gas made from compost, shit or wood chippings is a great alternative... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compost_heater