10 ms·

The world continues to focus on cities, while the rest of the people are left behind. I notice a clear metropolitan bias on HN, often incredulous that 1st world

by nugi 9y ago

The world continues to focus on cities, while the rest of the people are left behind. I notice a clear metropolitan bias on HN, often incredulous that 1st world citizens are still living in a unimproved state. Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. Please keep in your minds and hearts that there are millions people outside the expected social systems generally assumed available to city and suburb dwellers.

xor1 9y ago
California on its own has a huge amount of disparity. I'm only familiar with the SF/Bay/LA/OC/SD bubbles, since that's where I've spent (and continue to spend) my entire life. I can't even name more than a few counties, and I can barely name any cities outside of those counties. The rest of California that isn't bordering any of these regions may as well be another country to me.
- daodedickinson 9y ago
  Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institute has been the leading writer on this topic for years; this is his latest: https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-21st-century-wild-west/ https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-21st-centur...
- Roboprog 9y ago
  If you want to see “Appalachia West”, drive north on I-5 until you get to Bakersfield, then take CA-99 from Bakersfield to Sacramento. Well, from the LA area, anyway. Or from SF go east on I-80 to Sac, then south on CA-99. It’s a different world than the coastal cities. (Much like you said, but that’s the route, anyway) Sacramento itself is a kind of borderland, despite being the capitol.
bequanna 9y ago
> ... ambulance times are in hours Where? I live in an very remote part of Northern Minnesota. Even so, worst case ambulance time to most people in my area would be 15-20 mins. I would argue that an incredibly small portion of the US population lives >1hr from an ambulance or first responder.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Here's a map of critical access hospitals, which are a pretty good proxy for rural emergency hospitals: http://www.flexmonitoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CAH_Map_01_12_18.pdf http://www.flexmonitoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CAH... It doesn't show larger hospitals, so it is hard to directly answer the question about access to emergency care, but it shows that there is quite wide geographic coverage. The map in this article shows that the gaps are just where you would expect, in the extraordinarily rural west: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index...
- sgtmas2006 9y ago
  The closest hospital from me is an hour away. 45 if you drive semi-fast. That time + whatever response time is. We had to call an ambulance for my father once and it was 20-30 minutes for them to arrive. It's not really that uncommon.
  - arkades 9y ago
    There’s a meaningful difference between “it was 20-30m for them to arrive” and the previous post’s “hours.” Almost an order of magnitude’s difference. And that’s a medically meaningful difference. 20m response time, 45m to the hospital, you’re still in the time window for critical therapies for heart attacks and strokes. Several hours response time, you’re not. I mean to say, I’m not nitpicking: the difference between your scenario and what the previous poster asserts is large and medically meaningful.
- freehunter 9y ago
  When I was growing up in the rural Midwest, about 30 minutes from the nearest small-town hospital, we waited nearly an hour and a half for an ambulance to arrive to help my sister with an asthma attack because my mom couldn't drive and keep her breathing at the same time.
jdminhbg 9y ago
Thirty minutes from a major city but ambulances take hours doesn't seem to make a ton of sense.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  I can imagine scenarios where it might. Maybe that area is in a different service region (so they don't dispatch from the city) with a much lower ambulance density. If all the ambulances are busy and have long travel times, it's possible it could take more than an hour for one to free up for a new call.
- Veelox 9y ago
  If the ambulance is ran by the county and there is only one or two and you are 4th in line for pickup it could happen.
- marnett 9y ago
  City ambulances don't service counties. If the county outside the city has less available ambulances but high demand then wait times go up.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Depends on what time of day you have your emergency and what is happening. The town I grew up in is 45-60m to an ER during the day, 30m at night. It’s a volunteer squad, so typical response time is ~20m, longer during the weekday. If someone else has an emergency, they will likely need a mutual aid call, which adds 15-30m. If you need ALS, the ambulance may need to pull over en route when a county paramedic responds. If you are further out, the times increase rapidly. Many common emergencies like stroke are guaranteed fatal. In the small city that I live in, first responder for a medical emergency will arrive in <7m. Transport to hospital is ~5-10m.
BeetleB 9y ago
>Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. I can't speak for school funding, but are you actually suggesting ambulance response times were better in those areas in the past? Or broadband?
VectorLock 9y ago
Why shouldn't the world focus on cities? If you're choosing to live in an area where you're geographically separated from other people can you really complain that you're not receiving benefits from systems that are more optimal when people are clustered together?
- hueving 9y ago
  >can you really complain that you're not receiving benefits from systems that are more optimal when people are clustered together Yes. Society should always be doing more than what is cost optimal. Cities are only being focused on right now naturally because that's where the rich people are. It wasn't that long ago that inner cities were quite poor and there were people making excuses like you for not investing in them.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    It’s where a large majority of all people are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States#Historical_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S...
  - KamBha 9y ago
    While I agree that the more investment is probably required in rural areas, I think your assertion that the reason why rural areas are being under funded is incorrect. Reality is that more people now live in urban areas[1]. Democracy being what it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in the city. Add to that that setting up this infrastructure is often not cost effective for a private business (due to a lack of customers) and that most rural communities prefer less government intervention (ie less taxes), we have a situation where there is little impetus to invest in rural communities by private companies and governments (at least local) don't have funding to pay for service. [1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-rural-urban.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-...
    - ghaff 9y ago
IntronExon 9y ago
Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. The first claim seems unlikely, unless that’s 30 minutes at the speed of sound. I’d need solid citations to bite. The second seems unlikely as well, and given how bad response times can be in disadvantaged parts of cities, I’d wonder if it’s an urban/rural divide, or the usual rich/poor divide. The third point is absolutely true, and that’s what happens when people leave, and therefore aren’t paying property taxes in that area. A supermajority of Americans live in and around cities, so that’s no shock. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/27/us/nearly-half-in-the-us-are-living-in-suburbs.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/27/us/nearly-half-in-the-us-a... More recent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States#Historical_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S... 80% of Americans live in cities, so is it really a shock that a majority of resources are focused on the majority of people?
- axaxs 9y ago
  I don't have a solid citation, apologies. But remember 4 of the top 10 cities are in the, landwise, mostly uninhabited Texas and Arizona. It's not a stretch to drive out of the city and lose access to broadband. I'm in a top 30 city and absolutely driving 30 minutes away takes broadband off the plate...depending on direction(south and west do, north and east dont).
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    That’s fair enough on the citation. I would point out that as you say, Texas and Arizona are heavily urbanized, and outside of that, very sparsely inhabited. TX having ~84% urban population, and AZ nearly 90%, that’s going to be hard to cover the other small percentage with broadband. Texas, despite being one of the “Big 8” ranks 32nd for average population density. In other words rural TX and AZ are atypical.
- freehunter 9y ago
  >The first claim seems unlikely, unless that’s 30 minutes at the speed of sound. It doesn't have to be a physical or technical limitation at all. It's a limitation of the cable monopolies not seeing profit in putting fiber or cable lines out there and there's no competition so if they don't, no one will. As for everything else you've said... I would like to introduce you to the concept of the tyranny of the majority. If the richest country in the world says to its citizens "sorry your school isn't big enough to afford books, have fun in the job market" something is seriously fucked up. Yes, yes it is a shock that rural populations are treated like shit. I grew up in it, and the fact that it's getting worse not better is still shocking every single day.
ryanobjc 9y ago
So, what you're saying is that, apart from buying goods and services from rural areas, that the rest of the countryside should somehow assist, with tax money, the rural citizens? Strange that you'd say that, from a population historical of voting for anti-tax candidates. Perhaps not you personally. In other words, you'd like to socialize the downsides of living in remote areas of the country?
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Not so. The state takes our taxes and runs the schools. The rural areas get little funding for their schools, even for the same size school (the same tax base approximately). No, its city folks voting all the money to their schools. Its democracy, but its not pretty.
  - tcoff91 9y ago
    Schools are funded largely by local property taxes in most parts of the US, which is why rural areas have less funding for schools. Schools of equivalent sizes rural vs urban absolutely do not have the same property tax revenue.
  - js2 9y ago
    Not sure where you live, but in the states I've lived, it's the county or municipality that uses property taxes and runs the K-12 schools. Public universities are are subsidized by the state, but those are available equally to all of the state's residents.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      Iowa. They do it differently. The state took over decades ago.
    - jordonwii 9y ago
      In general across the country, less and less public school funding actually comes from local taxes. The state has gotten involved in most states in order to correct discrepancies in school funding between rich and poor districts (with California being one of the most involved states). Some states still have notable funding issues between districts, though. This gives a pretty good description of the issue: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-school...
spamizbad 9y ago
For those not in poverty what you describe is -- indirectly -- a feature not a bug Schools are disappearing because there is no tax base to support them, and the remaining residents tend to favor an austere government. There's also a degree of distrust of governmental organizations. There are a lot of small towns where, if the state government came in and said "We're going to build you a school for free and you won't have to pay for anything" there would be a lot of belly-aching about how the bus traffic would increase wear-and-tear on roads, causing more roadwork, raising taxes. My father lives in rural Wisconsin. Every political season, there's a wave of people running for office trying to reduce the county's tax burden from the 2nd smallest to the 1st smallest in the state, by basically completely gutting what already meager community amenities are provided. Each year they get closer to sweeping the county elections.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The little town in Texas that voted to put libertarians in charge is a decent cautionary tale. https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/ https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-frees...
  - prewett 9y ago
    After reading the article I'd say that the problems were caused primarily by personal conflicts. Any problems with libertarian philosophy did not have a chance to surface because they were completely swamped by the dysfunction of town leaders.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      They tried to have their cake and eat it too. I think that played no small part. They incorporated as a town to save their way of life as an unincorporated community then got greedy and tried to to town things without a town budget.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      A weird tangent - this may be the mother of all libertarian - libertarian conflicts - Nick Denton versus Peter Thiel. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-t...
phil248 9y ago
I'm not sure how to sympathize with people in rural areas lacking services when they relentlessly vote for anti-government leadership by very large margins. If they want the market to provide, they should move closer to the markets.
IIAOPSW 9y ago
> Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. Literally all of those services are more efficient in cities. A km of fiber serves more household when population is dense. Ambulance (and any other vehicle) commute times are shorter when everyone's in the same place. A single school building can be within walking distance of more kids. Its not a matter of city folk being entitled or holding their provincial counterparts in contempt. It is impossible for rural areas to enjoy the same standard of living as urbanities because literally every interaction and service has to pay extra to solve the last mile problem. Do you know how much fiber, how many ambulances, how many school buildings it would take to make every rural area as desirable as the city?

by nugi 9y ago

xor1 9y ago

California on its own has a huge amount of disparity. I'm only familiar with the SF/Bay/LA/OC/SD bubbles, since that's where I've spent (and continue to spend) my entire life. I can't even name more than a few counties, and I can barely name any cities outside of those counties. The rest of California that isn't bordering any of these regions may as well be another country to me.

daodedickinson 9y ago
Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institute has been the leading writer on this topic for years; this is his latest: https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-21st-century-wild-west/ https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-21st-centur...
Roboprog 9y ago
If you want to see “Appalachia West”, drive north on I-5 until you get to Bakersfield, then take CA-99 from Bakersfield to Sacramento. Well, from the LA area, anyway. Or from SF go east on I-80 to Sac, then south on CA-99. It’s a different world than the coastal cities. (Much like you said, but that’s the route, anyway) Sacramento itself is a kind of borderland, despite being the capitol.

bequanna 9y ago

> ... ambulance times are in hours Where? I live in an very remote part of Northern Minnesota. Even so, worst case ambulance time to most people in my area would be 15-20 mins. I would argue that an incredibly small portion of the US population lives >1hr from an ambulance or first responder.

maxerickson 9y ago
Here's a map of critical access hospitals, which are a pretty good proxy for rural emergency hospitals: http://www.flexmonitoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CAH_Map_01_12_18.pdf http://www.flexmonitoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CAH... It doesn't show larger hospitals, so it is hard to directly answer the question about access to emergency care, but it shows that there is quite wide geographic coverage. The map in this article shows that the gaps are just where you would expect, in the extraordinarily rural west: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index...
sgtmas2006 9y ago
The closest hospital from me is an hour away. 45 if you drive semi-fast. That time + whatever response time is. We had to call an ambulance for my father once and it was 20-30 minutes for them to arrive. It's not really that uncommon.
- arkades 9y ago
  There’s a meaningful difference between “it was 20-30m for them to arrive” and the previous post’s “hours.” Almost an order of magnitude’s difference. And that’s a medically meaningful difference. 20m response time, 45m to the hospital, you’re still in the time window for critical therapies for heart attacks and strokes. Several hours response time, you’re not. I mean to say, I’m not nitpicking: the difference between your scenario and what the previous poster asserts is large and medically meaningful.
freehunter 9y ago
When I was growing up in the rural Midwest, about 30 minutes from the nearest small-town hospital, we waited nearly an hour and a half for an ambulance to arrive to help my sister with an asthma attack because my mom couldn't drive and keep her breathing at the same time.

jdminhbg 9y ago

Thirty minutes from a major city but ambulances take hours doesn't seem to make a ton of sense.

Slansitartop 9y ago
I can imagine scenarios where it might. Maybe that area is in a different service region (so they don't dispatch from the city) with a much lower ambulance density. If all the ambulances are busy and have long travel times, it's possible it could take more than an hour for one to free up for a new call.
Veelox 9y ago
If the ambulance is ran by the county and there is only one or two and you are 4th in line for pickup it could happen.
marnett 9y ago
City ambulances don't service counties. If the county outside the city has less available ambulances but high demand then wait times go up.
Spooky23 9y ago
Depends on what time of day you have your emergency and what is happening. The town I grew up in is 45-60m to an ER during the day, 30m at night. It’s a volunteer squad, so typical response time is ~20m, longer during the weekday. If someone else has an emergency, they will likely need a mutual aid call, which adds 15-30m. If you need ALS, the ambulance may need to pull over en route when a county paramedic responds. If you are further out, the times increase rapidly. Many common emergencies like stroke are guaranteed fatal. In the small city that I live in, first responder for a medical emergency will arrive in <7m. Transport to hospital is ~5-10m.

BeetleB 9y ago

>Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. I can't speak for school funding, but are you actually suggesting ambulance response times were better in those areas in the past? Or broadband?

VectorLock 9y ago

Why shouldn't the world focus on cities? If you're choosing to live in an area where you're geographically separated from other people can you really complain that you're not receiving benefits from systems that are more optimal when people are clustered together?

hueving 9y ago
>can you really complain that you're not receiving benefits from systems that are more optimal when people are clustered together Yes. Society should always be doing more than what is cost optimal. Cities are only being focused on right now naturally because that's where the rich people are. It wasn't that long ago that inner cities were quite poor and there were people making excuses like you for not investing in them.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  It’s where a large majority of all people are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States#Historical_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S...
- KamBha 9y ago
  While I agree that the more investment is probably required in rural areas, I think your assertion that the reason why rural areas are being under funded is incorrect. Reality is that more people now live in urban areas[1]. Democracy being what it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in the city. Add to that that setting up this infrastructure is often not cost effective for a private business (due to a lack of customers) and that most rural communities prefer less government intervention (ie less taxes), we have a situation where there is little impetus to invest in rural communities by private companies and governments (at least local) don't have funding to pay for service. [1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-rural-urban.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-...
  - ghaff 9y ago

IntronExon 9y ago

Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. The first claim seems unlikely, unless that’s 30 minutes at the speed of sound. I’d need solid citations to bite. The second seems unlikely as well, and given how bad response times can be in disadvantaged parts of cities, I’d wonder if it’s an urban/rural divide, or the usual rich/poor divide. The third point is absolutely true, and that’s what happens when people leave, and therefore aren’t paying property taxes in that area. A supermajority of Americans live in and around cities, so that’s no shock. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/27/us/nearly-half-in-the-us-are-living-in-suburbs.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/27/us/nearly-half-in-the-us-a... More recent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States#Historical_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S... 80% of Americans live in cities, so is it really a shock that a majority of resources are focused on the majority of people?

axaxs 9y ago
I don't have a solid citation, apologies. But remember 4 of the top 10 cities are in the, landwise, mostly uninhabited Texas and Arizona. It's not a stretch to drive out of the city and lose access to broadband. I'm in a top 30 city and absolutely driving 30 minutes away takes broadband off the plate...depending on direction(south and west do, north and east dont).
- IntronExon 9y ago
  That’s fair enough on the citation. I would point out that as you say, Texas and Arizona are heavily urbanized, and outside of that, very sparsely inhabited. TX having ~84% urban population, and AZ nearly 90%, that’s going to be hard to cover the other small percentage with broadband. Texas, despite being one of the “Big 8” ranks 32nd for average population density. In other words rural TX and AZ are atypical.
freehunter 9y ago
>The first claim seems unlikely, unless that’s 30 minutes at the speed of sound. It doesn't have to be a physical or technical limitation at all. It's a limitation of the cable monopolies not seeing profit in putting fiber or cable lines out there and there's no competition so if they don't, no one will. As for everything else you've said... I would like to introduce you to the concept of the tyranny of the majority. If the richest country in the world says to its citizens "sorry your school isn't big enough to afford books, have fun in the job market" something is seriously fucked up. Yes, yes it is a shock that rural populations are treated like shit. I grew up in it, and the fact that it's getting worse not better is still shocking every single day.

ryanobjc 9y ago

So, what you're saying is that, apart from buying goods and services from rural areas, that the rest of the countryside should somehow assist, with tax money, the rural citizens? Strange that you'd say that, from a population historical of voting for anti-tax candidates. Perhaps not you personally. In other words, you'd like to socialize the downsides of living in remote areas of the country?

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Not so. The state takes our taxes and runs the schools. The rural areas get little funding for their schools, even for the same size school (the same tax base approximately). No, its city folks voting all the money to their schools. Its democracy, but its not pretty.
- tcoff91 9y ago
  Schools are funded largely by local property taxes in most parts of the US, which is why rural areas have less funding for schools. Schools of equivalent sizes rural vs urban absolutely do not have the same property tax revenue.
- js2 9y ago
  Not sure where you live, but in the states I've lived, it's the county or municipality that uses property taxes and runs the K-12 schools. Public universities are are subsidized by the state, but those are available equally to all of the state's residents.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Iowa. They do it differently. The state took over decades ago.
  - jordonwii 9y ago
    In general across the country, less and less public school funding actually comes from local taxes. The state has gotten involved in most states in order to correct discrepancies in school funding between rich and poor districts (with California being one of the most involved states). Some states still have notable funding issues between districts, though. This gives a pretty good description of the issue: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-school...

spamizbad 9y ago

For those not in poverty what you describe is -- indirectly -- a feature not a bug Schools are disappearing because there is no tax base to support them, and the remaining residents tend to favor an austere government. There's also a degree of distrust of governmental organizations. There are a lot of small towns where, if the state government came in and said "We're going to build you a school for free and you won't have to pay for anything" there would be a lot of belly-aching about how the bus traffic would increase wear-and-tear on roads, causing more roadwork, raising taxes. My father lives in rural Wisconsin. Every political season, there's a wave of people running for office trying to reduce the county's tax burden from the 2nd smallest to the 1st smallest in the state, by basically completely gutting what already meager community amenities are provided. Each year they get closer to sweeping the county elections.

stevenwoo 9y ago
The little town in Texas that voted to put libertarians in charge is a decent cautionary tale. https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/ https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-frees...
- prewett 9y ago
  After reading the article I'd say that the problems were caused primarily by personal conflicts. Any problems with libertarian philosophy did not have a chance to surface because they were completely swamped by the dysfunction of town leaders.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    They tried to have their cake and eat it too. I think that played no small part. They incorporated as a town to save their way of life as an unincorporated community then got greedy and tried to to town things without a town budget.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    A weird tangent - this may be the mother of all libertarian - libertarian conflicts - Nick Denton versus Peter Thiel. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-t...

phil248 9y ago

I'm not sure how to sympathize with people in rural areas lacking services when they relentlessly vote for anti-government leadership by very large margins. If they want the market to provide, they should move closer to the markets.

IIAOPSW 9y ago

> Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. Literally all of those services are more efficient in cities. A km of fiber serves more household when population is dense. Ambulance (and any other vehicle) commute times are shorter when everyone's in the same place. A single school building can be within walking distance of more kids. Its not a matter of city folk being entitled or holding their provincial counterparts in contempt. It is impossible for rural areas to enjoy the same standard of living as urbanities because literally every interaction and service has to pay extra to solve the last mile problem. Do you know how much fiber, how many ambulances, how many school buildings it would take to make every rural area as desirable as the city?