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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

>There is almost no work -- the main sources of income are beekeeping and a bit of forestry. There's no tourism, even though, according to UNESCO, the air here is cleaner than almost anywhere else in Europe.

One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy.

One area that this would for sure revitalize would be Middle America. There are towns and counties that are in a deep economic recession, but have lots of cheap land and housing. Meanwhile in Silicon Valley, developers making 6 figures worry about whether they can afford a shack. Remote work would be a great boon for both workers and communities.

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Unfortunately, in remote greek villages, there is nothing to attract you. Old houses in bad condition, no infrastructure (no fast and kinda reliable internet connection, some don't even have 3G or 4G signal), nothing for entertainment other than the traditional coffee shop, almost no young people to socialize with, and most important, there is no willing from the government, local or centralized, to help improve living conditions there.

They are beautiful for a trip, but not to live forever.

As a matter of fact, Greece is not attractive for a young person to live and work here.

> Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy.

Could it potentially increase house prices and make them unaffordable for other people?

10 developers are going to buy up all the houses in the village?

just decrease dev's salaries and everything will be fine

Then the devs quit and work for someone else, probably for even more pay.

yeah ok, i'll get right on that. it's not like salaries are determined by the market for those skills or anything

They are going to buy them all then rent them back to the original inhabitants. Then write non ironic post about how everyone should build passive source of income because working a 4 hours week is great

Who are these other people of which you speak?

>Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy.

I guarantee that this village has no internet (other than 3/4G with a data cap).

That's not a hurdle that can't be overcome. I spent a year with such a connection and a 14GB data cap being shared with my SO.

If you go easy on the netflix/youtube/videoconferencing you're good.

Amazingly enough voice-only hangouts work pretty well at 32kbps.

One problem I do se though is what if such a developer wants to start a family? I'm not sure the availability of schools is too good in such areas.

I don't know where you live, but in certain locations in Europe (villages, small cities) you can get decent internet. Unlimited 4G/5G is also gonna happen in a few years.

I currently live in Germany, but I am Greek and have lived in Greece for most of my life.

You think that the Apple that built the $5bn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park can't drag a handful of pitiful fiber optic cables 500 miles to where they're needed, if they really wanted? :)

I don't even think it's about dragging fiber cables. I live in India and in the last one year, a single company's efforts - Reliance Jio - have ensured that I get decent 4G connectivity nearly everywhere. Price is a non-issue - I pay less than $3/month for about 2GB/day of downloads. If I needed more, I wouldn't have to pay more than $10/month.

India isn't exactly the most advanced country. Can't imagine why internet would be a problem in any affluent country anymore.

It was hyperbole, my point was that if Apple & co really wanted to promote remote work, it would cost them peanuts, at least regarding the infrastructure expenses.

Regarding team collaboration, that's a different story and nobody has science to actually back up local teams vs remote teams, anyway.

I have PAYG roaming throughout the EU for one penny per megabyte (1 UK penny == 1.27¢ US). I think that’s unlimited in the EU but in the EEA goes up to 1.41p/MB after 12 GB (but if I used that much I would switch to something even cheaper).

As long as the village has proper infrastructure. That is a decent Internet connection (in Greek counties average connection speed is about 3Mbps so forget about teleconferencing and such), decent mobile connection, frequent public transportation, adequate medical facilities (a lot of municipalities have understaffed hospitals) and equally adequately staffed schools. In my estimates, more than 80% of the country outside big cities fails in one or more of those factors.

I would bet a significant portion of high achievers want to live in urban areas near other high achievers rather than rural areas. Face to face networking opens up many, many doors.

> "One of the greatest things the tech industry could do to decrease the economic inequality due to location would be to embrace remote work. Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy."

In rural areas I think you have to start thinking more concretely about what "economy" means. With smaller populations things are much more micro than macro. One huge difference between rural and urban areas is that people are much more self sufficient, which makes economic numbers difficult to compare. For instance somebody with an income of $5,000 is generally going to be living a pretty miserable life in the city. On the other hand that can easily be more than enough to live extremely comfortably, even given comparable costs for what's purchased, in a rural area. And the reason is self sufficiency.

In a rural area that person likely already owns their home (80%+ home ownership in rural areas [1]) and activities come entertainment like hunting, fishing, and agriculture can provide immense amounts of resources. For instance just a single large whitetail deer can easily yield more than 100 pounds of edible meat. A single catfish and you're looking at 5-10 pounds of food, and so on. And the overhead costs there are completely negligible. The hunting license costs way more than everything else combined (once you already have your guns, rods, tackle, etc). Get into things like raising chickens and pigs, and you literally will never have to pay a dime for food again if you don't want.

$5,000 ends up meaning very different things, even if we ignore localized inflation. It's just you don't need to buy as much. Of course the corollary there is that notions like "economy" start to mean different things. If people don't need, or want, to buy as much - then economic growth is not a very good indicator of how well a place is doing. We take the view that people must not only constantly want more, but also buy more, earn more, and spend more. Growth, growth, growth! What of people that are, "Nah - thanks, but I'm okay with what I have"? So now we stick a guy earning 6 figures into the middle of all of this. I'm not really sure his effect is going to be, but it seems a bit simplistic to simply immediately equate more money with success.

[1] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/...

> single large whitetail deer

Are these widely available in Greece?

> Get into things like raising chickens and pigs, and you literally will never have to pay a dime for food again if you don't want.

Have you actually done this? I know people who have tiny farms as a hobby, and people who've retired from smallholding because it was uneconomic, and people who live in remote areas of Scotland .. and this resembles none of their lives. You might not have to pay for food (of a few types at certain times of the year), but you can't grow your own petrol or heating oil.

Greece has wild boar - beats the pants off whitetail any day! And yeah, most of my family is very rural and raise and grow all sorts of stuff on relatively small plots of land. I'm not talking about entirely off-grid living. That's why I was comparing $5,000 to $5,000. That $5,000 is what pays for your satellite, electric, gas, and all the other little things. That said with solar and electric vehicles now you can start getting even more self sufficient, which is great.

How about instead of wasting their time hunting and foraging for food, people should spend their time improving their skill set so they can earn more than $5000 a year? You say self-sufficiency, I say inefficient subsistence hunting/farming.

It's kind of funny how people's supposed political ideologies can so quickly take a 180 isn't it? You literally just suggested 'why don't those poor people just go get better jobs'. Of course I think the problem is most people don't actually create their own ideological systems and instead just pick one 'side' or another, and adopt those beliefs as their own - even when they don't necessarily fit.

In any case, the point I was making is that not everybody wants or needs change. Some people for certain do, and I do actually agree with you (though I doubt you agree with yourself!) - going to the city and getting a job that pays way more than you'd earn in a rural area is an easy option. It's precisely what my parent did. But when looking at those that remain, you can't really compare economic systems since it's just so entirely different. And trying to 'better' rural America by implanting 6 figure remoters is going to have unclear implications.

" Imagine what even having 10 developers living in the village could do for its economy."

The same could be said of the 10K small villages in America, or billion in the rest of the world.

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