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Comment by arrozconcosas | Hacker News Reader

Ask someone from an urban area any basic question about a rural area, and they will be clueless about some simple things. I once had a friend who grew up in Chicago ask me if a cow was a Buffalo because it was brown and he thought cows were into black and white. That’s a silly example but it applies even more so to more meaningful policy decisions that happen is rural areas.

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The states in the US aren’t divided on urban/rural lines though. They are divided arbitrarily.

Someone from Hoboken, New Jersey has a lot more in common with someone from Brooklyn than the latter does with someone from a farm in rural upstate NY.

Exactly.

In theory this is not a big deal because of the 10th amendment and the states having legislatures that provide some level of urban/rural balance. In practice, it's more complicated.

Maybe, but someone from a farm in rural upstate New York is also quite different from someone from a farm in Georgia. Because of mass media and news, Americans aren’t necessarily attuned to their cultural differences.

Anecdote: my parents moved to the Virginia side of the DC suburbs in 1989. In 2018, they moved 50 miles to the Maryland side, to be near my wife and our kids. I moved around a lot between high school and now so I didn’t notice it. But my dad (he travels all over the developing world for his career) immediately noticed. (And they both hate Maryland, lol.) He can tell the accents are different. The way people make small talk is different. In his view (as a Bangladeshi and then a Virginian) people are less courteous. When he pointed it out, I couldn’t unsee it. Maryland is the southernmost part of the mid-Atlantic (NJ/DE/PA). Virginia is the northernmost part of the south. Even just looking at places 25 miles on either side of DC, the Maryland side has way more Jewish people and Catholics, and way fewer Asians. (Growing up in northern Virginia in the 1990s, I don’t think I ever met a Catholic. Apparently, Virginia is only 8% Catholic compared to 20% for Maryland.)

I have no reason to disbelieve your anecdote, but I think even if true, it’s a bit of a special case. Most Americans’ culture is determined by the metro area they live in (or lack thereof), rather than by state boundaries.

Having lived in both urban and rural areas, I don't think either has a monopoly on ignorance of the other.

Having lived in both urban and rural areas, I don't think either has a monopoly on ignorance.

FTFY

Sure, but the same is true of rural peoples’ understanding of urban areas.

Given that no policy can be perfect for everyone, why do we think that votes should be proportional to land area and not number of people affected?

It's a silly example, because it doesn't really apply to the situation at all, unless your friend in Chicago happens to be Tammy Duckworth.

Isn't the converse true as well? Rural people lack basic understanding of urban issues.

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