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Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

nytimes.com

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Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#151

Post by weberc2 »

aurailious wrote: post #143
weberc2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you misread my comment. I was very careful not to suggest that "the law was explicitly discriminatory". I'm merely asking how they accomplish the alleged discrimination.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#152

Post by state_less »

CydeWeys wrote: post #115
badloginagain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory all you need to make it work is good internet connection. Especially if its remote. If there was a serious offer from some company where for the same amount of rent in SF, I could have a mortgage on literal acres of land, thats attractive. Less attractive is the crumbling infrastructure, opioid wildfires, actual wildfires, and aggressively conservative culture. Gotta try something though, right?

The thing is, when I'm working remotely, the amenities that the city I live in can provide are even more important than if I'm working in an office. If I'm working remotely, then 100% of my social needs have to come from the city. So having culture, things to do, etc., becomes even more important. I live in a city because I like living in a city, and then secondarily also because there's good jobs here.

Depends on what you value. You might also be rooting for Musk's low latency Starlink program so you can hangout at the reef or in the mountains.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#153

Post by amyjess »

Ultimately, if you're going to do it, do it the way TI did.

Texas Instruments set up their headquarters next to Richardson, TX. When they realized there weren't enough engineers in the area, the TI founders started their own university so they could farm engineers to grow TI.

Ultimately, once the university got big enough, they turned it over to the state, and now the University of Texas at Dallas is the largest engineering-centric university in the southwest, and its existence is probably responsible for the Silicon Prairie and the Telecom Corridor being a thing.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#154

Post by njarboe »

amyjess wrote: post #148
Scoundreller wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Lots of national forest land that many people would love to be able to live on. Check out the prices around Aspen which is surrounded by National forests.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#155

Post by pnathan »

mrdodge wrote: post #69
mr_tristan wrote: post #43

I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run. (Subsequently, if their life continues to get worse, well, I suspect more tendencies towards authoritarianism.) This is where I sense the tension. At least in the US, the political system seems to want to maintain people in rural areas, but th…

What was different about America that small towns thrived? The economic system is short sighted, and doesn't always have to drive politics - this may be a recent phenomena.

Logistics, essentially, and the advent of globalism caused more and more centralized approaches.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#156

Post by Glyptodon »

cgoecknerwald wrote: post #123
nimbius wrote: post #99

speaking 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…

I absolutely agree with your call-out. If a company has to have a "good culture" to attract talent, then so does a county, city, or state. Since I no longer have to live in a state that fights against my rights, I may very well choose to live (and therefore work) in other states for the rest of my life. However, I do wonder if we are over-conflating "rural" with "conservative." Certainly, they are correlated, but I c…

The big differences between rural California and Rural Mississippi from my experience:

1. Rural California has way fewer black people. 2. Rural California is more geographically wealth-segregated. (The probability that a larger acreage and higher-owner-income rural property is adjacent to trailers is greater in Mississippi than California.)

In rural Mississippi people pretend their black neighbors don't exist unless they need "help." In rural California people just don't have black neighbors.

In general rural California is probably much more like Mississippi than you'd think.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#157

Post by badpun »

sidlls wrote: post #58
badloginagain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory all you need to make it work is good internet connection. Especially if its remote. If there was a serious offer from some company where for the same amount of rent in SF, I could have a mortgage on literal acres of land, thats attractive. Less attractive is the crumbling infrastructure, opioid wildfires, actual wildfires, and aggressively conservative culture. Gotta try something though, right?

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.

As someone coming from Poland, a country that’s pretty much 100% white and Polish, I don’t feel that the lack of “diversity” has negatively impacted my development. It seems to me that people in the US have been brainwashed (in schools, by media etc.) into believing that diversity is always good and lack of diversity is always bad, while in reality it’s not that simple.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#158

Post by amyjess »

Benjammer wrote: post #127
cgoecknerwald wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree with your call-out. If a company has to have a "good culture" to attract talent, then so does a county, city, or state. Since I no longer have to live in a state that fights against my rights, I may very well choose to live (and therefore work) in other states for the rest of my life. However, I do wonder if we are over-conflating "rural" with "conservative." Certainly, they are correlated, but I c…

I think you would probably be surprised how similar rural area culture can be on opposite sides of the country.

But there is one key difference: in a rural area in a blue state, you at least have the protection of state law. If you get discriminated against for being gay, you can sue. You don't have to jump through hoops for birth control or abortion. You don't need an ID to vote.

Yeah, sure, your neighbors might be hostile to you, but having the state government behind your back helps immensely.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#159

Post by HarryHirsch »

state_less wrote: post #152
CydeWeys wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, when I'm working remotely, the amenities that the city I live in can provide are even more important than if I'm working in an office. If I'm working remotely, then 100% of my social needs have to come from the city. So having culture, things to do, etc., becomes even more important. I live in a city because I like living in a city, and then secondarily also because there's good jobs here.

Depends on what you value. You might also be rooting for Musk's low latency Starlink program so you can hangout at the reef or in the mountains.

It doesn't work like that. A colleague argued in all seriousness that watching ballet on Youtube is the same as watching it live at the NY City Ballet. The fellow is a boor who would be in NYC for a day but never take his kids to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur skeletons.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#160

Post by lotsofpulp »

Glyptodon wrote: post #156
cgoecknerwald wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree with your call-out. If a company has to have a "good culture" to attract talent, then so does a county, city, or state. Since I no longer have to live in a state that fights against my rights, I may very well choose to live (and therefore work) in other states for the rest of my life. However, I do wonder if we are over-conflating "rural" with "conservative." Certainly, they are correlated, but I c…

The big differences between rural California and Rural Mississippi from my experience: 1. Rural California has way fewer black people. 2. Rural California is more geographically wealth-segregated. (The probability that a larger acreage and higher-owner-income rural property is adjacent to trailers is greater in Mississippi than California.) In rural Mississippi people pretend their black neighbors don't exist unless…

Except for all the laws protecting freedoms that nimbius posted and social welfare like parental leave, and access to the UC education system.
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