The alternative of what? Socialize and subsidize infrastructure costs even more for rural dwellers so the city folks pay for the $20k cable a single rural family requires?
Edit: to be less snarky, there are plenty of examples of doing something inefficient for the benefit of society as a whole. The New Deal and the ADA are two examples that come to mind.
Unfortunately, we don’t do much of that anymore in the US.
That said, Starlink, and presumably competitors at some point, does change the game. As does probably 5G and successors. They don't replace last mile/last 10 mile wired Internet for all cases but we do increasingly have viable alternative for more rural locations.
My brother's house had a 1Mb/s down ADSL wired connection and he was the last house on the road that could get "broadband" at all. With Starlink, he's able to work, stream video, etc. which wouldn't have been possible before.
Also, internet and such for rural people benefits society as a whole, indirectly. For example, better crop yields (Through better access to information) and such.
So, I think your argument is deeply flawed.
Regarding your first response, you may want to visit the HN guidelines regarding shallow dismissals.
Feudal systems didn't end because of inequality, they were the opposite: the feudal system ended when serfs were allowed to enclose their communal land and were given it as private property. It went from an equal system that suffered a tragedy of the commons ("the commons" literally referring to the common land that existed under the feudal system), to a system of private farmers who were able to capture some of the wealth from their effort and land.
Again, I'm not sure if the intent of this is another shallow dismissal or if you're failing to make the connection I'm trying to communicate.
>the feudal system ended when serfs were allowed to enclose their communal land and were given it as private property.
Why do you think the nobility allowed this? History tells us it's rare that a consolidated power willingly gives up that power. Is it possible that the inequality of rights and taxation led to the nobility's hand being forced here?
Anyway you look at it, many historic societies existed for hundreds of years with levels of inequality vastly greater than experienced currently by any farmer in the U.S.
You are using the current situation of a farmer (who has access to the internet and other regulated monopolies) as evidence for the case against those very services. If you remove that level of access, I don't think you have the point you think you do.
It's like pointing to someone who gets government assistance and saying "See? There isn't enough quality of life differential to warrant them getting assistance." The very fact that they receive assistance is exactly why that level of discrepancy is lower.
If you're saying that its possible that greater inequality can be tolerated, it's missing the point. I'm not stating a claim about an absolute level; I'm saying society should be aware that a tipping point exists. The same is said for taxation; people can point to past eras where people paid a higher effective tax rate and claim that as evidence that the current level should be raised. We can probably debate what the appropriate level is (but I doubt anyone actually knows), but that wasn't the point. Arguing the "right level" of inequality doesn't negate the point that there is some level that will make society relatively unstable.
Besides, the historical comparison may not be as apt as you think. There are many reasons why the same comparison is disrupted; technology for one allows for easier and more effective coordination. I don't think many feudal peasants could organize quickly via carrier pigeon while today we have social media; Peasants couldn’t vote to overturn their govt etc, etc.
Why do you believe such a thing exists in the U.S.?
I personally find the arguments for mutually assured destruction very plausible.
Whether it's between countries or between factions within a country with WMDs, a real fighting war will practically wipe nearly everyone out.
Because it exists for every civilization and essentially every system. The U.S. is not inherently exceptional in this regard.
And, yes, MAD is plausible and also a strong deterrent. But a central crux of the theory is that the system is inhabited by rational agents. Humans can even be modeled as rational agents most of the time, but I don't believe they adhere to this model all of the time. Behavioral psychology seems to bear this out.
How does that follow? Clearly the presence of WMDs changed the game.
I also don't see how rationality, or it's absence, relates to this point?
The ADA, strictly speaking, only helps those with disabilities. But guess what? Having people with disabilities be able to access goods, services, and work just like anyone else helps society as a whole.
For example, I would want to make sure you still have access to voting even if it costs a disproportionately high amount of money to ensure that right for you or if it's much more probable that you would vote against my personal selfish interest. We generally want a society with a shared set of core principles rather than just a purely transactional society.
1. More people are able to contribute to society in ways they were unable to before. Personally, my life is better because I’ve learned from people of various abilities. That wouldn’t be possible if my school and workplaces were unable to accommodate them.
2. We all get older, we all lose abilities as we age. The ADA is helpful to literally every elderly person. Not to mention all able-bodied people are one accident away from requiring ADA amenities.
3. As other comments mentioned, some ADA regulations help more than just the disabled.
4. I don’t expect this to be a majority HN perspective, but I believe we’re only as free as the worst off in our society. Lifting the floor is always a good thing, in my opinion.
Having a disability isn't a choice. Living rurally is.
Because rural/urban living is a choice, this means people can come in and out in response to supply and demand via the price mechanism. If rural areas are viewed as undesirable, rural wages will rise until it justifies people being there.
How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit society?
We could call it the Great Leap Forward, or maybe the Cultural Revolution.
How does an urban population having high speed internet benefit society? Whatever your answer, that's the benefit for rural folks too.
I’d argue the isolated benefit is the same, but the network effect amplifies it. When a ton of people do music together, it becomes part of the culture. That effect is more difficult to scale in low density populations, which means their rate of improvement is probably lower.
I can't think of a better reason to subsidize the additional cost for rural broadband: without it, there is no nationally accessible "culture" that unifies us.
Handing rural people an extra $50k in addition of the payment for the goods ands services to install the infrastructure doesn't seem right to me.
If the situation were reversed, these kinds of defenses would not convince the people making them that rural dwellers ought to subsidize urban living.
Education, healthcare, transportation, retirement -- these are all things where we could say "People can just pay for these things if they value them", but instead we determined that some subsidies are good for the country as a whole (we often even want more subsidies for some of these).
Likewise, it's important to have a population that's willing to live and work in rural industries that supply big city centers. Subsidies to provide some of the infrastructure that more dense areas have can help the nation accomplish that needed population mix more easily.
You can shuffle the board around however you want, but the truth is that agriculture (and therefor rural life) is going to be paid for one way or another.
The status quo is that people indirectly pay for food through taxes, higher service cost, and other distortions that have no relation to how much food they consume. They are forced to pay a subsidy whether they like it or not.
Don't forget foreigners: If your country has a subsidized food production system and you're exporting food, then foreigners are benefiting from your subsidies. (This is actually a debate in Canada vs. USA regarding milk.)
"Let them eat cake"
All the benefits you enjoy as a result of living in a modern society have been paid for by someone other than you.
Basically unless you grow food the city folks would be economically better off if you didn't exist. Your world view is exactly the opposite of reality.
Cities eat up tax dollars too. Boston's Big Dig was basically a $10 billion or so gift to Boston from, not only Western Massachusetts taxpayers but the rest of the country. (The Speaker of the House was from the Boston area.)
"Basically, if we didn't need to eat, we'd be better off of our digestive system didn't exist."
What a hilariously strange world view. There are comparative advantages for both urban and rural areas, and both are vitally important.
Urban areas optimize for concentration of labor. Rural areas optimize for land-and-resource-dependent operations.
You won't build a successful large scale R&D lab in a small farm town, but you also won't build a successful mining operation in downtown LA.
(Also as an addendum, there are so many industries dependent on land and resources other than just agriculture).
> As a rural tax payer I'm paying for some city dwellers to sit around all day doing nothing. All the benefits you enjoy as a result of living in a modern society have been paid for by someone other than you.
No part of that is right. Economically rural areas are a drain justified only by farming, votes, and a charitable desire to serve our fellow man. The idea that a handful of farmers are somehow paying for the teeming masses in the city to sit on their hands is wrong on its face.