Would you take free land in rural America? | Hacker News Reader

Would you take free land in rural America?

thehustle.co

64 pointsAnon84189 comments

> In the mid-1800s, the United States had thousands of miles of open land in the middle of the country and almost nobody who wanted to live there.

> Then, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln pulled the ultimate Manifest Destiny power move with the Homestead Act.

That's… not how my history book says it happened. Wikipedia seems to agree, though it doesn't go into much detail:

> The act depleted the Native Americans in the United States of much of their land and natural resources as a result of it being allocated and sold to settlers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#Homestead_Act_o...

I'm no history buff, but I'm pretty sure the Homestead Act of 1862 violated some treaties in a major way, and soldiers were involved.

If you can get past "north good, south bad" in studying the politics surrounding the war, and look at/ include things other than just slavery, you'll realize pretty quickly that Lincoln was more about centralizing and solidifying national power at any cost than he was concerned with any moral crusade.

He is due his credit for maintaining the Union, but the sainthood often bestowed on him is misplaced, especially in regards to race.

The politics and power dynamics of building the transcontinental railroad might be the historical lens where it's easiest to see the bigger picture, that isn't clouded by and doesn't automatically collapse into a battle over the slavery narrative. (Especially given the labor used in its construction.)

> Lincoln was more about centralizing and solidifying national power

Hence why the Lincoln Memorial rests his arms on two fasces: https://www.nps.gov/articles/secret-symbol-of-the-lincoln-me...

In fact the secession of the Southern states was what finally gave Republicans the congressional majority necessary to pass the Pacific Railway Act and the Homestead Act in the first place: https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2012/01/06/secession-con...

The South was still reeling from tariffs introduced a few decades earlier which favored the industrial Northern states and hurt the agricultural South, so they tended to be against westward expansion that would open up even more agricultural competition: https://www.thoughtco.com/tariff-of-abominations-1773349

Disclaimer: this is not intended to be any kind of defense for the hereditary chattel slavery system which comprised much of the southern agricultural workforce, which is horrific and basically indefensible. I just regret all those times I snidely asked “States’ right to what?” without really getting it lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_crisis

> I just regret all those times I snidely asked “States’ right to what?” without really getting it

All those other things you enumerate were not the central focus. It was centrally and foundationally about slavery, which Confederate leaders were quite eloquent in expressing:

“The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. [...]

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto...

Manifest Destiny was basically the belief that the US was destined to span coast to coast, regardless of the Native Americans or Mexicans that stood in the way. It’s a very imperial mindset.

Do not forget that Mexico was itself a colonialist entity, and Spanish is a colonialist language. That is often overlooked.

Why stop there? Don't forget that the Aztec empire was just that, an empire. They conquered land, sacrificed their enemies to their gods and were an altogether unpleasant bunch which explains why the Spanish conquistadores got help from natives in bringing down the empire. Before the Aztecs came the Chichimeca who conquered their predecessors, the Toltecs. Before the Toltecs came the Otomi, etcetera. Nahuatl, Itza’, Mixtec, Zapotec, Totonac, Otomi, Pame, Purépecha are all colonialist languages - and that covers only the last few thousands of years of history in meso-America.

That's because the story of humanity over its course is one of conquering.

Indeed it is, something to keep in mind when confronted with accusations of "colonialism" towards specific nations, peoples or cultures. Conquest and colonisation are part of all our histories, no matter our background.

That doesn't make them good, or justifiable. We are all descended from murderers; that doesn't make murder good. It's always happened, it's currently happening, and we need to stop it.

We can't.

The moment we sit down and start singing Kumbayah some neighbour will take his chances to sweep us up. If ever we were to manage to tame the entire human race into singing Kumbayah we'd be taken over by a fleet of flying saucers, sapient gorillas or just rebooted because the simulation entered a state of deadlock. It isn't just humans either, strife and conquest are a fact of life from the most primitive life forms to homo sapiens and everything in between.

I think we can avoid genociding millions of unarmed people for lebensraum personally.

To that point I think indigenous societies were doing just fine. It wasn't a fact of life to lose a language or entire culture within a generation before settlers arrived. You didn't inherit a position of serfdom. Property rights weren't a thing. Women could get divorces and had political authority. In many tribes non-binary genders were accepted or even the norm. Tribal warfare did not kill millions indiscriminately.

Entropy may be a fact of life, you don't have to contribute to it more than necessary. If we are already warring with things like flatworms and COVID maybe warring with each other is counterproductive and a "dark pattern" to be worked on. Food for thought

Those "indigenous societies" - or, to use Rousseau's term, "noble savages" - simply lacked the technology to enslave more than their direct neighbours or they would have put the Spaniards (et al) to shame. Have a look at the history of ... well, more or less any "indigenous society" which is in close contact with others and you'll discover they are, after all, just as human and with that just as belligerent as the rest of us.

In other words, Rousseau was wrong, the savages have the same vices and the same virtues as we have. Wake up from your dream of the perfect past which came to an end when the evil white man came to conquer and welcome to the real world. Read some real history instead of Howard Zinn and Nikole Hannah-Jones, have a look into the different forms of slavery as practised by those "indigenous societies", read up on the Aztec's own claim of sacrificing 40.000 people over a 4-day period for the re-consecratino of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan or the 50.000 to 200.000 (historians quibble over the actual number) who were sacrificed every year. Heading into the temple complex your eyes would be drawn to the steep double staircase on the Grand Templo Mayor. A trail of blood leads to the impressive top of the temple, a flat working area where the captives or the occasional volunteers were brought to be sacrificed where most of the city could see. Most of the temple-top sacrifices involved cutting through the abdomen and diaphragm to rip out a still-beating heart. Not to paint them with a black brush, just to realise those "indigenous societies" were just as "guilty" of "sin" as all others.

Wake up.

eh. Doesn't it seem kinda stupid that people need to kill each other in order to survive?

Sure. But then back on planet Earth, we have reality to deal with.

Well, we don't live in the imperial hegemony of the Spanish empire, let alone the Aztec. We live in the imperial hegemony of the United States. The imperial power that is still violating treaties, sterilizing natives, and maintaining "reservations".

It's also kind of gross that westerners need to equate every state with their specific settler-colonial ones. All of those "colonialist languages" co-existed for hundreds of years and were only endangered by the introduction of European settlers. The wholesale liquidation of entire cultures was something uniquely western, and as a consequence the only languages I have left to describe the crime are those belonging to the criminals that did it. In 100 years the Aztecs did not do what the Spanish did in a decade. I'm sure you'll say the Aztecs simply lacked the means, but then you're comparing them to an actual settler-colonial empire.

You say Aztecs were an unpleasant bunch and that's why other tribes helped the Spanish, but as I remember it the conquistadores were welcomed as Gods in Tenochtitlán. Doesn't seem like a very unpleasant welcome, the reward for which was razing the city and killing millions. Seems to me like the other tribes might have helped the Spanish because they knew which way the wind was blowing? Or maybe they also viewed them as gods. Can you ask them how they felt about the Spanish once the Aztecs were gone and the conquistadores enslaved everyone, mutilating people for not mining enough silver?

It’s kind of telling why people need the victims of genocide to have somehow “earned” it, either from being “weaker” or “just as bad”. I choose to not minimize the slaughter of around 100 million indigenous Americans in the "New World". There is no justification for it nor was there precedent.

"As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilizations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you." — Jamaica Kincaid

It was a populist law passed in the middle of the Civil War. The entire continent was on fire. And the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Catawba, and Creek tribes sided with the Confederacy against the United States.

> And the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Catawba, and Creek tribes sided with the Confederacy against the United States.

I knew they were opposing the United States (at the time, an aggressively-expansionist neighbour with an order of magnitude more arms manufacturing), but were they all definitely allied with the Confederacy? Your enemies aren't necessarily friends with each other.

(Also, keep in mind: Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Catawba and Creek weren't countries. I vaguely remember that internal Cherokee politics was complicated, and that the US acted as though certain people were representatives when they weren't.)

You can read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Territory_in_the_Americ... for more information, but yes, several of the tribes in the Indian Territory did in fact make alliances with the Confederacy and fought on the side of the Confederacy against the Union.

The article said leaders from several tribes acted without the consensus of their councils. The Cherokee were split.[1] A Confederate source said just the Choctaw weren't.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_in_the_American_Civil...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Nation_of_Oklahoma#Ame...

Wow, really glad this got in the thread and the link is much appreciated. I seriously had no idea. Mikey Foucault was right history is a hot mess.

History is best viewed from the perspective of the individuals or groups with substantial power, because outcomes are their acting in their own best interests. Or what they perceived to be their best interests.

In the context of the Cherokee (which I'm more familiar with than other tribes), you initially have a group of mostly-independent city states, surrounded by neighboring tribes (with which there is good and bad history), dealing with substantial population decrease (due to smallpox), trying to negotiate with a fundamentally different culture (colonies/US) encroaching on their lands. Think 10th century Europe.

There were a diversity of opinions on how to move forward, and so a diversity of approaches, as groups jostled for personal advantage. Fundamentally though, it was a delaying action, fought (economically, politically, and militarily) until ceaseless European migration made coexistence as equals untenable.

The Cherokee have a somewhat unique history in that, by the late 1700s, they were moving to colonial style economics (land ownership, farming), politics (central government), language (invention and dissemination of written language in the 1820s), and religion [0].

Unfortunately, 1829 also saw gold discovered in northwest Georgia, at which point there was too much money to be made by seizing and exploiting land, and any burgeoning cultural similarities and human rights were conveniently ignored so fortunes could be made.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Echota#History

Ah, the US civil war was three decades after the Indian Removal Act, so most of them were in modern-day Oklahoma (bordering Texas, Arkansas and Missouri). That makes sense. For some reason I placed the US civil war about 50 years earlier.

Not sure on all of them, but many sided with them in exchange for recognition of their own entities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_Americ...

So were the confederate states.

(Depending on how many issues you want exclude in over-simplifying the causes of the war.)

I don't remember a lot of impact in the top half of the continent, other than fear of invasion spurring the British colonies towards confederation.

I wouldn't. I've looked into it. There are lots of places where you can get a free place in the US. They're nice places, pretty, if you like being outside like me it's got a lot going for it. Still, I don't want to move to a place with nothing going on and bet on a town that may just get worse. And Kansas in particular, I wouldn't want to pay those taxes.

I did abandon cities though. Cities are sirens. They attract you with the promise of lots of economic and social activity, then you wind up locked on a treadmill full of people navigating around you like an obstacle. You wind up isolated, having to wait in traffic for extended periods to go anywhere, paying outrageous sums to live. The natural world is mostly dead in them. I can get Netflix and tinder and all that other virtual stuff anywhere, which seems to be all there is in cities anyway, plus when I go outside there are butterflies and fire flies and weird birds everywhere and people leave me alone about my business, they're not used to being packed like sardines so they don't navigate around you like an obstacle, they are usually eager to be friendly. And you can make a decent life happen with very little money.

What do you eat though?

It sounds like the diverse mix of cultures one finds in cities may not be something that adds value for you, but it certainly does for me.

Also, one of the reasons people enjoy cities is because of the proximity to stuff. Living in a city I can walk to everything from the grocery store and a plethora of restaurants, to the local theatre.

Living in a city those things are often at most a 15 minute walk.

Living somewhere deeply suburban or rural, you often have to drive more than 15 minutes to reach a single one of those things.

Sure you have tinder, but just doing the math based on population density one can see that cities have an advantage if you like a diverse dating pool.

Yes living in a city costs more, but it’s because there is more demand. That demand is sustained by real world individuals deciding cities have value for them.

I cook mostly. I eat pretty good.

I come from a diverse background with a diverse friend group in a very large city. By diverse, I mean at least a dozen nationalities and largely immigrants from every continent. I'm no stranger to it, and it does hold value to me. But it's overrated, it's not worth being packed into an apartment building like a sardine and getting stuck in traffic going anywhere that isn't the corner store.

That said, where I live isn't exactly a monoculture. There are Indians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Philippino, Norwegians, Germans, Mexican and assorted other central american people, Cubans, and of course your usual white and black american people. All in a town with a 4 digit population.

The places I can get to in a 5 mile car ride where I live might not be places to buy stuff, but I can have a lot of fun out here. There's water, woods, lots of little food shacks and taco trucks and a couple of grocery stores, a few bars (I've grown out of bars mostly). It's low stress to get around, and when you get where you're going there's usually some people that aren't jaded by the smell of the masses and are eager to be friendly.

I wouldn't say the dating game is easier in cities. You've got just as much competition as options, and people in cities are more judgmental and unforgiving. And also, in my opinion, out here the quality of the people is just better in general.

I think largely the majority of people in cities are there because they're stuck there. Very few people anywhere moved there because they wanted to, most people are just born where they live, and in cities there's just more people in a smaller space. I don't think it's indicative of an advantage, and I think largely the desire to live there is driven by ideas like life outside of one is a waste, there's nothing to do, country bumpkins are bad neighbors, etc. Most of the selling points of densely populated environments are overstated, if they're true at all anymore IMO.

> …people in cities are more judgmental and unforgiving.

As someone whose life took the opposite path — born and raised in rural Iowa, having since lived in both big cities and suburbs — I'm astounded by generalizations like the above, "the quality of the people is just better", etc. The lesson seems to be "you're going to [love|hate] the [big city|rural] experience based on the personal experiences you have in each.

Yeah well, people are talking about their own subjective experience and their preferences. I don't think all cities are the same, and I don't think all rural places are the same. But the one I wound up in is really special, and it's not the only one. You can leave small town Iowa and go somewhere else that isn't Chicago or San Francisco, and I'm sure there's a city somewhere I might enjoy.

> But the one I wound up in is really special, and it's not the only one.

Of course! And there are oases in areas that are otherwise mostly cultural deserts (i.e. Iowa City). I'm glad you don't actually think of city folks as "generally worse". I'm thankful to have spent time in both big cities and small rural communities, and I think it'd be good for our collective empathy if more people could.

Yeah, there're a lot of factors you dont see coming that make poetic middle of nowhere life feel not super sustainable long term.

Me and my partner lived in the CA desert for a long time for reasons similar to what you list about problematic big cities and benefits listed in the post but once we felt like we conquered it (?) we ended up wanting to return to family / friends / civilization / 6 dollar cappuccinos / brick oven pizzas / walkable resources etc.

That said I wouldnt trade that time for anything and theres a strong chance Ill be back when im done futilely participating in humanity.

This is the problem with moving rural. Unless you own a lot of it, you're still just penned in, and now there's no local amenities or support.

I moved into the countryside 12 years ago from a large town where I never had to drive, suddenly my commute was hours a day and there's nothing around

What sort of factors? If it's going to suck for me in the coming years I could use a heads up. What's not sustainable about it?

Lack of culture and education mostly. Lack of anonymity. Tribalism. Gossip. Conservatism. Racism. Good ol boys. Local government corruption. Brain drain. Shrinking populations. Low wage jobs. Tiny or non-existent dating pool. Hospital far away, possibly no ambulance service. No childcare. No decent stores other than Walmart or Dollar General. Have to drive literally everywhere.

The only thing "small town living" has going for it is the scenery.

> The natural world is mostly dead in them.

I live in the Seattle metro(Tacoma) and can walk to a 900 acre old growth forest with 20 miles of trails, or quickly drive to several beaches and watch for whales, seals, etc. Seattle and Portland, and likely many places on the West Coast have similar amenities- not to mention being surrounded by multiple national forests and national parks. I’m curious if the cities you abandoned work back east or European?

I've been to that metro area, a long time ago. It is a beautiful place, in my opinion that region of the world is the most beautiful place on earth, and I've been to a few beautiful places worldwide. I have walked through an evergreen forest and seen whales spouting on the Puget sound all within a mile walk. If it weren't so damn expensive and urban in that area I'd live there in a heartbeat.

I'm not entirely talking about reserved places like parks. Cities have those, they're nice. What I mean is, in your immediate environment, outside of your door, the ground is paved, sprayed for mosquitoes (and consequently every other arthropod) with neurotoxins, it is built entirely for humans and yet somehow not ergonomic.

I live under a giant oak tree in an oak forest. There are multiple wild creatures living their lives within a 10 foot radius of where I'm sitting right now. I don't have to go to a designated outdoorsy place, it is my every day environment. That's something very valuable to me.

Puget Sound area is kind of an exception. I would say most European, Asian, Midwest, East coast big cities I’ve been to have almost no nature within an hours drive. Maybe a few manicured parks

Perhaps that’s true in some places of the places you list, but I can barely think of a European city that does _not_ have nature within an hour drive.

Or, for that matter and east coast city. Even New York City has plenty of nature within an hour (the Ramapo mountains in one direction, plenty in most others too).

More counter-examples:

Berlin: Grunewald, accessible by S-Bahn

Philadelphia: Wissahickon Valley, actually inside the city, with 21 miles of single-track in a wild river valley.

London: Epping Forest, accessible on the Underground; north Surrey hills, just under an hours drive.

Montpelier (France): Verdon Gorge, about an hours drive, and lots of nice stuff before you get there.

Chicago: yeah, ok. You got me.

A part of me keeps my eyes open for opportunities to move somewhere more remote. Once I have Starlink, I can be just about anywhere. I don't really want to be truly remote, though, so I have a lower limit. I want to be within, say, 30 minutes of 1) a walmart, at least (not my favorite place, but there are a lot of them), and 2) a legitimate hospital. That is probably rural enough so I can escape most of the traffic stupidity.

That was basically my criteria, and I hopped around a little bit like that until I found it. Where I'm at it a little busier than I'd like, but nice altogether.

Don't forget that Starlink is geo-locked to within ~1mile.

Just because they aren't enforcing it 100% of the time right now doesn't mean it will stay that way.

Is it really that tight?

I was hoping the polygons on this page were accurate: https://satellitemap.space/

I do see a reference from a thread a long time ago that suggests a cell is perhaps 15 miles diagonally.

I'm hoping the geo locking is removed at some point soon so I can take it with me when I go RVing in the sticks.

But back to my original comment, I meant I can probably get Starlink at any rural location, as a fixed site, so I can work from anywhere.

It will definitely never be removed.

The system simply doesn't have the capacity to serve lots of people in a small area. It only works if they geo-fence people into sparse, widely-spaced cells. Starlink is very upfront about this. There is very limited bandwidth per square kilometer of earth-surface. It isn't meant for cities.

One thing I didn't see mentioned are taxes. Kansas has both relatively high side income and property taxes. Building a modest house(200k) on a good income (150k) would yield something around 12k a year in taxes, if my mental heavily rounding math is right.

That may not sound like much to many of us, but compare that with say, TN, where you'd pay closer to 2k in taxes AND have much better weather, amenities, and scenery.

Your math works out! :-) The Lincoln county property tax rate is 1.80% (https://smartasset.com/taxes/kansas-property-tax-calculator)... the property tax on a $200,000 property would therefore be $3600/year. Kansas income taxes on $150,000 would be $8,093 (https://www.bankrate.com/taxes/kansas-state-taxes/).

White county, TN, has a property tax rate of .52% (https://smartasset.com/taxes/tennessee-property-tax-calculat...): $1040/year, and Tennessee doesn't have an income tax.

Property in both is pretty comparable (https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Lincoln-Co..., https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Sparta_TN/...), 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft. Maybe a bit of an edge in Kansas.

Sales tax in Lincoln county are 2 percentage points lower, but it is at least a hundred miles to a bigger city.

Kansas kinda sucks.

P.s. Jackson county, AL: 0.33% property tax, 3.9% effective income tax rate, 1,700-2,200 sq ft.

>Kansas

Surprising.

1) Where does the money go? Relative to other states?

2) No homestead exemptions? $75k reduction would get you to ~$2250, which still isn't cheap, especially with that income tax.

>Sales tax ... 2 percentage points lower

What are the actual rates?

About 2: https://www.ksrevenue.gov/perstaxtypeshs.html

Max $700. "Your total household income must be $36,300 or less." Also,

"You were born before Jan. 1, 1965; OR You must have been totally and permanently disabled or blind during the entire year, regardless of your age; OR You must have had a dependent child living with you all of last year who was born before Jan. 1, 2020, and was under the age of 18 the entire year."

Lincoln county sales tax: 8.5%

Sparta, TN: 9.5%

Whoops. I may have been looking at the state tax rates vs. the total sales tax rates.

As for the first question, a hypothesis: KS is about twice the size of TN with about half the population; 14/km^2 vs 65/km^2. But for real numbers, I'm having a hard time finding comparables. And I'm having a hard time figuring out where TN's money comes from.

TN has roughly twice the budget of KS ($38.6B vs $18.4B) but spends less per capita ($5695 vs $6320) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets).

KS spends more of their budget on education; TN on Medicaid- (https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-of-st...).

In 2017, TN got 40% of its budget from the federales; KS, 25% (https://ballotpedia.org/Total_state_government_expenditures). TN gets roughly twice as much in total federal spending than KS (https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=5c7be0443698b7e8ae2...).

On the other hand, TN. And on the other, other hand: gravel cycling in Kansas!

And with Tennessee, you can get relatively close to the smokey mountains national parks for a reasonable price for a house. You’re then a short hop to Asheville, there are multiple regional airports, and StarLink works there.

Agree, but better act fast! Asheville already boomed, and Knoxville is mid-boom at the moment. What was 160ish k in 2019 is hitting the mid 3s today.

Knoxville has a lot going for it too.

Ditto Chattanooga. Two great sleeper cities when Nashville is getting all the hype.

My wife really liked Chattanooga when we were considering where to move. The downsides from my perspective: deathly humidity in the summer time, and according to the locals I asked, no food culture to speak of, particularly in terms of ingredients. Otherwise, pretty, nice size, great river ... we ended up near Santa Fe.

You're right about that. I lived in Knox for a year, and the humidity is worse than Florida in the summer.

Curious where you came from, and how you're liking it? I've lived in high humidity my whole life, and decided to move somewhere drier this year - AZ or NM. Would love to hear your experience.

Born in the UK. Graduate study in Israel & Germany. Moved to Seattle 1989, 7 years there. Moved to Philadelphia, 23 years there. Moved to near Santa Fe 3 years ago.

I personally love the near absolute lack of humidity here near Santa Fe. It changes the impact of the cold, and the heat, especially when combined with direct sunlight. 20F here with direct sun: wear a t-shirt and you won't be actually cold. Subtle things like my running shoes never getting stinky because they never get "wet with sweat".

However, I have fairly weather resistant skin and hair. My wife's experience here has not been quite so positive, though some of that is likely caused by the extremely hard water where we live (fixed that this weekend). At altitude (we live at 6000') you need to get used to wearing sunglasses outdoors all the time unless you want cataracts much earlier than normal.

The other thing to keep in mind in areas similar to the one where we live that nobody tells you (or if they do, you don't believe them): windy season. As the ground starts to warm up in the spring, every single day here for 5-6 weeks starts calm and then spends 6-8 hours of the day in hellacious wind storm. Things calm down in June (there can still be crazy winds, but not every day for weeks). It seriously sucks, and we are coming around to planning travel so that we leave the area for a good chunk of windy season.

You also have to adapt your ideas of beauty. As Stegner put it:

> Dutton describes a process of westernization of the perceptions that has had to happen before the West is beautiful to us. You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time.

https://bensonian.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/you-have-to-get-o...

NM itself is ... interesting. Just 2 million people in the 5th biggest state by area. I keep telling myself that politics here is like Phila. city council, but spread out across a whole, large state. NM has more poverty and a less dynamic economy than it's neighbors. The upside is empty trails, and wonderfully friendly people.

Truly, thank you for your reply.

Do you also find the hot is easier to deal with? I actually shyed away from the northern areas because of the cold/snow, which you make not sound so bad. In transparency, we're considering Sierra Vista and Las Cruces in our search, but they get considerably warmer.

Empty trails sound great. The population boom where we live now is what made us decide to go :).

Being outdoors in the "real heat" (say, above 96F) is challenging. but much easier than similar temperatures in Philadelphia ever was as long you have access to water to drink.

We are lucky to live in an old (1875) adobe house that handles the massive diurnal temperature change (sometimes 30F, occasionally more) very well. It has encouraged us to fall into a lifestyle during the summer where you follow one of two patterns:

1. (most common) get up within an hour after sunrise, do whatever you need to do outdoors (exercise, gardening, construction, whatever). Complete that by 10:30am, then head inside, close windows, stay there until about 6:00pm. Open windows, potentially head back outside (depends on altitude a bit, can still be on the cool side at 6-7k' after sunset). Sleep in delicious temperatures.

2. get up, head up to 8000' or higher, stay outside all day.

Las Cruces is definitely much hotter than Santa Fe. I would not enjoy living in ABQ or further south without adobe (preferably double adobe) during the summer - it would require too much a/c for my taste.

cf. something like 10-20k in property taxes and another 20-40k in state income tax in urban California for comparable values of modest and good…

But with California weather, foods, and terrain.

Small towns mortgaged their future on big box stores out by the freeway. Now they have half the tax revenue to support their infrastructure (roads, power, sewer, water). Expect decay followed by large property tax hikes.

Small businesses selling generic items are just not capable of excellence for the same reason that I would not be a competent doctor, lawyer, and software engineer compared to people who did just one of those things.

I knew of a small town grocery store where my grandparents used to have a vacation property. They got a delivery of food once a week, so anything fresh had deteriorated halfway through the week. Technicians needed to be booked weeks in advance to fix things like fridges as it was several hours outside the city, so for a month they didn't have space for cheese. They couldn't buy anything that had a large minimum order and couldn't get bulk prices, so it was expensive. Locals didn't shop there was it was cheaper to burn half a tank of gas. They get hit the hardest during supply chain challenges as their understanding of logistics is to place an order and hope it shows up.

They can exist for niche food products, but selling milk, grapes, and cereal? No, as they will dramatically underperform a business that specializes in dealing with those.

Didn't realize Associated Grocers type distributors/co-ops weren't a nationally universal thing.

The cities didn't have much choice when those stores were built outside of city limits or in a neighboring town.

Lay the blame where the responsibility resides: with the consumers who chose bulk over local.

While it's true that individual consumers make choices like this, it's not fair to blame individuals for systemic problems. If a person making a low wage is given the choice between feeling good about supporting local business, and being able to afford enough food to survive by shopping at a big box store, it's not really a fair choice.

Not my point. Tax income for small towns no long match infrastructure support costs. Never mind who's buying what where.

It's the small town buckling to the WalGetCo corporate negotiators, giving them tax breaks and new roads and water and sewer expansion. With just one business served by the new infrastructure: the big box store.

Sure the taxable property goes up, city income goes up; but the density is way less than the old downtown, the new income doesn't come close to paying for the new outflows, and the old downtown businesses find themselves subsidizing their competition on the edge of town.

So wrong.

For places with sales tax, a big box moving in can easily double a small towns tax revenue overnight.

I don't dispute that small business suffers, but its far from zero-sum. The increased revenue benefits the town far more than the town pays for any infrastructure upkeep.

Especially since most cities require the developer to pay for all the initial upgrades in the first place, including their own utilities tie-ins and improvements to extant public roads (eg traffic studies, adding lanes, installing signals).

So right. This was covered on a post here on HN last week. An in-depth review of an (Illinois?) town and the hole they'd dug for themselves.

Read it, and reconsider.

When a consumer is offered a choice that is more attractive to them, it seems unreasonable to blame them for taking it.

Maybe blame neither.

Which entity set up the tax system such that this kind of freeloading was possible? State governments, I’d guess.

How dare those consumers not have enough wealth to shop based on anything but lowest price

if you follow the motivation of the different groups the motivation is the same for everyone and its best to focus on people rather than entities. business owners have an insatiable desire for profits and are willing to sacrifice society and individuals to do so. Consumers value saving money over supporting local or dont see the value in the local offerings real or perceived (big companies have both economies of scale and generally more effective advertising) suppliers crater better to big businesses because they make them more money and exert more power over them. a more personal one on one contact of a small business is a pain to them and takes more resources. local politicians are presented with a choice of getting nothing or allowing them to go to an area that will, and then they get nothing. not to mention potential personal kickbacks, short term positive press with the consequences being on the next politician.

The root of the problem is society valuing their own money/things over people. one person or organization changing wouldn't change things significantly, and the rest in the chain will probably pressure them back. Sadly society is moving further away from valuing people. online shopping, crypto currency, automation as much as i love all these advancements they enable and increases the value of things over people, and in turn a concentration of wealth and power.

It feels really disingenuous to put all of the blame on consumers that are motivated to find the best price for basic goods like food instead of the companies that operate at the scale which enables them to undercut local business to lethal degree. You're essentially arguing that consumers are at fault for acting the way that the consumer-driven capitalist business model expects them to behave. Major investment in cheap, nationwide retail caused this, not consumers.

Can you even really blame the consumers? That's like blaming the birds who eat at bird feeders instead of the people who put out bird feeders in cities [1]. Blame the corporations and builders.

[1] Bird feeders can contribute to the decline of native plants when birds who disperse the seeds in their scat feed at the feeders, their scat often lands somewhere where the seeds have no chance at germinating (sidewalk, mowed lawn etc)

It’s hardly the small towns fault that countries urbanize as they get wealthier

It is their fault when they redistrict to expand their borders into the county, then realize they haven't the means to pay for all that infrastructure. Simple accounting mistakes can bankrupt them. Enthusiastic starry-eyed town councils want everything, but never even think about paying for it.

We're talking small towns here. Their council is a fireman, a baker, an insurance salesperson. Not a professional city planner. It seems inevitable they will over-reach and bankrupt the city treasury. It's a real risk.

Just as the article notes, free lots in out-of-the-way towns aren't too attractive because you still have to spend many dozens of thousands of dollars to put on a house on it, and then you live in an out-of-the-way town with few ways to resell. At that point, you could move to the rural fringe of a populous area, and be a lot closer to amenities, entertainment, good schools, healthcare, childcare, shopping, etc.

In dense and popular areas, it's the land prices that contribute to high housing prices. In less popular areas, it's construction prices that dominate the cost.

>At that point, you could move to the rural fringe of a populous area, and be a lot closer to amenities, entertainment, good schools, healthcare, childcare, shopping, etc.

The Bay Area is something of an exception because of geography. But, in general, drive out an hour from a lot of major and certainly mid-sized cities, and it's pretty easy to get out to a rural or exurban area and have a ton of space if you want it for a pretty reasonable amount of money--while still having easy access to urban or near-urban amenities.

But it also means over 2 hours of driving a day for a job. And if a kid wants to go to sports club, art club, visit friend or whatever, one parent has to drive him there that same distance every time.

This article is mostly focused on people who have remote jobs. So the daily commute is not really a concern.

I grew up in a rural town in Wisconsin and we had to drive an hour into the city of Madison, WI to do anything "city-like". We just did it every Saturday as a matter of habit. Anything you needed throughout the week that required going into the city was just scheduled or done on Saturday. We did it all on one day and have one "commute" per week. It really wasn't a huge deal. Even living in San Fran or Seattle or any other big city, it is likely that you spend more than 2 hours each week in transportation time. I recently moved out of Seattle, but even to do errands on a weekend we spent many hours sitting in traffic. We might only be driving 10 miles, but it still takes an hour or longer.

I could even back up my argument that I spent less time sitting in cars each week when I lived in rural Wisconsin than when I lived in the heart of Redmond Washington.

Life is different in rural areas. I think that is what most people miss. You won't have that same urban culture in rural America. You won't be running your kids to sports clubs, art clubs, etc. You will spend more time with yourself and your family. Your kids' activities will be with community programs from the rec center, the schools, and/or church group. The goal isn't to live city-life in a rural area. It is a shift in how you live.

For some people, rural life isn't for you. If you cherish those elements of city-life then you need to live in the city.

But what has changed in the world now is that for many people (myself included) we were forced to move to a city because of the work we chose to pursue. For those people, there is now an opportunity to live a more rural lifestyle and still be able to maintain jobs that we enjoy (through remote work).

Let's not forget the access to moving image culture that the network now provides. It used to be that life in a rural community doomed you if you were interested in seeing the most current and/or off-beat, international cinema, and at one point, even TV. That's just no longer the case. And the effect extends to all the "new" culture that appears on e.g. YouTube ... given reasonable internet service, you can be just as connected with all this as you would have been in NYC.

It's a change along only one particular metric, but it's a big change, nevertheless.

That assumes you work in the city and/or go in there all the time for activities. I'm remote anyway but if I did commute it would be into a suburban office park much closer to where I live. I maybe go into the closest major city once a month or so and that's fine for me. I grew up a similar distance from Philadelphia and maybe was in the city once a year.

> and then you live in an out-of-the-way town with few ways to resell

Why do we always buy/update our house for the next owner?

Designing to resell at a high price is overrated, but wanting the ability to resell at all isn't a bad idea.

Options, options, options. Knowing that resale will take 1-6 months rather than 1-6 years, maybe longer, means that if your life circumstances change (as happens to many people), you will be in a much better position to respond to them.

Ability to move away, whether because you found better job or better location matter. And second house in place you don't care about is costing money on taxes and maintenance.

Yeah. What happened to passing the house in the family?

By the time you end up dying nowadays, your kids have long owned a home and potentially your grandkids as well.

People are also often mobile and have different wants/needs in a house. There's a good chance that the family home isn't what they want need.

I’ve also seen many older people sell the old big house and use the proceeds to buy a conveniently located condo and use the rest as their retirement fund

I've just been discussing this with my wife. We're thinking of just buying a bigger enough lot that we could build more than one house.

A privilege that few are offered.

Most families have to sell the house before the parents die because the parents can’t even use the house anymore. Maybe it’s more common but it seems most parents die in a facility or some other special housing for end of life. They have to use that money they got from the house sale to pay for the end of life care.

Basically, end of life care siphons off any chances of generational wealth unless exceptionally well off.

No, I couldn't do it. Even apart from local family connections it would be difficult professionally. If I wanted to switch jobs or was let go for some reason then I would be limited to jobs that were completely remote, or I'd have to relocate again. 100% remote is more common these days, but not enough for me to limit myself to those options. And in some cases those 100% remote jobs will/are going away as COVID becomes more normalized as the status quo. (That has happened where I work. Partial remote yes. Full remote no.)

Even a completely free piece of land and free housing isn't a substitution for basic infrastructure and diverse local culture. Maybe if you have a growing family or are retirement age, but with the childless 35 and under crowd growing I can't imagine wanting to move to the middle of nowhere.

>basic infrastructure and diverse local culture

Or, you know, a job.

> diverse local culture

They've got both kinds: country and western.

I can’t think of any sane reason a parent would want to isolate their children from socialization; either. It would be to deprive them from their own nature and it would set them back, probably irreparably.

We live in an age where it’s easier than ever to socialize. Lincoln, the town in this article has a population of 1.2k. I grew up in the rural Midwest in a town of 800 before the internet was a thing. I had plenty of opportunities for socialization. In many ways rural communities are more social than urban ones because the community is the only thing they have.

> We live in an age where it’s easier than ever to socialize.

Do we? Online, maybe, but that's no substitute. In large parts of the country, kids can't go see their friends without their parents shuttling them around, in part because the terrain is near-impassable without a car.

Maybe if the rural community is still somewhat walkable - the core of many small town would qualify - but my feeling is that many/most are not.

(That said, this applies to most suburbs these days too, and even many cities. Unfortunately.)

Rural communities don't need to be walkable. I would regularly bike 5+ miles to visit my friends in our rural area (all farm country) and did so about as soon as I learned to ride a bike (6 or 7 years old). Kids biking wherever they wanted to go was very common. So was riding ATV's when they got to be preteens.

In rural communities, parents aren't always chaperoning and shuttling their kids everywhere. You're given a lot more freedom as a child.

How long ago was this? If you had freedom as a child, it might have been because of the time rather than the place. I was a kid in a rural area in the 2000s, and there was exactly one time in my entire childhood when I saw another kid that I knew outside of school without my parents having arranged it and having driven me somewhere. If I went for a walk alone, people driving past would stop and ask me if I was lost and needed help. Actually, that happened last time I was at my parents' home even though I'm in my 20s. I felt lonely and isolated growing up, and I still feel developmentally stunted from it.

Many states still allow 12 year olds to drive farm trucks on local roads.

This really only works when you fit in with the local demo. If you’re not white in an all white town - it doesn’t tend to go over well! Same for if your interest are different than the mainstream for that region.

For instance - I wasn’t into guns, hunting, or pickup trucks. Social outcast immediately.

At least in cities there are more groups of people. You might not fit into one group but it isn’t the only group.

The educational opportunities are also a joke. I hear what my coworkers at big tech had growing up even in just plain suburban areas and it’s incredible compared to what I had. I feel like I grew up in a developing country compared to them.

> We live in an age where it’s easier than ever to socialize

All the available data from credible sources shows the opposite. Research indicates that developed societies are facing an unprecedented loneliness crisis.

With some good help from social networks.

I have to agree that. In some ways, there is more socialization in a small town than in a large city. The threshold for "having enough in common" is lowered to "we both live here". In a city, people often interact less with others in absolute terms because there are so many people and talking to any one person over another seems arbitrary.

It is debatable whether rural communities provide less opportunity for "socialization" compared to the atomization and isolation that comes from living in a big city, perhaps around people you have no long term ties or roots with.

Take these last two years. Who would you imagine got more socialization: adults/children living in big cities where in-person socialization, schooling was banned to a large degree... or rural places that did not do this?

I would imagine people in the city had more access to socialization.

Not in my experience.; in small towns, you get to know everybody. In big cities, you pass through the streets like a ghost unless you make a real effort to escape your comfort zone. Move to a little town, and you're forcibly escaped from your comfort zone as soon as the clerk at the grocery store sees you twice and starts a conversation with you, and you find out his wife is one of your kid's new teachers.

I did both, moving out of a big city in middle of pandemic. Socialization became 10x easier the moment I moved. Anecdotal etc etc, but people are more friendly and more outgoing where I moved vs where I moved from.

Visited a friend in a town of 5000 for a month. A week or two in, I was running into people I "knew".

Personally, I put the sweet spot around 15k, in a town an hour away from a city with a real airport.

Having lived in both places with kids during, that wasn’t at all my experience. Anecdotal, obviously.

Yeah; some of the towns in the article are down to zero elementary schools. You're home schooling at that point, and with that few kids, I'm guessing there's no support network for the adults either.

Are you saying that cities are the more natural environment for children, and that rural living deprives them of their nature?

"Childless" cohorts are irrelevant if you mean to imply these people intend to remain childless. They will not have descendants nor create lasting communities. They are a dead end.

The future is made by those that procreate.

What is the necessity for a "diverse" culture, as opposed to say a cohesive culture, or at least one that promotes healthy and strong values (such to cultivate healthy, strong people)?

If existence is pointless except for procreation, what is our children's purpose? To have children, in order to have children, in order to have children? This is unbounded teleological recursion, unless you allow for a basis case in which any given life also has meaning for its own sake.

Myself, I hope for more for my own two children than just that they have children of their own some day, just as my parents didn't have me only in order that they might someday have great-great-grandkids they'll never meet

Culture and ideas transmit through channels parallel to heredity. Celibate monastic orders are one obvious example.

I want to live in a diverse culture for a reason analogous to why I'm wary of agricultural monocultures: All it takes is the right virus to come along, and all of a sudden we don't have any bananas anymore. There are some tragic failure modes associated with strong, cohesive, anti-"diverse" cultures.

Can't those who don't have children still influence other's children? Famous childless people include Rosa Parks, Arthur C. Clark, the Dali Lama, Edwin Hubble, Oprah, Angela Merkle, Bill Hicks, Dr. Seuss, T.S. Elliot and George Washington. Surely they influenced the future.

Plenty of people have their reasons for not having children and to simply call them a "dead end" is pretty heartless.

By diverse culture I mean more than one local bar and one local diner. As much as I like apple pie, I'd begin to hate it if it were my only option

I wouldn't call it heartless, just a fact of life. I don't think the above comment meant that they are worthless or that people shouldn't be able to do it, only that you can't build a community around people who have no children beyond 1 generation. I don't get the jump to defensiveness, there are perfectly good reasons to not have them, and you need no reason at all, but one thing that will happen is that a community of the future won't include you or your descendants.

Politically and culturally they are though, which matters in the context of long term migration patterns and political fallout.

I'm not making a moral judgement of those that cannot reproduce despite their desire to, and I have full heartfelt sympathy for them.

>more than one local bar

Valid, there are certainly less of these things. There is more diversity of space, nature, perhaps even social interactions with extended family that may live in one location.

> Politically and culturally they are though...

I don't even know where to start in trying to understand this statement. Are you saying that you will only leave a political and cultural legacy in your children and no one else? People not having kids could very well be leaving a _larger_ legacy than those who do. They do have more time after all. That's just a thought experiment, but far from implausible. Frankly I find your point here to be utter nonsense.

> What is the necessity for a "diverse" culture, as opposed to say a cohesive culture, or at least one that promotes healthy and strong values (such to cultivate healthy, strong people)?

Strange to pit "diverse" against "cohesive" and "healthy and strong values" as if they are opposites.

Lots of people cite this paper from the author of “Bowling Alone” claiming pretty much just that https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/benediktsson2013/files...

Anecdotally I’ve experienced this to be true, but I still think diversity is something we must strive for. I even kind of hate the word “diversity” since to me it carries undertones of “existing separately, together” versus empathy that will make us truly one people.

It may be easy to feel safe by default in a community of people who all look like me, but I think that’s my survival-focused animal brain just not wanting to be killed or eaten. There are just as many stories about families/communities sweeping all sorts of awful abuse under the rug in the name of cohesion, and I would rather push through the eumemic struggle and try to truly understand all types of people than be happy in a lie where we have to force a happy face every Thanksgiving when Uncle Touchy comes over or whatever.

Southern Hospitality is definitely a real thing though, and it feels so nice to greet people on the street, wave at others and have them wave back, have off-the-cuff conversations with strangers, etc. Way better than walking around San Francisco where lots of people (I’m guilty too!) try to stare at the ground when walking by each other, not that you’d be able to see their face if they were holding their head up anyway.

Certainly "diverse" was present by OP as opposed to something yes?

And since we agree on what actually matters (the other terms in this list) what is exclusive to diverse communities do you think?

Someplace diverse, where I want to raise my kids, allows them to explore a wide variety of possibilities. They should be able to see the arts via museums and theaters while also being able to explore the outdoors. There should be paths to dive deep in the areas that spark their curiosity, whether it be varsity sports, science and math olympiads, becoming a ballet dancer, or becoming an expert woodworker.

They should be exposed to large enough cohorts of people with different backgrounds and interests that stereotypes are pushed away and when they meet new people, they instead form relationships by getting to know that person instead of assuming things about them.

The opposite of diversity is not coherent, it is myopia. Groups lacking diversity lack fresh insight and allow opportunities for stereotype and intolerance to grow. I've encountered exactly this in dozens of Midwestern suburbs. I grew up in a town and school district where our class had "the black kid", "the Latino kid", "the Vietnamese girl" and so on surrounded by hundreds of white kids. The misinformation was real, and the opportunity to talk to someone and dispel those beliefs was low. University offered a chance to fix some of that, but my former classmates who never left town are bye and large a bunch of bigots. On the other hand, people I knew who were raised in diverse areas learned much broader perspectives and manage to incorporate new view points more easily.

There is a spectrum, can we agree on that?

We are programmers yes? Is a monolith better or is mass distribution better? Depends yes?

In business and operations do economies of scale exist? Or is it always better to be separate individual groups not operating under a larger shared structure? Depends.

"Diversity" taken to the extreme is entropy. Obviously extreme entropy is incoherent.

Politically, socially, culturally, mass diversity is correlated with decline of social cohesion, loyalty, trust, common sacrifice and rise in tribal and political conflict.

There are advantages for sure to exposure to broad viewpoints and new information. Having a cohesive and generally homogeneous society (and this can be defined along many axes don't forget.. not just "race". How about social values, political views, ethnic culture, shared historical experience etc) does not preclude one from learning and being curious and open to new perspectives. But it does eliminate petty conflicts that can waste time and energy and get in the way of real progress and collective power.

When you hear about companies strongly promoting their "company culture", aside from the requisite amount of skepticism about this being marketing and hot air, is there a kernel of truth to the idea that everyone being on some degree of the same page helps that organization work together better to achieve shared goals?

Would it be better for, say, a military unit, a sports team, a corporation to have all their members having very divergent viewpoints, cultural values, philosophies, mission statements, purposes, motivations etc? Not always. Can we at least say that... not always?

Team building, creating elements of homogeneity, shared purpose, and loyalty, wouldn't be a common endeavor (not that it is perfect) for all of these entities if so.

>and so on surrounded by hundreds of white kids

I absolutely agree that life is harder for a minority amongst a divergent majority. This is possibly an argument against putting people in this situation. Is it better for them? Your statements sound like it is not.

To me, all historic associations with goal of "strong people" have "conquest and domination" attached to it as real goal.

In that context, it makes sense for it to be opposed to diversity. Just part of it stays unsaid.

And thinking about it, "strong values" tend to imply conservative. People don't say that about radical social justice proponents doing sacrifices for their cause. Nor about LGBT couple deeply faithful and in love. It gotta be religious to be called that.

If historically strength means conquest and domination, weakness must mean being conquered and dominated yes?

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".. this is observably true throughout history no?

In that case, why would a people/nation not want to be strong? Why would they not do what they can to ensure they are not conquered?

>"strong values" tend to imply conservative

Exactly. Then what is the appeal of not-strong values? How are these to be sold to people that don't want to be run over by the strong?

>People don't say that about radical social justice proponents doing sacrifices for their cause

Perhaps because they don't make the nation strong?

>it makes sense for it to be opposed to diversity.

Does being opposed to diversity enable your nation to be the conqueror or the conquered?

"in that context"... the context to which you agree is historically true?

> If historically strength means conquest and domination, weakness must mean being conquered and dominated yes?

No politician or populist ever promised to "build the nation of weak people". That just does not exists.

> "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".. this is observably true throughout history no?

Not really, no. That is expression of spefic ideology in which might is right and no other moral values apply. It is not accurate description of human behavior in either large or small scale. It happens with ideologies like Nazism, sure, but they are not all that ever existed.

> Exactly. Then what is the appeal of not-strong values? How are these to be sold to people that don't want to be run over by the strong?

There is no such thing as someone promoting "not-strong values". Such rhetorical point does not happen to be used

You are confusing propaganda and euphemism with real thing. The "strong values" is slogan, euphemism or propaganda, take your pick. Nothing to do with actual strength or actual values.

> Does being opposed to diversity enable your nation to be the conqueror or the conquered? "in that context"... the context to which you agree is historically true?

Neither of those. Simple, the political groups being opposed to diversity are the ones who currently happen to be close to movements that in fact want to dominate other nations or races.

It does not have to be like that, other combinations could happen. But currently, things are aligned this way.

>The future is made by those that procreate.

Let me guess. Your idealized society doesn’t have room for gay people either, does it?

I used to live in a rural farming town for a few years. I'll be blunt. The people in the town were racist. Not everyone, but enough to make life extremely uncomfortable. And not the 'burn a cross on your lawn' kind of racist (well, mostly, some of the youth were precisely that kind of overt racist - I was called various racial slurs by drunk teenagers, and one time had them swerve their car to almost hit me), but the 'it takes five times as long to take my order at the diner as anyone else' or 'postal clerk keeps insisting on multiple forms of ID to hand over a package, despite not asking for any ID from anyone else who came up to the window' kind of racism. That's not pleasant to put up with daily nonstop.

This throwaway factoid in the article is supremely important: > small towns in north central and northwest Kansas are usually 90%+ white.

This kind of extreme homogeneity breeds racism and xenophobia.

Yep, the random people following you around every store you shop at, always double and triple checking up on you every 5 minutes, random people side-eyeing you everywhere you go but being nice to your face and you couldn't convince them that their actions qualified as racism if you held them before a 12-panel jury with video evidence and Jesus Christ as your prosecutor.

But they're not generally mean to you, they didn't kill you or anything, just made you feel unwelcome everywhere you go every day of your life always, and they did it so effortlessly they weren't even aware they were doing it.

That's deep south racism and it sucks so much because I didn't even have the tools to recognize what they were doing until I got away from it. Since it always happened to me, I just assumed that's the way people were.

Moving to the PNW and being treated as part of the background and not a circus side show was such an eye opener. I now think everyone should get away from their hometown for a few years at least once in their lives, because otherwise they may never know how much of what they take as normal is actually weird, evil, odd, or strange about their version of "normal".

My hometown is large enough to be considered a city, and is just somewhat rural. You couldn't pay me to live there because it's very depressing. You've got one main highway with a walmart and a couple chain restaurants (Applebees and Olive Garden).

There's an old downtown area that's pure blight. Businesses that were just abandoned 10+ years ago and were never filled... and some still-operating businesses that look like they were abandoned 10 years ago. All local jobs are menial. Factory work dried up 50 years ago. 5 people I went to high school with (that I'm aware of) have died from overdoses. The education system is mediocre at best and there are lots of racists and bullies.

If you go more rural it gets better simply because you're living in the woods. At that point you're dealing with well water, septic, satellite internet (maybe starlink?), frequent electricity loss after storms, and general isolation. Maybe I'll retire to a place like this.

I would be curious to see how much you would need to spend to replicate all the services that large cities generally have for a typical upper middle class family.

Local school probably doesn't have AP classes or anyone to meaningfully help with SAT prep. Or a computer science teacher. Got to hire tutors to do all that or send the kids to boarding school.

Probably cannot get childcare. Got to import a nanny if you want full time childcare. And the nanny will need a car as nothing is in walking distance.

Airports. You are going to spend a bunch extra flying out of whatever little regional airport is nearby. No low cost carriers in these small towns.

Then there are the things that cannot be replicated, like ambulances:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/there-s-shortage-...

If you are choosing to live in one of these places, there is probably someone in your household not working who is going to mind the kids and help engage in homemaking.

You will also find you have neighbors in similar situations who likely run a small group daycare operation for a bit of extra cash.

Yes, your kid is not going to have as many teachers. They will also have far, far, far fewer peers and smaller classroom sizes. They will get more attention from the teachers.

If your kid wants to do AP or SAT prep, you will find your local school can run the course after hours. You can probably hire one of their teachers.

Fair, there would be a more informal economy that would compensate for a lot of it.

Am a bit skeptical that a course could easily be created out of the air like that, but maybe smaller places are a lot more flexible.

Absolutely true, I would argue the advantage of having greater attention from knowledgeable adults in a small town far outweigh the benefits from living in a city.

> Yes, your kid is not going to have as many teachers. They will also have far, far, far fewer peers and smaller classroom sizes. They will get more attention from the teachers. If your kid wants to do AP or SAT prep, you will find your local school can run the course after hours. You can probably hire one of their teachers.

This seems a bit disingenuous. More likely, families would need to give up on their child getting a truly rigorous education. Schools in rural US don't have the ability to actually prepare students for top tier college programs. They may be adequately prepared for middling undergraduate education but they won't be anywhere even close to AP/IB students from Austin/SF/Seattle/Boston.

I think you're giving high schools way too much credit in general for the rigor of the education they provide for the best students.

There are a whole bunch of really bad inner city schools - to the point that "inner city school" is synonymous with bad education. Tutoring is expensive, most middle and low income families can't afford them.

If you are wealthy enough to afford a tutor in the city, then great you can bring out a tutor to you or live near a good school.

Inner city schools can be bad but they usually have more opportunities than rural ones. Rural ones literally have nothing to offer. I’ve talked to enough people who went to inner city schools - they had way more opportunity than I could’ve ever imagined. School might’ve had disruptions but opportunity was very much available.

My school was so poor they went to a four day week and cut all electives. No one went to a target college and people struggled when they did go to college (many changing their major from a hard one to an easy one). I think I went to the most prestigious college out of the entire group (not even that good) and I certainly was not prepared. The average student at my university was infinitely smarter and harder working than people at my HS. It was the first time in my life I had to actually work at schooling.

Mind you - I chose one of the most rigorous and difficult majors. So, it was hard even for the kids who did come from good schools. Anyone else from my school would’ve dropped out - I had unparalleled grit and that was the only reason I was able to continue.

Indeed, but schools like:

- Westwood in Austin

- Lynbrook in SF

- Thomas Jefferson in Richmond

- IL Math & Science Academy in Chicago

- Clements High School in Houston

Are public, free, and will provide that education without tutors. My wife grew up on a family salary of ~$25,000/year in the 00's and went to one of these schools and through the IB program was incredibly well prepared to get top GPA in a top-5 engineering undergrad.

A huge part of that was being surrounded by other also very smart people, and being constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area, and you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free. If you want free land, you simply have to give up that quality of education.

Binning/exclusivity/stratification is as big or bigger part of that than the quality of the school's education.

What percentage of kids are served by schools of that caliber? 5%? 1%? That's not "access" to better education, it's selection bias.

>constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area,

Rural life precludes having or setting high standards?

>you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free.

You're paying for it, whether you have kids or not. You just don't have the freedom of picking your child's educators without having to buy a new house and move to change school districts.

And that's presuming the rural school isn't sufficient, which is a loaded assumption all on its own.

> Rural life precludes having or setting high standards?

In practice it does because people going there generally go for:

1. Nature - awesome!

2. Self isolation - you can't hack it in mass society anymore, hardly a premise for high standards, statistically

3. Are stuck there because of financial reasons - it's hard to have high standards when you're unemployed, underemployed, underpaid.

4. Are stuck there because of family - that's a valid reason but you're also stuck there with people at points 2 & 3.

Cities have a much greater degree of variance, but as the floor is lower so too the ceiling is much higher.

There's just more people of more backgrounds around in cities.

Access is highly variable though and I'd go so far as to say it's the exception in cities rather than the norm. For example, Cambridge MA has one public high school and it's very much middle of the pack in the state with respect to testing outcomes. Though again it's probably a mistake to assign too much credit/blamr to the school anyway unless it's exceptionally bad.

Otherwise said, if you want to move there, the wife is expected to stay at home and accept no possibility of getting job or career for much longer time then it would be otherwise.

There is no reason a male of the house can't be the homemaker. Even if he's the one working some of the land, that will likely be before the kids are really awake.

You may also have an elderly parent or an older child who can do the work. Remember, with enough land you can give family members their own house, yard and driveway.

It's important to not get stuck in old ways of thinking.

"It's important to not get stuck in old ways of thinking."

Great comment, but I think you mean stuck in new/urban ways of thinking.

It probably seems crazy to someone in a rural town that parents would spend all their time working to afford childcare so they don't have to interact with their own children.

> spend all their time working to afford childcare so they don't have to interact with their own children.

That is obviously not the intent. It is a calculation. We come out significantly ahead if we hire a nanny or do daycare than if me or my spouse quits to take care of the kids.

It is more expensive to go the nanny route, but that will give us the option of being near our kids all day and interacting with them, which is very valuable to us, while still working full time jobs (we are both remote).

Every parent is trying to balance income, expense and best interest of the child (attention, education, socialization).

Villages here have tons of women working jobs. Those places are not rich, so when shops and factories opend, they seeked those jobs. Where they can't (like for lack of childcare) they often actually really struggle. The social issues are very real in those places.

Plus, is it? Or you are using rural as shortcut for fundamentalist Christian conservatives subcultures? The manipulative talking point "working to afford childcare so they don't have to interact with their own children" suggest so.

As someone who grew up in a farm town of 3k and went to public schools my entire life it was fine but boring. I’d argue the boring aspect either results in kids trying harder at school or getting into trouble.

I had no problems getting a high paying engineering job in SV and eventually buying a home in the Peninsula. I’d argue some kids in boring rural areas have more motivation to learn than ones who grow up with everything they need.

I grew up in a small, dying town in Texas. There was still Ambulance service, so really depends on how small (<800 people). There are generally no jobs, so there are plenty of childcare providers from other young parents (who probably grew up there) to retirees who need some extra cash. Quality of childcare is of course, variable.

Airport travel is probably only a good option for remote workers, I don't think I took a commercial flight till I was over 18. Most of the stable jobs are government related (town/county governement and school teachers) and often awarded via nepotism.

Land is cheap, but winds of 50MPH are the nromal, tornadoes, snow, heat, dust. I don't think I could ever go back to living there permanently, and it will only get worse during economic downturns.

I will also note that big box stores are probably detrimental to tax revenues, but my memory of the smaller stores was high prices and low inventory. We'd often drive 70 miles to the bigger city, as it was cheaper, wider selection. Nowadays I'm sure it's mostly Amazon or the big drive to Walmart, and no local store is going to change that. The Sears and Motgomery WArd catalogues were the general shopping tools, most of thee places I knew of peaked in the 50's, surged a bit in 80's with the Oil Boom, and then went back to dying.

You seem to be trying to replicate a dual income urban lifestyle in the country. If you’re willing to live in rural areas do your kids really need to go to an in person school for all this information and tutoring? Do both parents need to work full-time to even require daycare?

I am not sure what to think of homeschooling. I was homeschooled until grade 8 and even after did a ton of courses online. Worked out great for me, but only because I am not a social person. I am not certain that I can be lonely as long as I have an internet connection, as I spent days by myself in university.

How that worked out for some other people I know was much more mixed.

Rural should not imply "homeschooled".

As a new Nebraskan, there's just something unnerving about vast flat land, at least for me. After three years the biggest reason I look for jobs is to get off of the big dining room table I live on.

I could never do it, but I had a friend who did exactly that. He was from Kansas though.

Went to Boston after college in Kansas, worked for five years moving up in title, came to the Bay Area, started as a staff engineer and quickly moved up to principle, and after working a total of 15 years, retired at 37 back to Kansas. Lived in the smallest studio he could find the whole time he was in the cities and had $1M+ saved up, which was more than enough to sustain his lifestyle in Kansas after spending $100,000 on a house (land + construction).

Isn't this pretty much a question of how well off the person you ask is? If they can afford better they likely already have, if they can't this question might get a yes, but it will likely trap people isolated and worse off than before. I can't see how this would ever be a good idea.

This is such a crucial point that I think many people are entirely overlooking. Even the case examples in the article moved because they needed to find affordable places to live. It wasn't really a free 'if I could move anywhere in the country...would I pick rural Kansas' kind of choice.

Sure, build a shooting range and watch the money fly in

I have a sneaking suspicion that you’ve never spent any significant time seeing what it takes to build a shooting range.

You’re looking at a half million dollar investment to start a reasonably-equipped outdoor range. $2m+ for an indoor handgun range. That’s before dealing with insurance and operating expenses.

In the 90's, there were rural towns in the Dakotas, which were auctioning off land. This permafrost land was left in the hands of the municipalities/banks who were trying to avoid paying taxes on the land.

Any sizable plots north and east of Kansas out to Ohio (not including West Virginia), is pretty easy to sell, since you can lease it out to farmers for the foreseeable future.

The price of farmland in the USA has more than doubled per acre in the past 18 months. It’s at the point now where without significant price increases for the outputs, farming won’t be worth doing unless you’re a giant ADM style cartel that makes up the difference in ethanol subsidies, regulatory capture, or some other flavor of cronyism.

>without significant price increases for the outputs,

You say this as if it would be abnormal.

Food prices go up with (are part of) inflation, too.

ADM doesn't really do any farming themselves (except for small experimental plots).

Is there anything that hasn’t doubled in price in the last 18 months?

Just about everything. The consumer price index has risen just slightly less than 10% over the last 18 months.

Oil and gas stocks.

XOM 10/30/2020: 32.62 01/28/2022: 75.28

Pretty much everything normal people buy

Silver

In my case, I could and I want to, but I wouldn’t. Unfortunately my experience as someone who would immediately be identified as an “outsider” in rural America has been not that great. Unless it’s a tourist town, or an immigrant one (like those straight to the factory from the boat towns), it’s usually not that great.

Towns suffering from depopulation to such a degree that they've decided to give part of it away just to have neighbors to do business with are probably welcoming of outsiders to the point of desperation. I highly doubt you'll be treated like an outsider in one of these towns that is giving away land.

No, not in my experience living in a rural small town. Desperation doesn't make xenophobia and racism go away, if anything it further entrenches resentment ('why does the foreigner get a job while we're unemployed').

Many countries have offered similar deals. Italy had hundreds of houses for € 1 but you needed to fix them up to a liveable state, often € 10-12K.

Australian country towns offered land for AUD 1 (USD 0.72). It has also occurred in Spain and even Japan. Japan is destroying hundreds of empty houses a year.

If I could get a great internet connection either via satellite or otherwise, sure. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to make a living the way I want.

There's a good reason it's free.

And even being free, no one is taking it.

Hell I could put a nasty mattress on the curb with bed bugs on it and a "free" sign and it would be gone in an hour. But these free houses and free land lots have been free for years and still no one wants them.

So yes, to your point "There's a good reason it's free".

Does it have water security, electricity, access to social services, access to logistics networks, and so on?

tl;dr - No.

I think you could attract a bunch of well-off remote workers to homestead if you promised them a stable high speed internet connection when they got there.

Free land isn't enough; it shouldn't feel like I'm moving backward in time.

The biggest thing stopping me from doing it would be a lack of quality healthcare. I can't imagine many top doctors hanging around a place like Kansas.

Kansas population, almost 3 million. Small nations in Scandinavia have some of the best healthcare, social security, internet, wages, etc. so if what you say is true (I have no idea) then it is a problem with America at large and not Kansas per se since Kansas have everything needed to be at the top if allowed by the systems in place.

You make your money in civilization then when you're retired you can have a nice ranch or villa somewhere quiet, green and sunny.

I used to be somewhat upset at the ECB bailing out Greece but then I realized all that prime real estate coast line for Northern European boomers lol. Who has the last laugh?

How the hell do you get the notion that the ECB bailed out Greece? Don't you know the "bailout" money went straight to the German and French banks, the only thing Greece got was more loans at worst conditions, more prostitutes in the streets, more suicides, more brain drain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com