> I am pointing out that this is not a given, magic that will just happen. Capitalism is not always efficient nor reliable, based on the evidence.
I said 'if there's a market for it'.
The simple fact is that these rural communities are just not as economically viable as they used to be. Most rural communities exist around 'base input' types of industries that made money by exporting stuff extracted from the land. Farming, mining, logging, etc. The community existed because extracting those resources required a lot of labor, and that labor wanted to buy services after work. When you had 100 people who worked in the fields all day, they'd come back to town and patronize local bars, stores etc. However, farming, like mining, has continued to become less and less labor intensive because of better automation. There isn't 100 people coming back from the fields in most cases now. There's 1 dude who was driving a combine harvester all day. Or a planter, etc. And more recently, its one guy who was monitoring a dozen combine harvesters that were self-driving based on GPS.
Editing in a reply to below comments bc depth limit.
> This is why I'm very pro remote work for the broader economy.
> It's much easier for remote workers who want to live in rural areas to patronize these local bars, stores, etc, when they're not already commuting to places with a much larger collection of services.
I'm also pro-remote work, but even if every job that is do-able remote becomes remote, that won't revitalize every rural community. No one is moving to North Dakota just because they got a remote job. The US is just too big and the number of remote-able jobs is too small. Sure, some rural communities, with particularly nice outdoors, etc will be winners. But you need actual 'large' numbers of people to sustain those local bars/stores. A few software developers moving to a dying mining town is just not going to be enough patrons to sustain a bar, stores, schools, etc. Even if they all keep their 500k Google paychecks, they can still only drink so much beer at once.
> In which case, that reminds me:
> The neat thing about central planning is that it can invest in things-- like rural electrification-- which are cost prohibitive for a market-based solution, if/when that need arises.
> So would you agree they are both neat in their own way?
Yes, they are both neat in their own way. I like that the post office has to deliver mail to everyone.
Central planning can react faster than the market, if the central planners have good foresight. But they can't see into the future either. If you have some rural mining community that could sustain a population of 5,000 in 1970, it made a lot of sense to electrify it. But then 40 years later, the mine is more productive than ever before, but only needs 20% of the labor because of advances in automation. It kinda sucks that you built an electric system sized for a population of 10,000, right? Cuz now you have a town of 5,000 where unemployment is extremely high.
Though I'd argue that rural electrification at this point (or in the next few years) is probably best by a home-solar-battery combo.