Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

Beattyville is near/in the Red River Gorge area, depending on exactly where you draw the boundaries. I've spent a lot of time nearby on climbing trips, and yes, the area is astonishingly poor. Climbers rarely get that far south of Mountain Parkway, but the whole area is in pretty rough shape.

I think one of the things that's interesting to consider about this is that there is a large stream of people coming into the area, and it isn't just climbers. The area is full of recreation opportunities. What isn't clear is how to ensure that the money works its way out into the communities. In all of the trips I've made, I've spent money in just a handful of businesses: 3 campgrounds, 1 pizza place (which also happens to be a campground), 1 other restaurant, the much loved beer trailer, and the Shell station in Slade.

It's not clear that tourism is a viable replacement for resource extraction in an area where there are established communities. Tourism, and eco-tourism specifically, is something we see pitched as a way to save undeveloped land in the developing world, but based on what I see in the Red River Gorge area, it hasn't brought much prosperity to the region as a whole. Perhaps if there isn't an established economy and population based on resource extraction it can be made to work, but the hard reality seems to be that resource extraction employs a lot more people.

I love getting outside, and the Red River Gorge area is a beautiful place to do it. I want to see the country (and the world) make a shift towards renewable energy. I work to reduce the amount of waste I generate. But when you get right down to it, there are a lot of places where the economy is based on resource extraction, and I have a hard time envisioning what the people living in those places are going to do if the brighter, greener future comes to pass.

Beattyville may be struggling because the cost of coal mining locally can't compete with the cost of coal mining in Wyoming, but making a shift towards greener energy is going to put a lot more communities in a similar situation.

I grew up in Hazard, KY. Tourism would help, but it won't fill the void left by the mining industry. There was a massive amount of money in coal. Every profession in the area ultimately led back to coal. Tourism can help some parts of the area, but honestly, I think some of these towns are just going to cease to exist.

I have to agree. I grew up in KY as well (closer to Louisville) and you don't have to go far outside of Louisville before it looks like this article. We used to do long bike rides (100/150 miles) and the abandoned towns and poor towns we would pass through was startling. It was really hard to ride out on an expensive bike into areas like that and not feel like you were enjoying the beautiful countryside while also ignoring the huge problems that were right in front of you. That is why tourism does not really work to fix these issues. It brings in a little money but not enough compared to what was there previously. Resource extraction is a dead end...it always is and I tend to agree these towns will simply cease to exist.

>> But when you get right down to it, there are a lot of places where the economy is based on resource extraction, and I have a hard time envisioning what the people living in those places are going to do if the brighter, greener future comes to pass.

There aren't going to be nearly as many people living in those places. Like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath people will move to greener pastures. We can make that transition easier or harder, but there's not much we can do to prevent it altogether and we probably shouldn't even if we could.

Rather than try to bring coal mining back to this community as a form of social subsidy - why not just institute a basic federal income?

These folks are not alone - they are just the canaries in the mine. They have literally no useful modern job skills. And while they are the first to fall to this trend, as coal miners in 21st century america, millions of jobs are soon to follow, from fast food workers, to call center employees, to a huge number of accountants, lawyers, salespeople, factory workers - jobs of all kinds.

Rather than struggle with trying to give jobs to people who have no skills, and then trap them into working at these jobs in order to sustain themselves, why not just give them a guaranteed basic income that keeps them above poverty? Is that so hard?

> huge number of accountants, lawyers, salespeople, factory workers - jobs of all kinds.

One thing absent from your future job-losses: people in software. Not a critique, more just an interesting note.

We're talking about a government that hasn't even been able to get its own annual budget in order for years now, remember. So a guaranteed basic income might indeed be a big lift.

(Paraphrased) The problem with a basic federal income is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

I've recently become a Jeep enthusiast. There's a fairly limited amount of off-road trails and rock crawling locations on the East Coast. I can only imagine that there's tons of great places to wheel given the amount of mining that happened around here. Another tourism opportunity - likely would only make a small dent, but interesting nonetheless.

I like the thought of eco-tourism as a boon but short of international destinations like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite, does it really have an economic impact? I also get the feeling that Red River Gorge is more for adventurists like yourself and less for 'eco-tourists', which might have a propensity to spend more money locally.

I would love to be proven wrong. This is a very interesting subject to me.

Arizona and Nevada are dotted with abandoned copper and silver mining towns.

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