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Other commenters arguing against you seem to be missing your point somewhat. I think right-sizing infrastructure to the community (and tax base) that supports it is a good and important idea.

It took me awhile to realize the necessity of building infrastructure this way. Strongtowns talks a lot about this -- for instance, see this piece about how many cities in the US cannot afford their own water infrastructure [1].

It makes sense that larger, more dense, more economically productive areas need and can afford different infrastructure than more rural areas. If you mandate or incentivize rural areas to use the same infrastructure as the more urban ones, you can often end up with problems.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/12/1/we-cant-afford...

The main issue with right-sizing infrastructure solutions by devolving them to small communities is myopia with respect to unknown-unknowns and especially to the question of whether there should be a small community in that location at all.

The solution for unknown-unknowns is to make changes gradually and try to make them reversible (reversing should be cheap) to the extent possible (e.g., rather than destroying a bridge, you close it for some years first and if some need arises, you just reopen it).

> whether there should be a small community in that location at all

This isn't particularly actionable; we can't just forcibly uproot people. Moreover, liberals (including me) and progressives usually (and rightly) advocate for the state subsidizing public services for communities that can't afford them--e.g., quality schools and libraries and so on in low-income communities, but then when it comes to rural communities, there's often an attitude that rural communities are leeching resources that rightly belong to larger areas (especially urban centers) and that their problems are their own fault (despite that most rural people were born in their environments). This seems pretty philosophically inconsistent.

By the way, I don't mean to impute this sort of attitude on the parent, by the way--his "whether there should be a community in that location at all" remark made me think of it, but I don't think he intended it as urban chauvinism.

There are limits though. The island in question is long obsoleted by modern fishing techniques. It's a teensy tiny Bethlehem Steel. The discussion should really be framed as "managed retreat".

> Get your small community off my county!

That's what I read.

Kinda seems like a scenario where you can save 80% of cost by ignoring 20% of the problems.

Not good enough for many, but it's a very strong value proposition none the less.

How do you manage work and remoteness? Long commute? I imagine internet isnt good at home.

It ignores all sorts of externalities and world-wide interactions. The concept of living in an isolated rural bubble forever is an illusion.

Air and water for example, they don't just stick around in one place. So if you pollute something, that pollution happily goes elsewhere making it everyone's problem. Same with disease, or cancer. Say you need to go out to the hospital for radiation treatment every day, and you can't do it without assistance from an ambulance, that gravel road and the no-bridge concept is suddenly a really bad idea.

I think it's ignoring more than just 20% of the problems, it's ignoring looking (and planning) ahead, and understanding that not all factors are known, especially not in lower-populated areas.

And then there is the power imbalance a supplier will have over a small rural town, as it is unlikely that there is much to choose from, and no real power to influence a large company anyway. So now you're stuck with undrinkable water, bad internet, and barely any healthcare.

> It's ignoring looking (and planning) ahead

I think this is an unfair statement. You make it sound like rural communities intentionally do not plan ahead, which is both a generalization and inaccurate.

I've lived in (very) rural communities that definitely plan ahead. When the consequences of not planning ahead can include death or financial ruin, the incentive to plan ahead is high.

Yes, they plan ahead so effectively that they have thrown their most valuable resource, fertile topsoil, away while ruining the water for everyone in the search of short term profits.

https://www.iowapublicradio.org/news-from-npr/2021-02-24/new...

This seems like much more the result of external pressures from city dwelling corporate executives who drive competition for cheap agricultural produce to such an unsustainable level that everyone has to do the same destructive practices just to stay in the game.

There are many farmers who would love to manage their land more holistically, but recognize that it's financially impossible to do so unless they get lucky and hook a privileged group of rich people who are willing to pay an extreme premium for their food in order to buy non religious indulgences to relieve their guilt for their own contribution to the problem.

And really, to lay blame for this problem on the backs of any singular entity alone is absurd. It's a systemic problem that every single one of us participates in.

All hail Moloch. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

How many small towns or rural areas have you lived in?

Wait, don't answer that. Instead, tell me how much time you've spent studying rural economies, rural infrastructure, and the development of rural communities over time.

> undrinkable water

Rural life usually is on well and septic, which is hyper-local.

I can’t wait for the cost of incinerating toilets to go down.

What happens when that rural community runs out of water? Almost everywhere we pump more water than the natural aquifers support.

I mean that's kind of ignoring rural problems though... They cannot afford the same type of infrastructure that a city has because the area the communities span is way bigger and in general just different. The problems are different so you need a different solution. I think this is more akin to the other solution solves 20% of problems those rural area's did not even have but now have to maintain the excessive solutions to their detriment.

I do agree that it requires looking ahead but that's kind of what the OP is saying the solutions they are being given are not looking ahead to the realistic problems they are actually facing no?

It may shock you to hear that people that live in areas like this often have something called community. It includes things like giving neighbors rides to the hospital.

Believe it or not, rural life isn't a new-fangled innovation; it was the default for all of human history and prehistory up until about 2007.

Disease is a particularly curious example because disease spreads much more readily in an urban environment. Moreover, just because you're in a rural area doesn't mean you live far from a hospital. My parents live in a rural area and they're 5 minutes from a clinic and 20 minutes to a hospital (perhaps a dozen hospital options in a 40 minute radius and multiple world-class healthcare options in a 3 hour radius). But yes, if you are seriously disabled and you have no meaningful community to help you, then you're probably going to have a hard life in a rural area.

Further still, if you move everyone out of rural areas, then you are basically committing your food production to large-scale industrial farming operations as that's the only way it can be done with sufficiently few people.

> And then there is the power imbalance a supplier will have over a small rural town, as it is unlikely that there is much to choose from, and no real power to influence a large company anyway. So now you're stuck with undrinkable water, bad internet, and barely any healthcare.

ISP monopolies are a problem everywhere, and I don't know why a rural community with their own wells would be subject to worse water quality than an exurban community like Flint or urban communities like Jackson, Baltimore, or NYC. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-growing-drinkin...

There are also a lot of benefits to living in rural areas--fresher food, cleaner air, access to more/better nature, closer-knit community, dramatically less violent crime, etc.

> Disease is a particularly curious example because disease spreads much more readily in an urban environment.

Mainly for human-only diseases. Bacterial and fungal diseases can be a much different story. Still a couple of naturally occurring anthrax cases in USA per year in rural areas even.

> Moreover, just because you're in a rural area doesn't mean you live far from a hospital.

This is often a U.S. thing since they have subsidized “critical access hospitals”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Access_Hospital

Starlink gets me 120+ Mbps most days. No one knows I work hours from awired internet or a Walmart until it rains...

I mean every place starts out this way, the issue is when density increases and people start to care about preventable deaths. Don't need stop signs, people die. People washboard on the road, people die. Emergency services can't get to you, people die.

I sometimes wonder what kind of event it takes for a place to revert from paved to gravel roads. In San Benito County, California, which is bigger than the whole state of Rhode Island but virtually depopulated, there are roads that were paved at some point because they served old cinnabar and asbestos mines that nobody needs any more. These roads are so bad that the locals, to the extent that any exist, drive with at least one side of wheels on the dirt shoulder. Every five or ten years the county comes and and throws materials into the potholes, which just makes the surface worse. Now this broke county is planning to repave some of these roads using federal bailout money. Is it only a lack of imagination that keeps them from retreating to gravel?

>Is it only a lack of imagination that keeps them from retreating to gravel?

I think the chance of the feds paying for the replacement is doing a lot.

Reversion to gravel roads has already happened in some of the more depopulated states.[1] Dust control is a problem.

[1] https://blog.midwestind.com/converting-paved-to-unpaved-road...

Oh, I thought we solved that by spraying the unpaved roads with the waste stream from making Agent Orange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri

> this is vastly superior, for my rural community

For 4WD vehicle owners in your rural community who don't need an ambulance, I guess?

I mean, it's sorta reasonable to argue that this is OK for you personally (until your next hip fracture or stroke, anyway), but... you can't run a "community" well this way. What happens to elderly residents? I'm guessing they live in the wilds until they're too old and then move to a facility in the exurbs? Likewise anyone who needs regular health care access for chronic conditions isn't a fit.

Bluntly: you're still being subsidized. Even if you don't take cash from the government for your infrastructure[1], you're still riding on the ability of the rest of society to take on the people who you can't support.

[1] And I don't buy for a moment that you don't get any infrastructure funding. Your power lines and phones are regulated and required to be provisioned at a loss, if nothing else. Mobile and internet access is subject to similar laws in many states.

Are there any predominantly rural areas that aren't being depopulated? Which I feel sad to even say out loud. My grandparents' lovely small town in the south faced this, both from Walmart and from the young moving to get jobs. Actually my other grandparents in another small town in another state also had this too. Both are 30mins away from bigger towns.

Same. Our county is a bit under the 10,000 pop. level and has a majority 70+ population.

You mistook my meaning. I did not mean no cash, I meant, little to no "you need to have a bridge" type laws or anything. The OP is talking about laws that effect this rural community, I was explaining how at an infrastructural level there are little in the way of laws that hinder my county,

Also, no one here uses an ambulance the hospital is nearly two hours away. You call 911 and a helicopter comes. You pay $120 / year per household for the helicopter evac coop or you pay a few grand when they pick you up.

Edit: You do not need four wheel drive or all-wheel drive. The water crossings are capable in any vehicle with a standardish ride height (my 2001 Legacy can manage it with only ~6" of clearance). And these dirt roads are not like private ones you might have seen. These are well made and maintained roads. No more pot holes than a well kept paved road.

> little to no "you need to have a bridge" type laws or anything [...] You call 911 and a helicopter comes.

And you don't see the dissonance here? Why does that call even go through? You think the phone company can make that happen based on the sub-million/month bills your community pays? Of course not, they take a huge loss. Someone made sure you had phone service!

Likewise someone made sure you had roads. I know you think they didn't, but they did. Nowhere in the continent is more than two hours drive from a paved state road artery, you probably use two or three every week. And that paving happens out of state coffers paid for by cityfolk. Likewise the helicopter rides you're talking about don't make money, and it's laughable to think they do. Emergency services are subsidized everywhere, the only profit-making ambulances you see are in (yes) cities where they can lean on more statistically reliable business and more typically insured customers.

Your focus on the specifics ("bridges" vs. "infrastructure") is obscuring the truth that your rural lifestyle is, like all such environments, very heavily subsidized by urban taxpayers. It's simply not possible to operate a modern society at that density. It's just not.

I think you're missing my point still. I've not once suggested any such thing about money, didn't even talk about it.

You certainly seemed to be using your argument as a proxy for "our lack of regulation means we can live as we like without dependence on the rest of society", and I'm pointing out that's wrong. To repeat: your focus on the specific ways where you are not dependent does nothing to refute all the ways in which you are.

I agree you have broken bridges and unpaved roads and raw river fords and whatnot that no one is fixing for you or trying to making you fix. I just don't see how that's interesting?

To repeat: you keep putting words into my mouth and crafting a strawman.

Then I confess I really don't know what your point is, beyond telling us you have bad roads? Surely there was a point behind that. Was it not "look how little we spend to have a good life"? Well, then noting how much everyone else is spending for your benefit seems responsive, no?

I think you must not have read the article nor my comment. I think those are preqs for engaging in conversations here...

I think the equivalent thing here to your gravel roads is a public harbor and dock, instead of a ferry. A ferry for <200 people sounds like trying to run public transit through Nebraskan farmland.

In California Caltrans operates a 24x7 oncall ferry service for cars in the Sacramento delta area serving an island of fewer than 300 people. It costs $4 million per year plus capital costs (this year: over $25 million in new capital). Because we are idiots.

No, because there's 17 square miles of cultivated land on Ryer Island. Few people, but active farms.

That sounds like a good reason for a bridge and a bad reason for a ferry.

The taxpayers are subsidizing those farmers. What about those rural areas that want to survive on their own?

I don’t think there’s really anything wrong with subsidizing agriculture and forestry and whatnot. But I do think there are better and worse ways to build transportation systems.

whats the average life expectancy in your county?

Please impose your city slicker values on us poor people. We are too ignorant for our own good /s

It's kinda hard to tell exactly what the /s applies to, but...

The weird rural inferiority complex presented as the pretense that outsiders are looking down the country folks seems a lot more common than any actual down-looking. It's almost tempting to think that the source is actually a hierarchical worldview more commonly embedded in the minds of rural-dwellers.

Personally I'd guess that lifespan and/or various quality of life measures don't correlate neatly along any urban-rural divide, so if I wanted to disabuse someone of the notion that they did, I'd go looking for statistics to that effect. If they show life expectancy for rural communities is the same or higher, then the question is answered. If they show life expectancy is lower, surely solving that problem would be more important than rural pride... unless of course that hierarchical worldview speculation is correct.

There is a neat correlation in life expectancy in the US in urban vs rural areas. Per this study, in urban areas women live 2.48 years longer, and men can expect to live 2.53 years longer than their counterparts in rural areas. The study notes a significant difference in cardiovascular disease as a primary cause. I guess eating healthy foods is a city slicker value...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8743112/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981900/

Likely less a value and far more a cost thing. It is a lot cheaper to be poor and on welfare in a city. I pay an immense mark up on groceries. I also own a farm, so I don't buy much groceries (produce in the winter, a few luxuries, that's about it). Most folks here are basically living a city-style welfare life but hours from the city.

>It's kinda hard to tell exactly what the /s applies to

That’s a problem

No clue, not even sure if that data is available. We have a population of a bit under 10,000 in our county, and it is a very aged county. The census said the majority age is 70+.