What is Ford thinking?

Ford has applied for a patent for cars that would repossess itself. If you are late on your payments the car drives itself to the impound lot. Another option would be to turn off features like air conditioning. Teslas have always been configured to allow for factory changes. Ford’s idea is just taking it to the next level. 

It all feels very Big Brother to me. Big Corporation? 

Personally, I never want to own a car with “features” like that. Do you really own a car that can be altered or even driven away without your consent? I’d rather buy an old beater and pay cash for it. 

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of keyless locks and ignition. The signal from the key fob can easily be copied using readily available devices. I’d rather have an old fashioned key. The ones with the chips inside are more secure but I like the plain metal keys. It’s nice to have a bunch of cheap copies handy. Of course if you have an old beater with a manual transmission nobody is going to want to steal it anyway. 

Ford’s technology isn’t free either. The extra cost of adding the repo system will show up in the price. How would you feel about paying extra for a “feature” like that?

The obvious thing to do is to not buy vehicles with those systems. That’s how Capitalism works. Of course, Ford might lobby to make such devices required by law. That’s Corrupt Capitalism at work. 

Hopefully there will be enough of an outcry that Ford will drop the whole idea. 

-Sixbears

Do you really own it?

Back when I decided to build a dome to live in, I received a lot of negative comments. One of the big things people gave me crap about was resale value. Frankly, I really didn’t care about resale value. The house was for my family, not for some potential owner down the road.

Turns out banks are interested in resale value and don’t like to loan on nontraditional housing. That had to be worked around. By selling my old house, I made enough profit to build the shell, divide up some rooms, and do some wiring. Once the place was actually in existence, it wasn’t a problem to get a loan to finish the job. Now that tax assessors have put a number on the value of the place, it’s pretty much treated like any other house.

I never worried about the resale value of vehicles. Even back when I borrowed money to buy cars, resale was never a concern. All my cars were modified to fit my needs -not some plain vanilla basic generic needs. Besides, I don’t trade in cars. By the time I’m done with a vehicle, it’s ready for the scrap yard.

A lot of people talk about cool and interesting things they’d like to do, but then rarely depart from the norm. I hear about the dream houses or cottages they’d want to build, or some radical modification they’d love to try. Of course, few banks would lend money to build such a house, so they’d have get creative on the financing side. In the end, they pretty much do what everyone else does. If they feel really radical, they might paint their front door red. In a pinch they could repaint it for resale.

The US is supposed to be a nation of individuals. Sure we are -within a certain narrow range. It got me thinking. If we don’t act like we own our stuff enough to modify it, do we feel the same way about owning ourselves? After all, we are our own do it yourself projects, responsible for the way we turn out.

-Sixbears

Land Ownership

There's a piece of land out behind my house that's "owned" by some holding company. One day for grins and giggles, I tried to find out who the real owners are. I gave up a few shell companies in when everything turned to oriental characters instead of English. Apparently, the real owners are somewhere in Asia.

They might own the land, but it's only sorta kinda theirs. My guess is that they plan on sitting on it until wood prices get high enough. Of course, the price of harvesting that wood might be higher than they planned on. Neither me or any of my neighbors are willing to give road access to the woodlot. They'd have come in from the backside, a long ways from the quality wood, and haul everything uphill. It can be done, but it raises the cost.

They own the land, but can't seem to do much with it. On the other hand, every winter I put in snowshoe trails. A couple years ago, I ran into a cross country ski trail that someone put in from the other side. I've hunted on the land. One year I heated my house for several months with the dead and down trees and branches within walking distance.

Someone else owns it, but I use it. No one's going to bother the cross country skier or myself. The Asians don't know what's going on and their's very little they could do about it from far away. Right now, there is some enforcement from local authorities. If I'd bulldoze a road and cut down all their trees, someone would notice. However, the use I make of the land treats it lightly and leaves little evidence. I get to enjoy it, and pay no taxes on it.

I believe you only "own" your land as much as you can control it. Two days ago, I heard someone crashing around on my property and checked out what was going on. It was a guy looking for the neighbor's well, as he was hired to do some work on it. Made sense as the well's close to my property line. I directed him to the well and everything's fine.

Once I ran into a bunch of people at my beach. Since in one of the more isolated beaches on the lake my first thought was that someone decided it was a good picnic spot. They were very apologetic when I showed up. They had outboard motor trouble and the wind blew them onto my beach. The story checked out. I didn't have a problem with that, but word gets around when a person watches their property.

You only own what you can control. Since I've got a fairly small piece of land, it's easy for me to control it. Ted Turner has absolutely huge landholdings, but I'm betting he doesn't control it as much as he thinks he does. Plenty of those acres must be paper ownership only. I'll be he has plenty of naughty little neighbors like me.

-Sixbears