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Comment by tjr225 | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to find humor at the irony of rich tech bros moving to where poor people live and driving the poor people further away.

Also; many have argued cities are more efficient than the alternative: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/environmental-advantages-citi...

Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but 8 billion people going back to a primitive way of life doesn't seem like a sustainable option either. Nice that you have the privilege to do it, though. Ironically, we are in need affordable housing where the city jobs are. That way we aren't forcing low paid workers to commute 1+ hours each way each day to put food on their families table. Here's the ironic part: depending on where you live, selling your city house in the current market only makes that problem worse!

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Cities are wonderful places except that hell is other people. There's actually no need to go back to a primitive way of life but there absolutely is a need to learn more basic survival skills with respect to self-sufficiency. Or if you can't even change a tire on a car you should be afraid, very afraid.

> hell is other people.

This is such a common attitude in the US, but it's also a very US attitude. I mean, when I lived in Italy, there were just always other people around. High mountains, small towns, walk in the countryside... you're quite likely to see someone anywhere you go. So you just deal with it.

These things are personal preferences, so difficult to reason about, but I feel that a lot of people in the US would be happier if they didn't have this hangup about "other people", while participating in a society that is entirely and completely dependent on other people.

I'm happier walking around in downtown Hong Kong, a place with much greater density of humanity than anywhere in the United States, than I am here in the US. I think you are denying the existence of fundamentally irrational US citizens who make things suck for everything else in a way citizens of some other countries simply don't.

I have my share of complaints about the US, and with COVID, there are more, but by and large, other people here aren't so bad.

I feel like it's not tenable to maintain this attitude of "it's only good if there's no one else", which you see here a lot.

Well, if there aren't real concrete consequences for doing demonstrably obviously illegal things, then it seems to me it will only get worse here going forward. So I honestly do not blame anyone whatsoever for wanting to run away to either the middle of nowhere or to live among likeminded sorts. I did so myself after getting physically attacked by pandemic deniers who lived down the street from me.

But this was a pre-existing condition - the last half decade really unleashed and enabled the full scope of our national insanity with the pandemic and 2020 election the coup de grace IMO.

In the US, the real hell is other people's cars.

Nope. I've got those skills. Primitive life is grossly inefficient. Are you gonna burn wood to heat your dwelling and cook? Is everybody? Have you thought through the environmental consequences of this? Hunting and gathering is a similarly ridiculous proposition. Unless you're a supervillain bent on killing billions of people, that is -- hell is other people, indeed.

Did I say anything about primitive life? Where do you guys think this stuff up? I've got a modest place with a nice bit of land on which I'm raising produce and buying everything else from local merchants. But I installed full solar with beefy battery backup and it paired nicely with the Starlink Internet. But by all means assume I'm living a life straight out of Deliverance.

Many of these areas have discovered a remarkable technology, long lost in cities, called "building new houses" - sometimes with their own hands! This does wonders for allowing new people in to a place without displacing existing residents.

> Many of these areas have discovered a remarkable technology, long lost in cities, called "building new houses" - sometimes with their own hands!

I’d love to learn more about these places.

What does a rich tech bro make these days?

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