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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure if this is wishful thinking but can Starlink lead to growth of smaller communities that are self-sustaining (produce their own renewable electricity, food, etc) that cannot simply exist due to connectivity constraints? I have a dream of the world where we live in 1-10k population small towns littered around the globe, connected through starlink and public ways, and the idea of cities would become obsolete. No more traffic jams and NIMBYs and other nonsense. Better policies suited to those neighborhoods and better politicians. Unique culture would flourish in each community based on its dynamics. Utopia in my imaginary mind, what are the downsides?

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Not sure how any of that magically creates better politicians, and it's worth mentioning that some people really enjoy large cities and the idea of a megalopolis.

However, I do agree that Starlink could be the answer to impoverished areas not having readily available internet. This is something I hope to see change as a result, as it would really reinforce some of the early sentiments Elon put out a long while ago.

That's true, I also like some aspects of large cities, especially on the East coast (NYC).

I was thinking that better politicians because of conciousness of the community towards its own governance, we already do that but very poorly. I don't even know who the politicians are in my own county. No idea what they do and I don't know if we have a local newspaper in our county. May be I should engage in town halls and local politics.

I find that the smaller areas tend to have worse politicians as there are less to choose from. I can see it being both ways.

Plus, not many politicians in the US at least really seem to care about the thoughts or even the well-being of their constituents.

If anything, it's the access to information that would result in better education which would thus (hopefully) result in more informed voters. That would be the real win, in my opinion.

I think this is a romantic view. Small towns are, if anything, more corrupt as there are less people and less options. It’s a lot easier to get away with being blatantly corrupt in small town America, at least in my experience growing up in a southern adjacent smallish (~15k people) town.

Speculation - it could create better politicians through two means:

(1) More competition for local immigration, which creates selection effects whereby the better run locales attract the largest populations and survive

(2) Small local elections aren't subject to partisan MSM outrage coverage or social media virality. Local politicians more likely to emerge organically through legitimate community relationships and reputation, instead of how effectively they're able to stoke the national outrage. Local journalism is also more healthy and fact based, so perhaps more likely to get an informed outcome instead of an outcome driven by partisan tribalism.

A downside is that a lot of someones have to make the satellite dishes and solar panels. Sure, if you work white collar and can do everything remotely it’s no big deal, but the world runs on hundreds of millions of people working in factories and logistics. Those get more efficient in more densely populated areas. The more people who work in densely populated areas, the more total wealth there is in society, the more people can live in their utopia villages.

The biggest downside is you live in bum fucking nowhere. You’re stuck in a social circle you can’t escape from and the only escape is to get on Starlink and talk to people about the good old days when we used to sit in traffic and huff exhaust fumes, but at least we had options. There’s only 2 grocery stores in town and they’re full of the lowest denominator crap because nobody in your town has any good taste. The kids your kid grows up with have stupid parents and are stupid themselves, so your smart kid grows up feeling isolated and like there’s something wrong with them because they’re different. Maybe your kid pulls through it all or maybe tries to numb out with drugs and ODs. Maybe you develop a bad reputation around town for your differences (maybe your an atheist in a town of Christians, I don’t know) and get blackballed from social events. Maybe you go to the bar and everyone’s in a relationship except for you. Or maybe you’re gay but there’s nowhere to be out. The movie theater only has 2 screens and only runs G and PG movies. The biggest music act you saw this year was a cover of “My heart will go on” played by an 8 year old on the Clarinet at the Little Miss Chokecherry Festival. You tried to expose the town to the culture you’re into but everyone just thinks you’re weird. The traveling salesman problem gets a million times harder.

Basically unless everyone is plugged into the net all the time in some massively fulfilling way or rearranges perfectly every generation to avoid cultural bubbles, small towns suck and people leave them for a reason. They head to cities and those cities become thriving multicultural hubs of new ideas that slowly make their way back to the smaller towns.

I have the same dream. We just need the connectivity: internet/communications (like via Starlink), and transportation (safe VTOL aircraft for everyone.) Without those things the decentralization of civilization will not be possible.

Urban population density is the only thing that is keeping our(US) carbon footprint from going through the roof imo. I'd much rather have people live in high density buildings within walking distance to most things. Sewers, electricity lines, gas, roads, water is all shared.

I promise small towns have plenty of NIMBYs and people who believe the slight delay they are experiencing is a traffic jam as well.

I'm not sure this is ends up as utopian as you make it sound. I imagine a lot of people moving out of big cities will bring the big cities with them.

First you need your Starbucks. Then your brew pubs. Better roads and sanitary services. Amazon Prime two-day delivery.

Suddenly these rural small towns start looking a lot like exurbs in large metros. Not a total negative. A lot of small towns are in desperate need of economic infusion, but I don't believe you can transplant wealthy city dwellers into rural American without irrevocably changing the way of life in those places.

The smaller communities in you describe in the US often have better internet than larger cities.

The trick is to be somewhere AT&T refused to build out to back in their heyday. Those places sometimes have local telephone cooperatives.

Fiber optic cable has been dirt cheap for decades (cheaper than a dirt road, in fact). Gigabit to the home in tiny communities is basically free these days. You don’t even need to dig a trench, since there are inexpensive machines that bore tunnels as they lay fiber behind themselves.

Starlink would make no sense if we simply broke up the ISP duopolies.

Alternatively, people could organize enough candidates to take over their city and county governments, and have those people force right-of-way for local ISPs to be approved.

Even without that, WISP’s are a thing, don’t require right of way (but do require line of sight), and compare favorably to starlink.

Having said that, there are still places where only starlink can reach; it should be a much smaller percentage of the population than it is though.

A fiber and 4G/5G station won't work for such scale community?

Correct. These places aren’t getting fiber or strong 4G/5G connections. Have you visited rural towns?

I live outside of a rural town on 29 acres and my 4G gets 4Mpbs and my WISP provides 20Mbps. It’s no Google Fiber, but it’s enough to let my wife and me both work remotely and be on video calls most of every workday.

That said, I just signed up for Starlink because it’s faster and cheaper than my WISP, and hopefully more reliable. Right now we get a few minutes of dropped connection a few times per day.

The WISP reliability shouldn’t be that bad. (It’s not the radio’s fault.). Either there’s a tree branch or flimsy pole breaking the connection in the wind, or some backend network issue.

There aren’t any mandates to provide service, so it’s hit or miss.

My parents live in a town where the local franchise agreement allows the cable company to cover whatever they want. The company opted to cease maintenance of cable on their road. So their options are spotty 4G service or rolling a DIY wisp with a friend across the valley in a more civilized town.

Satellite internet has already existed for a long time, and while it's not fantastic, it's not bad enough to be a show-stopper for a small self-sustaining community. My parents are on satellite internet, and for their uses (YouTube, Facebook, some FaceTime calls to family), it's fine.

This would just permanently entrench existing wealth structures. Gated communities will be celebrating at what you suggested. It would be the end of economic mobility. Great for the long tail, not so great for those left of the power law.

Economic mobility is enabled by jobs and education, not location. Speaking as someone who grew up in a small town and ended up making 10x my parents combined, a small town upbringing is not a hinderance if you’re inspired by learning about the world through the Internet.

If the remote working and education trend continues, location will be more or less irrelevant.

If "we only hire in our NY or SV head office" tends towards "we hire anywhere, as long as you're good enough" - wouldn't the effect be the opposite?

We've been seeing the slow death of rural communities for decades so the status quo doesn't seem to be of much help to them. Some reverse migration back into these communities and a trend away from increasing centralization into a few rich cities should only help their economic prospects.

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