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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

Realty is still scarcy. Good education is scarcy. Medicine is scarcy. Only things which are plentiful are plastic crap, unhealthy food and arguably cars.

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There's plenty of real estate, it's just that some of it is in the centre of Monaco and some of it is several hours away from Magadan.

Education (at least for anglophones) is plentiful like never before; it's only the "old boys' networks" that remain scarce.

Medicine as in pharma is still scarce, but medicine as in "how to avoid needing pharma for as long as possible (and how to tell when it's time to learn to love big pharma)" is as plentiful as education, above.

What is really scarce is any incentive for people to learn to use the plenties above.

(Lots of plastic is crap. The plastic bagging that allows me to leave fodder out all winter in the snow and rain? Defo not crap)

People are increasingly competing for that Monaco real estate (or realistically, Paris suburbs), whereas a lot of land which had agricultural communities thriving as soon as 50 years ago is now worthless and abandoned. Nobody needs the fruit of your small scale farming in a subpar productivity area. A lot of towns which had thriving industries are also dying out. Even if there's a demand for industry, it's much easier to conjure a brand new metal sheet box in the vicinity of a megapolis and fuel it by exploiting (often illegal) migrant labour.

Magadan is an extreme example but there are a lot of such settlements not only in Russia and Eastern Europe, but also in USA and Western Europe.

I think one way to reduce the "city premium" is to make remote work easier. For example, develop a wall panel that acts as a "window", through which your room could become a part of a larger virtual office. Then you'd be able to talk with people, make eye contact and so on. But it would also reduce the "rich country premium", as offshore work would become easier as well. It might be a good thing overall, but it'll hurt the careers of many.

That's if AI doesn't get all the jobs first though, which seems increasingly likely. But that's another question.

If people adapt, there are still options for life in ex-agricultural communities. Small-scale farms can make excellent environment for tourism, as many city dwellers don't exactly enjoy living in a city, and want some peace on their holidays. Remote work is also a possibility for an increasing number of people.

Smaller post-industrial cities could also be a good option for commuters, if they are located close enough to big, living city. Many are not, which admittedly is problematic.

Small scale farms as tourist destination is a wet dream, and remote work is shrinking (personally affected by this). You can think of many utopistic ideas, but reality hits like a train.

Rural tourism is definitely a thing. The problem is that the countryside used to feed and employ half of the population until very recently. The large city will unlikely consume that much rural hospitality services. So only a token amount of rural population will remain, especially if these lands have subpar productivity, as is the case around Moscow and Madrid and Beijing and likely Berlin as well. Or in the original 13 colonies?

A massive chunk of people fleeing the equator to me looks like increased scarcity of habitable places. Not “realty”. In one sense sure, craholes rendered unlivable by climate change will still be listed on websites for sale.

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