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Rural Kansas is dying

newfoodeconomy.org

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Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#111

Post by jonknee »

sverige wrote: post #80
jonknee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's not like you have awesome urban living around corn fields either. Huge fields and few people kind of get in the way of vibrant towns.

Small town living has its own charms, and having lived in big cities, medium-sized cities, and small towns, my preference is for places that are 50,000 people or smaller, with a city over 500,000 population no nearer than 90 minutes away. Small towns were common 50 years ago in the rural Midwest. Farm sizes were much smaller on average then, and lots of people raised several children and made a decent living with 160…

> This is a loss for the country as a whole.

Is it? It seems like that’s the direct result of increased productivity. Even if it’s a loss for the people who would enjoy that life, it seems like tons of cheap food made available for everyone else is very much a gain.

tl;dr The losses of farmers in Kansas are large in Kansas terms, but small in United States terms. It seems a win for the country.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#113

Post by AFNobody »

chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

> I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US.

> It's beautiful out here and I wish more tech workers would consider the Midwest when they decide to leave the Bay Area.

I think you are confused to the core issue. Your situation is relatively difficult to sustain long term and I know of only 1 person (out of 20+) that tried it that have succeeded for 10+ years.

It is a bit anecdotal but, to me, it is pretty clear that the issue isn't "consideration" but "Remote work is genuinely offshored to cheaper IT resources in India/China/etc". Those of us who want US-level salaries find it extremely difficult to sustain a remote work situation indefinitely, particularly as they age into the 40s and 50s.

If I could be certain I'd hold down a job that pays 40% of what I make now, indefinitely, I'd have left the "Big City" 10+ years ago.

The truth is for "average" developers as we age, we get trapped between being "too expensive" (people start trying to negotiate you down except when the economy is at full employment) and the financial obligations a family represents.

To be honest, it is a large part of why LeanFIRE and FIRE communities are so popular with tech folks. Many of us want _out_ but the financial risks involved aren't practical unless we are wealthy enough to be effectively retired in a LCOL location. I doubt many (if any) of such people plan to actually stop writing code.

You should probably also keep in mind that "small town" Kansas (50k+, but not a major city) is not the same thing as "rural" Kansas (where there isn't 50k people in the county spread over a much larger land area than Manhattan, KS).

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#114

Post by nitwit005 »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #17
jonknee wrote: post #5

This is much less interesting than the rust belt decline or any other number of dying communities. Kansas used to need a lot more people to support farming and thus had enough people around for small towns to have a little life to them. Now they don't. It's a good thing that we can make so much food with fewer people, but it does mean even fewer people will live in rural agricultural communities. We love to romantici…

With the internet, small towns should be more viable in places like Kansas.

I wouldn't expect people to make that choice when there are better options. If I wanted to get away from urban life, I'd go move next to a forest with hiking, or near a ski resort, not near miles and miles of endless farms.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#115

Post by ebullientocelot »

blahedo wrote: post #69
state_less wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the benefits depends on the knowledge work. A mathematician might benefit from the quiet solace of the country side, the human bandwidth being of marginal benefit, and instead focus on the problem. When they're ready, they transmit the proof, where it will be studied, reviewed and disseminated (if correct). If you're not considering the information you receive too heavily, then you'd probably want more sync…

> A mathematician might benefit from the quiet solace of the country side, the human bandwidth being of marginal benefit, But most of the working (academic) mathematicians I know, while they need some time in "quiet solace" or whatever, absolutely need to spend some time bouncing ideas off other mathematicians. Not unlike computer scientists, actually. And that's easier when the other mathematicians are local-ish.

I'm just a math grad student, no claim to being a pro, and I can concur already that really digging into the meat of something, some new theorem, say, is MUCH easier with peers to throw off the wall ideas at.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#116

Post by gh02t »

eventualhorizon wrote: post #103
pasbesoin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's supplying the gigabit fiber connectivity, out there? P.S. Answered my own question. Information may be out of date, but quite limited coverage residential plans from a couple of companies, and somewhat more but still limited coverage from a few companies business class offers. Wish I had that many choices. ATT finally dropped a fiber line into our neighborhood, but it's not hooked up yet. Given what Comcast is…

AT&T dropped fiber in my front yard too. I ignored it for a few months because previously they only offered bundles with tv and telephone and crappy speeds to boot. A coworker told me he was getting symmetric gigabit from AT&T for $70/month so I decided to check them out. I switched from Comcast and everything has been awesome except for the supplied wireless router. My iDevices will not work reliably on it so I adde…

Funny, AT&T is more expensive than Spectrum where I am for even worse (if that's possible... Spectrum is pretty bad) service. We're also a Google Fiber location (albeit one of the ones that is currently frozen) and when it was announced somehow Spectrum magically "discovered" a bunch of extra bandwidth and upgraded their plans from 50/5 to 300/50 for $90/mo. Symmetric gigabit for $70 is so far off for us it might as well be science fiction. And this is Raleigh, a well populated area known for high-tech industry.

It's frustrating, and there are many places that are far worse off than us.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#117

Post by durkie »

stephengillie wrote: post #109
jarvelov wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With those options then Net influencer or Instagram model surely? When the task of picking berries can be automated the manual labor should be shifted to other activities. Naturally one might argue that it would be better for society where it so that people put in their hours into other fields than those that seek to profit on people's vanity. However, when the option is what would essentially be meaningless work whe…

If only we could automate the attribute of "being a human". Alas, as I often say, "as long as humans exist, there will be a demand for other humans to explain things to them". Thus a machine picks the berries while a human explains their feelings about the berries. Could not the human do both, and take the job back from the robots?

Have you picked berries for hours on end? It's terrible work.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#118

Post by caseysoftware »

AFNobody wrote: post #113
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

> I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. > It's beautiful out here and I wish more tech workers would consider the Midwest when they decide to leave the Bay Area. I think you are confused to the core issue. Your situation is relatively difficult to sustain long term and I know of only 1 person (out of 20+) that tried it that have succeeded for 1…

It depends on the team and the role. From Austin, I joined Twilio (employee #25ish) as the first developer evangelist not on a coast. Now I'm with Okta on the Product Team (almost 2 years) running the technical side of our API offerings. There hasn't been a local office for either during that entire time.

Demonstrate that you bring unique value to get your foot in the door, deliver on that value to stay in the game.

If you're just starting your career, it's going to be tough at best but if you have a track record and find the right team, it's possible.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#119

Post by nanomonkey »

This reminds me of a story about Slovakian Protestant Farmer's and how they died out because it became social acceptable for each family only had one child. If the child died the family died. If the child lived they would marry another farming family's only child and the farms would combine, growing larger.

Suicide by Culture (http://250bpm.com/blog:113)

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#120

Post by spc476 »

dawnerd wrote: post #112
antognini wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the same way he feels about earthquakes.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. I think a better one would would be hurricanes.

With hurricanes you get warning days in advance (I live in Florida). With tornadoes, you might get a few minutes warning, and with earthquakes, not so much (as far as I understand it).
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