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Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#271

Post by stickfigure »

dogman144 wrote: post #95
stickfigure wrote: post #19

I live on rural property about an hour from SF. My neighbors aren't techies, but they really aren't that different. Lots of older/retired people, plenty of maker-type people. Out here there's space to have shops, tractors, and physically large projects. I can't discuss programming with my neighbors but welding, electronics, gardening, and construction are fun topics. I still see many of my Bay Area friends; weekend p…

This is an area I'm looking to move to, from Santa Rosa up to Ukiah but way east Bay looks interesting. What is the fire risk like? I'm comfortable with everything else via Starlink, remote job that'll stay remote, and similar.

> What is the fire risk like?

The answer is complicated.

My property has burned over twice since I've been here, and two years ago a few hundred of my neighbors lost homes in the LNU fire. However, I'll still say that for rural California, it's actually not bad.

It's grasses and oaks here ("light flashy fuels") which burn with low intensity. If you prepare diligently, your home will most likely be fine. We don't get crazy conifer-fueled earth-sterilizing crown fires like the Sierras. By end of spring you can barely tell there was a fire.

I joined the fire service after the LNU fires (unincorporated Solano is all volunteer). So while fire is something that's never far from my mind, it's not something I really worry about.

Sadly, Starlink isn't servicing this area yet, no DSL or cable either. I have to bounce "wireless broadband" off a couple hillsides. It's dreadfully slow, but way better than Hughesnet. Starlink will be a gamechanger for sure.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#272

Post by gameman144 »

landemva wrote: post #255
ochoseis wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core function of the government is to provide basic necessities to its constituents. In other words, guaranteeing a food supply is a critical national interest and there’s no better way than to incentivize home-grown food.

The primary function of government was to protect liberty. The USA liberty experiment is nearly done.

These two go hand-in-hand. As a whole-cloth believer in government's main goal being the protection of rights, I'd propose that it's pretty tough to guarantee those rights if you have invading armies or revolting citizens. Guaranteeing stability for the nation (in economic, military, and civic spaces) is needed, even if only as a means to protect liberty.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#273

Post by gameman144 »

majormajor wrote: post #207
engineer_22 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life. Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head an…

Rural communities are providing a subsidy to urban communities by ... selling them things? Isn't "charging money for" just about the opposite of subsidizing? Food is necessary; that does not mean that the US's rural communities in their current form are all necessary or even that they're unsubsidized. Food is an incredibly substitutable market, you'd expect the market to push prices down to a minimum.

> Food is an incredibly substitutable market, you'd expect the market to push prices down to a minimum.

This is largely the reason why we have subsidies for farming: we're not okay with substituting domestic agriculture for foreign imports, due to the risks involved. Consider the case of manufacturing, which is also a largely substitutable market.

In the late 20th and early 21st century, the USA hollowed out loads of our manufacturing hubs in pursuit of lower prices, and this worked as advertised; costs dropped! With circumstances changing and a desire to perform more domestic manufacturing, though, we've lost a lot of our options. The USA has lost a lot of manufacturing nous and industry momentum, meaning that there's a lot of upstart cost to get back into the game.

While subsidizing an industry may not be efficient from a global market perspective, it can be very sensible from a national policy perspective, since it means that you can build an experienced workforce and institutional knowledge within a given domain.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#274

Post by gameman144 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #181
refurb wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities literally can’t sustain themselves without outside inputs - food, building materials, energy, etc. Subsidizing agriculture isn’t a “rural” subsidy, it’s a “population” subsidy.

> Subsidizing agriculture isn’t a “rural” subsidy, it’s a “population” subsidy. It's both, actually. Just like if the government started paying for free, say, cloud storage, regardless of where anyone lives, that'd be a population subsidy on the consumer side, and an area/industry-specific subsidy on the producer side. > Cities literally can’t sustain themselves without outside inputs - food, building materials, ener…

> Note that nobody's calling for the federal government to spend zero money in rural areas, when they talk about subsidies, they usually mean spending a disproportionate amount of money there.

This is interesting because I think this is the heart of a disagreement between urban and rural folks.

From the urban side, there's the perspective of "we're sending more to the government than the government is spending on us!". This is totally valid, and can be frustrating as a city-dweller. This is also exactly what we'd expect, though, given that the whole conceit of cities is that they introduce economies of scale and industrial concentration. Cities specialize at producing a lot of value without taking as much infrastructure or upkeep.

From the rural side, though, there's the opposite perspective. Of course there's more of a maintenance cost: you can't centralize ten-thousand acres of farmland, it is expansive by its definition. Likewise, you can't centralize resource extraction: the resources exist where they exist, and at the density they exist. A local mining operation may only need a few dozen workers, but those workers need roads, electricity, water, and housing which cannot scale. The purpose of this disproportionate spending and investment is to make possible the economies of scale within cities that consume this rural output.

A simple metaphor here is the idea of organs within the body. Your gut subsidizes the rest of your body calorie-wise: your intestines send far more calories to the rest of your body than they consume. Then again, of course they do, because if they didn't they would serve no benefit.

Cities may consume a lot of resources, but produce disproportionately more money. Rural areas may consume a lot of money, but produce disproportionately more resources. This is to be expected, since they're each specializing in separate things. If we're expecting farmlands to be as economically efficient as cities, then it's only fair to expect cities to be as agriculturally efficient as rural areas.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#276

Post by jen20 »

This thread has mostly focused on the US. In the UK, rural life is quite different and it frustrates me no end that there is no equivalent to the local pub even in small towns in the US (sports bars don’t count)…

In terms of specifics in the UK, look west and southwest. Full of fantastic little villages which have communities.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#277

Post by VoodooJuJu »

mdasen wrote: post #48

> I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minori…

You've never lived in a rural area before.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#278

Post by giantg2 »

justin66 wrote: post #180
engineer_22 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life. Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head an…

> Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. We pay a premium to buy food from the rural US in the form of common import tariffs that stifle or eliminate competition at the expense of the consumer and to the benefit of agricultural interest…

"Large volumes of food need to come from some rural area, but if left to its own devices, the market would never demand that so much of it come from the rural US, or that the rural US make so much from the crops it produces."

Why not? The US exports a lot a food and consumes a lot of food (per capita). If we were to cease exports and even some domestic production, then prices will rise. The worldwide demand isn't going anywhere but up, while arable land is the same or shrinking.

In a way I do think that many farm subsidies should be examined and maybe done away with, but in another way I realize that we can't compete globally (exports), and many likely can't afford to pay the the true cost of domestic production. Not to mention if we become an importer because of this, we could outbid other nations and instigate famine in the poorer nations.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#279

Post by [deleted] »

briHass wrote: post #225
justin66 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. We pay a premium to buy food from the rural US in the form of common import tariffs that stifle or eliminate competition at the expense of the consumer and to the benefit of agricultural interest…

One of the main points of the parent posts was the impact of climate change and/or subsidies for fuel. Our local agricultural system is already hopelessly dependent on fossil fuels, and you propose that this situation is improved if the US starts importing most of its food?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#280

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

rich_sasha wrote: post #54

Uk Oxford and Cambridge are bona fide tech hubs, and towns of ~150k people but in either you can totally live in a village with a 20-30 min bike commute. We’re talking cows in pastures and dark skies. Hell, I know someone who helped raised some cattle on a common in return for a share of the meat... while actually within Oxford City boundaries.

We’re in Charlbury, 15 minutes out from Oxford by train, and it’s full of knowledge workers (tech included). FTTP broadband, plenty of facilities, population just 3000, beautiful Cotswold countryside. The only downside is that house prices are high as a result.
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