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Comment by archagon | Hacker News Reader

This would be my dream housing arrangement — a permanent little village in some beautiful country filled with self-directed and creative people.

When I was visiting Europe this past year, I saw plenty of gorgeous little hillside villages (pop. ~100) that relied on a larger town below. Some were within sight of major cities, while some were more remote. Even stayed in one for a few days, hiking down and back up whenever I needed groceries. It was really interesting and quite relaxing.

My main issue is that it feels like a rather, um, "colonialist" idea. It would be very important to integrate with the local community and culture.

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I think you'd then end up interacting with all those people and finding the majority of them to be just as annoying as everyone who currently frustrates you where you live already!

Too idealistic to plan just for creatives when so many in that category have less-than-creative partners who need regular jobs to get by.

Maybe better to own one of these smaller villages and have friends and colleagues drop in and out as they wished.

There'd be reasons the locals have abandoned them. Poor services, poor land, poor connectivity, etc. Do you snatch up cheap-but-remote housing in your own country? I know I don't. These just seem exotic and enticing but I imagine they're an expensive pain to fix up in reality.

> I think you'd then end up interacting with all those people and finding the majority of them to be just as annoying as everyone who currently frustrates you where you live already!

Perhaps, except I don't meet many people who'd be willing to permanently relocate to some remote village in my everyday life. (As opposed to the travel-back-and-forth-to-a-swanky-coworking-space-in-Thailand type people. Nothing wrong with that, but different breed, I think.) There's a higher chance I'd get along with them than with most people around me.

> Too idealistic to plan just for creatives when so many in that category have less-than-creative partners who need regular jobs to get by.

I agree, and I didn't mean creatives exclusively. More like, "mostly people who want to work on their own projects" as opposed to, like, radical isolationists or farmers or something.

> Do you snatch up cheap-but-remote housing in your own country? I know I don't.

Yeah, because by myself, I don't really have the funds to do so. :)

> These just seem exotic and enticing but I imagine they're an expensive pain to fix up in reality.

I agree, and I'm not talking about the villages in the article exclusively. Communes and ecovillages[1] have been successful in the past.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecovillage

Something tells me if you fill a village with people of your choice, you'll get homogeneity. And without the chance interactions with diverse people and perspectives, those creative people will feel a bit less creative.

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