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>I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life.

Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head and we see that rural communities are providing a huge subsidy to urban communities in the form of labor and commodities.

There is a gross misunderstanding between urban and rural citizens of the complexity of their interactions, and it's near the core of our current political polarization.

Increasingly, many of these rural primary industries will need on site tech workers as well.

Rural Canada is where I'm located at the moment. I tend to agree with GP that cities are an inevitable migration towards efficiency and that rural life is increasingly an unsustainable welfare state.

How can you say unsustainable when rural communities are where food comes from? Mass famine is unsustainable...

I wouldn't call them "unsustainable" because even though I disagree with the subsidies I think they're pretty easy to sustain.

But your reasoning makes no sense. You don't need subsidies to have food. Here's a study on farm subsidies that found that removing them would increase prices only slightly for most goods: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.agri-pulse.com%2Fa...

> The impact of premium subsidies – which work as discounts on the amount that farmers pay for crop insurance - varies widely depending on the crop and the policy. The price of corn, which is primarily used for livestock feed, would rise by nearly 5 percent if the subsidy were withdrawn, which would hurt livestock operations as well as foreign customers and ethanol producers.

> Lusk says that removing subsidies would lead to at least small price increases for all foods, with the largest increase, of 1 percent, for eggs. Meat prices would be about 0.55 percent higher. Fruit and vegetable growers also benefit from the insurance, so prices for those crops would rise by 0.67 percent, Lusk found. The price of dairy products would be 0.14 percent higher.

The argument is you can’t have cities without rural areas supplying what they need.

To disprove that you need cities that are self-sufficient.

Subsidies don’t matter in that question.

Uhh no, who was arguing that you can have cities without anyone in rural areas? This just looks like another ridiculous straw man.

> cities are an inevitable migration towards efficiency and that rural life is increasingly an unsustainable welfare state

Was what the whole thread started with.

That says nothing about there being nobody in rural areas, just fewer people, and it being an unsustainable welfare state obviously refers to the current subsidies.

So yeah, it was a straw man on your part.

Cities are the centers of knowledge work and financialization, not heavy industries and agriculture people need to survive. Humanity could live without cities, we did before, but it couldn’t live without what makes cities possible from afar.

Somehow I doubt that GP was arguing that literally 0% of the population would be outside of cities.

Try tilling 40 acres with a horse. Imagine getting sick, or giving birth.

We lived without cities, but with a vastly lower population and quality of life. Things like knowledge work and financialization are what made possible great ventures such as energy distribution, transportation, mechanized farming, medicines, and so forth. I'm not sure agriculture would even sustain the existing rural population without the infrastructure of a complex modern economy.

We're all in this together.

> tend to agree with GP that cities are an inevitable migration towards efficiency

This is why cities came about in the first place.

> that rural life is increasingly an unsustainable welfare state.

It's not the case that all rural areas are subsidized in the way those in the US often are.

It's important to understanding how just wrong the thinking behind this comment is.

"Everyone needs X" does NOT mean that it's impossible for X to be subsidized, or for "the place that produces X" to be subsidized.

> Flip this on it's head and we see that rural communities are providing a huge subsidy to urban communities in the form of labor and commodities.

That's not how economics works. That's not how any of this works.

If rural areas are getting a disproportionate amount of government spending, then they're (probably) getting subsidized. That they produce things that the urban dwellers need doesn't change that.

Just like if a big city gets a huge federal grant for a new subway system, that's probably a subsidy*, even if the big city produces things that people in rural areas use.

* Though you can argue that the question of whether something is a subsidy is really more about whether the area gets a certain amount of money in total, rather than claiming any form of federal/state spending is a subsidy automatically

Cities literally can’t sustain themselves without outside inputs - food, building materials, energy, etc.

Subsidizing agriculture isn’t a “rural” subsidy, it’s a “population” subsidy.

> Subsidizing agriculture isn’t a “rural” subsidy, it’s a “population” subsidy.

It's both, actually. Just like if the government started paying for free, say, cloud storage, regardless of where anyone lives, that'd be a population subsidy on the consumer side, and an area/industry-specific subsidy on the producer side.

> Cities literally can’t sustain themselves without outside inputs - food, building materials, energy, etc.

Irrelevant. People need transportation, too, but if the government starts buying people bikes and cars, that's a subsidy.

Note that nobody's calling for the federal government to spend zero money in rural areas, when they talk about subsidies, they usually mean spending a disproportionate amount of money there. What "disproportionate" means is itself a question -- I think the most logical definition is "gets more federal $ in spending than they send to DC in tax revenue" but you could argue otherwise.

I'm not arguing if it's a subsidy, I'm arguing who benefits.

You can't grow enough food for a city within city limits. So if a subsidy goes to a rural area to grow food, that's not a subsidy for rural people, that's a subsidy for everyone.

As I already said, it's a subsidy for everyone on the consumer side, and a subsidy for that industry (which is located in rural areas, largely) on the producer side.

And the benefit is debatable. Yes, it lowers prices a tiny bit, but you could lower all kinds of costs through government producer subsidies, and yet not all of those would be of great or even net benefit.

Glad we agree then!

> Note that nobody's calling for the federal government to spend zero money in rural areas, when they talk about subsidies, they usually mean spending a disproportionate amount of money there.

This is interesting because I think this is the heart of a disagreement between urban and rural folks.

From the urban side, there's the perspective of "we're sending more to the government than the government is spending on us!". This is totally valid, and can be frustrating as a city-dweller. This is also exactly what we'd expect, though, given that the whole conceit of cities is that they introduce economies of scale and industrial concentration. Cities specialize at producing a lot of value without taking as much infrastructure or upkeep.

From the rural side, though, there's the opposite perspective. Of course there's more of a maintenance cost: you can't centralize ten-thousand acres of farmland, it is expansive by its definition. Likewise, you can't centralize resource extraction: the resources exist where they exist, and at the density they exist. A local mining operation may only need a few dozen workers, but those workers need roads, electricity, water, and housing which cannot scale. The purpose of this disproportionate spending and investment is to make possible the economies of scale within cities that consume this rural output.

A simple metaphor here is the idea of organs within the body. Your gut subsidizes the rest of your body calorie-wise: your intestines send far more calories to the rest of your body than they consume. Then again, of course they do, because if they didn't they would serve no benefit.

Cities may consume a lot of resources, but produce disproportionately more money. Rural areas may consume a lot of money, but produce disproportionately more resources. This is to be expected, since they're each specializing in separate things. If we're expecting farmlands to be as economically efficient as cities, then it's only fair to expect cities to be as agriculturally efficient as rural areas.

> Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches.

We pay a premium to buy food from the rural US in the form of common import tariffs that stifle or eliminate competition at the expense of the consumer and to the benefit of agricultural interests, and of course, taxes that subsidize agriculture. Large volumes of food need to come from some rural area, but if left to its own devices, the market would never demand that so much of it come from the rural US, or that the rural US make so much from the crops it produces. That's presumably some of what the OP was hinting at.

Exactly.

It's bizarre how often you see people arguing as if a lack of rural or farm subsidies would suddenly mean food disappearing.

The core function of the government is to provide basic necessities to its constituents. In other words, guaranteeing a food supply is a critical national interest and there’s no better way than to incentivize home-grown food.

The primary function of government was to protect liberty. The USA liberty experiment is nearly done.

These two go hand-in-hand. As a whole-cloth believer in government's main goal being the protection of rights, I'd propose that it's pretty tough to guarantee those rights if you have invading armies or revolting citizens. Guaranteeing stability for the nation (in economic, military, and civic spaces) is needed, even if only as a means to protect liberty.

Consider this scenario:

1. The US drops all agricultural subsidies and tariffs.

2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere.

3. "Elsewhere" goes to war with a US ally and stops selling food to the US.

4. The US then wishes it hadn't given up its abilty to grow food.

The amount of “the worlds economy is so interdependent that no country would go to war” argumentation seems to have died somehow.

Also I don’t know how “we will get food from even further away rural communities argues against food coming from rural communities”.

The prime growing areas will just move north where there is already plenty of rural land not being used.

> 2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere

Gonna stop you there. This wouldn't happen, because the US has plenty of growing acreage and plenty of demand. The farming industry doesn't need subsidies, and removing them would affect total output only slightly on average.

Now, if we were more like Japan and had issues with enough space for farming, then yeah I'd agree with you.

Unless medium to large scale farming in the US is significantly different than the rest of the world, Land availability and demand are only tiny parts of the puzzle and not even the hardest issues to solve when farming. The need for immediate scale for any kind of shortage is guaranteed to cause significant shortages + massive price hikes starvation in the short term.

Lol, just how big do you think the farm subsidies are? This is some big-time Clancychat you're throwing out there.

Lol, i'm not talking about scale changes, not subsidies! loloolol

> 2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere.

I'd argue that the more plausible outcome is what economists predict: US agricultural interests would have to compete and domestic prices for food would go down, while the price that struggling economies which export food can charge for that food would go up. Competition... and the various parties involved focusing on what they're good at producing.

On the other hand, we in the US do tend to be pretty idiotic about largely abandoning business sectors when the going gets rough.

One of the main points of the parent posts was the impact of climate change and/or subsidies for fuel. Our local agricultural system is already hopelessly dependent on fossil fuels, and you propose that this situation is improved if the US starts importing most of its food?

So the US would stop producing food and import it instead?

First, why? Second, from an ecological perspective this wouldn't change anything, just shift shit around.

Ridiculous, stop.

> So the US would stop producing food and import it instead?

Is that how US agricultural interests would react if they had to compete on the free market? They would simply give up and let the land lie fallow?

You just said government would lift tariffs. Most of the land would go to a monoculture for export. The only land that would grow diverse foods for domestic consumption would be to cater to the demand for local consumption. And in the world where government lifted tariffs, we must assume that they acted in representation of the people, so that demand mustn't be so high.

This is pretty basic.

The food you eat as a wealthy person is probably in a good part produced in other parts of the world due to cheap labor. Sure we provide lots of corn and and soy but a lot of that is for export fuel and meat production

"Large volumes of food need to come from some rural area, but if left to its own devices, the market would never demand that so much of it come from the rural US, or that the rural US make so much from the crops it produces."

Why not? The US exports a lot a food and consumes a lot of food (per capita). If we were to cease exports and even some domestic production, then prices will rise. The worldwide demand isn't going anywhere but up, while arable land is the same or shrinking.

In a way I do think that many farm subsidies should be examined and maybe done away with, but in another way I realize that we can't compete globally (exports), and many likely can't afford to pay the the true cost of domestic production. Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.

> Why not? The US exports a lot a food and consumes a lot of food (per capita). If we were to cease exports and even some domestic production

To clarify, removing tariffs and agricultural subsidies might not affect our overall agricultural output much (I wouldn't want to make a prediction on that) but it would lower the cost of goods which were previously subsidized with taxes or tariffs.

> Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.

It's worth pointing out that almost all economists of all political leanings are opposed to agricultural subsidies (it's one of the rare political things economists agree on) and one of the commonly cited reasons is that buying food produced by third-world economies at a true market price would be a natural and valuable step in helping those countries develop and grow out of poverty. The number of powerful people (including people who would normally give lip service to free markets) who, when confronted by this consensus among economists, basically don't give a shit is... disheartening.

I think that would be true and work, but only if our output wasn't reduced enough to interfere with other nations (supply needs to exceed nutritional need as it does today, and the distribution and supply chain also needs to be unaffected or improved). No idea of it would normally or not. But I'm guessing the high inflation and potential food crisis from the war in Ukraine would make this a unlikely candidate for a time to make that switch.

> The number of powerful people (including people who would normally give lip service to free markets) who, when confronted by this consensus among economists, basically don't give a shit is... disheartening.

Domain experts reach consensus and their recommendations aren’t followed in a lot of disciplines. I agree in this case it makes economic sense to stop farm subsidies — which could result in lower domestic food production and greater imports from abroad. And when the world economy is humming along smoothly that’s great. But if there’s a hiccup in the world economy —- e.g., in the case of war in a place where it makes economic sense to grow a lot of wheat or a problem in the logistics network shuttling things from where they’re produced to where they’re consumed then it’s not as clear-cut.

My naive view of politics, when they’re running well, is to navigate conflicting priorities from groups, including domain experts, the populace, etc.

And I think the farm subsidies could be interpreted to involve national security concerns on top of then economic concerns. If a world war breaks out and we’re on the opposite side from places we normally source our food then they have leverage over us.

TL/DR I think there’s more at play than just the economic concern.

Regarding the security concerns, I assume the reduction in poverty overseas would have tremendous security benefits here. I also tend not to believe US agriculture would not simply reduce its output to dangerously low levels, but that’s harder to speculate about.

Rural communities are providing a subsidy to urban communities by ... selling them things? Isn't "charging money for" just about the opposite of subsidizing?

Food is necessary; that does not mean that the US's rural communities in their current form are all necessary or even that they're unsubsidized. Food is an incredibly substitutable market, you'd expect the market to push prices down to a minimum.

This isn't as clear cut as you are making it. A lot of infrastructure haa pushed the price of food down. As prices go down, so do margins. Making a living as a farm hand has better margins without the interstate highway system for example.

The supposed "subsidies" to rural areas are the cost of creating the low prices which cities also reap a lot of benefit from. You in fact could not easily substitute rural monoculture for something else. Not at today's prices.

In your worldview: the government subsidizes rural life by... building roads? Making gas cheaper?

How does all the food grown in rural areas make it into cities? Not by teleportation; by being loaded into semis, driven on roads, using gas. There's a cost. When roads get worse, when gas is more expensive; food gets more expensive; and it gets more expensive for cities more than it gets more expensive for rural areas.

That's... subsidizing. For cities. We live in an interconnected economic system. The fact that cities make more tax revenue, then export some of that tax revenue to rural areas to support their public infrastructure, does not mean cities are subsidizing rural areas. It means that cities need rural areas to survive, or at the very least, to keep costs affordable.

I even check led the dictionary to be sure, but no, that is not subsidizing.

> Food is an incredibly substitutable market, you'd expect the market to push prices down to a minimum.

This is largely the reason why we have subsidies for farming: we're not okay with substituting domestic agriculture for foreign imports, due to the risks involved. Consider the case of manufacturing, which is also a largely substitutable market.

In the late 20th and early 21st century, the USA hollowed out loads of our manufacturing hubs in pursuit of lower prices, and this worked as advertised; costs dropped! With circumstances changing and a desire to perform more domestic manufacturing, though, we've lost a lot of our options. The USA has lost a lot of manufacturing nous and industry momentum, meaning that there's a lot of upstart cost to get back into the game.

While subsidizing an industry may not be efficient from a global market perspective, it can be very sensible from a national policy perspective, since it means that you can build an experienced workforce and institutional knowledge within a given domain.

>Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods.

This is a thread about someone who wants to do computer work remotely in a "rural tech community". I have a hard time seeing what that has to do with farms.

Small towns can be sustainable. The problematic sort of development is the purely residential carscape built just outside of town but driving in to use any services. See e.g. Wattsville, VA with attendant gated community Trail's End, featuring half the local population and one small overpriced convenience store.

https://postimg.cc/vx4Ws884

It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for the winding down of city governance when population dwindles. It's probably just the human element. I don't mean to be promoting some sort of libertarian "self-governance is great!" philosophy, just thinking out loud.

Imagine a city building game where city expenses increase with each population milestone (due to new positions in local government, new departments, etc.). One would naturally expect that if the city population were to drop below a specific threshold, the appropriate departments would be wound down to curb expenditure. If there aren't enough people to economically support a parks department, then (sadly) let the parks go wild.

Perhaps it's just hard to fire someone because an algorithm told you to do so. Real life is messy, after all.

You can wind down certain things, but at what point are you winding down stuff that's more on the necessity side of things? The US has a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs repair and replacement and I don't think people want to be told "sorry, your house is only accessible by off-road vehicle now." We're spending over $20B to increase rural broadband because people in rural areas don't want to be told "sorry, the population has dropped below a certain threshold so we're winding down the internet in your area to curb expenditure." (And before someone talks about Starlink, SpaceX is looking to get a lot of that money).

I think it's also not just about the emotions of firing someone. It's really hard to manage a downward trend - and not from a touchy-feely standpoint. If you're an uncaring machine and people leave, you fire a proportional number of government employees. But that doesn't solve the situation. Every business in the area now has fewer customers. At some point, those businesses close reducing tax revenue further and increasing unemployment more. It's not just the city that feels the pinch of a dwindling tax base - that dwindling tax base means there's also a dwindling consumer base.

An important thing to remember is that cities/towns/counties often take out debt for spending that will pay off over time. For example, you want to build a school so you borrow $X and you'll pay it back over the next 30 years. You need to rebuild some roads so you borrow and pay it back over the next 30 years. However, if your population is dwindling, that can leave the town holding debt it can't really pay anymore. If you built a school for 1,000 students and then the population dwindles by 30% over the next 20 years, you're stuck paying for way more school than you need with fewer people paying for it. Ok, layoff some teachers - but you have to lay off more then 30% of the teachers because you're paying for 100% of the school debt and maintenance costs. So you fire 40-50% of the teachers, class sizes go up, the people with the best options (the most educated with the best job opportunities and most money) leave your town eroding the richest part of your tax base and leaving lower income people on the hook for that debt while they escape it...which causes you to fire more teachers which causes more people to leave...

I think it's not just that there's a messy human side to it, but that it's hard to manage decline. Ok, you wind down a department. What about the building? Maybe you can sell it, but probably at a loss since you have a declining purchasing base. As you wind down a parks department or library, the richest people are likely to leave. Now your algorithm requires more cuts.

And the sad state of it is that it's often not a parks department. It can be things like roads or safe drinking water.

There is also a messy human side of it as well, for sure, but it's just hard to manage decline. I can totally see the game: you cut the parks department and the rich people complain, sell their house for 15% below previous market value and leave, and your tax base dwindles more. You cut after-school programs and more rich people complain about the town and schools and leave - and your tax base dwindles more. You try to attract new residents to YouVille and cartoon characters say, "I want a town that invests in its schools," and "everyone I know is talking about leaving YouVille."

I just wanted to say your walls of text are very offensive, inaccurate, and read as someone who has never lived in a rural community.

Can you spend some time pointing out a few of the specific inaccuracies from your perspective?

I will try to, but it's an overwhelming amount of generalizations, characterizations, and talking points.

I mainly wanted to voice my disdain and alert others to take what he said with a grain of salt.

For now, I would reference you to other comments that have disputed parts of what he said:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31129696

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31129451

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31129728

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31129451

This is your idea of a good comment?

> Hi there. I guess you are having a day of bad luck or something, cause you managed to get me to reply to you. heh.

> I'm basically the walking oxymoron of your example. I was raised rurally, and am more educated than many city slicks. I'm not religious, or poor. Not rich, but not destitute. And as far as my political leanings go, I figure I'm above all of you, because the center was killed by extremists, so there is nothing left but to act better than the rest of you.

I feel like my eyeballs are already about to roll back out of my skull, and that's just the first two paragraphs!

I'm guessing the part about being unfriendly to non-white people is a big part of what's offensive. may or may not be true, but people tend to react poorly to sweeping negative judgments about the place where they live. on top of that, the analysis of how roads and water work is not quite right.

the overall point about the tax base death spiral is true though. it's really hard to wind down infrastructure that's been built out to support a certain population size. this happens in cities too, it's a major issue in baltimore, for example.

Wow

I feel like there's a huge semantic disconnect in this thread about the meaning of "rural". You and the grandparent seem to be using it to mean small suburbs/exurbs in economically declining regions of the US (e.g. The Rust Belt), not what it actually means which is farm towns and mostly farm land / private land disparately spread out with primarily county-level governance.

I'm also a big fan of StrongTowns, and I don't think what the grandparent is describing accurately reflects rural life.

Most of these small "farm towns" no longer have a majority of their population engaged in agriculture. The economic landscape of rural america has shifted profoundly in the past 50 years and a lot of these places are functionally exurbs now - populated by people who are economically dependent on nearby metro areas but choose to live/remain in small towns for lifestyle reasons.

Also, I happen to be born and raised in the area the Strong Towns guy calls home, and while I don't follow his work closely I can say the abstracted rural community he builds his theses around has a very loose relationship to the actual semi-rural communities he has spent his life living and working in.

I grew up rural. I regularly visit home once or twice a year. He’s not wrong.

My friends growing up were pretty much the exceptions. We moved out, got advanced degrees, and almost all of live in major metro areas. The two that don’t, live in college towns, which are they’re own thing.

The main economic driver, the coal mines, all closed, and pretty much everyone with half a brain moved away. Those that are left… well, they’re stereotypes.

Last time my friends an I got together back where we grew up, we talked about it. The place has changed, and not for the best. As one friend put it, “It’s gotten more churchy, and not in a good way.” It’s meth labs, gun stores, video slots, end times evangelical churches, and militias.

Now you can make your own community anywhere you are, but it’s harder in rural areas. A lot harder. There’s just fewer people, less opportunities, and less appeal for the right kind of weirdos.

> It can be things like roads or safe drinking water.

In most rural areas the roads are maintained by the county outside the town, and people maintain their own drinking water using wells. You pay someone to drill you a new well if it runs dry, and you're responsible for maintaining your own pumping system and getting your water regularly tested and treated if necessary. I have no idea what you're on about... rural areas don't work the way you are describing, you've obviously never lived in a rural area.

Why would it matter one bit whether the county or the town pay for road maintenance? In either case the cost burden is going to fall on the taxpayers, and if area population declines, the each person is going to have to pay more or accept their roads falling into disrepair

It's like you're purposely misreading what they wrote. Did you miss this part?

> An important thing to remember is that cities/towns/counties often take out debt for spending that will pay off over time.

They are very obviously talking about 'decline' in general at this point, not exclusively rural areas where most people or everyone gets their water from wells.

Hell, just look at the comment they're replying to:

> It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for the winding down of city governance when population dwindles.

> The US has a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs repair and replacement and I don't think people want to be told "sorry, your house is only accessible by off-road vehicle now."

This is probably necessary in some respects. The US has an enormous number of lane-miles per inhabitant. There's a lot of subsidizing going on here that doesn't necessarily look like subsidizing, because the way the road network operates is just ingrained into our culture.

There is but it is often followed more in the breach, see the case of Damascus, OR.

Cities and villages can be dissolved by the same mechanisms by which they're incorporated. The process is peculiar to the state in which the corporation is held.

It was simply never anticipated so why would you have such a thing. Plus people do still live in the Rust Belt and rural areas around it so it's all "working just fine still".

One thing that's interesting: around where I live, property lines are defined by stone walls and you see tons of rando stone walls in the middle of the forest. Then if you do some research you find that 100% of all the trees were clear-cut back in colonial times and all the trees you see today are under 100 years old (yet it's a verdant forest during the summer). There used to be a ton more people - easily 10x - but the existing political structures are the same and mostly still work well enough.

This is true of almost the entirety of the US.

There sort of is, in the form of merging governing bodies and/or consolidating public services. This lets one entity size them appropriately to the budget, in exchange for giving up the ability for smaller entities to more effectively concentrate services in one area of a county or township.

I'd love more info about these kinds of things, I find it quite fascinating to read about places going through it and watching parts of town locally dealing with it.

Also - pensions!

I feel we need more education for citizens about how public pensions and other retirement benefits work - as they can be a huge drain when the money is good, even more of a piece of the pie when the money goes down.

Yup, I think government should be forbidden from making any contract where they owe money in the future for wages paid today. Today's taxpayer pays for services rendered thirty years ago and today; no wonder our services get worse every year.

For example, Seattle had a mayor Ed Murray. His couple year tenure resulted in the state needing to pay $80k/year more until he dies, so probably $3 million. That should have come out of that year's budget. The city should not have been able to obligate others to pay that.

There’s no standard process because it’s a separate thing each time.

But cities do die and usually bequeath everything to a nearby city or the county.

You're getting a lot of very bad comments in opposition, which is unfortunate.

A lot of people have no trouble being clear-eyed about the downsides for big cities -- expensive, crowded, lots of traffic, can be hyper-competitive, people are ruder or more indifferent, child unfriendly, more hostility to conservatism/religiosity, etc. -- but get offended when someone is equally clear-eyed about rural areas. I'm guessing that's because they interpret it as "punching down".

There may be more or more serious downsides to rural areas, of course; after all, they are gradually losing people to urban areas, people are voting with their feet. It would be bizarre if that were occurring and there weren't more serious downsides to the rural areas.

I don't think the parent comment is getting bad comments in opposition because people aren't "clear-eyed about rural areas". I think it's more likely because the parent comment lists all of the attributes of urban areas in a positive tone and all the attributes of a rural area in a negative tone. I think most people are well balanced in their opinions on urban vs. rural life, and realize there are pros and cons to both. It would have been nice if the parent comment listed a well balanced opinion instead of a heavily one sided opinion.

And maybe I'm misinterpreting the parent comment as well and I feel like the comments about rural areas were negative because of my bias. That could be the case, but I'm inclined to believe that the parent comment was quite biased in favor of urban areas.

It's a word of caution about rural areas. If you were cautioning someone about moving from a farm to the big city, you'd do the same thing with mostly listing negatives of big cities. I see this all the time in discussion of FAANG and the big tech hubs, people talking about the various downsides (which, to be sure, are many).

And if you look at the comments in response, a lot of them are obviously offended and throwing out misinformation and straw men. They're very bad comments from people either not thinking clearly or arguing disingenuously.

There are some rural areas that fit your description, but many that do not, and are quite nice places to live.

Also, urban areas generally have very high concentrations of uneducated, addicted, and poverty stricken individuals as well, and the proportion of the population that fits this bill has increased dramatically in the past few years.

>the proportion of the population that fits this bill has increased dramatically in the past few years.

Wait really? Source?

The number of tents, needles, etc. found on sidewalks and in parks/open areas.

> Are you white, male, straight, Christian, etc.? A lot of rural places can become easier if you tick those boxes. If you don't tick those boxes, then you might start wondering how you might be treated differently from living in the city.

I really loved the depiction in Lovecraft Country when the protagonists (black American) were pulled over and given a courtesy notice by the police officer that they were in a "sundown county", where after sunset they would be arrested or killed by that very same police officer.

The sun was setting and they had to get to the next county over before the sun set, but would also meet this same fate if they were driving over the speed limit.

Drama ensues as the police car follows them to the county edge, all at the speed limit.

Now, from the oral and recorded history of people around me - continually dismissed by the white majority from all political leanings - I knew the plot "twist": the next county over was a sundown county too.

Sure enough, at the county line, a line of other police officers wait and capture them, waiting to harass them until justifying killing them, execution style.

I liked that fictional depiction because I hadn't seen it portrayed before, I liked that the show wasn't trying to be about the difficulties of being black American (because many shows with black cast and direction wind up being soap boxes about exactly that, a way for marginalized directors to "finally use their platform"), this show was mostly different while incorporating some plausible realities. Like, what if we did the show Supernatural, where Dean and Sam Winchster wanted to chase demons across America but were black Americans in the 1940s, there would simply be additional shit they would have to continually deal with, nearly indistinguishable from the demons and what the demons would do!

I live near where they tried to unionize amazon and yes, it’s like that, but also your description seems like you haven’t lived in these places you describe. Yes, we’re rural and conservative and backwards, in pockets, but there are pockets that aren’t. It’s not a monolith. You won’t be alone and the only one paying taxes for roads.

Edit: and where you see something worth abandoning, i see opportunity for growth and improvement

I appreciate your point about population decline as that isn't something I had considered at all.

Maybe rural doesn't capture what I'm looking for, but I'm not sure of a better word and it does capture the feeling. I would like at least 4 acres and some privacy at the very least. Then the question becomes what I'd have to give up to get that. It definitely means giving up living in a big city, but maybe it doesn't mean giving up a small city/town.

Don't listen to that blow hard. They clearly have never lived in a rural area before, or had a really bad experience in a rare situation.

Here's the truth of it for ya. Most of the technologically inclined people you are looking for in the rural areas tend to move to the cities; from the rural areas. Mostly due to the only thing that user was correct about. Opportunity.

But once they have the money to come back home, they do.

When I left my rural spot, we had people coming back to buy farms and build families. Solar panels, Starlink, etc.

Do yourself a favor and call the town offices of each place you are interested in. They can help you find out more about what they are looking to do in their respective areas, and maybe point you to some people in the same areas that might be good to talk to.

Yes, there will be religious people. But guess what? They exist in cities too. Yes there will be conservative people. But guess what? They exist in cities too.

And I can keep going on and on with that on rinse and repeat for literally anything that can be said about rural folk. Why?

Cause they move to the fucking city.

Something else to consider, you want to be within 30 or so miles from a grocery store and a hospital. I would suggest looking for land outside a medium city.

Small towns have grocery stores and hospitals...

My small town has a Walmart supercenter and another grocery store

Rural is generally farm land outside of small towns, that's where people drive to get groceries.

Land outside a medium city is a suburb, not rural.

>Small towns have grocery stores and hospitals...

Yes, but 4-40 acres gets a lot cheaper the further you go from the town. My point was as he was looking and pricing, make sure you are 30 minutes away from a grocery store or hospital. You can always grow a garden and hunt if you so desire, but if you break your leg or something, an hour is a long drive to get it fixed.

>Land outside a medium city is a suburb, not rural.

Depends on the city.

I guess my point was you don't need to drive to a "medium city" for groceries.

Unless you're in sparser areas like Wyoming, Nevada, West Texas, etc. you're always 30 minutes or so from the nearest town no matter where you live.

If you're looking for 4-40 acres, you're not wanting land out in backcountry, you're wanting land outside a town.

I really wonder about some people, and exactly where they’re finding these areas.

I suspect it’s mainly people near the high desert in the West where you can go 90 miles between gas stations.

I would consider where I am to be the edge of rural and even if I go deeper into it there are still grocery stores and hospitals.

An overlay for Google maps showing the 30 minute boundaries would be nice.

Kansas City 2.1 Million people

My brother lives there. There are 20-40k towns 30 min in almost every direction. One is college town called Lawrence, Kansas, which had quite a few startups when Iwent through last summer. Coffee shops full of 20's coding.

Rural hospitals have been shut down quite a bit in the last 20 or so years.

https://sidecarhealth.com/blog/181-rural-hospitals-have-clos...

And towns ironically can get as big as a small city. Small in the truest form though, keep in mind.

Rural hospitals are going bankrupt and closing.

https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/21/lawmakers-act-prevent-ru...

"21 percent of rural hospitals nationwide are currently at high risk of imminent closure. It’s more than double that in states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Alaska, where upward of half of all rural hospitals are at high risk of closing. Overall, this adds up to about 430 hospitals in 43 states that collectively provide care for millions of Americans and employ more than 150,000 people."

Take a look at Rapid City, SD. You can get 4+ acres pretty easily. We have a decent sized tech community that is active and growing.

I think you would be able to find what you're looking for at the edges of many metropolitan areas. I'm about 30 min (<40km / <25mi) from the regional city of half a million people, and it's very possible to get that kind of acreage here. I'd base your search on other factors, like climate, education (if you have or will have kids), political stability, etc, and come up with some regions to dive into in more detail.

> there are plenty of locations with very few people that might be an hour from a city like Boston. Boxborough, MA is an hour from Boston while covered in forest. I'd think of it as "suburban", but it might the rural/pastoral feel you're looking for while still being within commutable distance to everything.

This is a good bet. There are many towns in the vicinity of cities where houses are spread out and you have a rural feel, even if it’s not strictly rural. Often they are inhabited by people who can afford to move out of the city, or just want more space. On average, people are educated and have decent incomes, as opposed to many cities, where you often get extremes of poverty and wealth and an eroded middle class.

> It's also hard to know what you mean by "rural" since the distinction between suburban and rural is hard in the US.

> Maybe you're looking for a place like Saratoga Springs or Ashville, NC or Burlington, VT or Charlottesville, VA.

I can't speak to Asheville, Charlottesville, or Saratoga Springs, but I can say a little about Burlington.

Burlington is a city of 45,000 people with a lot of commercial activity for a U.S. city of that size. It's the home of the state's flagship university. It has a train station (technically just outside the city) that offers service to New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. It's not far from rural areas, but I wouldn't think it rural itself.

I imagine that a lot of people from bigger metro areas, when they talk about going "rural", are imagining living on the outskirts of a city like Asheville or Burlington, or somewhat close by to the city, not full-on "the nearest major grocery store is 50 miles away".

If all the roads to get to your destination are paved, you ain’t rural heh. You’re just exurb.

The definitional game of Ruraler Than Thou is definitely an annoying one.

Waiting for some Aussie to come in and say “look, if you’re not so far out that the only way to get anywhere is by plane, you’re just larping.”

> we're going to get serious about climate change, will that mean $10 gas? Even with electric cars, the cost will increase. Will we continue to spend a fortune on roads and other accommodations for rural life?

I've heard this take before, and I find it wild. Sure, in terms of tax revenue; cities subsidize rural areas. But cities also could not exist without rural areas. Where is food grown? Where does large manufacturing happen? Chemical processing? Mining? Oil? Solar & wind farms?

If you want to talk about sustainability; from an ecological perspective; cities are insanely unsustainable. Talk about tax revenue, service work, mind work; sure cities dominate. But the balance flips when we start talking about real, tangible economic output. And moreover, if we're talking about global warming, as you have; I think that matters. I don't think there's a reality where US leadership forgets how critical its rural economic base is to surviving the water and food wars.

I've lived in a lot of cities and rural areas. Public infra is just bad, everywhere. This isn't a situation where "oh the big cities have so much tax revenue, their streets are amazing and the wow the schools, healthcare is perfect and" nah. Its bad everywhere. You'll stumble across random counties in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of miles of the best roads you've ever driven on. You'll drive into a city of two million people and the roads look like a war happened yesterday. Its money. Its corruption. Its historical socioeconomic forces. Its a ton of different variables; density can be one, but go to any major US city and look up the best school systems. They're rarely inside the dense city; they're in that rich, less dense suburb 45 minutes outside the city. Density is correlated; but very poorly.

Have you ever actually lived in a rural area?

I have and literally everything they've said is extremely accurate to my experience and those that I've talked to.

Moving to a rural area is very much greener grass syndrome. Once you have to deal with the meth heads and associated issues with rural communities (low education, low opportunity, etc.) you will move the fuck out.

Obviously if you don't plan to have children and live a semi-hermit lifestyle then whatever.

> Moving to a rural area is very much greener grass syndrome.

The overzealous defence of rural areas is definitely a combination of this, people who actually made the move and can't admit they made a mistake, and those with nostalgia for the sort of location they grew up and left.

I suppose there's probably some people mixed in who legitimately prefer it and those who don't know anything else.

Not all rural areas are bad, but a lot of them aren't great.

I grew up in a rural area and moved back now that we're remote. The only time I've met a meth head was when a friend of a friend came back from college and you could tell he was doing meth (based on descriptions of what meth does to you from the internet anyway.)

You have to be picky, the area has to have an old culture that's still intact and hasn't been through some serious economic problems. If you go to eg West Virginia you're going to be dealing with meth heads. The general impression I get from this site is that people here won't like it because that means embracing religion.

> You have to be picky, the area has to have an old culture that's still intact and hasn't been through some serious economic problems.

No shit? Really? You gotta find a rural town that hasn't been through incredible economic hardship the last 50 years? Fuck me, that's wild! I never would've thought.

Yeah it's a bizarre comment. "Rural areas don't have as many drug problems if they don't have the economic issues most rural areas have." I mean sure, but most rural areas have been doing not so well economically.

On the other hand, remote work (at city wages) makes for a decided economic advantages in a remote LCOL area.

Crime is lower, family activities are more readily available.

If you like outdoor activities, hobbies that require lots of space, or less light and noise pollution, rural areas are nice.

There are advantages for both. You can be happy in either location, so long as you play to the strengths of your locale.

Your comment is an excellent example of "what does rural mean?" Right now I live in a suburb of Seattle. I'm quite confident there's more opportunities for kids and kids' activities here than a rural area of the kind where you need to drive a long distance to get to a big grocery store, or where most people need wells for water. Any time I search for kids' stuff here it's like I'm drowning, in any big metro I think you're spoiled for choice.

No disputing the costs though. Seattle is expensive as hell.

Also don’t move to rural America if you’re going to be upset by gunfire. It’s most prevalent during hunting season of course, but plenty of people plink at all times of year.

+1 suburban / rural areas are heavily subsidized by the federal + state governments. It isn't cheap to maintain that amount of roads / utilities and I could certainly foresee a future in which it becomes much more expensive to leave so far apart.

Do you have any figures on this? I know during the Reagan administration the federal government heavily cut subsidization of rural areas, helping to accelerate their decline.

It's hard to find data on this is general. I've seen a couple maps before of counties within states, and their state-level spending/revenue, but finding the same for counties when it comes to federal revenue...never seen anything like that.

edit: I mean a map similar to this - https://streets.mn/2015/01/14/map-of-the-day-state-highway-t...

Though it should really be a percentage-based map using population size, rather than using absolute amounts.

edit2: ah, this is pretty decent, even though it's not a map - https://ofm.wa.gov/sites/default/files/public/dataresearch/f...

As you can see here, King County (Seattle and nearby suburbs) sends way more to the state in revenue than it gets in spending. Most of the other counties -- which are obviously low population -- receive more in spending than revenue. In other words, they're subsidized. From what I understand, this is pretty common within states.

Yes, it would be helpful to have a breakdown on what the spending was on. I would assume most of it is infrastructure like roads and whatnot, which people living in the expensive counties also benefit from (shipping goods, ease of travel, etc).

It was funny, when Trump remarked about "shithole countries," he obviously hasn't seen rural America in a long time. As a country, we've allowed it to deteriorate quite a bit.

Honestly not the case where I am. State money only comes if for natural disasters: back when Hurricane Sandy came through, there was state money to replace bridges damaged by the rain volume. Otherwise it's handled at a county but primarily the town (which in NY is a "shire" or "borough" government level between county and city/village).

There's a rotation of road resurfacing that follows a 2-5 year cycle. The key thing with roads in snow country is getting the drainage right - as long as there's no standing or under-road water to freeze, the road won't get frost-heaves which are one of the primary damage sources. So our town crews focus on drainage first and then resurfacing, and then smaller bridges. Larger bridges are generally partly funded by the county and state because of the scope but the one bridge recently replaced was over 50 years old and the new one has a similar expected life.

The thing is, the kind of transportation network that in a big city will be a local road or subway, in a rural area is often a highway paid for by the federal or state government, if you're looking at equivalent use cases.

I'd love to be proven wrong though, if you have opposing data.

This is one of the more pompous things I have read of late around some of the rural assumptions. Urban areas don't offer any better "opportunities" when you consider lower income areas. So, a lot of your arguments are hard to follow.

It is true that a lot of rural areas tend to be "more conservative", but honestly liberal and conservative are really hard to argue in this day and age. Both aren't what they were 10+ years ago. Both are parodies of that time with extreme ideologies with no room for the middle.

As someone born and raised in the bay area and spent decades living there, it isn't the bay area I grew up in. There used to be a broader community feel, there used to be more open space, there used to be a broader cross section of beliefs and ideas. Now it's a mix of liberal echo chamber letting communities go to shit due to "compassion", a bunch of transplant tech dweebs with no investment in the community - just chasing the mighty dollar, and a huge community that still exists providing services and looked down upon by many of said transplants. (Yes, there are more groups then that, but those are some pretty obvious ones).

The narrow mindedness of tech about the community they migrate to, the ignorance of what the community was and the people still there is actually a pretty big problem. The preponderance of a prejudice on this site that an urban lifestyle is better due to density, etc. is pretty prevalent as well.

I now live in a rural community. Is it all that I want? Not one bit. My partner and I decided to fill our lack of spare time with a retail shop around a mutual interest during the second year of covid and record CA fires. Was it bright? No. Has it given us a better connection to the community and the people here, yes. I have weekly discussions with people connected to generations of forestry as well as 60+ y/o individuals who have spent decades experimenting with foods that could grow at 4500 feet mentioning how things have changed. I also interact regularly with blue collar truckers, mill workers, teachers, etc. Some of these conversations have been much deeper than any that I had interacting with the generic bay area tech person.

Rural areas also have problems. A smaller population means the food selection can be a challenge, drug problems can be exasperated (that said, SF and Santa Cruz are WAY WORSE than up here), be prepared for everyone to know your business - good or bad.

The above post approaches a log of rural from a tech person perspective.

I think the average HN person would do well to get out of their routine and spend time in the communities outside their little bubble.

I've been in this rural part of CA for about 6.5 years after 7x that in the bay area. I couldn't live in the Bay Area again because it has changed from my childhood, my teen, college and into mid adult years. Palo Alto and Mountain View have become a joke of what they once were. There are still pockets worth visiting - restaurants, culture, etc. - but the quality of life has changed. Everything is crowded.

The sad thing, with Covid, rural areas went from being a place that was a bit different to being infested with the same sort of people that claim rural communities have issues.

But, what do I know.

You've never lived in a rural area before.

This reads like the opinion of someone who only knows about rural communities based on what they read on social media.

Is it satire?

I especially love the "white" part when the less urban SouthWest has the highest black population in the US, yet a city like SF pushed most of its black population out decades ago. Definitely appreciate the lecture on "diversity".

You may be surprised to learn that there are more races/ethnicities than "white" and "black".

It's true that SF has lost a lot of black people, but the proportion of white people is lower in 2020 than it was in 2010, which is lower than it was in 2000, etc. This is because of the Hispanic and Asian populations, plus mixed-race people.

> I especially love the "white" part when the less urban SouthWest has the highest black population in the US

I don't doubt that you can find rural areas that are mostly black, but what do you mean by "less urban Southwest"?

I think they likely meant Southeast. I’m not aware of a large population of rural, black people in the Southwest.

I feel like you've never visited any rural area. I grew up in a rural area and most of the people I know from growing up ended up in a city at some point in their life because of the lack of opportunities in the rural area, but very few people fit the stereotype you're putting forth. The place I grew up was a farm town, and my family were also farmers, everybody in my family went to college even though we weren't well-off, and that's true for most other farm families. Farming these days is actually strongly technology-focused, and people go specifically to college for agricultural studies to learn how to cost effectively and sustainably operate their farms. I'm the odd one out in my extended family because I moved far away and went into the tech industry.

I would strongly challenge your belief that rural people are uneducated and unintelligent, it's mostly the exact opposite. Many of the rural people have skills and knowledge far beyond what the average person in the city does, because they have to do more things for themselves in their day to day life. City life is mostly about specialization and formalized/structured job roles and living. Rural life is about doing whatever is necessary to succeed and moving things forward one more day. The average farmer has a strong understanding of multiple trade skills (plumbing, hydraulics, welding, mechanics), as well as at least a basic understanding of mechanical & civil engineering, at least a basic understanding of biology, and at least a basic understanding of electrical systems.

The only thing you really get right here is about the economics of the situation. Rural areas experience brain drain and are shrinking over generations, part of that is due to increase mechanization and automation in farming which reduces the need for farm labor and creates drive for the children of farmers to go into other fields. The lack of employment and economic opportunity is real, and it is something to give due consideration before deciding to move to a rural area. But it's not because people there are stupid, uneducated, or whatever stereotype that comes to mind.

And, on the note of politics, most rural people are more Libertarian than Conservative. They frankly don't care what you do as long as you leave them alone and stay off their land unless you're invited. In my life I've had FAR FAR more negative interactions with other people trying to enforce their beliefs on me in the city than I ever have growing up in a rural area, and at this point in my life I have roughly 20 years of experience in both situations. A basic, simple, and common example is how HOAs operate vs how local politics works in rural areas. I would not describe rural people as Conservative, and I don't know how you'd want to politically describe most city people (Liberal seems inaccurate), but city people are generally busybodies and expect everyone to conform, rural folks don't care what happens on someone else's property.

Can't upvote this enough. Dead-nuts on point.

> very few people fit the stereotype you're putting forth

Pretty sure everything they said can be verified by data. But of course those are averages and generalizations, it's not that every single person in a rural area is a white straight Christian conservative, just like not every single person in a big city is a non-white LGBT atheist progressive. But you will find more people with the former traits in rural areas, and more people with the latter traits in urban ones.

Like if you just looked at the list:

> Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minority? Do you have hobbies that might be more unique? Cities have the critical mass for so many groups of people.

What part of that is wrong? Yes, you can find some rural areas that buck the trend, but overall you're likely to run into these issues.

Just like there are some issues more common in big cities: more expensive, more traffic, lines everywhere, people being ruder/indifferent, etc.

> I would strongly challenge your belief that rural people are uneducated and unintelligent, it's mostly the exact opposite.

Please don't twist someone's words or strawman their position here. They never said rural people are uneducated, but rather less educated, which can be verified with data -- as they clearly meant formal education (high school, college, etc.).

And they definitely didn't say unintelligent. I would say I don't know where you got that from what they wrote, but I have a pretty good idea.

> And, on the note of politics, most rural people are more Libertarian than Conservative.

What we know from data is that people in rural areas tend to identify more as conservatives and vote for the more conservative party (in the US, the GOP).

> What we know from data is that people in rural areas tend to identify more as conservatives and vote for the more conservative party (in the US, the GOP).

That's because there are very few viable candidates who run as Libertarians. GP is right about the sentiment, though.

I doubt it. "I just want the government to leave me alone" is a common sentiment across the American political spectrum, sure, but when you drill down to specific issues you suddenly find that people are actually okay with or supportive of the government doing all kinds of stuff. People don't always tell the truth.

For an example on one issue I'm very familiar with: zoning. America tends to have hyper strict zoning, and the most ardent supporters of it tend to be those who very loudly are in favor of the free market and "against government intervention." It's just that, when it comes down to their principles vs their lifestyle, lifestyle wins.

Zoning isn't a thing in rural areas... pretty much at all. You can effectively do whatever you want on your land as long as you're not breaking state or federal laws.

It's weird how you're getting upvoted so heavily for citysplaining rural areas to someone who grew up in one, on a farm. Your profile says you don't even live in the US, but you're originally from the Bay Area... maybe you should listen in this case rather than trying to tell people in a part of the country you've probably never even visited how living their life works.

You managed to completely miss the point of the zoning example, but I can't say I'm surprised.

> Your profile says you don't even live in the US, but you're originally from the Bay Area... maybe you should listen in this case rather than trying to tell people in a part of the country you've probably never even visited how living their life works.

God, what an awful, narrow minded comment. Do you seriously think that's the only part of the US I've lived in or been to? You're not even trying to have an earnest discussion here.

> Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity.

Hi there. I guess you are having a day of bad luck or something, cause you managed to get me to reply to you. heh.

I'm basically the walking oxymoron of your example. I was raised rurally, and am more educated than many city slicks. I'm not religious, or poor. Not rich, but not destitute. And as far as my political leanings go, I figure I'm above all of you, because the center was killed by extremists, so there is nothing left but to act better than the rest of you.

And guess what. I'm not alone. There are millions of us out there. You just have to find us among each rural location, heh.

So what I have to say to you here is this. What I am about to say obviously doesn't apply equally to everyone, but seeing as how you are generalizing, so will I.

City folk tend to be the most insufferable blow hards of egotistical proportions, that is often followed with a inability to understand their own shortcomings, because they are too focused on trying to be 'better than the bumpkins' that fucking feed them.

This single sentence from you shows much more of what kind of person you are, than anything else you wrote in front of me right now. It shows that you don't actually have any common decency for your fellow man or woman, because you are too focused on these things.

1. Not being religious. Clearly important to you because you started with it.

2. Being Left Wing, or at least center liberal. Again, importance is easy to see, since you include it right after religion.

3. Being rich, or at least not poor. Now, not knocking you on this, but your idea that people are lower income just because they live rurally is just... wrong. Think long and hard about it. Rural folk, tend to own property. That doesn't just fall in your lap unless you got it from family. This does happen often out in the rural areas because of farms and such; but that shouldn't be a knock against them, since the same happens for rich folk in cities too. Just not with farms, usually.

4. You clearly think of yourself as smarter than the rural bumpkin... but I have news for you. There are plenty of people who live rurally who are not just smarter than you, but literally better than YOU in every, single, way. But you'll never accept this, because it would mean that you would have to accept that someone you don't respect is actually better than you. Fact is, if you actually were as smart as you clearly think you are going by your huge comment thus far...

You would have never said any of this sentence, at all. You would have known better than to do something so blatantly arrogant and ignorant.

5. Less access to opportunity.

This is the ONE thing, I might actually agree with you on. At the end of the day, cities do have that pretty much monopolized. But you should reassess how you put the fact into a sentence, because there are still many opportunities available to the right people in rural areas. You, just might not be the right person. And no, it's not because they want some poor dumb religious stooge. It's because you would be too full of yourself to be wanted in those places to begin with.

I live in New Orleans, and I wholeheartedly agree with this take.

I'd like to second this post's sentiment and be one more datapoint of the millions like us.

GP's comment was pretty offensive and I like how you flipped the generalizations back to show that.

I'm reading the commentor you're responding to as commenting on general social trends in rural areas they're familiar with (or merely hearing about) rather than judgments on any specific individual.

It's certainly possible that they're mischaracterizing the social state of affairs in any number of places, but general rural economic decline does seem to be a frequent form of political handwringing (including complaints from some people ostensibly representing rural voters who claim they're left out when it comes to policy). I would definitely love to hear about specific areas or general statistics that prove the general narrative wrong, though.

Much of the condescension you have attributed to the post appears to not be present in it. Population statistics are not individual statistics. Perhaps he is wrong about the population statistics but your existence doesn't invalidate that.

Note how "Children are more often shorter than adults" is true despite the existence of Sophie Hollins of Southampton and Peter Dinklage the actor. That isn't an insult to children and it isn't arrogance on my part to say that I am likely taller than a child at my 183 cm. It's just that, absent other information, certain population measures are true about certain populations.

Anyway, I am curious as to whether rural counties vs urban counties exhibit the differences he's talking about. I'll go look at the census and Pew surveys and see what it brings up.

A lot of posters here aren't interested in discussing the actual data. They're personally offended, and responding off of that.

A lot of posters here aren't interested in discussing the actual data. They're personally offended, and responding off of that.

The perfect summary of much of modern political discourse.

Go ahead and source the data and we'll discuss it.

That rural areas are more conservative, less educated, poorer, and more religious on average, etc. is well known. I can provide the data if this is an earnest request, but I'm guessing you're already aware of these things, so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

If someone is arguing against a generally well understood fact -- like, saying that North Korea is richer than the US -- it's on them to support it. They're not doing that here, because the facts aren't on their side.

> aren't interested in discussing the actual data.

> I can provide the data if this is an earnest request

It is, please do so we can discuss the actual data as you've said.

I live in a rural area and grew up working a beef ranch in the Poconos, and all of these claims (less educated, lower income, more conservative, more religious) sound obviously true to me, but I looked up the data out of curiosity.

Here is the USDA Economic Research Service on rural vs. urban educational attainment and median income; rural areas indeed are less educated and lower income[1]. This Pew Research study shows that rural areas are more conservative than urban areas across a wide range of political issues[2]. Data on religion was slightly harder to find, but this Gallup poll shows rural areas in the US are more religious than urban areas[3]. If any of these results are surprising, I'd guess that you may not have much experience of urban areas as a comparison. To be clear, I still prefer living in a rural area, but I recognize that there are pros, cons, and individual differences.

1. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/emp...

2. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/urban-s...

3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/7960/age-religiosity-rural-amer...