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Do the changes need to trickle down to the dying towns? They are forgotten because they no longer have much value to people outside the towns. The town itself
by princeb 9y ago
Do the changes need to trickle down to the dying towns?
They are forgotten because they no longer have much value to people outside the towns. The town itself exists as a conduit through which people channel their energies together to bring value into their lives. If the conduit collapses, if the factories and the mills go, how can the people survive? The raison d'être of the communities has long passed away, but the community itself hasn't. Put them out of their misery, please!
It is only by some miracle that these towns begin to bring value to the economy again (and not simply by the unsustainable method of spending and consuming), but until that happens they will continue to rot. Their minds can exist in the global hive-mind that is the internet, but their physical bodies need physical maintenance. And yet they exist too far away and too isolated to make it economically viable to do so.
The major cities appear to have monopolized the exercise of human labour for value. Whereas early homo sapiens have loosely organized communities that work to maintain a loosely comfortable life, modern cities have concentrated human effort like a parabolic reflector in order to generate luxuries beyond the reach of mere casual cooperation. These small towns, without the buttress of a major industrial mill or any economic output at all, captures none of the benefits of living in a modern world.
The consolation to the community that hopes to see the itself continue is that these towns are surprisingly hardy, producing generation after generation of brain-addled drug addicts. My sympathies are not with them.
- ryandrake 9y agoI grew up own one of these rural "rust belt" towns and it amazes me that it's still there, and that there are still plenty of people there doing god-knows-what. Once in a while I go home to visit my (retired) family and I wonder what in the world keeps all these people in these dying pseudo-towns, jobless, hopeless, angry at the world, addicted to meth, and blaming their lot on "the liberals". These communities are dead and they don't even know it. Maybe they do know it and they're just stubbornly clinging to a setting and lifestyle that has no future.
- kesselvon 9y agoThe breakdown occurred because we no longer prevent mergers and acquisitions on the basis of regional monopolies or impact on local economies, but on whether consumer prices are increased or decreased. Capital accumulates, and if you let it, it will suck everything out from the country and suburban areas and concentrate it in the major cities. The decline of rural America has everything to do with the flows of capital and not a lot to do with whether small towns are sustainable.
- princeb 9y agocapital goes where labour goes, and labour goes where capital goes. it's easy to forget that capital is not simply money but everything else that is not labour - buildings, facilities, machines, computers, etc. this is not a central planned economy. people organize where they want to organize and it turns out large cities are increasingly where people want to do that. people - the ones who choose neither to move to rural communities nor to bring custom - and not capital, are the systematic destroyer of local communities. mergers, like large cities, are just another symptom of humanity's unsatisfiable desire for efficiency. competition good, cooperation better.