Conservation versus Greens/Environmentalists

Don't patronize me Tom, things are a little different here in the states.

Now let it go.

ZW

 

No it isn't, how do you come up with these numbers?

You're only off by 800+ million acres.

 

LOL, you are right, things are much different in the US, it is 100 times easier to buy property.

We have more controls on real estate laws here then you do down there.

This is very simple, and it is not meant to be patronizing, MOST people don't realize this, and most who read this will just assume it's wrong because that's what they've heard all their lives.

Renting is NOT cheaper then owning. It is easier, but not cheaper. That is a very easy statement to prove...

The person who owns the place you rent, must pay the same bills you would if you owned it PLUS make a profit, or they wouldn't rent it to you.

So, if you can afford to pay rent, you can afford to own.

As for buying a place. There is only one thing that is required for you to buy something....

Someone who will sell to you.

The first place I bought was a three bedroom, two story home, 2 blocks from the downtown block of a city with a population of about 50k. The average home like the one I bought in that area was 100k or above.

The guy who owned it had many rental properties and had a manager that took care of them for him. The manager went through a divorce, fucked up and forgot to shut the water in the one house off when the last tenants moved out before shutting the heat off. The pipes burst and destroyed the drywall and flooring in the living room and kitchen. He put it up for sale for 75k and it sat empty for two years.

The owner didn't want to deal with it anymore.

I offered him 35k for the place, but he had to hold the mortgage with no downpayment and pay all the closing costs. The mortgage was actually two seperate ones. The first for 14%, the second at 12%. Banks rates were around 8% then.

My monthly payments for both were around $370.00, the taxes, water and such were another $330.00.

The rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in the city was around $800- 1000 per month.

I lived there for two years, spending money that would have went to rent, on doing repairs to the house. After I had the kitchen set back up and one bedroom renovated, I rented it out to a buddy for $150.00 a month and kept on working til it was ready to sell.

I lived there for less then it would have cost me for rent, collected a little money each month from it, built some equity in it, and then sold it for much more then it cost me.

That's with the worst credit rating possible, banks laughed at me when I talked to them. With no money in my pocket. With no co-signer... nothing but an owner who wanted to sell.

Doing the same thing repeatedly, building equity in each one before selling it again, is how I ended up buying this place. 40 acres in the middle of nowhere with a house and tons of room to do what we wish.

As to the whole US thing being different... I learned these ideas from reading american 'get rich in real estate' books... most of which don't apply to up here in canada due to our more stringent real estate laws.

But the basic principal of only needing someone who is willing to sell to you and it being cheaper to own then rent, hold true no matter where you are.

In boom times when the price of real estate is through the roof, places that you can buy like that are all over, tucked away on streets just waiting for someone to buy them.

In times like now? They are even easier to find and easier to make a deal on.

If someone has an empty building sitting somewhere deteriorating, they will almost always be willing to listen to any offer that will get it off their books with some profit to them in on-going costs. That place I bought was costing the owner $200.00 a month and loosing value before I bought it from him. After I bought it, it brought him $370 and saved him that 200, so a bonus of 570 a month until it sold and he got the lump sum owing of around 32k.

Just because banks and mortgage companies won't look at you, whether that is due to bad credit, little income or whatever, does not mean you can't buy property. It just means THEY won't lend you money to do it.

It in no way stops the owner of a property agreeing to sell you it based on whatever conditions you can agree on.

 

Public ownership /= government ownership or even government exploitation like you suggest.

And the people in Asian do eat beans and rice, every day. Over 3 billion people survive on beans and rice - every day.

 

This is a very Westernized understanding of human rights. So thank you for making reference to a European, long-dead, white man as an example of how land ownership is perceived for you.

What people do not realize at all, that public property is used every single day in their lives - water sewers, sidewalks, roads, parks, buses, trains, air, water - it's all public spaces that we share and many productive and improvements have been made in these areas. So it's pretty silly to assume that "I don't see how anything productive can come of" these public spheres of communal life.

Subsistence farming used to exist, and it was quite successful, before the days of neo-capitalism.

 

Ari now you know this is just empirically false. Even the poor in China eat more then rice and beans. 3 billion is near half the world, and half the world is not starving, that's not to undercut the serious issue though of the billion who are malnourished. I mean Asia's problem too is nothing in comparison to Africa, Asia just has many more people
http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/liaison_offices/wfp185786.jpg

And the only thing that ever protects land from being exploited is turning it into a national park. Even national forests are exploited often. Public ownership can't possibly mean anything else other then governmental, you can have co-op ownership, or ownership by a for non profit organization, but that still means someone private even if it's multiple people own the land.

Also substance farming is not a fun way to live, nor is it practical in how close people live now. I have a larger then average backyard and I could grow maybe enough corn for one year if I wanted to eat corn all year.

 

Just because an idea is western does not make it a bad one. I agree with a lot of western thought. And I don't think I even need to say that John Locke's being European, white, and a man has absolutely no effect on the validity of his ideas. That 'dead white men' thing is a common line for self-proclaimed 'progressives' to take, but it's not going to fly with me.

Otherwise, your examples of commonly-held land are actually land held by the government. They control it, develop it, and maintain it. You were talking about free land, were you not? Land which can be used by anyone for any purpose? If you're talking about 'public land,' there's plenty of it already.

 

Just because you got lucky doesn't mean everyone will.

No down will get you laughed in the face, Mabey up north you've got trusting souls, but here even owner financing is done proper...through a bank.

This is off topic, the main reason I deleted my post. I won't continue.

 

As I said...

 

'The vast majority of property owners don't own their property...it owns them" ~

ZW