3 ms·

And by restricting how far away somebody can get credit you limit the market, which pushes prices up. What these people need to do is shift to a) online bankin

And by restricting how far away somebody can get credit you limit the market, which pushes prices up. What these people need to do is shift to a) online banking (where the entire US is one market) and b) start paying their employees in direct deposit. That is one side though: the other is that small-town USA is dying. No amount of banks can solve that problem, because it is a problem of opportunity and because declining opportunity is a spiral that keeps going down. Unless you enact some version of the old British poor-laws or limit movement to the cities like China (neither would be legal in the US) you can't stop that.

SauciestGNU 9y ago
I think you hit the nail in the head. Furthermore, instead of trying to limit movement to the cities, I think we ought to cut bait and stop subsidizing these dying areas and instead fund moving the people who live there to areas with sustainable economies. Small town rural America is never coming back, so instead of continuing to put good money after bad, we should look to innovative solutions that will help the people there, but might leave the actual locations abandoned or close to it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  Every post about rural America on HN always ends up with at least one of these hostile "f-you, adopt my lifestyle" comments. They're unempathetic, parochial, boring, and certainly not clever.
  - SauciestGNU 9y ago
    I'm not asking anyone to adopt a lifestyle, I'm advocating that we assist people relocating to a place where they have a semblance of a chance to prosper. Propping up slowly dying towns with subsidies in the form of EBT and social security/disability and Medicaid surely has less economic utility than putting programs in place that will help the people in dying towns find productivity elsewhere. I understand that people grow attached to their homes and their communities, but the idea that people are entitled to prosperity in the location of their choosing is ludicrous. With telecommuting and remote work it becomes more possible, but you've still got to close the skills gap between the (largely uneducated) rural small towns and economically productive cities.
    - pnutjam 9y ago
      Can you imagine what single payer or UBI would do to revitalize rural america?
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    Well, if we allow everything down to municipal development and agricultural species diversity to be set by profitability and market factors, we are implicitly saying, "Fuck you, adopt my lifestyle" to everyone whose lifestyle doesn't generate high returns.
    - candiodari 9y ago
      And if we don't (to a large, but not quite 100%, extent) we allow for a huge, huge vulnerability in our society. One that could cause it to fail, and has caused many catastrophic failures in the past.

SauciestGNU 9y ago

I think you hit the nail in the head. Furthermore, instead of trying to limit movement to the cities, I think we ought to cut bait and stop subsidizing these dying areas and instead fund moving the people who live there to areas with sustainable economies. Small town rural America is never coming back, so instead of continuing to put good money after bad, we should look to innovative solutions that will help the people there, but might leave the actual locations abandoned or close to it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Chaebixi 9y ago
Every post about rural America on HN always ends up with at least one of these hostile "f-you, adopt my lifestyle" comments. They're unempathetic, parochial, boring, and certainly not clever.
- SauciestGNU 9y ago
  I'm not asking anyone to adopt a lifestyle, I'm advocating that we assist people relocating to a place where they have a semblance of a chance to prosper. Propping up slowly dying towns with subsidies in the form of EBT and social security/disability and Medicaid surely has less economic utility than putting programs in place that will help the people in dying towns find productivity elsewhere. I understand that people grow attached to their homes and their communities, but the idea that people are entitled to prosperity in the location of their choosing is ludicrous. With telecommuting and remote work it becomes more possible, but you've still got to close the skills gap between the (largely uneducated) rural small towns and economically productive cities.
  - pnutjam 9y ago
    Can you imagine what single payer or UBI would do to revitalize rural america?
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  Well, if we allow everything down to municipal development and agricultural species diversity to be set by profitability and market factors, we are implicitly saying, "Fuck you, adopt my lifestyle" to everyone whose lifestyle doesn't generate high returns.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    And if we don't (to a large, but not quite 100%, extent) we allow for a huge, huge vulnerability in our society. One that could cause it to fail, and has caused many catastrophic failures in the past.