Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful
> Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by German born British economist E. F. Schumacher.
Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
141–150 of 257 posts
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#142I think there is a reckoning coming in terms of what "educated worker" means, as increasingly, it does not mean "competent."
Competence and specialization is what drives rural economies. Machine repair, fabrication, feed mills, legal services, construction, teaching, child care, animal and livestock services, all require physical competence. These are considered blue collar jobs, because they require someone to actually do something to create value.
I would argue that the soft skills that corporate environments require do not create value, they at best manage capital, and usually deal in the factors and derivatives of negotiating wealth transfers and businesses that reduce to forms of amusement, posterity, and entertainment.
The urban/rural resentment has a lot to do with the relative dependency of each on the other. Cities need food, and farms need capital. Globalization means cities can get food for less from around the world, and the margins on farming are so thin that capital is mostly only accessible at the conglomerate scale.
Competence can be bought from a global supply chain, so rural economies are collapsing precisely because of globalization (e.g. international trade liberalization), and because of distorted fiscal policies that destroy local wealth in favour of centralizing it from global sources. The results have been, and remain predictable.
What is very likely is that city housing prices will become so high that companies will have to use remote workers to produce goods while paying the cost of living, and this will drive broadband investment.
However the real crisis is that the traditional urban/rural dependency and cultural divide is polarizing in favour of the urban side, who can be defined as the sort of people who use phrases like, "left behind," and who lack an apprehension of what follows ecological imbalance at this scale.
Adding educated workers to small towns will not revitalize them, and nor will building public works with public administrative jobs. Until there is a way to generate productive and competitive capital and build real wealth in them, without suffering predation by both their respective governments and globalized markets, they will continue to disappear.
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure the comment didn't say that.
To be clear, I was responding to this: > Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible. How else can you interpret this? Blue-collar minorities are less capable of knowing where/when to get a license than blue-collar whites? Or perhaps the "minority" bit is a red-herring altogether and the salient criterion is "blue-collar"?
> Blue-collar minorities are less capable of knowing where/when to get a license than blue-collar whites?
But your comment wasn't suggesting this. You were suggesting that the law was explicitly discriminatory to require minorities alone to need ID and whites could vote without ID.
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#144speaking as someone who works in a small town in the midwest as an auto mechanic, the people that shot themselves in the foot with this idea were the very ones who proposed it. I got 5 months of free online Python classes from the local government. This was part of some larger state plan to 'revitalize' us as a 'web 2.0' something or other for the 'silicon valley' of the midwest. The whole thing read like snake oil b…
Need an abortion? book a flight, we require a trans-vaginal ultrasound and a waiting period.
There's a coalition in my state that believes all life is sacred and abortion should be illegal even in cases of incest and rape. God's will and so forth...
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#145I can't read the article - did it mention globalization? I don't know why you'd want to hire someone remotely in small country town USA when you could get 10 people for the same price in other countries. Now there are pretty resort towns where skilled people want to live, that is different. But old Mid-Western agricultural towns don't have that draw.
Here's two reasons to hire small town USA:
1. Culture fit. (This is a huge reason for customer service centers onshoring.)
2. Same/similar working hours.
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#146Are these same small towns also insulated from market crashes and recessions? Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence? Edit: apparently people are interpreting my comment negatively. I was seriously asking if these small town communities can act as a sort of buffer during recessions because of their relative isolation, thereby limiting negative effects. I'm not questioning whether they should ex…
Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence? Are you asking if there's a good reason why these small towns should exist?
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Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
People drastically understate the infrastructure and other issues you note in places outside of major urban centers of technology. My children do not have a net benefit from a huge home on a huge plot of land if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking.
> if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking. But all of this exists outside of rural areas, and in fact in many areas close to metro hubs. Just because you're in a more urban environment does not guarantee you to have this utopian neighborhood.
Of course it doesn't guarantee that; nothing is guaranteed. It comes down to likelihood: I'm more likely to find high quality education and diversity (cultural and recreational) in the Bay Area, New York, etc. than almost anywhere else in America.
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a very long time in the US (up to 1970's in Alaska) one had the homestead act that allowed people to claim a large amount of land (160 acres) if you lived on it for five years and improved it. There was a huge amount of land available and this "free" land would create a lot of rural population. People from all over the world came to get a chance to own land. Impossible in Europe basically for a person to be able…
> Most of this land in the lower 48 was gone by 1900 or so and this is what people are referring to when they talk about the closing of the American frontier. Well, sorta. The feds still own 30-85% of each Western state: https://assets3.bigthink.com/system/tinymce_assets/944/origi...
Mostly because that land is so inhospitable that nobody wants it.
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#149If a small town in the US could become a tech hub, then every capital in the world would already be one. Significant amounts of money are spent around the globe, yet it seems tech hubs are the one thing you cannot disrupt. :)
Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy
#150speaking as someone who works in a small town in the midwest as an auto mechanic, the people that shot themselves in the foot with this idea were the very ones who proposed it. I got 5 months of free online Python classes from the local government. This was part of some larger state plan to 'revitalize' us as a 'web 2.0' something or other for the 'silicon valley' of the midwest. The whole thing read like snake oil b…
It sounds like they're committed to the values that are important to them, regardless of the huge disadvantages. What's the way to change this?