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Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

nytimes.com

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Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#171

Post by danans »

badpun wrote: post #157
sidlls wrote: post #58

Earlier 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.

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.

> I don’t feel that the lack of “diversity” has negatively impacted my development

They said they want diversity for their children. That has nothing to do with how your environment impacted you. People are allowed to have preferences so long as in the process of acting on them, they don't trample on others' rights.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#172

Post by steauengeglase »

johan_larson wrote: post #13

Maybe we shouldn't be trying to keep these small town alive. Maybe we should focus on shutting them down in an orderly fashion and help the residents move to more dynamic areas, probably in large part by helping them acquire skills that are actually in demand there.

OK, but first you have to solve for X in the following example: The Romans would displace conquered peoples by resettling them in Rome while the Romans went out into the hinterlands. This allowed the new influx of slaves to become "Romanized" while giving Roman soldiers farm land they were promised to receive as the price of conscription.

This creates two massive problems for today's society:

Today "Romanizing" has a different name: Cultural Genocide. Whether intentional or not, you are eradicating the cultures you have displaced. Today that's considered a violation of human rights and human dignity. You can't do that and if you try you are at least going to have to find something to mitigate the problem. Do you create an intersectional matrix that finds the most marginalized peoples and leaves them as they are? How do you decide who is most marginalized if you have to move someone. What if their culture a kind of terroir? Can it not exist if you remove it from that place? If so what do you do? Even if they have their language, are the Gullah still the Gullah if you remove them from their diet and usual place of livelihood? Not to mention, when you move their their language will likely disappear and members become assimilated.

Then you have the Refugee Resettlement or "Oakie" Problem. You are introducing a new out-group who will compete for resources and power with an existing in-group. This always causes conflict. In theory, if the in-group view the out-group as either dumb and/or untrustworthy, they turn their judgemental views into critical views and their critical views into moral judgements. After all, value judgements never sit still. After a while they begin incarcerating the most marginalized of the out-group and the scapegoating starts. If not carefully calibrated and balanced the in-group start caving heads in with baseball bats, but the more you carefully calibrate it, the more you return back to the "Romanization" problem.

There are a lot of other problems that arise, but these are the two most consistent when dealing with humans.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#173

Post by DoubleCribble »

I tend to agree with an idea that's mentioned in the article. Perhaps much of the land in certain flyover states should just return to the bison? While it means most of the towns would disappear, some would greatly succeed. I'd be FAR more likely to regularly visit Podunk-Nowheresville if I could witness the annual migration of 10 million bison. After having traveled to the other side of the planet and seen such a migration, developing an American safari industry seems like an outcome worth pursuing.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#174

Post by ep103 »

war1025 wrote: post #167
ourmandave wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's a shame how much abortion gets pushed as a wedge issue. It's great at riling people up and getting them to cluster into their particular camps, but at that point people who would otherwise be able to agree on other issues and actually make progress decide to just not talk to each other.

abortion and gun control.

We can limit the amount of abortion that occurs, without banning abortion (sex education, birth control, health insurance, family planning, adoption center funding, etc).

And we can limit the negative impacts of gun ownership on society, without gun bans (NICB, mental health funding, red flag laws, standardized licensing, increased funding for already existing laws, significantly increased police accountability, etc) .

But no one wants to talk about these things. Instead, we keep talking about them as wedge issues. Ban Abortion / Abortion is a right. Ban X,Y,Z Guns / Gun Ownership is a right.

If you want a jolly good time, find someone who is adamant on one of those issues, have them give an explanation for a while, then see how far you can get in the other issue before they realize they're using all the same arguments but from the opposite viewpoint.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#175

Post by nemo44x »

DoubleCribble wrote: post #173

I tend to agree with an idea that's mentioned in the article. Perhaps much of the land in certain flyover states should just return to the bison? While it means most of the towns would disappear, some would greatly succeed. I'd be FAR more likely to regularly visit Podunk-Nowheresville if I could witness the annual migration of 10 million bison. After having traveled to the other side of the planet and seen such a mi…

It's all mainly farmland.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#176

Post by weberc2 »

apcragg wrote: post #139
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"?

Or groups of people live in certain geographic areas and are not served by public transit or near government offices like a DMV. That can have the effect of making it generally harder one one group despite equal competence.

This would be interesting and I’m curious about the extent to which this happens, but this hypothesis doesn’t support the claim that “absent information about getting an ID, it is nearly impossible for blue-collar minorities (but not their white counterparts) to vote”. Also, if you lack access to public transit, I would expect you’re more likely to have an ID, not less so.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#177

Post by ghaff »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #159
state_less wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose if your criteria is that you need to have world class ballet where you live, that does indeed restrict your options.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#178

Post by ryanwaggoner »

badpun wrote: post #157
sidlls wrote: post #58

Earlier 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.

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.

Can you give us the more nuanced view, particularly as it applies to America, a place with a lot of existing diversity and a pretty mixed history with regard to how minorities have been treated?

What’s the nuanced case for why Americans shouldn’t care that much about “diversity”?

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#179

Post by mynameishere »

johan_larson wrote: post #13

Maybe we shouldn't be trying to keep these small town alive. Maybe we should focus on shutting them down in an orderly fashion and help the residents move to more dynamic areas, probably in large part by helping them acquire skills that are actually in demand there.

[flagged]

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#180

Post by grillvogel »

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.

why do you need a park if you live on multiple acres of land?
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