patrick.net

Here's my latest, for 2013 Q4. A 20% drop ...
http://www.showrealhist.com/RD_RJShomes_PSav.html

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Fitch?

There's irony - and then there's hannibal lector shouting down jeffry dahmer for bad table manners.

LOL!!

Humans, supposedly the smartest animal, are the only species that I know of who must pay rent or purchase land on which to live. For most if not all people, they will pay someone for every night they sleep on this earth. And if you don't or can't, you are scorned and considered a bum, homeless, a hobo. Yet the earth was given to us all, for free, like the air and water. It would be funny if it wasn't such a total rip-off. How'd that middleman get in there? Oh, they always seem to find a way to fleece people for anything they need. The whole rent or own land thing is nothing but another scam, and it maybe the biggest scam of all.

ttsmyf says

A 20% drop ..

Agree

Call it Crazy says

Zakrajshek says

How'd that middleman get in there? Oh, they always seem to find a way to fleece people for anything they need.

When they start charging you for the air you're breathing, watch out!!!!

Zakrajshek says

Humans, supposedly the smartest animal, are the only species that I know of who must pay rent or purchase land on which to live. For most if not all people, they will pay someone for every night they sleep on this earth. And if you don't or can't, you are scorned and considered a bum, homeless, a hobo. Yet the earth was given to us all, for free, like the air and water. It would be funny if it wasn't such a total rip-off. How'd that middleman get in there? Oh, they always seem to find a way to fleece people for anything they need. The whole rent or own land thing is nothing but another scam, and it maybe the biggest scam of all.

Most non-human creatures live in constant fear of being eaten. What you are paying for is peace of mind.

Don't believe me? Try living as a wild man in Alaska, the Amazon, Australian outback, places like that. You can make all the shelter you want for free, get free food, free water, free everything at least as far as money; however, that lifestyle will be a LOT more expensive in time and stress than paying for modest housing.

You will also most likely die in short order.

New Renter says

Don't believe me? Try living as a wild man in Alaska, the Amazon, Australian outback, places like that. You can make all the shelter you want for free, get free food, free water, free everything at least as far as money; however, that lifestyle will be a LOT more expensive in time and stress than paying for modest housing.

You will also most likely die in short order.

One doesn't live out in the wilderness alone. One lives in small, intentional and cooperative communities. Animals will stay away, for the most part, and you can live a long and healthy life.

For example: Native Americans (at least in California), spent WAY less time "working" everyday than we do. They had a simple lifestyle, yes, but they were healthy and connected to their community. And they understood NO ONE OWNED THE LAND.

Why is there a need for these large, dirty, dehumanizing and dangerous cities where you spend your days working hard to pay your rent or mortgage, and for basic necessities, while the ownership class has the option to live the life of pleasure and leisure? Although I am sure there is a somewhat natural inclination for people to come together in locales, it seems like the modern city has been semi-orchestrated to benefit the Owner class to use the Masses for cheap labor and for control purposes, ultimately.

New Renter says

Most non-human creatures live in constant fear of being eaten. What you are paying for is peace of mind.

Don't believe me? Try living as a wild man in Alaska, the Amazon, Australian outback, places like that. You can make all the shelter you want for free, get free food, free water, free everything at least as far as money; however, that lifestyle will be a LOT more expensive in time and stress than paying for modest housing.

You will also most likely die in short order.

And no Patrick.net.
That's would be real torture.

Regarding the paradise that was the pre-Columbian americas:

The average lifespan in the healthiest societies was about 35 years with very few living past 50. Most societies likely suffered from malnutrition, high infant mortality and warfare

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/science/don-t-blame-columbus-for-all-the-indians-ills.html

http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/laphb/27fall97/laphb272.htm

Most of the evidence for this is based on analysis of pre columbian skeletal remains which does not cataloug a wide range of diseases which the native population likely suffered from.

Slavery was also a domestic industry in the precolumbian americas:

Indigenous enslavement of indigenous peoples

Most victims of human sacrifice were prisoners of war or slaves.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

"1500 - 1800 A.D. From the 1500s to around the year 1800, life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between the ages of 30 and 40. "

http://longevity.about.com/od/longevitystatsandnumbers/a/Longevity-Throughout-History.htm

The Native American slavery was very different than European-style slavery of Africans.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States

"Many Native American tribes practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America; but none exploited slave labor on a large scale.[2]

Native American groups often enslaved war captives whom they primarily used for small-scale labor.[2] Some, however, were used in ritual sacrifice.[2] While little is known, there is little evidence that the slaveholders considered the slaves as racially inferior; they came from other Native American tribes and were casualties of war.[2] Native Americans did not buy and sell captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for redeeming their own members.[2] The word "slave" may not accurately apply to such captive people.[2] Most of these so-called Native American slaves tended to live on the fringes of Native American society and were slowly integrated into the tribe.[2]

In many cases, new tribes adopted captives to replace warriors killed during a raid.[2] Warrior captives were sometimes made to undergo ritual mutilation or torture that could end in death as part of a grief ritual for relatives slain in battle.[2] Some Native Americans would cut off one foot of captives to keep them from running away. Others allowed enslaved male captives to marry the widows of slain husbands.[2] The Creek, who engaged in this practice and had a matrilineal system, treated children born of slaves and Creek women as full members of their mothers' clans and of the tribe, as property and hereditary leadership passed through the maternal line. The children did not have slave status.[2] More typically, tribes took women and children for captives for adoption, as they tended to adapt more easily into new ways.

Several tribes held captives as hostages for payment.[2] Various tribes also practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; full tribal status would be restored as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society.[2] Other slave-owning tribes of North America included Comanche of Texas, the Creek of Georgia; the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, who lived in Northern California; the Pawnee, and the Klamath.[3]"

Yep, life everywhere else in the world sucked too, that is unless you were a member of the aristocracy. Even then you had to worry about war and rebellion, as well as heavy metal poisoning from the fashions of the day:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22546056/ns/health/t/suffering-beauty-has-ancient-roots/

http://corrosion-doctors.org/Elements-Toxic/Mercury-mad-hatter.htm

New Renter says

Yep, life everywhere else in the world sucked too, that is unless you were a member of the aristocracy. Even

So then it wasn't because the Natives were living out in the wilderness that they had shorter lifespans; it was generally the expected lifespan of people throughout the world during those times.

Living in smaller, intentional and cooperative communities close to nature in our current day and age does not mean we will all die a mid-life death. We now have widespread knowledge of health, hygiene, nutrition and importantly, antibiotics. We have vaccines and knowledge of modern surgical techniques, as well as herbal and traditional medicinal knowledge from around the world.

Our large cities could be decentralized and smaller neighborhoods/communities/villages could be created where work is close. It'd be the end of commuting!

All people in the community have vital function as they are contributing on some level to the good of the whole community. Trade can be through barter, new monetary system, electronic, or??

Technology welcomed! But used for the betterment of all humans, not enslavement.

See:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2108320/california-police-criticized-for-stingray-cellphone-trackers.html

There is so much space in this beautiful country, why do we need to be packed like sardines into these metro areas, competing for resources, when our living situations could be constructed so differently?

I agree with this.

Still I would have grave concerns regarding the long term prospects of some extreme types of small communities.

Anecdotal Hollywood example - I watched Easy Rider for the first time a year or so ago. I was struck by the scene where Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper visit the hippie commune and are impressed with the free love and communal lifestyle. As the riders leave Fonda looks over the valley at sunrise and states" They're gonna make it".

All I could think was:

Oh Hell no!

One harsh winter, one epidemic, one person who realizes they are doing more work than anyone else or worse one charismatic leader turned brutal dictator is all it would take to turn that little paradise to a living hell.

As a real world example there is a documentary Happy People about a tiny isolated community living in Siberia.

http://documentaries.about.com/od/revie2/fr/Happy-People-A-Year-In-The-Taiga-Movie-Review.htm

These people are snowed in for most of the year and have almost no contact with the rest of the world. They are on their own. Throughout the winter they travel hundreds of miles along their territory setting and checking traps, fishing, fighting off marauding bears and extreme cold, repairing their tiny hunting cabins as necessary, it's not an easy life. At least the people get to ride snowmobiles, their hunting dogs have to RUN those distances through the fallen snow

The community pays for what little they need from the outside (medicine, gas, snowmobile parts, etc) with furs but the exchange rate gets worse every year. That way of life is very hard and is slowly dying. Yet they are "happy". I doubt most westerners who have not grown up with that kind of lifestyle would be so happy.

These are extreme cases, not the norm. Still it can be illustrative to look at the other end of the spectrum to find the middle ground.

I think what you are proposing is for large companies, especially large companies like banks, software producers, insurance companies etc. to delocalize - set up satellite locations networked into the company but physically located in outer lying areas. Why do Oracle, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google, EBay and all those companies even have giant headquarters? Unless your employees job requires a physical presence there is no pressing need for them to squander up to four hours a day commuting. Set up a satellite facility in a lower COLA and let your employees spend their commuting time at home instead. Even better revisit working from home. As long as your employees meet their goals who cares if they do it in only 4 hrs a day?