Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

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As a numerical fact, over 80% of people in the US live in cities and suburbs.

I am going to go back to your original comment: you think we should change the fact that most jobs are in cities and suburbs.

I’m just being realistic here: that is not possible. The human population dispersing from cities and suburbs doesn’t make physical sense. You wouldn’t live in a rural area anymore if Manhattan decided to move out and go out to towns like yours. Your town would turn into a city in its own right.

Mumbai has 54,000 people per square mile. Texas has about 110 people per square mile. If Mumbai has a similar density to Texas, it would be roughly the size of Arizona, just for one city that only represents 1% of the population of India.

The fact that most people concentrate themselves into denser areas makes your rural lifestyle possible in the first place.

I am not sure what I’m supposed to have empathy for here. I never said that rural people are dumb or bad or that nobody should live in rural areas. I have plenty of empathy for humans in general. I personally don’t prefer rural life but I also don’t have any negative feelings toward anyone who wants to live that way.

I’m just being realistic: concentrated areas where humans live in communities has been our reality since nomadic hunter-gathering was replaced by agriculture.

> I’m just being realistic here: that is not possible. The human population dispersing from cities and suburbs doesn’t make physical sense. You wouldn’t live in a rural area anymore if Manhattan decided to move out and go out to towns like yours. Your town would turn into a city in its own right.

Good that you can read between the lines. That is the goal. Bring prosperity to these areas rather than extracting from them so regularly.

> The fact that most people concentrate themselves into denser areas makes your rural lifestyle possible in the first place.

Again, another HN fallacy. Rural is not a "lifestyle". Most people don't just move to a place where there's no ambulance services out of a "lifestyle choice". That line of thinking on HN as a default needs a swift and sharp death. Usually it's economic situations. If you start to drift away from the federal definition of rural, which is incredibly specific and not accurate to the average Americans definition, it includes a lot of small towns and cities. There's a lot of overlap as to why people live in those places and, again, it's generally not lifestyle.

> I am not sure what I’m supposed to have empathy for here. I never said that rural people are dumb or bad or that nobody should live in rural areas. I have plenty of empathy for humans in general. I personally don’t prefer rural life but I also don’t have any negative feelings toward anyone who wants to live that way.

Empathy isn't just a trait you have or don't have. Not only are there different kinds of empathy, but humans practice empathy selectively based on experience (largely). I'm saying it sounds like you lack perspective based on the things you've said, which often equates to a lack of empathy. Now, if you were raised in a city or suburb and have never left then that explains it. That doesn't make you awful or anything bad, at least in my view, if that's what you need to hear.

> I’m just being realistic: concentrated areas where humans live in communities has been our reality since nomadic hunter-gathering was replaced by agriculture.

Those tribes were how big? Nowhere near the density of tech cities or any city with the appropriate concentration of jobs I referenced. My idea is to spread the population out more and make better use of land and resources.

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