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itake

We should minimize our eco-footprint with high density living, not subsidizing high environmental impact lifestyles.

How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit society?

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A great idea! A terrific plan like this needs a clever name.

We could call it the Great Leap Forward, or maybe the Cultural Revolution.

Neither of those had anything to do with moving people from the countryside into the cities, as far as I'm aware. The Chinese Communist Party is still trying to suppress rural-urban migration (e.g., via hukou).

> How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit society?

How does an urban population having high speed internet benefit society? Whatever your answer, that's the benefit for rural folks too.

One difference is that urban areas get that benefit with lower cost due to the inherent scaling available in dense population. The benefit might be the same, the cost is not.

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.

> When a ton of people do music together, it becomes part of the culture.

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.

The utility market is generally a regulated monopoly. The market and govt both recognized the economies of scale with public infrastructure. As part of the tradeoff to be allowed to operate as a monopoly, utilities must also ensure rural or unprofitable customers still receive access. It’s all part of the deal and intrinsically tied to your point.

Let's cut off their electricity and phone too and forcibly relocate them. It's not like other countries haven't done that in the past. /s

When? I can't think of any examples of forced rural-urban migration other than the Highland Clearances in the UK, which isn't really comparable.

Pol pot did it in Cambodia

That was urban-rural migration.

Rural people need reliable access to power for farming.

We can just make them pay for it instead of mooching off everybody else.

Exactly. People in this thread are perfectly happy to throw unknown heaps of other people's money at the problem until it is solved. And it's not like the government has a track record of efficiently spending money in the first place.

Someone's gotta grow the food. Our farmers deserve Netflix.

And eDoctor visits, farmer forums, IoT data services, banking, accounting apps, etc

Or perhaps they deserve to be treated like adults and decide for themselves what infrastructure they want to pay for.

I think the larger point is that guaranteeing access ensures they have the opportunity to make that choice.

Enjoy starving to death then.

If farmers feel their lifestyle isn't good enough in proportion to the work they do, they should raise the prices of the food they sell, not get paid by the backdoor through subsidies.

How do the food, livestock, minerals, and wood that grows in rural areas benefit society?

Those are priced into the economy. The value the cities provide is transferred to rural for food, livestock, and minerals.

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.

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