> Do you seriously believe that every janitor, parking lot attendant, nurse, and waiter, could move to the small town you are discussing and commute in for work? Here's a headline for you: "A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M. Like many in the housing-starved San Francisco region, Sheila James has moved far inland, gaining affordable space at the price of a brutal commute." [0]
My wife literally used to do the same thing... It was a 3 hr commute to and from work (6+hrs per day), if all the services were up; but they never were in SF. At least twice a week it would take her 4 hrs one of the ways.
That's why we moved, her commute is now 10 min.
You're kind of making my point, everyone where I live has a higher quality of life than they do in SF. They have more space, cheaper food, fuel, breathing less pollution, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Just FYI you're talking a 1-3% difference in life expectancy between most of the states. That's probably within the margin of error. It appears to have more to do with wealth than anything, but that's neither here, nor there (The bottom 20 states have lower life expectancy and that's where smoking is more common and legal indoors).
> Yes, one way of dealing with human misery, is to be able to afford to put it out of your sight and out of mind, and not deal with the structural issues that create them. It's great that you get to ignore them to live your best life.
> But don't think that a society can be created where those things don't exist, just by moving to a more pastoral/agrarian lifestyle. What you describe is not scalable to the rest of society without massive social programs the kind that don't exist across America (and likely never will)
I can tell you're living in a city. It's FAR easier to make it in the suburbs than either a city or the country. It's also FAR easier to purchase land than people think. You can get land at $4,000-$6,000/acre within 40 min of most cities. You can build a $180,000 house on that land that's larger than the vast majority of residence in major cities (I know because I've developed said land repeatedly). So we're talking what, $200,000 for a house and a couple acres. You can afford that on $35-40k a year, which you can make at walmart or Amazon.
People experience misery in cities because the citizens of that city don't care. If they did, they'd tighten up the laws and encourage people to get jobs and prosper. That's not what SF does.