Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with most of your comment, but it's a bit too judgemental.

The main political wedge we're facing is the absolute destruction of the manufacturing-production economy (which requires open space and other distributed capital), in favor of the finance-metagame economy (which doesn't). In this wider context talking about subsidies is a bit disingenuous, because if we had a balanced economy then resources would be flowing to the rural areas from the urban areas as revenue of private companies. Instead, most of the resources for building out non-urban infrastructure are flowing abroad, while the little remaining bit trying to mitigate the hollowing out gets called a subsidy.

It's easy to get frustrated with the regressive hypocritical politics, especially with the last few years of objectively utter nonsense. But if that is ever going to get fixed it's going to require even more resources going to rural areas to alleviate the poverty driving the anger and spite. Ideally this would happen by fixing the market dynamics, but really it needs to happen any way possible.

I understand your point - farming, mining, and manufacturing are all essential economic activities that have largely shifted overseas post-WWII. This has hollowed the rural economy in US and other western nations while also making goods vastly cheaper and bringing billions out of poverty worldwide.

In my mind I am very willing to help and support many parts of a community and society. We need all sorts of work to build a society - finance, tech, manufacturing, non-remunerated work (raising children, etc).

I’m in favor of gov investment in infrastructure as I believe it helps all of us grow. Same with healthcare and education.

But it is _very_ important to make these benefits transparent and clear, otherwise we end up in the situation we now face, where the same voters that would be most helped by these investments argue against such programs and are strongly anti-government (see Trump, Brexit, Jan 6, etc).

> But it is _very_ important to make these benefits transparent and clear, otherwise we end up in the situation we now face

I strongly disagree on the causality here. The red state subsidies are a blue team talking point. To the extent the reality gets through to the red team, it's anticonvincing because the main thing they feel they're missing is self determination.

Telling them to be appreciative of federal welfare, and they can get even more of it (eg UBI), is the exact opposite of what they want. They want purpose, hence the attraction to regressive ideologies promising that there is purpose to their suffering. Purpose cannot be provided by overt direct subsidies - it can only come from the feeling of earning one's way, regardless of the truth of the matter (eg how the metagame industries suffice). By extension this means revitalization of rural economies, no matter how artificial. Then again after decades of ZIRP what does "artificial" even mean?

I grew up in a very rural, conservative small town and still talk to many people there.

They loved the $1500 checks in their accounts. They see rising cost of housing and several have suggested government subsidies for homes or a massive government program to build more houses.

I agree people want purpose, but I don't think rural conservatives are actually against government programs or subsidies, as long as it benefits them and is not presented from the perspective of modern culture war and media. They don't like "handouts" but they DO like roads, water, electricity, farm insurance, military bases, post offices, etc.

Your experience would seem to support the first part of my comment. What is making "benefits transparent and clear" if not presenting "from the perspective of modern culture war and media" ? Pointing out that their communities are net subsidized directly undermines the feeling of self sufficiency. FWIW based on my personal experience, I would say that people accepting the handouts justify it as at least getting something "back" for themselves, while others get so much more - it's not like the cognitive dissonance just goes away.

But sure one doesn't need to be so indirect as I went on to say in the second half of my comment. I feel like that's playing awfully close to the cognitive dissonance though, in that any given program can very easily end up on the talking point shitlist and become permanently unwelcome. Ideologically I'm a fan of decentralization so I'm inclined to focus on fixing the distributed economy, even though it requires a similar amount of forcing.

I think we agree on most practical aspects of this situation.

We both agree that this situation of expensive grid hookups in rural areas is simple economics. We both agree to make it affordable would require a subsidy. Rural residents seem to want this cheaper/subsidized, but several in the article are also happy to build their own infrastructure instead. I think that's great!

It seems where we may have disagreement is around wider political issues regarding perspectives on government, media, and culture. Specifically, I think we have slightly different perspectives and theories about the mindset and views of conservative rural residents.

That's totally fine! However, it feels a bit like we're both talking in circles without a clear topic / thesis or enough personal experience to provide strong insights.

Enjoyed the discussion though!

I agree on all counts. I think "strong insights" are pretty common these days though, and if we hope to ever figure anything out, less-purposeful discussion such as this might be more productive. Cheers!

Don't they often argue that government handouts are what prevent people from finding jobs, innovating, or moving to an area with jobs.

I don't think it's too hypocritical to accept government handouts because you need it while at the same time wishing you had a job so you didn't have to take handouts

However not everyone feels that way and they use a very broad stroke when it comes to Government assistance which was referred to by some as "socialism" and later "communism"

It sounds like you're suggesting the subsidies remain, but the red states get to pretend that it's not the anti-government individualism their personal ideologies demand?

If people want self-dependence and self-determination, they should strive for it - not play acting that they are independent. What they should not do is complain about the entire concept of government intervention ("socialism!") while benefitting from the exact same thing, paid for disproportionately by the groups they demonize.

I'm talking straight up pragmatic realpolitik. Fundamentalism is attractive to people in poverty, because it lends a purposeful narrative to their suffering. Fundamentalism then breeds more poverty. If we don't want that cycle to take down the country with ever more regressive fundamentalism, then we need to break it. If that involves pinching our nose and tiptoeing around the hypocrisy, then so be it.

From my libertarian perspective I'd rather not use a loaded term like "subsidy" due to the larger context where the government printed massive amounts of money over the past several decades, benefitting the centralizing/urban metagamers at the expense of the distributed/rural economy. Loaded terms make it too easy to condemn specific aspects while ignoring others that are quite similar.

Farming in the US did not shift overseas. American farming output in 2021 is higher than ever, approaching 3x WWII levels[1].

Farming in the US rather consolidated around massive economies of scale, where a few large industrial-scale players with large capital available can produce vast amounts of food at a very low unit cost.

This was partially the result of government subsidies and policy ("go big or get out" in the 70s) and partially the result of large technological advances yielding huge productivity gains. Far less labor is now required to produce a unit of food. Petroleum-based fertilizers developed in the 1940s improved crop yields in many cases by thousands of percent. At the same time, mass produced mechanized farm equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc.) became far cheaper and widely available.

The traditional family farms that dominated agriculture until the mid-20th century have become largely uncompetitive in the commodity market, leading to many social problems in rural areas and a widespread perception that American farming is no longer a thing. A few find a niche in organic farming or specialty crops. Many just sold their land to a large operation, lived off of the proceeds for a while, then became poor.

It's important to note too that this consolidation has had beneficial social effects: in inflation-adjusted terms, food is extremely cheap now as compared to any prior point in history. Put another way, the amount of minimum wage hours of labor required to procure 2,000 calories a day is lower than ever before in human history. _Obesity_ is now a significant health problem among lower income Americans, whereas historically starvation and malnutrition due to high food costs were the main food issues for the poor.

American farming is bigger than ever; it's just done on a vast industrial scale now.

[1] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-agricultural...

Your assuming nutrient levels per unit weight have remained the same in the food from WW2 to present. There’s pretty convincing evidence that in face nutrients per unit weight have dropped dramatically. So there’s a qualitative difference in comparing food from different years.

Very good point about farming and productivity. I believe US manufacturing didn't decline in output either, just increased productivity and declined in workers. Although essentially all the growth in new manufacturing went overseas I believe.

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