"In economics, scarcity is defined as not having sufficient resources to produce enough to fulfill unlimited subjective wants. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be attained at the same time, so that trade-offs one good against others are made. Neoclassical economics, the dominant school of economics today, defines its field as involving scarcity: following Lionel Robbins' definition, economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" - This introduction on scarcity I have copied and pasted from Wikipedia.
I understand that scarcity is an artificial trick in order to strip people of their personal god-given, nature-given power. The story of how I came to own a house is interesting. To begin with, I bought a simple house in a small town (population 15.000) for Us$ 3.000,oo. Maybe a little less. The house was pretty much run down. Dirty. Ugly. Ever since the day I bought it I have been working in order to improve conditions. I have added a front wall, floor tiles inside and done little changes, like building an extra iner wooden wall. But a lot has to be done.
I have been working with my hands like I have never done before. The most abundant material on my lot and all over the city is rock, basalt rock. People in town don't like rock. They prefer bricks that they can't easily buy because of money scarcity. Here is the first point I make on my rebelion. I do not want their bricks even though I have used "their" bricks for my outside front wall (that was a concession to my wife). Salaries and wages have been historically kept low in Brazil in order to reinforce the scarcity ideology. I am talking of an average minimal wage of R$ 12 a day - that makes for something like US$ 5 a day. That is an ideologically thought anti-empowerment wage!
In later posts I will explain what I am doing in order to radically and revolutionarily empower myself, live well and not have a heart attack - how can you have a heart bipass surgery on that kind of money. It is sure death! Well later on, as I said, I will add photos of the different stages the house has been through up to now and also show the improvements with no mortgage (which is impossible for at least 30 millionm Brazilians), loans, Government programs etc. The key words are independence, urban agriculture or permaculture, recycling, reusing and influencing others, no flush toilet, using rainwater and all that. I hope to be able to get to contact and get to know like-minded people from wherever they are living... OK that is it for now.
The verandah is ready. Here we can see the older roof cover on top of the new one. Again, the new roof is made of recycled Tetra Pak milk, juice, tomate sauce packages - you know the packaging material used for Long Life milk and so on. This kind of roof is very good for the tropics or near tropical areas. Our verandah is very cool depíte several days when temparatures have gone beyond 40º C. My goal is to change the whole roof of the house for this or simliar material and technology. 
The under side of the roof cover looks lihe this. You can see that it has many colors and peices of plastic and other material. In some of the I can still read iformation and instructions which makes happy to remember that this could have ended up in city dumps throughout the country. Also something very important: all the lumber that I have used has been somewhere else before; I bought the in a place that sells used building material. So they have been reused - which is one of the three Rs I want to practice.
