4 ms·

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 dy

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.

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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.

deleted 9y ago

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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.