by jillesvangurp | 2025-05-24 05:49:41+00:00
I've been thinking a lot about this in my personal context. I'm not super wealthy and thinking about the inevitable moment when I will work less and need to live on what I've scraped together by then. I currently live in Berlin in a gentrified area which is nice to be in but also getting more expensive rapidly. It's convenient for me to be here. But I wouldn't mind being in a much cheaper place otherwise.

I see a few technical trends that would enable me to live quite far away from Berlin mid term that could be a lot more affordable.

- Starlink provides good enough internet pretty much anywhere. Rural Germany is famous for its lack of connectivity. I could live anywhere in Germany and have a decent connectivity and be able to work remotely. Complete science fiction until recently. But now feasible. I expect there will be competitors in a few years.

- Improved modes of transport to remote locations via autonomous driving electrical cars, mini buses, drones etc. could unlock rural destinations. Electrical means cost per mile/km is expressed in kwh. About 2-4 km/kwh. Autonomous means there is no driver to pay or tiring driving to do. Even at Germany's high-ish grid prices, a 50 km commute becomes quite affordable (a cup of coffee worth of energy). And you can take a nap, relax, or work while you move and be quite comfortable while being moved. There are a lot of affordable housing options starting from about 10km away from where I currently live. 50km, we are talking rural Brandenburg which has depopulated significantly since the fall of the wall. Ghost villages, lack of employment, etc. I know several people that moved to the edge of Berlin or beyond and have a great standard of living there.

- Tiny/prefab housing means the current cost of constructing houses is increasingly complete bullshit. I don't need a artisanally crafted house at great expense. I just need a small amount of space that is comfortable. That shouldn't cost me north of half a million and put me in debt for decades. And modern materials means such a place could be well insulated and relatively cheap to heat.

- Low cost, renewable energy is starting to dominate. Germany has really high energy prices. But it's investing to fix that. Those investments might pay off in a few decades and lower the cost of energy. That's good news if I'm heating with a heatpump, and am being moved around electrically.

So, I need some land reasonably close to where the action is (Berlin in my case) but not in the middle of it. An affordable & comfortable way to get to Berlin when I need to. And some housing that won't break the bank. I think all of those are well in reach for well below 100K and next to nothing in monthly cost. All I need is some kwh of power and water. And the usual insurances, taxes, and what not. And food, which I might even grow some myself if I had enough room for a garden. And being far away from all the hipster areas in Berlin, probably means local shops are going to be relatively cheap.

Of course this being Germany, the obstacle to this is going to be immense bureaucratic inertia. You can't just plonk down a tiny house anywhere you want. There are rules! Designed to frustrate anything entirely reasonable like that.

But I imagine similar things are going to be true everywhere and there is going to be fierce competition between depopulated regions to attract people and their money. And when push comes to shove, I'm not German and could be persuaded to move elsewhere. Also, if you extrapolate to autonomous RVs, you could just live in those and let them drive you to some remote parking space at night and to charging and water points for access to the essentials. Be in nature when you want to be, drive up to a city when you need to. Move south in the winter, north in the summer, etc.