Curious globally, but mostly interested in USA/UK.
I would like to live a more pastoral life, but anecdotally I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city.
It's nice, there's enough tech folks to maintain several maker spaces and co-working spots, and the students are a steady stream of enthusiastic youngsters to keep things feeling fresh. Added benefit that I've discovered talking to people in bigger cities: there's enough going on here that I often want to do several things in a day, and since much of it happens in the same 2 mile radius, you don't have to factor travel time into planning. (For example, I can go to a python meetup that ends at 7 and get to the theatre to see a 715 show with friends on the other side of town - a lot of places make that into an either-or proposition).
You get the benefits of rural life, but your neighbors are more likely to be open minded and progressive, and you tend to get more culture, better schools and the restaurants are generally better.
Afaik they're the only company to work for so it's a bit limited. But I have a friend who lives there and is one of their many developers and she loves it. I understood from her that they're staying permanently remote even after the pandemic, but they might give you preferential treatment if you're willing to move anyways. And I know she still has the possibility of going into the office whenever she wants and has great relationships with her coworkers.
Some of their problems are very interesting too, as much of the software is to run their highly optimized warehouse. Their whole schtick is that they can get your product out of the warehouse in just an hour or two, so if you can pay for fast shipping it will get to you however fast you want. And this ends up being a very interesting optimization problem with human and machine components as well.
I used to live in a small rural town West of Lansing when I worked as an agronomist in a past career. I left to do a SaaS startup and stayed local because this small town became a test site for cable Internet. Note this was a time when neither Lansing nor Grand Rapids had a broadband Internet option, everything was dial up or ISDN if you were lucky.
My new office was across from city hall. I advocated to the city father's that they spend a fraction of the money promoting it's empty industrial park (every small town in Michigan has one) to lure software companies to town promoting it's then rare broadband Internet. They treated me as if I was advocating building a spaceport for aliens. In fact if they saw me coming they'd cross the street.
I found out years later that quite by accident a startup had moved to the town specifically for the availability of broadband. Now they only have around 25 employees twenty years later but in a town of less than 3,000 I think that is still pretty good. But with a small amount of effort they could have had a dozen such companies ;<(.
P.S. we are hiring web dev and analytics/data engineer if you know anyone in the area!
- Small computer repair shops competing with big box computer repair
- Hagerty Insurance
- Munson Healthcare (the only health care provider in the 30 mile radius that I'm aware of).
- Finance - There are a couple of banks and credit unions but most of the investment firms I know of aren't based out of Traverse City.
- atlas space
- oneupweb
- midmark
- salamander
- efulfillment
- 20fathoms
- Healthbridge
to name a few off the top of my head
I still see many of my Bay Area friends; weekend parties at my place are way more fun than parties in their tiny city houses/apartments. And we still keep in touch remotely.
Not every rural area is the same; I also lived for a year in eastern Kentucky and the people are indeed a bit different there. But I still made friends, and I'm not a major extrovert or anything.
I'm in Solano, which is somewhat ok. We still sometimes struggle with the permit department. It would be even easier if we were about a mile north, in Yolo. But there isn't a huge inventory of properties for sale so you don't necessarily get to pick.
On the plus side, if you're trading in from a home in the inner bay area, everything will seem very cheap.
https://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lng=-122.41991&0-tt=60&0...
What is the fire risk like? I'm comfortable with everything else via Starlink, remote job that'll stay remote, and similar.
The answer is complicated.
My property has burned over twice since I've been here, and two years ago a few hundred of my neighbors lost homes in the LNU fire. However, I'll still say that for rural California, it's actually not bad.
It's grasses and oaks here ("light flashy fuels") which burn with low intensity. If you prepare diligently, your home will most likely be fine. We don't get crazy conifer-fueled earth-sterilizing crown fires like the Sierras. By end of spring you can barely tell there was a fire.
I joined the fire service after the LNU fires (unincorporated Solano is all volunteer). So while fire is something that's never far from my mind, it's not something I really worry about.
Sadly, Starlink isn't servicing this area yet, no DSL or cable either. I have to bounce "wireless broadband" off a couple hillsides. It's dreadfully slow, but way better than Hughesnet. Starlink will be a gamechanger for sure.
Starlink and a backup mofi sim router that is config'd a bit will suffice, I'm in a pretty rural spot but more mountain west. It's on the base tripod in my backyard (no roof mount) and works fine.
If remote work is important to you, check out internet options. There's a chance of Comcast and CenturyLink, but both get shifty about actually servicing homes in places (Comcast won't run a drop to my house even though their cable is on the pole at the corner of the lot; CenturyLink has run out of DSLAM ports in some neighborhoods, and some homes are too far from the DSLAM to get usable speeds); some public utility districts do fiber, but if your prospective house isn't already passed by their fiber, you would need to pay actual costs to extend the network plus actual costs to run a drop to your DMARC (which gets spendy if you've got underground wiring and a long driveway; I've got a $50k installation quote which 40% is undergrounding along my driveway and 60% is stringing the fiber on poles for 2ish miles); but some counties don't do that. I've seen relatively good reports for Starlink, but waiting time is unknowable and bandwidth and latency fluctuate during the day.
Do you really want another old couple on the streets of seattle so that you can live your agrarian fantasy?
I'd hope new housing would be built to accomodate any newcomers.
If you want to go farther out, there are plenty of parts of WA that are really rural - but you might not find things like high speed internet are very accessible.
The one thing you won't get moving into any of those places is lower housing costs, however. These are all priced with the fact that high-earners are living in these cities and commuting into Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond and getting paid those salaries.
If there's a tech "scene" here, I'm unaware of it.
The Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization partnering with rural leaders across the country to build digital economies that support scalable entrepreneurship and lead to more tech jobs in rural America.
https://ruralinnovation.us/community-impact/rural-innovation...
Not affiliated, just found it prompted by your question, looks very interesting!
* Fast and cheap fiber internet. Reasonably priced utilities.
* A reasonably sized and maintained home with a yard goes for under $200,000.
* Small airport with a connection to Charlotte on AA that I believe had federally subsidized aviation access.
* Small risk of natural disasters.
* I did a photography gallery and the mayor of that town stopped by to see it.
I enjoyed my time there but after friends slowly moved to bigger cities, I did too. I can't see myself happy there anymore. I probably wouldn't be married now and probably would have had a harder time forward in my career. Even if there was a tech scene there, it wouldn't be larger than 10 or so people, and the local tech companies were far less advanced.
But if I had a choice as a kid where would be more fun to grow up, I'd say back in Virginia. More room to roam, outdoor activities nearby without parking issues, yard for hosting get-togethers, and far less pressure in school/extra-circulars.
Hope this helps a little :)
If you really want to go rural, Scottsboro Electric offers gig internet, and you can join a snake-handling church too if that's your thing
Number of tech worker's that's hard to know.
Many "rural" people live in small towns/cities where their nearest neighbor is mere yards away, others would only consider "rural" to be where the nearest neighbor couldn't be hit with a high-powered rifle.
Later they mentioned where they moved it was ... it was the suburbs. Very much not rural.
Where I live there's a farm down the road, that doesn't make it rural either.
It's weird, since at 500,000 people we definitely meet the definition of a big city, but culturally people behave like it's a small town. Additionally, it's feasible to live in the mountains and still live less than an hour away, or to live in one of the nearby villages (Corrales, Placitas, Tijeras) and essentially enjoy the same lifestyle as someone living in rural New Mexico despite Albuquerque being very close by.
And yeah, we have ample numbers of people who work in tech, albeit most of them are connected to the federal government in some capacity, so it's not the "trendy" kind of tech. For that reason, and perhaps also because of the age and general conservative nature of people who work for the federal government, the tech community here might come across as having less energy than a place that's a fraction the size of Albuquerque. You're more likely to find a fellow programmer through a outdoor group than a tech meetup.
I've never lived there though and it is hard to get a feel for what would actually bother you until you've spent a significant amount of time there.
2 or more acres: Yes
can't see your neighbor: No
Less than 500 people: No, just about double that at 1k
Even in the "city" that is 15 min away, there is never any real traffic, not like what you get in a major city. I never worry about hitting traffic, I can come and go to the co-working space at will without ever a thought of "I better leave before rush hour hits".
[1]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...
My barn has wooden beams, four toilets yet cost less than half to buy than the middle terrace apartment in London that came with 1 toilet and only 1 bedroom and a corridor kitchen. It is also ~4x in area. It came with an allotment and 5 generous plots where I like to plant leeks, onions and runnerbeans where I batch freeze them rather than get them wrapped in plastic shipped from Argentina. I have breathtaking scenery, fresh air and countryside walks nearby along with many ofsted outstanding schools.
It is quite tricky to live far from amenities in the UK so expect markets and farm shops aplenty, I can get unpasteurised milk fresh from pasture grazed cow to bottle the same day which I could not in the city. Our island, being smaller than a state it is easy to get anywhere, festivals are aplenty, fishing in Aberystwyth, a blustery night in Edinburgh for instance and a car or short journey to the station can have you on the continent and in Ghent or Bruge, Antwerp, Berlin or Stockholm the same day.
People are generally rational, courteous and kind mannered. I am greeted as I walk past, unlike in parts of London or Birmingham. I do not lock my doors, and my daughter is learning about life in a safe and idyllic environment I can provide and ok ok it is true my neighbours are mostly old dears, it only means I am less likely to disturb them. I don't hear police sirens and ambulances every day and I don't have to stand armpits in my face travelling the tube yet I can still get to a major airport faster than I when I was in east London for a time.
Unless for the nightlife it beats me why anyone capable would want to be near the cities esp. now with remote work becoming the regular experience of many. If you choose the UK and would like to know more feel free to username -åt- gmail me.
Beautiful downtown area around a waterfall, tons of biking, near mountains and 3 lakes.
House prices are through the roof right now due to the influx of people though. Stories of bidding wars that used to be unheard of in this area.
I’d like to get plugged back into the tech community here. Could I grab an invite to the slack group? hahn.shot.first@gmail.com
It is not exactly a rural community: it's just 20 or so families of remote tech workers (mostly freelancers) living a few kilometers from a small old town with dirt cheap land and local labor (like "buy a two-story house with one month's SF salary" kind of cheap). It was founded before the pandemic by a guy who used to work as an SWE at Yandex and grew tired of living in Moscow.
I wonder if something like this exists elsewhere.
My guess: You need at least a town with a state college. (Do you consider Fort Collins, Colorado to be "rural"? It's about 110,000 people. Decent tech scene there.)
Here’s an excerpt from a draft of our organizational plan:
> When Americans raised in a rural area want to enter knowledge work or start a business, they’re usually stuck with two options: do something local, which caps their earning potential, or move to an urban metropolitan area, which exacerbates the problem of rural brain drain. [REDACTED] fosters and accelerates a recent third option: work remotely or start an internet-based business, opening up the earning potential formerly only available to those who chose to move to the big city, while keeping the people rooted in (and thus their earnings circulating through the economies of) their rural home.
> While the first thought to unlock aforementioned internet-based earning potential for rural Americans might be universal broadband on the scale of the rural electrification of America in the mid 1900s, there are two specific advantages that focusing on coworking as a complimentary solution provides. First, coworking spaces can be built as a centralized service for all citizens of a county, like a university exchange or a courthouse, when broadband internet service is available in part of a rural county but not to most of the citizens at home. Second, coworking spaces continue to provide value and foster economic potential even once every rural home has broadband internet, as evidenced by their success and popularity in cities across the world.
What made you interested in rural communities? What would make you likely to move to one? It’s quite a different way of life out here but I have no doubts that one could adjust.
Property mentioned: https://apps.realtor.com/mUAZ/edgtb14h
You don't even have to get that far out of the city to get away from city people. I'm just an hour from DC, in a part of Maryland where there are still quite a few farms within a 5 minute drive, and it's like night and day compared to the city. And I even have fiber internet! Strongly recommend it.
We’re talking cows in pastures and dark skies. Hell, I know someone who helped raised some cattle on a common in return for a share of the meat... while actually within Oxford City boundaries.
Can you actually see the Milky Way anywhere in Oxford? I was never able to when I lived there.
Majority of the places I have seen tech people move to, the first thing to happen is increase in prices, be it housing or services.
If you’re really in the rural you’d be a significant percentage of the population just by moving in.
Also I grew up in Havant, and basically all of the A27 is a thin strip of urban surrounded by fields — my childhood home was almost equidistant between Lockheed Martin and a horse farm/castle.
Outside of the U.K., a friend lives on the edge of Zürich[0], has fields with grazing sheep an arrow’s flight[1] from their flat.
[0] technically not in the city itself, but in a conurbation and you wouldn’t notice the boundary by looking at an aerial photo.
[1] a bit longer than a stone’s throw; specifically 100 meters.
I'd try to Google something reminiscent of "AZ artificial community" - I tried Googling that, but couldn't find it. Kind of frustrated that I can't remember the name now!
It's.... Fine. The locals are mostly bemused. I'd struggle to do it in rural US where the political divide is much wider. I'm only here because it's cheap though.
Not to plug but I built www.gaffologist.com to find my house. You can choose rural fibre routes as an overlay
https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/bend-is-u-s-capital-of...
It's a city of 100K people though, so I don't think it's what I would call 'rural' if you live in town.
Urbana, IL has a University of Illinois campus. In other words, it's a college town. To give you an idea of the culture, churches have pride flags painted on their signs and hang black lives matter banners. The main event at annual engineering open house is robo brawl, a scaled down version of battle bots. We have art scattered around town, made by local artists. The Independent Media Center has things ranging from a Makerspace, to a bicycle repair community, to books to prisoners. If you show up wanting to learn something, people will be happy to share what they know.
For amemities, we have gigabit fiber run by a regional company. If you want Comcast, they're here to. We have one of the best public transit systems in the country.
This doesn't describe all rural areas/smaller towns.
When we were selecting a city to start our hacker co-housing project, we factored in many things: cost of living, having smart people around, weather, taxes, civil rights, and of course the town's culture (with bigotry being the primary concern).
I think the main takeaway is to choose the location carefully. Not all rural areas are alike, just like not all big cities are alike. Think about the things that matter to you, and measure potential destinations based on those criteria. If it's critical that you have a goth club or something like that, you'll probably end up in a bigger city.
Water Valley (population ~4k) is often described as an artists community. It's near Oxford, MS, which is also known for its literature and art.
In terms of specifics in the UK, look west and southwest. Full of fantastic little villages which have communities.
Also it’s a college town so there’s night life and fun to be had, they’re inclusive and while they don’t have things like IKEA Kansas City and St. Louis are two hours away if you really want to scratch that bourgeoisie itch.
I work for them but don’t represent them, but saw your post and thought I’d make you aware of our growing team! I think there’s a few hundred engineers right now.
More seriously, I'd say that I love doing "tech work" out here. Almost none of my neighbors know anything about what I do, and most of them don't want to know. Suits me fine. I'd rather talk about tech stuff online with people who know, and about everything else with my neighbors.
I also like that my village is more of an artist community (famous, and not so famous) more than a tech community. Generally more interesting people for own personal tastes. Also, living around the corner from my cookbook idol (to the extent that I have cookbook idols) is both interesting and intimidating.
These rural areas with tech folks tend to be outer suburbs of cities and/or niche touristy/outdoor places -- basically work-remote tech folks who live at an area to enjoy the other aspects the land can offer.
I run a remote-first business around Lake Tahoe in Nevada and there's def large pockets of CA tech expatriates here settling down here, but this area isn't exactly rural, it's a big tourist town. As you go east you end up in the desert and it gets pretty rural, and there's def a tech segment out there though it's highly correlated with a communal/art scene courtesy of Burning Man (art hippies that happen to tech).
One time they gave me an offer for exactly what I told them I was already making. I would not go there unless I had to.
Ideally, the telescopes are located in remote areas. This led to the engineers and programmers out there, too, or perhaps the nearest college town.
[edit] https://www.dakotacentral.com/services/internet/
BEK is the rural electric I was thinking of https://www.bek.coop/residential/lightband-internet
Lancaster PA has or had a few tech companies.
So I'd say probably yes. Pick a county of 500 thousand people or so and start looking through their Craigslist for job postings. You'll find them eventually.
Where I live (Charlottesville VA) has one of the best data science communities compared to other meetups in other major metros. It’s actually easier because things are closer and less spread out, so it’s easier to stay involved. There’s university connections. Also people move here because they historically have been good enough to not need to live in a giant city to have reliable employment.
I like that there are better paying jobs able to be out here on the edge of the desert, but it's really hard to live in places where short-term rentals are combining with folks like me moving into the community. I will never be able to afford a place in town for sure.
I grew up in a small town. People are people, good, bad, boring, strange, theres just fewer to chose from.
There isn't many before or after us sadly, which is why I am thinking of helping somehow to change that.
I think that it was good to be able to be able to get into Austin/ SA for meetings and then live in the sticks. I'm in Western CO now... there are a lot of tech workers in the small town where I live.
College towns usually have a lot more culture, in many senses of the word, than non-college towns of the same size. The highly educated workforce makes a big difference.
We used to live 30 minutes outside Eugene, Oregon (University of Oregon) on 50 acres. In retrospect, it would have been better to have a smaller place (3-5 acres?) closer to town. But we were definitely secluded.
And yeah, colleagues of mine live on anything ranging from an old orchard to a working farm, in addition to those of us who live in town.
...also we're hiring two people if anyone is interested in global health data analysis or health informatics >.>
I'm about 3mi outside of town on 5 acres of trees, and I care barely see my neighbor. Its pretty quiet except for the occasional truck driving up the hill. Oh, and the neighbors (or me) occasionally shooting at something.
I highly recommend it, if you can deal with the lack of people and the generally conservative lifestyles/beliefs. If you're a libertarian, just leave me alone, type, it works just fine.
I do not really live a pastoral life, behind very small scale personal vegetable garden behind the house, but around here there are few agricultural enterprises with some carrots, potatoes, chickpeas, lentils cultivation and (small) herds of cows, sheep, goats, with limited milk, meat and cured meats products. It's still far more a tourist place with a big golf (the highest in the region), crag, canyoning, paragliding, a small aeroclub with gliders and small STOLs etc.
Respect of the big city, downsides:
- less services, even if there are enough they are not as near and 24/7/365 available, it's not an issue in ordinary life but might be in some cases, like something broke and you need a replacement Saturday afternoon and Christmas Eve or you need to go to the nearby hospital, urgent but not as urgent to justify a chopper transfer, or just an unexpected desire to go to a Chinese restaurant/pizzeria/* and there are almost none nearby;
- little variety of neighbors witch means a still "intensive" social life, since people are far more social than the city, with continuous invitations for lunch, dinner, ... but near-zero "cultural social life" in the sense of meet up with people of similar cultural/technical interests, you can just go to the nearest city/agglomeration for that;
- some services (electricity and connectivity) are aerial so outages are a bit more frequent than the substantially zero I've experienced in cities. That's not a real issue if you are equipped (I have a small p.v. with lithium storage and my connection have a good enough 4G/dummy 5G (700MHz) backups, no data/speed/* caps), they are actually burying many lines but so far I've experienced around two/three time/year 1-10' power outage casually one of few hours, half-a-day casual connectivity outage the new buried FTTH should solve that before next winter.
pro:
- far more relaxed life, commuting when needed is of longer range, but faster, without queues, accidents, parking issues, on still good and well entertained roads (winter included);
- vast selection of activities in nature, if you like them like me: going climbing means just going nearby, hiking? Potentially there is even no need for a car!
- available services are less, but of better quality, like when you go to the Drive supermarket you are the first or at maximum the second served, you can even phone "hey, I see an impromptu offering of climbing strawberry plants, can you put 4 aside? I'll be there tomorrow!" etc
- more freedom of movement by any means, even if for many activities you are tied to a car and it's not "rural" enough to own a cheap old STOL or mosquito chopper to goes around (well, at least for 99% of the residents, very few have small choppers to connect them with the shore).
- People in tech do it, but I think it is still early. I'm discounting cities like Salt Lake, Nashville, Boise, and even Bozeman - new tech cities that used to be decently rural all things considered, and now are not. There seems to be a low amount of SV/NYC-style techies who are actually living out and around here, even though I think there is a lot of romance around the idea - working for Google and living in Lake Tahoe. Not a lot of people are actually doing it full time vs. 3 months during COVID who aren't Pete Thiel rich. As weak evidence, I knew someone personally who got a job at a good tech company in one of the rural states that people romanticize, and they were the first employee at that company in that state.
- I think what is more common is solid local tech scenes with local tech companies, many of whom "who recruit from people willing to move there" (quote from an engineer at a place like this). For every SoFi (I believe it has a large Montana presence or am I making that up), there are more local C++ agtech shops. There are a great meetups around farming hubs because of John Deere software and what it takes to hack or maintain it. Cool companies, stable income, simple life. I think there is also a growing mass of remote workers sitting in the 90-120 min belt from every tech city now, especially the smaller ones - Denver, Chattanooga.... Far enough way where you're in your own rural world, close enough to a job market to get an emergency in-person job if needed.
- It is definitely perfectly doable. Don't worry, the guy in the pickup truck likely isn't an a-hole. The politics are much more live and let live and revolve around hyper-local environmental, housing, taxing policy decisions. It is also almost a no-brainer financially if you are in the 3+ YoE range in your career, in a job that is safe remote, and past partying years. Do you want to go on your 5th year of bar crawling through NYC while your new "hey I'm finally making it" salary is getting eaten away by everything to do in your neighborhood that you've already done? Or decamp to upstate NY, and that $200k/yr base will set you for life within 5 years of saving. Why is this even more possible? Starlink. It works, it'll likely keep working, and it is going to change things.
- Decamping rural will start catching on I think, and it may profoundly change the Rust Belt, rural West, everywhere similar. The asymmetry of the opportunity vs. risk is just too much. Financially, it opens up near FI/RE outcomes without much effort. Move out, save up, move back to SF to do a cash purchase plus savings. For normies, it opens a peaceful stable life with a spouse and little league and $300k homes, while a tech salary flows into your local credit union and your kids' future crushing college debt is no more - now you're in the generational wealth category depending on your job. Right now it is more the contrarians doing it, but I think that will change, and these towns will go through some growing pains because of the income asymmetries hitting non-vacation towns. I don't think state governments are ready for it especially culturally (all that tech into Austin means tech donors in TX now), but also it'll help save their finances. If you look through rural appalachia, 1GB fiber is everywhere, there are mountains, there are funky college towns, and there are cheap homes. The worse the grind, inflation, everything gets, the more insane it is to sit on >$120/yr with a remote job and not step out of the geographic race for a while while staying in the career race just fine. You can leave SF at 27, come back at 31 a notably well-off person, and keep working for SF companies.
To your question, life out here isn't too different. People are people. The main differences are as follows.
- You'll get out of your levels.fyi tech pay bubble very quickly when you get an idea of the local incomes. You are walking wealthy, up there with the surgeon in the hospital. Some concerns you have will be very different from the "locals," but also it's up to you to become "a local" because the ethics of doing it aside, these communities are too small to avoid it. There are lots of ways to approach this - in short be a good person, be conscious of the opportunities you have, be modest, and volunteer.
- Local governance/government is hugely relevant - there are tangible ways to get involved in your community with possibilities for outcome that are otherwise hypothetical to the SF resident trying to run for local city council with layers of special interests and government above them to wade through. Here, it's a small town govt, a county govt, local strong interests, and a federal agency outpost somewhere in the 100 mil vicinity. For someone looking for tangible results from their efforts, that's a cool opportunity. Similarly, a small business is both affordable,in a friendly regulatory environment, and therefore not insane to try to do like in NYC. Take 3 years of vesting and start a bakery on main street.
- The main and surprising difference is you might empathize more with the militias/anti-Fed/anti-Big Govt. State government is certainly more of a thing, and Federal government isn't really a thing (at least visibly and per the who is coming to help me in a "help me in 60 minutes or less" judgement of authority). The geographical features of life here force more self and local reliance. Cell phone service drops out 10 miles out of town and its another 30 miles to drive. A broken down car and no water is dangerous. The culture here has survived in an environment that requires solving their own issues due to the nearest hospital/garrison/police station/fire department/anything being 60 minute drive away. Neighbors, local orgs, local ranchers - these are the positions of authority and help but not because of outdated ways. Rural Red and Urban Blue are stuck on opposite sides of this barrier: "what government?" vs. "the government is here to help and lets fund it more," // "why in the hell do I need a gun" vs "the local PD is 90 mins away... I should buy a handgun in case, seems crazy not to?" are all equally true.
- If you work in tech but hate the impacts of retail adtech, this is the world for you. QR codes, Seamless, Instagram - it's just not out here in the same way it's jumped the digital barrier into everyday life in cities. That noise is way turned down, and it's the best part of things here.
- The presence and role of corporate america and globalism is profound and weird. There isn't a federal government office for 2 hours, but there is a Walmart usually. It'll employ, but also is a faceless node. If DuPont poisons water in WV, it can get away with it for years, and delay the resolution for years. Similarly, there are good odds an Amazon Warehouse shows up around here at some point, and when that happens, the pros/cons get hyper-local with huge impacts. Nothing is theoretical this local.
- Human connections matter much more than they do in the cities. The protocols, handshake deals, politeness, earnestness, lack of snark, trust-first - all still present. This is a wonderful aspect of life here, and I think some of the friction points from my last bullet stem from this: two worlds colliding. But beyond that, if you're wondering where normal life went, it went out here.
I've come away from this with a central belief that perspective is everything, and geography has a lot to do with it. The lives of Bob on E 91st in Manhattan and Steven in Bridger, MT are significantly different for good reason, and it is hard without living in both dynamics to understand just how different they are, and what it implies I certainly have more empathy. Similarly, people are people, and there's magic to going rural and tying into that community. Critically, we all have the same passports. This part of the country and it's views can't just get written off. Our flour, fuel and beef depend on it, for one.
In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minority? Do you have hobbies that might be more unique? Cities have the critical mass for so many groups of people.
Before I go further, I want to take a moment to talk about three things: income, education, and opportunity. Someone lacking any or all of those doesn't make them a bad person. However, moving to an area without those things can have an impact on you. In the US, a lot of services are paid for by property taxes collected by the municipality and county. If you move to an area where people are struggling, there isn't the same kind of money for services - and even if your housing is cheaper, you'll be paying a lot more in taxes since you might be going from "above average" to "really rich". Education and opportunity can also be a problem. Do you end up in an area where many have resorted to meth or opioids? Do you end up in an area where chronic unemployment is an issue? Again, this isn't people being bad or anything like that, but it can cause fear and resentment.
There was an article (which I can't find right now) about the unionization drive at an Alabama Amazon fulfillment center. Amazon came into a town that basically hadn't had jobs and everyone was living pretty poorly. The article interviewed some people and the sentiment came across as people thinking that the place was dying and even if they wanted a union, they didn't want to risk going back to a place that was a disaster.
In rural communities with flood risks, FEMA has bought and demolished properties rather than pay to rebuild them. This ends up gutting the tax base and leaves the community as a shell of itself. If the main store in your town and 5-10% of the houses get bought and demolished, you still have the roads, police, etc. to pay for with a dwindling tax base - and less reason for you to be there.
https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/in...
Check out the census map and select "Population Change" and then zoom in one level so it shows counties. Many rural areas have lost 10-30% of their population over a decade. It isn't fun to be a part of a dwindling tax base. A lot of expenses don't go down as that tax base goes down.
Along with this, I'd argue that there's a brain/income/opportunity-drain in a lot of rural communities. People who are richer, have more education, and more access to opportunity are more likely to leave. Are you buying into a location where the future isn't on your side?
If you're thinking about the next 20-40 years of your life, I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life. If we're going to get serious about climate change, will that mean $10 gas? Even with electric cars, the cost will increase. Will we continue to spend a fortune on roads and other accommodations for rural life? The US spends a huge amount of money on rural telecom infrastructure our of taxes on urban areas. Will places like Amazon start differentiating shipping pricing? It's a lot cheaper for them to deliver in cities where the distance between stops is small. I don't expect anything extreme, but if things are getting 1% worse every year, that starts to add up.
All that said, I do think that there are some good rural communities in New England - Central/Western Massachusetts and Vermont especially. You'll find high educational attainment, a population that is relatively stable, access to decent towns and cities, and a liberal enough attitude that won't expect you to conform to the hegemony as much as many rural places. Many of the Western Mass towns even have municipal fiber. I think you'd find enough tech workers around.
Honestly, it's hard to say whether a place would be a good fit for you since I know almost nothing about you. Are you white, male, straight, Christian, etc.? A lot of rural places can become easier if you tick those boxes. If you don't tick those boxes, then you might start wondering how you might be treated differently from living in the city.
It's also hard to know what you mean by "rural" since the distinction between suburban and rural is hard in the US. In Europe, things drop off to farmland very quickly. In the US, things just sprawl with no clear distinction. Is Saratoga Springs, NY rural? It's certainly a bit far from things and might be the "pastoral" feeling you're looking for, but it still has stuff around. Likewise, there are plenty of locations with very few people that might be an hour from a city like Boston. Boxborough, MA is an hour from Boston while covered in forest. I'd think of it as "suburban", but it might the rural/pastoral feel you're looking for while still being within commutable distance to everything.
Maybe you're looking for a place like Saratoga Springs or Ashville, NC or Burlington, VT or Charlottesville, VA. I think those places could be really nice. I would caution about moving to an area that is seeing a lot of population decline that has a big lack of opportunity.
Imagine a city building game where city expenses increase with each population milestone (due to new positions in local government, new departments, etc.). One would naturally expect that if the city population were to drop below a specific threshold, the appropriate departments would be wound down to curb expenditure. If there aren't enough people to economically support a parks department, then (sadly) let the parks go wild.
Perhaps it's just hard to fire someone because an algorithm told you to do so. Real life is messy, after all.
I think it's also not just about the emotions of firing someone. It's really hard to manage a downward trend - and not from a touchy-feely standpoint. If you're an uncaring machine and people leave, you fire a proportional number of government employees. But that doesn't solve the situation. Every business in the area now has fewer customers. At some point, those businesses close reducing tax revenue further and increasing unemployment more. It's not just the city that feels the pinch of a dwindling tax base - that dwindling tax base means there's also a dwindling consumer base.
An important thing to remember is that cities/towns/counties often take out debt for spending that will pay off over time. For example, you want to build a school so you borrow $X and you'll pay it back over the next 30 years. You need to rebuild some roads so you borrow and pay it back over the next 30 years. However, if your population is dwindling, that can leave the town holding debt it can't really pay anymore. If you built a school for 1,000 students and then the population dwindles by 30% over the next 20 years, you're stuck paying for way more school than you need with fewer people paying for it. Ok, layoff some teachers - but you have to lay off more then 30% of the teachers because you're paying for 100% of the school debt and maintenance costs. So you fire 40-50% of the teachers, class sizes go up, the people with the best options (the most educated with the best job opportunities and most money) leave your town eroding the richest part of your tax base and leaving lower income people on the hook for that debt while they escape it...which causes you to fire more teachers which causes more people to leave...
I think it's not just that there's a messy human side to it, but that it's hard to manage decline. Ok, you wind down a department. What about the building? Maybe you can sell it, but probably at a loss since you have a declining purchasing base. As you wind down a parks department or library, the richest people are likely to leave. Now your algorithm requires more cuts.
And the sad state of it is that it's often not a parks department. It can be things like roads or safe drinking water.
There is also a messy human side of it as well, for sure, but it's just hard to manage decline. I can totally see the game: you cut the parks department and the rich people complain, sell their house for 15% below previous market value and leave, and your tax base dwindles more. You cut after-school programs and more rich people complain about the town and schools and leave - and your tax base dwindles more. You try to attract new residents to YouVille and cartoon characters say, "I want a town that invests in its schools," and "everyone I know is talking about leaving YouVille."
I mainly wanted to voice my disdain and alert others to take what he said with a grain of salt.
For now, I would reference you to other comments that have disputed parts of what he said:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31129696
This is your idea of a good comment?
> Hi there. I guess you are having a day of bad luck or something, cause you managed to get me to reply to you. heh.
> I'm basically the walking oxymoron of your example. I was raised rurally, and am more educated than many city slicks. I'm not religious, or poor. Not rich, but not destitute. And as far as my political leanings go, I figure I'm above all of you, because the center was killed by extremists, so there is nothing left but to act better than the rest of you.
I feel like my eyeballs are already about to roll back out of my skull, and that's just the first two paragraphs!
the overall point about the tax base death spiral is true though. it's really hard to wind down infrastructure that's been built out to support a certain population size. this happens in cities too, it's a major issue in baltimore, for example.
I'm also a big fan of StrongTowns, and I don't think what the grandparent is describing accurately reflects rural life.
Also, I happen to be born and raised in the area the Strong Towns guy calls home, and while I don't follow his work closely I can say the abstracted rural community he builds his theses around has a very loose relationship to the actual semi-rural communities he has spent his life living and working in.
My friends growing up were pretty much the exceptions. We moved out, got advanced degrees, and almost all of live in major metro areas. The two that don’t, live in college towns, which are they’re own thing.
The main economic driver, the coal mines, all closed, and pretty much everyone with half a brain moved away. Those that are left… well, they’re stereotypes.
Last time my friends an I got together back where we grew up, we talked about it. The place has changed, and not for the best. As one friend put it, “It’s gotten more churchy, and not in a good way.” It’s meth labs, gun stores, video slots, end times evangelical churches, and militias.
Now you can make your own community anywhere you are, but it’s harder in rural areas. A lot harder. There’s just fewer people, less opportunities, and less appeal for the right kind of weirdos.
In most rural areas the roads are maintained by the county outside the town, and people maintain their own drinking water using wells. You pay someone to drill you a new well if it runs dry, and you're responsible for maintaining your own pumping system and getting your water regularly tested and treated if necessary. I have no idea what you're on about... rural areas don't work the way you are describing, you've obviously never lived in a rural area.
> An important thing to remember is that cities/towns/counties often take out debt for spending that will pay off over time.
They are very obviously talking about 'decline' in general at this point, not exclusively rural areas where most people or everyone gets their water from wells.
Hell, just look at the comment they're replying to:
> It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for the winding down of city governance when population dwindles.
This is probably necessary in some respects. The US has an enormous number of lane-miles per inhabitant. There's a lot of subsidizing going on here that doesn't necessarily look like subsidizing, because the way the road network operates is just ingrained into our culture.
One thing that's interesting: around where I live, property lines are defined by stone walls and you see tons of rando stone walls in the middle of the forest. Then if you do some research you find that 100% of all the trees were clear-cut back in colonial times and all the trees you see today are under 100 years old (yet it's a verdant forest during the summer). There used to be a ton more people - easily 10x - but the existing political structures are the same and mostly still work well enough.
Also - pensions!
I feel we need more education for citizens about how public pensions and other retirement benefits work - as they can be a huge drain when the money is good, even more of a piece of the pie when the money goes down.
For example, Seattle had a mayor Ed Murray. His couple year tenure resulted in the state needing to pay $80k/year more until he dies, so probably $3 million. That should have come out of that year's budget. The city should not have been able to obligate others to pay that.
But cities do die and usually bequeath everything to a nearby city or the county.
edit: I mean a map similar to this - https://streets.mn/2015/01/14/map-of-the-day-state-highway-t...
Though it should really be a percentage-based map using population size, rather than using absolute amounts.
edit2: ah, this is pretty decent, even though it's not a map - https://ofm.wa.gov/sites/default/files/public/dataresearch/f...
As you can see here, King County (Seattle and nearby suburbs) sends way more to the state in revenue than it gets in spending. Most of the other counties -- which are obviously low population -- receive more in spending than revenue. In other words, they're subsidized. From what I understand, this is pretty common within states.
It was funny, when Trump remarked about "shithole countries," he obviously hasn't seen rural America in a long time. As a country, we've allowed it to deteriorate quite a bit.
There's a rotation of road resurfacing that follows a 2-5 year cycle. The key thing with roads in snow country is getting the drainage right - as long as there's no standing or under-road water to freeze, the road won't get frost-heaves which are one of the primary damage sources. So our town crews focus on drainage first and then resurfacing, and then smaller bridges. Larger bridges are generally partly funded by the county and state because of the scope but the one bridge recently replaced was over 50 years old and the new one has a similar expected life.
I'd love to be proven wrong though, if you have opposing data.
Maybe rural doesn't capture what I'm looking for, but I'm not sure of a better word and it does capture the feeling. I would like at least 4 acres and some privacy at the very least. Then the question becomes what I'd have to give up to get that. It definitely means giving up living in a big city, but maybe it doesn't mean giving up a small city/town.
Here's the truth of it for ya. Most of the technologically inclined people you are looking for in the rural areas tend to move to the cities; from the rural areas. Mostly due to the only thing that user was correct about. Opportunity.
But once they have the money to come back home, they do.
When I left my rural spot, we had people coming back to buy farms and build families. Solar panels, Starlink, etc.
Do yourself a favor and call the town offices of each place you are interested in. They can help you find out more about what they are looking to do in their respective areas, and maybe point you to some people in the same areas that might be good to talk to.
Yes, there will be religious people. But guess what? They exist in cities too. Yes there will be conservative people. But guess what? They exist in cities too.
And I can keep going on and on with that on rinse and repeat for literally anything that can be said about rural folk. Why?
Cause they move to the fucking city.
My small town has a Walmart supercenter and another grocery store
Rural is generally farm land outside of small towns, that's where people drive to get groceries.
Land outside a medium city is a suburb, not rural.
Yes, but 4-40 acres gets a lot cheaper the further you go from the town. My point was as he was looking and pricing, make sure you are 30 minutes away from a grocery store or hospital. You can always grow a garden and hunt if you so desire, but if you break your leg or something, an hour is a long drive to get it fixed.
>Land outside a medium city is a suburb, not rural.
Depends on the city.
Unless you're in sparser areas like Wyoming, Nevada, West Texas, etc. you're always 30 minutes or so from the nearest town no matter where you live.
If you're looking for 4-40 acres, you're not wanting land out in backcountry, you're wanting land outside a town.
I suspect it’s mainly people near the high desert in the West where you can go 90 miles between gas stations.
I would consider where I am to be the edge of rural and even if I go deeper into it there are still grocery stores and hospitals.
An overlay for Google maps showing the 30 minute boundaries would be nice.
My brother lives there. There are 20-40k towns 30 min in almost every direction. One is college town called Lawrence, Kansas, which had quite a few startups when Iwent through last summer. Coffee shops full of 20's coding.
https://sidecarhealth.com/blog/181-rural-hospitals-have-clos...
https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/21/lawmakers-act-prevent-ru...
"21 percent of rural hospitals nationwide are currently at high risk of imminent closure. It’s more than double that in states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Alaska, where upward of half of all rural hospitals are at high risk of closing. Overall, this adds up to about 430 hospitals in 43 states that collectively provide care for millions of Americans and employ more than 150,000 people."
Hi there. I guess you are having a day of bad luck or something, cause you managed to get me to reply to you. heh.
I'm basically the walking oxymoron of your example. I was raised rurally, and am more educated than many city slicks. I'm not religious, or poor. Not rich, but not destitute. And as far as my political leanings go, I figure I'm above all of you, because the center was killed by extremists, so there is nothing left but to act better than the rest of you.
And guess what. I'm not alone. There are millions of us out there. You just have to find us among each rural location, heh.
So what I have to say to you here is this. What I am about to say obviously doesn't apply equally to everyone, but seeing as how you are generalizing, so will I.
City folk tend to be the most insufferable blow hards of egotistical proportions, that is often followed with a inability to understand their own shortcomings, because they are too focused on trying to be 'better than the bumpkins' that fucking feed them.
This single sentence from you shows much more of what kind of person you are, than anything else you wrote in front of me right now. It shows that you don't actually have any common decency for your fellow man or woman, because you are too focused on these things.
1. Not being religious. Clearly important to you because you started with it.
2. Being Left Wing, or at least center liberal. Again, importance is easy to see, since you include it right after religion.
3. Being rich, or at least not poor. Now, not knocking you on this, but your idea that people are lower income just because they live rurally is just... wrong. Think long and hard about it. Rural folk, tend to own property. That doesn't just fall in your lap unless you got it from family. This does happen often out in the rural areas because of farms and such; but that shouldn't be a knock against them, since the same happens for rich folk in cities too. Just not with farms, usually.
4. You clearly think of yourself as smarter than the rural bumpkin... but I have news for you. There are plenty of people who live rurally who are not just smarter than you, but literally better than YOU in every, single, way. But you'll never accept this, because it would mean that you would have to accept that someone you don't respect is actually better than you. Fact is, if you actually were as smart as you clearly think you are going by your huge comment thus far...
You would have never said any of this sentence, at all. You would have known better than to do something so blatantly arrogant and ignorant.
5. Less access to opportunity.
This is the ONE thing, I might actually agree with you on. At the end of the day, cities do have that pretty much monopolized. But you should reassess how you put the fact into a sentence, because there are still many opportunities available to the right people in rural areas. You, just might not be the right person. And no, it's not because they want some poor dumb religious stooge. It's because you would be too full of yourself to be wanted in those places to begin with.
GP's comment was pretty offensive and I like how you flipped the generalizations back to show that.
It's certainly possible that they're mischaracterizing the social state of affairs in any number of places, but general rural economic decline does seem to be a frequent form of political handwringing (including complaints from some people ostensibly representing rural voters who claim they're left out when it comes to policy). I would definitely love to hear about specific areas or general statistics that prove the general narrative wrong, though.
Note how "Children are more often shorter than adults" is true despite the existence of Sophie Hollins of Southampton and Peter Dinklage the actor. That isn't an insult to children and it isn't arrogance on my part to say that I am likely taller than a child at my 183 cm. It's just that, absent other information, certain population measures are true about certain populations.
Anyway, I am curious as to whether rural counties vs urban counties exhibit the differences he's talking about. I'll go look at the census and Pew surveys and see what it brings up.
The perfect summary of much of modern political discourse.
If someone is arguing against a generally well understood fact -- like, saying that North Korea is richer than the US -- it's on them to support it. They're not doing that here, because the facts aren't on their side.
> I can provide the data if this is an earnest request
It is, please do so we can discuss the actual data as you've said.
Here is the USDA Economic Research Service on rural vs. urban educational attainment and median income; rural areas indeed are less educated and lower income[1]. This Pew Research study shows that rural areas are more conservative than urban areas across a wide range of political issues[2]. Data on religion was slightly harder to find, but this Gallup poll shows rural areas in the US are more religious than urban areas[3]. If any of these results are surprising, I'd guess that you may not have much experience of urban areas as a comparison. To be clear, I still prefer living in a rural area, but I recognize that there are pros, cons, and individual differences.
1. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/emp...
2. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/urban-s...
3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/7960/age-religiosity-rural-amer...
I would strongly challenge your belief that rural people are uneducated and unintelligent, it's mostly the exact opposite. Many of the rural people have skills and knowledge far beyond what the average person in the city does, because they have to do more things for themselves in their day to day life. City life is mostly about specialization and formalized/structured job roles and living. Rural life is about doing whatever is necessary to succeed and moving things forward one more day. The average farmer has a strong understanding of multiple trade skills (plumbing, hydraulics, welding, mechanics), as well as at least a basic understanding of mechanical & civil engineering, at least a basic understanding of biology, and at least a basic understanding of electrical systems.
The only thing you really get right here is about the economics of the situation. Rural areas experience brain drain and are shrinking over generations, part of that is due to increase mechanization and automation in farming which reduces the need for farm labor and creates drive for the children of farmers to go into other fields. The lack of employment and economic opportunity is real, and it is something to give due consideration before deciding to move to a rural area. But it's not because people there are stupid, uneducated, or whatever stereotype that comes to mind.
And, on the note of politics, most rural people are more Libertarian than Conservative. They frankly don't care what you do as long as you leave them alone and stay off their land unless you're invited. In my life I've had FAR FAR more negative interactions with other people trying to enforce their beliefs on me in the city than I ever have growing up in a rural area, and at this point in my life I have roughly 20 years of experience in both situations. A basic, simple, and common example is how HOAs operate vs how local politics works in rural areas. I would not describe rural people as Conservative, and I don't know how you'd want to politically describe most city people (Liberal seems inaccurate), but city people are generally busybodies and expect everyone to conform, rural folks don't care what happens on someone else's property.
Pretty sure everything they said can be verified by data. But of course those are averages and generalizations, it's not that every single person in a rural area is a white straight Christian conservative, just like not every single person in a big city is a non-white LGBT atheist progressive. But you will find more people with the former traits in rural areas, and more people with the latter traits in urban ones.
Like if you just looked at the list:
> Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minority? Do you have hobbies that might be more unique? Cities have the critical mass for so many groups of people.
What part of that is wrong? Yes, you can find some rural areas that buck the trend, but overall you're likely to run into these issues.
Just like there are some issues more common in big cities: more expensive, more traffic, lines everywhere, people being ruder/indifferent, etc.
Please don't twist someone's words or strawman their position here. They never said rural people are uneducated, but rather less educated, which can be verified with data -- as they clearly meant formal education (high school, college, etc.).
And they definitely didn't say unintelligent. I would say I don't know where you got that from what they wrote, but I have a pretty good idea.
> And, on the note of politics, most rural people are more Libertarian than Conservative.
What we know from data is that people in rural areas tend to identify more as conservatives and vote for the more conservative party (in the US, the GOP).
That's because there are very few viable candidates who run as Libertarians. GP is right about the sentiment, though.
For an example on one issue I'm very familiar with: zoning. America tends to have hyper strict zoning, and the most ardent supporters of it tend to be those who very loudly are in favor of the free market and "against government intervention." It's just that, when it comes down to their principles vs their lifestyle, lifestyle wins.
It's weird how you're getting upvoted so heavily for citysplaining rural areas to someone who grew up in one, on a farm. Your profile says you don't even live in the US, but you're originally from the Bay Area... maybe you should listen in this case rather than trying to tell people in a part of the country you've probably never even visited how living their life works.
> Your profile says you don't even live in the US, but you're originally from the Bay Area... maybe you should listen in this case rather than trying to tell people in a part of the country you've probably never even visited how living their life works.
God, what an awful, narrow minded comment. Do you seriously think that's the only part of the US I've lived in or been to? You're not even trying to have an earnest discussion here.
I really loved the depiction in Lovecraft Country when the protagonists (black American) were pulled over and given a courtesy notice by the police officer that they were in a "sundown county", where after sunset they would be arrested or killed by that very same police officer.
The sun was setting and they had to get to the next county over before the sun set, but would also meet this same fate if they were driving over the speed limit.
Drama ensues as the police car follows them to the county edge, all at the speed limit.
Now, from the oral and recorded history of people around me - continually dismissed by the white majority from all political leanings - I knew the plot "twist": the next county over was a sundown county too.
Sure enough, at the county line, a line of other police officers wait and capture them, waiting to harass them until justifying killing them, execution style.
I liked that fictional depiction because I hadn't seen it portrayed before, I liked that the show wasn't trying to be about the difficulties of being black American (because many shows with black cast and direction wind up being soap boxes about exactly that, a way for marginalized directors to "finally use their platform"), this show was mostly different while incorporating some plausible realities. Like, what if we did the show Supernatural, where Dean and Sam Winchster wanted to chase demons across America but were black Americans in the 1940s, there would simply be additional shit they would have to continually deal with, nearly indistinguishable from the demons and what the demons would do!
Moving to a rural area is very much greener grass syndrome. Once you have to deal with the meth heads and associated issues with rural communities (low education, low opportunity, etc.) you will move the fuck out.
Obviously if you don't plan to have children and live a semi-hermit lifestyle then whatever.
The overzealous defence of rural areas is definitely a combination of this, people who actually made the move and can't admit they made a mistake, and those with nostalgia for the sort of location they grew up and left.
I suppose there's probably some people mixed in who legitimately prefer it and those who don't know anything else.
Not all rural areas are bad, but a lot of them aren't great.
You have to be picky, the area has to have an old culture that's still intact and hasn't been through some serious economic problems. If you go to eg West Virginia you're going to be dealing with meth heads. The general impression I get from this site is that people here won't like it because that means embracing religion.
No shit? Really? You gotta find a rural town that hasn't been through incredible economic hardship the last 50 years? Fuck me, that's wild! I never would've thought.
Crime is lower, family activities are more readily available.
If you like outdoor activities, hobbies that require lots of space, or less light and noise pollution, rural areas are nice.
There are advantages for both. You can be happy in either location, so long as you play to the strengths of your locale.
No disputing the costs though. Seattle is expensive as hell.
Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head and we see that rural communities are providing a huge subsidy to urban communities in the form of labor and commodities.
There is a gross misunderstanding between urban and rural citizens of the complexity of their interactions, and it's near the core of our current political polarization.
Rural Canada is where I'm located at the moment. I tend to agree with GP that cities are an inevitable migration towards efficiency and that rural life is increasingly an unsustainable welfare state.
But your reasoning makes no sense. You don't need subsidies to have food. Here's a study on farm subsidies that found that removing them would increase prices only slightly for most goods: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.agri-pulse.com%2Fa...
> The impact of premium subsidies – which work as discounts on the amount that farmers pay for crop insurance - varies widely depending on the crop and the policy. The price of corn, which is primarily used for livestock feed, would rise by nearly 5 percent if the subsidy were withdrawn, which would hurt livestock operations as well as foreign customers and ethanol producers.
> Lusk says that removing subsidies would lead to at least small price increases for all foods, with the largest increase, of 1 percent, for eggs. Meat prices would be about 0.55 percent higher. Fruit and vegetable growers also benefit from the insurance, so prices for those crops would rise by 0.67 percent, Lusk found. The price of dairy products would be 0.14 percent higher.
To disprove that you need cities that are self-sufficient.
Subsidies don’t matter in that question.
Was what the whole thread started with.
So yeah, it was a straw man on your part.
We lived without cities, but with a vastly lower population and quality of life. Things like knowledge work and financialization are what made possible great ventures such as energy distribution, transportation, mechanized farming, medicines, and so forth. I'm not sure agriculture would even sustain the existing rural population without the infrastructure of a complex modern economy.
We're all in this together.
This is why cities came about in the first place.
> that rural life is increasingly an unsustainable welfare state.
It's not the case that all rural areas are subsidized in the way those in the US often are.
"Everyone needs X" does NOT mean that it's impossible for X to be subsidized, or for "the place that produces X" to be subsidized.
> Flip this on it's head and we see that rural communities are providing a huge subsidy to urban communities in the form of labor and commodities.
That's not how economics works. That's not how any of this works.
If rural areas are getting a disproportionate amount of government spending, then they're (probably) getting subsidized. That they produce things that the urban dwellers need doesn't change that.
Just like if a big city gets a huge federal grant for a new subway system, that's probably a subsidy*, even if the big city produces things that people in rural areas use.
* Though you can argue that the question of whether something is a subsidy is really more about whether the area gets a certain amount of money in total, rather than claiming any form of federal/state spending is a subsidy automatically
Subsidizing agriculture isn’t a “rural” subsidy, it’s a “population” subsidy.
It's both, actually. Just like if the government started paying for free, say, cloud storage, regardless of where anyone lives, that'd be a population subsidy on the consumer side, and an area/industry-specific subsidy on the producer side.
> Cities literally can’t sustain themselves without outside inputs - food, building materials, energy, etc.
Irrelevant. People need transportation, too, but if the government starts buying people bikes and cars, that's a subsidy.
Note that nobody's calling for the federal government to spend zero money in rural areas, when they talk about subsidies, they usually mean spending a disproportionate amount of money there. What "disproportionate" means is itself a question -- I think the most logical definition is "gets more federal $ in spending than they send to DC in tax revenue" but you could argue otherwise.
You can't grow enough food for a city within city limits. So if a subsidy goes to a rural area to grow food, that's not a subsidy for rural people, that's a subsidy for everyone.
And the benefit is debatable. Yes, it lowers prices a tiny bit, but you could lower all kinds of costs through government producer subsidies, and yet not all of those would be of great or even net benefit.
This is interesting because I think this is the heart of a disagreement between urban and rural folks.
From the urban side, there's the perspective of "we're sending more to the government than the government is spending on us!". This is totally valid, and can be frustrating as a city-dweller. This is also exactly what we'd expect, though, given that the whole conceit of cities is that they introduce economies of scale and industrial concentration. Cities specialize at producing a lot of value without taking as much infrastructure or upkeep.
From the rural side, though, there's the opposite perspective. Of course there's more of a maintenance cost: you can't centralize ten-thousand acres of farmland, it is expansive by its definition. Likewise, you can't centralize resource extraction: the resources exist where they exist, and at the density they exist. A local mining operation may only need a few dozen workers, but those workers need roads, electricity, water, and housing which cannot scale. The purpose of this disproportionate spending and investment is to make possible the economies of scale within cities that consume this rural output.
A simple metaphor here is the idea of organs within the body. Your gut subsidizes the rest of your body calorie-wise: your intestines send far more calories to the rest of your body than they consume. Then again, of course they do, because if they didn't they would serve no benefit.
Cities may consume a lot of resources, but produce disproportionately more money. Rural areas may consume a lot of money, but produce disproportionately more resources. This is to be expected, since they're each specializing in separate things. If we're expecting farmlands to be as economically efficient as cities, then it's only fair to expect cities to be as agriculturally efficient as rural areas.
We pay a premium to buy food from the rural US in the form of common import tariffs that stifle or eliminate competition at the expense of the consumer and to the benefit of agricultural interests, and of course, taxes that subsidize agriculture. Large volumes of food need to come from some rural area, but if left to its own devices, the market would never demand that so much of it come from the rural US, or that the rural US make so much from the crops it produces. That's presumably some of what the OP was hinting at.
It's bizarre how often you see people arguing as if a lack of rural or farm subsidies would suddenly mean food disappearing.
1. The US drops all agricultural subsidies and tariffs.
2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere.
3. "Elsewhere" goes to war with a US ally and stops selling food to the US.
4. The US then wishes it hadn't given up its abilty to grow food.
Also I don’t know how “we will get food from even further away rural communities argues against food coming from rural communities”.
Gonna stop you there. This wouldn't happen, because the US has plenty of growing acreage and plenty of demand. The farming industry doesn't need subsidies, and removing them would affect total output only slightly on average.
Now, if we were more like Japan and had issues with enough space for farming, then yeah I'd agree with you.
I'd argue that the more plausible outcome is what economists predict: US agricultural interests would have to compete and domestic prices for food would go down, while the price that struggling economies which export food can charge for that food would go up. Competition... and the various parties involved focusing on what they're good at producing.
On the other hand, we in the US do tend to be pretty idiotic about largely abandoning business sectors when the going gets rough.
First, why? Second, from an ecological perspective this wouldn't change anything, just shift shit around.
Ridiculous, stop.
Is that how US agricultural interests would react if they had to compete on the free market? They would simply give up and let the land lie fallow?
This is pretty basic.
Why not? The US exports a lot a food and consumes a lot of food (per capita). If we were to cease exports and even some domestic production, then prices will rise. The worldwide demand isn't going anywhere but up, while arable land is the same or shrinking.
In a way I do think that many farm subsidies should be examined and maybe done away with, but in another way I realize that we can't compete globally (exports), and many likely can't afford to pay the the true cost of domestic production. Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.
To clarify, removing tariffs and agricultural subsidies might not affect our overall agricultural output much (I wouldn't want to make a prediction on that) but it would lower the cost of goods which were previously subsidized with taxes or tariffs.
> Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.
It's worth pointing out that almost all economists of all political leanings are opposed to agricultural subsidies (it's one of the rare political things economists agree on) and one of the commonly cited reasons is that buying food produced by third-world economies at a true market price would be a natural and valuable step in helping those countries develop and grow out of poverty. The number of powerful people (including people who would normally give lip service to free markets) who, when confronted by this consensus among economists, basically don't give a shit is... disheartening.
Domain experts reach consensus and their recommendations aren’t followed in a lot of disciplines. I agree in this case it makes economic sense to stop farm subsidies — which could result in lower domestic food production and greater imports from abroad. And when the world economy is humming along smoothly that’s great. But if there’s a hiccup in the world economy —- e.g., in the case of war in a place where it makes economic sense to grow a lot of wheat or a problem in the logistics network shuttling things from where they’re produced to where they’re consumed then it’s not as clear-cut.
My naive view of politics, when they’re running well, is to navigate conflicting priorities from groups, including domain experts, the populace, etc.
And I think the farm subsidies could be interpreted to involve national security concerns on top of then economic concerns. If a world war breaks out and we’re on the opposite side from places we normally source our food then they have leverage over us.
TL/DR I think there’s more at play than just the economic concern.
Food is necessary; that does not mean that the US's rural communities in their current form are all necessary or even that they're unsubsidized. Food is an incredibly substitutable market, you'd expect the market to push prices down to a minimum.
The supposed "subsidies" to rural areas are the cost of creating the low prices which cities also reap a lot of benefit from. You in fact could not easily substitute rural monoculture for something else. Not at today's prices.
How does all the food grown in rural areas make it into cities? Not by teleportation; by being loaded into semis, driven on roads, using gas. There's a cost. When roads get worse, when gas is more expensive; food gets more expensive; and it gets more expensive for cities more than it gets more expensive for rural areas.
That's... subsidizing. For cities. We live in an interconnected economic system. The fact that cities make more tax revenue, then export some of that tax revenue to rural areas to support their public infrastructure, does not mean cities are subsidizing rural areas. It means that cities need rural areas to survive, or at the very least, to keep costs affordable.
This is largely the reason why we have subsidies for farming: we're not okay with substituting domestic agriculture for foreign imports, due to the risks involved. Consider the case of manufacturing, which is also a largely substitutable market.
In the late 20th and early 21st century, the USA hollowed out loads of our manufacturing hubs in pursuit of lower prices, and this worked as advertised; costs dropped! With circumstances changing and a desire to perform more domestic manufacturing, though, we've lost a lot of our options. The USA has lost a lot of manufacturing nous and industry momentum, meaning that there's a lot of upstart cost to get back into the game.
While subsidizing an industry may not be efficient from a global market perspective, it can be very sensible from a national policy perspective, since it means that you can build an experienced workforce and institutional knowledge within a given domain.
This is a thread about someone who wants to do computer work remotely in a "rural tech community". I have a hard time seeing what that has to do with farms.
Small towns can be sustainable. The problematic sort of development is the purely residential carscape built just outside of town but driving in to use any services. See e.g. Wattsville, VA with attendant gated community Trail's End, featuring half the local population and one small overpriced convenience store.
Also, urban areas generally have very high concentrations of uneducated, addicted, and poverty stricken individuals as well, and the proportion of the population that fits this bill has increased dramatically in the past few years.
Wait really? Source?
Is it satire?
I especially love the "white" part when the less urban SouthWest has the highest black population in the US, yet a city like SF pushed most of its black population out decades ago. Definitely appreciate the lecture on "diversity".
It's true that SF has lost a lot of black people, but the proportion of white people is lower in 2020 than it was in 2010, which is lower than it was in 2000, etc. This is because of the Hispanic and Asian populations, plus mixed-race people.
> I especially love the "white" part when the less urban SouthWest has the highest black population in the US
I don't doubt that you can find rural areas that are mostly black, but what do you mean by "less urban Southwest"?
> Maybe you're looking for a place like Saratoga Springs or Ashville, NC or Burlington, VT or Charlottesville, VA.
I can't speak to Asheville, Charlottesville, or Saratoga Springs, but I can say a little about Burlington.
Burlington is a city of 45,000 people with a lot of commercial activity for a U.S. city of that size. It's the home of the state's flagship university. It has a train station (technically just outside the city) that offers service to New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. It's not far from rural areas, but I wouldn't think it rural itself.
A lot of people have no trouble being clear-eyed about the downsides for big cities -- expensive, crowded, lots of traffic, can be hyper-competitive, people are ruder or more indifferent, child unfriendly, more hostility to conservatism/religiosity, etc. -- but get offended when someone is equally clear-eyed about rural areas. I'm guessing that's because they interpret it as "punching down".
There may be more or more serious downsides to rural areas, of course; after all, they are gradually losing people to urban areas, people are voting with their feet. It would be bizarre if that were occurring and there weren't more serious downsides to the rural areas.
And maybe I'm misinterpreting the parent comment as well and I feel like the comments about rural areas were negative because of my bias. That could be the case, but I'm inclined to believe that the parent comment was quite biased in favor of urban areas.
And if you look at the comments in response, a lot of them are obviously offended and throwing out misinformation and straw men. They're very bad comments from people either not thinking clearly or arguing disingenuously.
Edit: and where you see something worth abandoning, i see opportunity for growth and improvement
I've heard this take before, and I find it wild. Sure, in terms of tax revenue; cities subsidize rural areas. But cities also could not exist without rural areas. Where is food grown? Where does large manufacturing happen? Chemical processing? Mining? Oil? Solar & wind farms?
If you want to talk about sustainability; from an ecological perspective; cities are insanely unsustainable. Talk about tax revenue, service work, mind work; sure cities dominate. But the balance flips when we start talking about real, tangible economic output. And moreover, if we're talking about global warming, as you have; I think that matters. I don't think there's a reality where US leadership forgets how critical its rural economic base is to surviving the water and food wars.
I've lived in a lot of cities and rural areas. Public infra is just bad, everywhere. This isn't a situation where "oh the big cities have so much tax revenue, their streets are amazing and the wow the schools, healthcare is perfect and" nah. Its bad everywhere. You'll stumble across random counties in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of miles of the best roads you've ever driven on. You'll drive into a city of two million people and the roads look like a war happened yesterday. Its money. Its corruption. Its historical socioeconomic forces. Its a ton of different variables; density can be one, but go to any major US city and look up the best school systems. They're rarely inside the dense city; they're in that rich, less dense suburb 45 minutes outside the city. Density is correlated; but very poorly.
This is a good bet. There are many towns in the vicinity of cities where houses are spread out and you have a rural feel, even if it’s not strictly rural. Often they are inhabited by people who can afford to move out of the city, or just want more space. On average, people are educated and have decent incomes, as opposed to many cities, where you often get extremes of poverty and wealth and an eroded middle class.
It is true that a lot of rural areas tend to be "more conservative", but honestly liberal and conservative are really hard to argue in this day and age. Both aren't what they were 10+ years ago. Both are parodies of that time with extreme ideologies with no room for the middle.
As someone born and raised in the bay area and spent decades living there, it isn't the bay area I grew up in. There used to be a broader community feel, there used to be more open space, there used to be a broader cross section of beliefs and ideas. Now it's a mix of liberal echo chamber letting communities go to shit due to "compassion", a bunch of transplant tech dweebs with no investment in the community - just chasing the mighty dollar, and a huge community that still exists providing services and looked down upon by many of said transplants. (Yes, there are more groups then that, but those are some pretty obvious ones).
The narrow mindedness of tech about the community they migrate to, the ignorance of what the community was and the people still there is actually a pretty big problem. The preponderance of a prejudice on this site that an urban lifestyle is better due to density, etc. is pretty prevalent as well.
I now live in a rural community. Is it all that I want? Not one bit. My partner and I decided to fill our lack of spare time with a retail shop around a mutual interest during the second year of covid and record CA fires. Was it bright? No. Has it given us a better connection to the community and the people here, yes. I have weekly discussions with people connected to generations of forestry as well as 60+ y/o individuals who have spent decades experimenting with foods that could grow at 4500 feet mentioning how things have changed. I also interact regularly with blue collar truckers, mill workers, teachers, etc. Some of these conversations have been much deeper than any that I had interacting with the generic bay area tech person.
Rural areas also have problems. A smaller population means the food selection can be a challenge, drug problems can be exasperated (that said, SF and Santa Cruz are WAY WORSE than up here), be prepared for everyone to know your business - good or bad.
The above post approaches a log of rural from a tech person perspective.
I think the average HN person would do well to get out of their routine and spend time in the communities outside their little bubble.
I've been in this rural part of CA for about 6.5 years after 7x that in the bay area. I couldn't live in the Bay Area again because it has changed from my childhood, my teen, college and into mid adult years. Palo Alto and Mountain View have become a joke of what they once were. There are still pockets worth visiting - restaurants, culture, etc. - but the quality of life has changed. Everything is crowded.
The sad thing, with Covid, rural areas went from being a place that was a bit different to being infested with the same sort of people that claim rural communities have issues.
But, what do I know.