Comment by poulsbohemian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by poulsbohemian | Hacker News Reader

My politics are on the left wing of the political spectrum, but as I sit here in my home in rural America (pop 30,000, farm based economy, nearest city of 250,000, 1 hour drive away) it would seem to me that people are mad because:

-There are very few high paying jobs -There is limited access to medical care -Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact -Small tax base means surprisingly high taxes, but real struggle to maintain infrastructure (especially schools) -“Traditional” upbringing, often religious based, that breed skepticism toward anything “foreign” - which means everything from non-white people to AirBnB. -A fear that Washington DC really is a threat to their freedoms. For example, there is a view that gun laws aren’t really about guns, so much as a perception of a slippery slope toward totalitarianism.

Those are just kinda off the top of my head… but having now lived here in small town, rural America for eight years, I can sympathize with some of their views. People in small towns are not all the slack-jawed yokels city dwellers like to believe they are - many are well-informed and well-educated. By and large, they have legitimate concerns, even if they can be misguided in their beliefs about the potential solutions — and politicians to help them achieve those solutions.

My $0.02 — small towns need to be more entrepreneurial. The government isn’t going to fix it for you. Trying to recruit Amazon (for example) to put a warehouse there isn’t going to bring the desired economic outcomes either. Do it for yourselves.

> There are very few high paying jobs > There is limited access to medical care > Local government ineptitude has a very real daily impact > Small tax base means surprisingly high taxes, but real struggle to maintain infrastructure (especially schools)

Sounds like poor white and poor black Americans face fairly similar issues.

> “Traditional” upbringing, often religious based, that breed skepticism toward anything “foreign” - which means everything from non-white people to AirBnB.

The xenophobia of rural whites is vastly oversold. I've never heard of anyone around here afraid of AirBnB. The level of racism I've seen in white communities is on par with the level I've seen in black communities. Which is to say that there's an undercurrent, but not a hysteria.

> A fear that Washington DC really is a threat to their freedoms.

Do urban Americans really not feel this way? It certainly seemed otherwise during the summer of surveillance.

> For example, there is a view that gun laws aren’t really about guns, so much as a perception of a slippery slope toward totalitarianism.

It's not that gun laws aren't about guns. It's that the rights of citizens to defend themselves against a tyrannical government _should one arise_ is important enough to be included in our Bill of Rights. I still don't understand how those who believe that our current president is a totalitarian monster can't sympathize.

> "The xenophobia of rural whites is vastly oversold"

I look vaguely non-white in a way that gets interpreted differently by different viewers, and my personal experience has been that I struggle to convince others just how real the xenophobia / racism of rural whites is, unless they have a chance to witness a specific incident/episode. And I still pass as "kinda white" depending on the viewer / situation, so I can only assume that people with darker or more "ethnic other" complexions than I have experiences that pale in comparison to my own. Some of the same "hey you're not _really_ white, are you?" still happens everyplace else I've lived, but it's friendlier and less threatening in places that I'd describe as "more urban" or "having more economic opportunities."

Just my personal experience, but I fled the small rural white town where I grew up as quickly as I could, and every time I return to such a setting I'm quickly reminded why I left.

I have a racially ambiguous look and jarringly foreign name, and haven't experienced much other than innocent "what [race] are you" and "what country are you from" questions. The biggest issues I had when moving to the country were cultural.

I grew up in Texas, then Mississippi, for reference.

Slightly off topic, but to your last point: I've done some thinking about this, and the idea that a civil liberty granting you access to firearms will help in a government coup or if the government really comes for you seems laughable on it's face. Your best bet is not a wild-west style shoot out, but alliances. Local government, corruption in the national guard or local sheriff's dept. When the federal government comes for you, you don't need one (or 15) firearms. You need friends in high places.

Ask an American Indian how that worked out for them. They had treaties, after all.

I actually agree with a lot of this. If I thought that 15 random wild-west fantasists could pull of a coup, I'd see more of an issue with the right to own guns.

But the point isn't that when the government comes for me in particular, I can stop them. It's that when the government does something so horrific that the citizenry as a whole decides to do something, they can. Local, ad-hoc militias across the country could definitely get the job done.

> It's that the rights of citizens to defend themselves against a tyrannical government _should one arise_ is important enough to be included in our Bill of Rights

The model of protection from tyranny embodied by the second amendment was one in which the protection wasn't from the mere right to keep and bear arms, but from the dependence of the state on the militia created by the citizenry being so armed for its basic security and defense functions. The professionalization of armed law enforcement and military forces (to the point where even significant international armed conflicts and domestic security crises are addressed by the state without conscription or summoning citizen posses, relying on professional—even if not always permanently active—volunteer forces alone) has destroyed that model entirely.

I live in a very liberal state that has a red belt. Let me tell you, if anything, the racism in white America is vastly undersold. I am white. I've had numerous occasions where people will use racial epithets with me, a complete stranger, in a business setting. Not all people who are rural are racists, but the percentage that are openly hostile to POC or even people with different backgrounds is far higher in small communities. You don't need to go far to find people who literally are okay with murdering people over politics and skin color. I don't think this is some recent change either, it's more likely that the article got it right, the world changed and they chose not to. They aren't bad people, but that doesn't mean they get a pass on the parts of them that are bad.

I don't think urban people feel as alienated by the government. I think that they feel less likely to trust people from urban areas with outsize power telling them that they were born wrong and using those beliefs to inflict pain and harassment on already people already dealing with a lot.

Regarding gun laws unless the country up and decides to make a constitutional amendment nothing is going to happen with guns. No one is coming after them. To paraphrase a statement "Once Americans decided killing schoolchildren was acceptable the gun debate was over". The mass killings are going to continue happening. No good people with guns will show up. And we'll all have thoughts and prayers on our Facebook feeds. The gun debate has nothing to do with guns. It has to do with the rights of a hobby being more important than the rights of citizens to live. No amount of rifles or handguns will be able to overthrow a government that can literally kill you from a locked room a world away. If guns alone could stop the US military there would be no ongoing war in the middle east. Firearms are fun, I totally get it, but let's be real that we're choosing fun over human life.

How can a small town become more entrepeneurial, competitively against a city, or without becoming a city?

The past 300 years shows that rural is simply not economically highly-productive.

Tell that to the food you eat. Rural is where every ounce of food comes from. There have been huge efficiencies in farming over the past 100 years that have fed the growth of cities. But we should never forget that without rural areas, cities would quickly crumble. The reverse is not true.

In the future food will be grown closer to the city in verticle farms. When that happens what will these folks do?

This a bit like AI. It's 2018. Where are your vertical farms? You want to talk efficiency, soil on the ground will be more efficient than soil in the air for at least the next 50 to 100 years.

Eventually we'll even live in starships and colonize distant planets if we don't kill ourselves first, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that will not be our defacto mode of living in my life time, and the same goes for vertical farms.

Please note soil will not be used in verticle farms. The limiting factor is the cost of electricity. Please note the curve of the cost of electricity over time its downward trending and will eventually be closer to zero.

Are you sure it will be sustainable for feeding ~8 billion people (Yes, I am talking about the world in general)? Agriculture also creates ecosystem needed to sustain the planet. Not just feed people.

Yes, I am pretty sure of this based on the startups in this area. Like AI this thing will sneak up on you.

I'm not sure I completely agree. There are economic advantages to being in a city. Lots of friction is reduced when you have easy access to resources, like talented personnel and capital. That said - on a place like Hacker News we talk openly about being able to work from Chiang May (for example) but we don't point out that it would be just as easy to work from somewhere in rural America. If you can build a software company in Portland or Seattle, what's actually stopping you from doing the same in Kansas or Iowa?

Nothing, really. Except business guests really like to have a nearby airport to fly into.

I know this as I used to work for Acxiom, headquartered in Conway, Arkansas. (Population: about 30k then, an hour from the Little Rock airport). It really was a restriction.

The examples you list in your second paragraph start with real problems that rural people experience for themselves and then move towards what are essentially conspiracy theories about national politics. There's a break with reality somewhere in there, and it's causing huge problems for them and for everyone who shares the country with them.

Completely agree, and I think the answer is desperation. Their upbringing is their own downfall. I'll throw my own (rural born and raised baby-boomer) mother under the bus here - she will rant and rave about the "immigrants on welfare" and exclaim "they better not take away my social security!" in the same sentence, not understanding that both are fundamentally socialist entitlement programs. I saw someone else in another thread talk about how "a car crash is a tragedy, a plane crash is statistics" -- populism has always been bike shedding, and individuals in rural America are desperately looking for someone who will give them an answer that will fit their outlook on the world.

>> mother under the bus here - she will rant and rave about the "immigrants on welfare" and exclaim "they better not take away my social security!" <<

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Either she or her significant other likely paid 7-10% of their income into social security and medicare...

Sure -- but plenty of people also paid their taxes and at then at some point in life found themselves in a disadvantaged position where they needed some kind of social assistance. I think you are absolutely spot on though with your implication that many in rural America (and probably urban too...) view many things through the lens of fairness and hard work.

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