7 ms·

The irony... I did this. I cashed out in my 20s, bought a $2m home in the middle of nowhere (that goes a long way out here), and live out my days in my worksho

The irony... I did this. I cashed out in my 20s, bought a $2m home in the middle of nowhere (that goes a long way out here), and live out my days in my workshop surrounded by singing birds, bees, wildlife, trees and gardens, with views across lakes and plains. And some cosmopolitan wants to tell me, as they cram another million people into gridlocked high-rises in their smoggy grey hellhole, that we in the country are bad for the environment? Or that the soulless crowds you have to navigate through every morning and evening are friendlier than the neighbours and strangers who wave and chat everywhere I go? If you're able, get out of the cities. Especially if you have children. You have no idea what you're missing.

com2kid 3y ago
> as they cram another million people into gridlocked high-rises in their smoggy grey hellhole, that we in the country are bad for the environment? Uh yes, if you shove a million people out in the middle of nowhere, you have to cut down all the nature, remove the wetlands, pave a bunch of really wide roads, and now all of a sudden your paradise is a bland soulless sub-urban hellscape that is no longer environmentally friendly. As for gridlocked, I can walk to multiple bakeries, grocery stores, and parks. The vast majority of my driving is to places that are less than 15 minutes away. My rural friends talk about taking a quick trip that's only 90 minutes away. 90 minutes there 90 minutes back, shit, that's 2.5hrs extra spent driving compared to my 30 minute round trip commutes. If I go over the last 5 or 6 months I haven't lost a total of 2.5hrs to gridlock. > Or that the soulless crowds you have to navigate through every morning and evening are friendlier than the neighbours and strangers who wave and chat everywhere I go? Why do you think people in the city are soulless? Cities are bastion of art and creativity. I say high to my neighbors all the time, we get together for drinks and we swap baked goods. This is made all the easier by how close we are together. Indeed, once I moved into the city, meeting people became easier, and the people around me are friendlier. (And I'm in Seattle, literally the worst city for meeting people in!)
- Gyrantula2 3y ago
  If anyone proposed housing a million migrants here, we'd sooner build gallows for the genius with that idea than to break ground on high density housing. It's a wildly controversial idea, but you could just stop letting so many people into your city... Cruising through the countryside at top speed to a larger town with the windows down and the radio up for an hour on the rare occasion I need something urgently is a pleasure compared to sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic to and from work, or crammed into a train with everything around me being suspiciously sticky and slightly smelly twice per day. We have what we need. You'd be surprised how little you miss the overwhelming number of choices and conveniences you have in the city. Anyway, I'm not that remote - I do most of my shopping online so everything is delivered to the door (albeit a day or two later than for you). It's the look in their eye, or their nature and priorities implicit in their choices. Cities are utterly bereft of soul, spirit, meaning, purpose, culture, etc. Whatever they do have in these respects seems to me like a cynical parody of their true form. They will convene a meeting for consultants to identify an urban area in need of beautification, commission an agendered hippie to plonk some monstrous perverted multicolour sculpture there for millions of dollars and boast about it like this isn't an insult to everything pure, and decent, and good in this world. The baked goods trading sounds really wholesome, I'm genuinely glad you have that. Still, there's a good reason city-folk come out here for rest and relaxation while I dread going into the big smoke and get the hell out as soon as I'm done doing what I need to do.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    What's interesting to me in so many of these discussions is how the core issue turns out to be the commute, more than any other factor. Here we see this happen in a conversation about pros and cons of city living. We also see it in WFH discussions: many staunch WFH proponents focus on doing away with their miserable commute. All of this is kinda foreign to me, because I've never had a "bad" commute. Right now I'm 14 minutes from work one-way, no traffic in my direction. This is rambly, and I think you're both making a solid points about something that is fundamentally subjective. So I'll just say that I feel sorry for all of you guys that are hating life during your commute.
    - 3y ago
lores 3y ago
Some people, like me, prefer the stimulation of cities to the quietness of the countryside. And city dwellers have a lower environmental footprint than rural people (in the West), because of efficiency in transport, recycling/treatment and land use. It's not a mystery, you can find dozens of sources in a second work your favourite search engine.
- networkchad 3y ago
  [dead]
arthur_sav 3y ago
Exactly. Living comfortably in the middle of nowhere is a luxury and that's why all the rich do it. Everybody else needs to be close to the rat race otherwise they can't afford to eat.
outcoldman 3y ago
Just want to say, appreciate the discussion about the environment. Never actually thought about what is better towns (rural areas) vs cities. And I am sure the answer is not as simple as it sounds. But my guess, there are too many people in the world, and living in the house in that sense is a privilege.
dukeyukey 3y ago
Eh, I grew up in one of the most rural parts of the UK. It's overrated. The scenary is nice and it's a safe, quiet place to grow up, but if you had ambitions beyond local teacher it's a maddening place. And it's the filtering effect - the kind of people I get along with don't move to random farming villages in the middle of nowhere, so while I had friends, I never had that uber-close "I get you" thing. Since moving to London, it's happened a lot more.
renewiltord 3y ago
Oh I didn't say it was unpleasant. It's bad for the environment. High CO2 cost, requires interfering with the local ecosystem, poor land use etc. I don't see why this upsets people so much. It's just an honest accounting of the costs. Living inside a US National Park would be both lovely and bad for it. This sort of trade-off between pleasantness and damage is common. For instance, I like traveling the world and in first class you've got half the seat-density of economy so the environmental cost is massive. But it's really nice and there's no way I'd prefer not to do it. It's just also bad for the environment. My wife and I just returned from a two-week long vacation in Patagonia. It's a stunning place and you'll be surrounded by unbelievable natural beauty. But the same lovely glaciers I mourned the melting of, I contributed to the melting of by flying there. Both things are true.
gcheong 3y ago
Was that 2m mostly house or mostly land? I think if I were to go that route I’d be looking for more land than house.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
My favorite is when they claim rural areas means destitution and also that public transportation can replace vehicles. There are a _lot_ of people on this site who have no idea what actual rural looks like.

com2kid 3y ago

> as they cram another million people into gridlocked high-rises in their smoggy grey hellhole, that we in the country are bad for the environment? Uh yes, if you shove a million people out in the middle of nowhere, you have to cut down all the nature, remove the wetlands, pave a bunch of really wide roads, and now all of a sudden your paradise is a bland soulless sub-urban hellscape that is no longer environmentally friendly. As for gridlocked, I can walk to multiple bakeries, grocery stores, and parks. The vast majority of my driving is to places that are less than 15 minutes away. My rural friends talk about taking a quick trip that's only 90 minutes away. 90 minutes there 90 minutes back, shit, that's 2.5hrs extra spent driving compared to my 30 minute round trip commutes. If I go over the last 5 or 6 months I haven't lost a total of 2.5hrs to gridlock. > Or that the soulless crowds you have to navigate through every morning and evening are friendlier than the neighbours and strangers who wave and chat everywhere I go? Why do you think people in the city are soulless? Cities are bastion of art and creativity. I say high to my neighbors all the time, we get together for drinks and we swap baked goods. This is made all the easier by how close we are together. Indeed, once I moved into the city, meeting people became easier, and the people around me are friendlier. (And I'm in Seattle, literally the worst city for meeting people in!)

Gyrantula2 3y ago
If anyone proposed housing a million migrants here, we'd sooner build gallows for the genius with that idea than to break ground on high density housing. It's a wildly controversial idea, but you could just stop letting so many people into your city... Cruising through the countryside at top speed to a larger town with the windows down and the radio up for an hour on the rare occasion I need something urgently is a pleasure compared to sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic to and from work, or crammed into a train with everything around me being suspiciously sticky and slightly smelly twice per day. We have what we need. You'd be surprised how little you miss the overwhelming number of choices and conveniences you have in the city. Anyway, I'm not that remote - I do most of my shopping online so everything is delivered to the door (albeit a day or two later than for you). It's the look in their eye, or their nature and priorities implicit in their choices. Cities are utterly bereft of soul, spirit, meaning, purpose, culture, etc. Whatever they do have in these respects seems to me like a cynical parody of their true form. They will convene a meeting for consultants to identify an urban area in need of beautification, commission an agendered hippie to plonk some monstrous perverted multicolour sculpture there for millions of dollars and boast about it like this isn't an insult to everything pure, and decent, and good in this world. The baked goods trading sounds really wholesome, I'm genuinely glad you have that. Still, there's a good reason city-folk come out here for rest and relaxation while I dread going into the big smoke and get the hell out as soon as I'm done doing what I need to do.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  What's interesting to me in so many of these discussions is how the core issue turns out to be the commute, more than any other factor. Here we see this happen in a conversation about pros and cons of city living. We also see it in WFH discussions: many staunch WFH proponents focus on doing away with their miserable commute. All of this is kinda foreign to me, because I've never had a "bad" commute. Right now I'm 14 minutes from work one-way, no traffic in my direction. This is rambly, and I think you're both making a solid points about something that is fundamentally subjective. So I'll just say that I feel sorry for all of you guys that are hating life during your commute.
  - 3y ago

lores 3y ago

Some people, like me, prefer the stimulation of cities to the quietness of the countryside. And city dwellers have a lower environmental footprint than rural people (in the West), because of efficiency in transport, recycling/treatment and land use. It's not a mystery, you can find dozens of sources in a second work your favourite search engine.

networkchad 3y ago
[dead]

arthur_sav 3y ago

Exactly. Living comfortably in the middle of nowhere is a luxury and that's why all the rich do it. Everybody else needs to be close to the rat race otherwise they can't afford to eat.

outcoldman 3y ago

Just want to say, appreciate the discussion about the environment. Never actually thought about what is better towns (rural areas) vs cities. And I am sure the answer is not as simple as it sounds. But my guess, there are too many people in the world, and living in the house in that sense is a privilege.

dukeyukey 3y ago

Eh, I grew up in one of the most rural parts of the UK. It's overrated. The scenary is nice and it's a safe, quiet place to grow up, but if you had ambitions beyond local teacher it's a maddening place. And it's the filtering effect - the kind of people I get along with don't move to random farming villages in the middle of nowhere, so while I had friends, I never had that uber-close "I get you" thing. Since moving to London, it's happened a lot more.

renewiltord 3y ago

Oh I didn't say it was unpleasant. It's bad for the environment. High CO2 cost, requires interfering with the local ecosystem, poor land use etc. I don't see why this upsets people so much. It's just an honest accounting of the costs. Living inside a US National Park would be both lovely and bad for it. This sort of trade-off between pleasantness and damage is common. For instance, I like traveling the world and in first class you've got half the seat-density of economy so the environmental cost is massive. But it's really nice and there's no way I'd prefer not to do it. It's just also bad for the environment. My wife and I just returned from a two-week long vacation in Patagonia. It's a stunning place and you'll be surrounded by unbelievable natural beauty. But the same lovely glaciers I mourned the melting of, I contributed to the melting of by flying there. Both things are true.

gcheong 3y ago

Was that 2m mostly house or mostly land? I think if I were to go that route I’d be looking for more land than house.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

My favorite is when they claim rural areas means destitution and also that public transportation can replace vehicles. There are a _lot_ of people on this site who have no idea what actual rural looks like.