18 ms·

Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

118 points by petethomas 8y ago

fromthestart 8y ago
Are these same small towns also insulated from market crashes and recessions? Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence? Edit: apparently people are interpreting my comment negatively. I was seriously asking if these small town communities can act as a sort of buffer during recessions because of their relative isolation, thereby limiting negative effects. I'm not questioning whether they should exist or anything nonsensical like that.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence? Are you asking if there's a good reason why these small towns should exist?
  - madengr 8y ago
    Maybe rural america (energy, food) do Master Blaster style embargo on big cities.
    - troygoode 8y ago
      You’re assuming rural Americans actually own the food and energy they produce.
    - eropple 8y ago
      "Rural Americans" own neither the energy nor the food production located near them. By and large, rural America is subsidized by the rest of America, be they urbanites or large companies. And to be frank, that's fine; I support generally allowing people to find the best way for them to live, within reason. (Where people like me start getting snippy--and we do, we aren't saints--is when that's not acknowledged. "Real Americans" and the like.)
      - Rapzid 8y ago
        The Rest of America
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Or, maybe, rather, should small towns be additionally supported. Say, there are benefits for the whole nation (and the whole humankind) from maintaining and supporting national parks and national monuments, even if they don't and can't turn a profit. Or, there are various considerations leading to support for local farming, even if it would not make business sense without donations. Are small towns equally important, and require some degree of support, or should they naturally close shop and disappear sometimes, when they stop making sense, the way businesses do?
    - davidw 8y ago
      > rather, should small towns be additionally supported. This is the key question. No one wants to up and remove those towns. The question is: should we subsidize their existence beyond the infrastructure like road, mail, etc... that we already pay for? And if we want to do that, how do we go about it to get the most bang for our buck?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  That's a good question... I have often wondered if many of our environmental/political problems would be solved if we helped everyone move to major cities. But the city environment undeniably makes many people less happy. Studies have shown a link between urban living and mental illness. So it might be nice to maintain options for humans who thrive in a more rural environment.
  - caseyohara 8y ago
    > the city environment undeniably makes many people less happy. Studies have shown a link between urban living and mental illness. Do you have a link for these claims? Genuinely curious, I've always wondered about this.
    - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
      This is from the National Institute of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5374256/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5374256/ I'm not an expert at knowing what studies are good... so someone will probably comment about why this study is problematic, and that's ok. "Studies have shown that the risk for serious mental illness is generally higher in cities compared to rural areas. Epidemiological studies have associated growing up and living in cities with a considerably higher risk for schizophrenia. However, correlation is not causation and living in poverty can both contribute to and result from impairments associated with poor mental health. Social isolation and discrimination as well as poverty in the neighborhood contribute to the mental health burden while little is known about specific interactions between such factors and the built environment."
      - caseyohara 8y ago
        Thank you, that is interesting.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      Sure, living in a city drives me crazy.
- snackbugs 8y ago
  The people who lived in towns which thrived long before the economy failed them don't need to justify their existence in economic terms. The question you should be asking is whether or not this economy has any benefit to those people. What an absolutely inhuman comment this is.
  - ubercore 8y ago
    I don't know the original intentions but I didn't read it that way. Seemed more like a question of the premise that a town _needs_ to be a tech hub to survive, which is sort of half implied by the article.
  - tryptophan 8y ago
    >economy failed them Its everyone else fault that nobody wanted to buy the crap their local industries made?
    - snackbugs 8y ago
      You're better off just not posting if the first infantile misfiring of your brain is what you decide is fit to type into the comment box.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vitaflo 8y ago
  >I was seriously asking if these small town communities can act as a sort of buffer during recessions because of their relative isolation, thereby limiting negative effects. It goes both ways though, because they're small towns, they can have their own recessions that have little to do with national recessions. When a factory is shuttered, it can have devastating affects for a small town, much worse than a typical recession, but nobody outside that community would notice much. This has been happening all over the rural US for the past 20 years. Everyone talks about the past 8 years of stock market booms, and low unemployment but there are a lot of small towns all over the US that are getting crushed by globalization. Nobody talks about because the problems are local to those towns, but for those that live there, the problems are very real and dire.
edaemon 8y ago
For what it's worth the submission title here ("Turning small towns into tech hubs isn't working") doesn't appear in the article. The basic reasoning of the article: ...the high-tech industries powering the economy today don’t have much need for the cheap labor that rural communities contributed to America’s industrial past. They mostly need highly educated workers. They find those most easily in big cities, not in small towns. In a report published in November, Mark Muro, William Galston and Clara Hendrickson of the Brookings Institution laid out a portfolio of ideas to rescue the substantial swathe of the country that they identify as “left behind.” They identify critical shortages bedeviling declining communities: workers with digital skills, broadband connections, capital. And they have plans to address them: I.T. training and education initiatives, regulatory changes to boost lending to small businesses, incentives to invest in broadband. ...the authors concede that they may not be up to the task. “I don’t know if these ideas are going to work,” Mr. Galston acknowledged when I pressed him on the issue. “But it is worth making the effort.” The article is essentially laying out the idea of encouraging the tech sector to develop in rural communities and says it might work, but notes that even proponents aren't certain. The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities.
- protonimitate 8y ago
  If the idea is for the Tech Industry to 'revitalize' these small towns (which I'm not sure I buy into), then the only way to do is to incentivize companies to hire workers from these areas (i.e. better education and early awareness of 'tech jobs'), or incentivize companies to move existing employees to these areas and allow them to work remotely. > The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry Which is for nothing. Old school business ideas and stubbornness is the only reason this is true. Keep your gaudy glass building in the hot new section of downtown if you wish, but let your workers choose where they live and work from.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Reality shows it is for something. People must be getting something out of density, otherwise the most in demand people (i.e. highly paid) wouldn't be opting to live there. At the very least, trust is a very valuable thing and knowing people who know people is very valuable, which is much easier to accomplish in cities.
jammygit 8y ago
Counterpoint: I hear there are some startups thriving on Vancouver island in a few small towns.
- troygoode 8y ago
  That’s not a counterpoint. Of course _a_ (or some) startup can thrive there, or anywhere. That is not what a hub is. We don’t have to change small towns at all if all we want is a diverse assortment of small businesses, some of which may be tech.
thinkingkong 8y ago
Small towns cannot be tech hubs, because that's not even what a 'hub' is. It would be the end node, or an outlier constantly. I'm from a small town but we have one huge industry which employs around 80% of the local community. The rest of the folks are in construction, service industries, schools, etc. No amount of effort would turn that region into a tech or innovation hub without it also turning it into a city. Instead of trying to shore up the weaknesses of rural communities how can they play to their strengths? A small community and lifestyle has lots of benefits over living in the city but you have to value both working in tech (remotely) _and_ what a small community has to offer.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  that's not even what a 'hub' is Exactly, they're called "economic clusters" for a reason. It's like these municipalities are merely play-acting.
- hopefulengineer 8y ago
  The biggest problem for small and medium communities is brain drain. It's a vicious death spiral because the smart and ambitious kids basically have to move away to large cities to get quality jobs. The only solution I can think of is incentivizing remote work so people don't have to be concentrated in cities. You might not even have to incentivize it because it's a tremendous advantage as a tech company to be able to recruit from any where in the country where lots of talented people don't want to move for family reasons or don't want to live in a city
  - Kalium 8y ago
    You're absolutely right. Incentivizing remote work could definitely help! With that said, it may be worth considering that there is some subtlety here. It's surprisingly difficult to integrate remote workers into a company that has and uses offices. A lot of communication is lost when people aren't regularly sharing the same physical spaces, and cultural practices and technologies to date are mostly limited to mitigating this loss slightly. There's a drop in productivity, and it appears to be (in general, at scale, individuals can and do vary wildly) inevitable. Building a small company entirely from exceptional individuals is workable, but as a model it can't scale. Right now the major incentive is that remote workers can be paid the local-to-them pay rate. This is a problem, as it rarely matches the model of remote work that smaller towns and would-be remote workers have in mind. There's also some major wins that individuals gain by congregating in urban areas with their industry. It's harder to replace these with remote work, as much of it depends on concentration enabling serendipity. Again, you're completely right. Remote work could definitely help! There might be some subtleties worth considering is all.
randomdata 8y ago
It seems to be working for the small town I grew up in. However, it gained its tech industry rather organically with a tech business in town hitting the tech lottery. It comes as no surprise that you cannot force an industry to flourish in small towns, or even big cities for that matter.
- jackbravo 8y ago
  So your small town has now several small tech companies? Or one that grew and employs now a considerable percentage of the workforce?
  - randomdata 8y ago
    Both.
johan_larson 8y ago
Maybe we shouldn't be trying to keep these small town alive. Maybe we should focus on shutting them down in an orderly fashion and help the residents move to more dynamic areas, probably in large part by helping them acquire skills that are actually in demand there.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thrwthrw93223 8y ago
  Easy for you to say as an outsider with a comfortable salaried job. A lot of people in these rural communities aren't educated and live paycheck-to-paycheck. Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution. <tinfoil> If your goal is to make rural people (historically a very hard group for governments to control, everywhere, not just in the US) more dependent on and controllable by the state then it works great. </tinfoil> (Yes, I know I'm just stirring the pot by saying this)
    - krapp 8y ago
      All a man needs is a horse and a gun and he can rule the world, right? I know many rural Americans like to imagine they're still living on the lawless frontier uncorrupted by civilization and Federalism, but.... it's not actually true that they're less dependent on the state than "city folk." Hell, in many cases rural areas are more dependent on the state. And ironically, it's that pastoral, romantic delusion of the statelessness of rural America that leads to the very same populist ideology that makes them easier to control. Like believing a billionaire globalist with a history of exploiting low wage employees and a loose relationship with the truth is an honest, God-fearing hard working friend of the common man.
InGodsName 8y ago
As someone who has lived in a small town, I'd suggest Government to offer: 1. Cheaper and faster internet in the remote locations. Then people can work remotely, have skype HD chats which don't disconnect in middle. Even free internet with 400gb limit per month per house would be good enough. 2. Faster ecom delivery - If we can order the same machines which city dwellers use, well it would suck less. Leave the rest on the people. The people who lived around me in the small town weren't less intelligent, they had to keep up with more issues like flaky internet, not finding the supplies, not getting the work. Internet/ecom can solve many of those issues.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  Cheaper and faster internet in the remote locations. I think SpaceX Starlink could be a game changer here.
- zachguo 8y ago
  Meanwhile in China https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of-chinese-e-commerce-is-in-its-rural-areas/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of-chinese-...
ryanmarsh 8y ago
I recently applied to be part of Tulsa, Oklahoma's program offering $10k for tech people to move there. I'm a high income tech person and I love to teach and mentor others (it's literally my business). I never received a response. Not even a, "hey we can't offer you $10k, but here are some other reasons you may still want to move here...". I can live anywhere in the country. I'm not tied to Houston, TX where I live I just haven't been motivated to move since I travel to fun places so much anyway. I flat out do not understand the strategies of these cities who are trying to become tech hubs. I also don't understand the "economic development" consultants that advise them. You want remote workers? That's a strategy, but you have to work at it. You want tech companies to move there? You have to work hard at it. The best kept secret about business in Texas is how our previous Governor got on a plane with pitch deck in hand and worked hard to lure businesses to Texas. This even included ad campaigns in other states. The mentality of most city councils, economic development committees, and governors seems to treat "building a tech sector" as some kind of magic requiring a secret incantation. It's sales, beat the bricks.
- Kalium 8y ago
  > I flat out do not understand the strategies of these cities who are trying to become tech hubs. The known-good approach, of spending decades building educational, financial, cultural, and business conditions that enable tech hubs is difficult and slow and expensive. Cities are looking for ways to shortcut this that are palatable to voters who often don't really see a need to change things. I think you've hit on it: a lot of people and places see tech businesses as something not significantly different from a car plant.
danzig13 8y ago
I work in information systems in a manufacturing company in a small town. The power of agglomeration is quite apparent in its absence. Most everyone in this company has only ever worked there and accepts the status quo of how things are done. Typically, “the worst way that works.” It would be nice to be in an area where we could have some turnover and occasionally get people from more mature/professional companies.
jhowell 8y ago
We've spent so much time and money gentrifying urban areas, now we're going back to the burbs. This is like going back to the mainframe, or from the cloud back to physical hardware. We toggle between the two extremes. My only hesitation is that the burbs haven't historically been so diverse and welcoming in the past and likely part of the reason "the kids" flee to the city. Maybe that will change.
rm8x 8y ago
Halifax anyone?
- winthrowe 8y ago
  I would think that having multiple universities within the city disqualifies it from being called a 'small town'.
mml 8y ago
Dirt can’t be turned to gold. Film at 11. Unfortunately, it can still vote for some reason.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sctb 8y ago
  Posting like this will get your account banned. If you can't comment civilly, don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rabidrat 8y ago
  Too bad we can't eat gold.
lubujackson 8y ago
I grew up in a small town in the Berkshires and recently went back there to see family. It is interesting to see the shift from where it was 100 years ago to where it was when I was a kid, to where it is today (and where it's heading). 100 years ago there was a ton of industry: paper mills, textile mills, marble and limestone quarries. These were supported by a train that ran through town to transports goods to and from Boston, and the town sprouted up organically around these industries. One by one, they all faded away but when I was little the town still had much of the residual glory: a downtown full of shops, a mahogany-lined library and school, plus a big new mall 15 minutes away. Then as I grew up all the things started to go away. The two drive-in theaters, the entire downtown shopping area, the malls. All of it bottomed out when the Walmart came to town (familiar story...) But now there is a bit of a revival around art, nature and tourism, which they have been pushing my entire life. The old train tracks are now a walking/bicycle path. The old textile mill is a modern art museum. The shell of its former existence gives the town a very unique character now. But there is a big disconnect between people who grew up there and the tourist mindset, and it's interesting to be able to see and understand both sides of it. The people that are moving there or want to visit there have a COMPLETELY different mindset than the people who do live there, even most the people trying to drum up the tourism. Most small towns aren't going to revive via tourism, of course, but I think the bigger problem is every small town is trying to find some big "thing" to come save them. A new plant, a new business hub of some sort. Instead they should be focusing on their strengths, such as they exist: cheap housing, open spaces, access to nature, no commuting traffic. Cut out red tape and let people redefine these town husks like hermit crabs changing shells. I think the best approach is to focus on local community elements that are attractive to people who can work remotely. It's got to be success by a thousand cuts, because most of these communities have no chance at a real influx of business.
- nwhatt 8y ago
  Well said. I have no data to back this up, but I feel like a lot of remote workers prefer smaller cities that still have lots of amenities - think Portland, Austin, Madison, Boulder. You present a solid blueprint for even smaller communities to start to attract remote workers.
mr_tristan 8y ago
I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run. (Subsequently, if their life continues to get worse, well, I suspect more tendencies towards authoritarianism.) This is where I sense the tension. At least in the US, the political system seems to want to maintain people in rural areas, but the economic system doesn't. And I'm not sure a politician running on a platform of "we're gonna get you out of dodge" is going to be very popular. Advocating for moving people out of rural areas seems like political suicide. I can't find anyone pushing for this idea.
- theseatoms 8y ago
  Plenty of economists push that idea. The way to make people richer is to move them to rich places. (Even more so internationally.) Your point about politicians stands. That's a great assessment of the tension between the two worldviews.
  - pesmhey 8y ago
    Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’. That economists push that idea begs the question. I’m not placing a value judgement on either worldview, just pointing out that in one worldview, there’s an assumption of constant growth. I happen to fall into this worldview, but I’ve grown an appreciation for those who don’t. Unbridled growth = cancer.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      > Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’. They say that, but if you write them a cheque, they'll cash it. It's the things that come along with wealth that they may disagree with, but certainly not the wealth itself. No doubt, there are pockets (even in Canada#) that refuse government welfare programs like health insurance because they feel that they shouldn't be dependent on others like that, but it's much less than 1%. # Some of our old-order Mennonites refuse to get a government health card.
threatofrain 8y ago
I think some small towns become retirement targets because outside of California the spots that fit multiple dimensions of quality like (1) good schools, (2) good incomes, (3) good weather, (4) affordable living, (5) decent commercial activity, etc., you end up with a narrowing space of options. Some of those towns grow enough to attract a tech company, and will continue to attract growth because it's just harder and harder to get the nice balance of factors.
msluyter 8y ago
I'd love the idea of living in a quiet, small community, were it not for a number of practicalities: Schools -- We're trying to provide the highest possible quality education for our daughter, which means living in the best public school district we can find or within range of the best private school we can afford. And while I'm sure there are exceptions, this means living in a city. Jobs -- Even though in theory I could work remotely, my wife (a lawyer) couldn't. Wherever we live has to be able to provide employment opportunities for two disparate professions. Arts/Culture/Etc... -- I take my daughter to the Thinkery (a neat kid's museum here in Austin) monthly. She takes ballet and swim lessons, perhaps music lessons soon. It's important for our family to be in proximity to a vibrant art/music scene. None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...) I merely mention this to indicate how difficult the project is.
- pastor_elm 8y ago
  >None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...) Many rural areas in Vermont (particularly in the Northeast Kingdom) will give you a school voucher to use at any school you want (public or private) because there isn't a local public. As a consequence, there are some really good private schools up there. The public schools are good too. It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving there.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    > It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving there. Depends on the Vermonters you ask. I take it you weren't canvassing a trailer park. A lot of people will give you some wise ass answer that people from MA and NY made their money in NYC or Boston and once they had a family to raise or when they were ready to retire they realized had to move to a state that hadn't been turned to crap by the people in NYC or Boston. Considering the political difference between NY/MA and (a good chunk of) people in rural areas of VT (or any other state in northern New England) you can see why they might say something like this.
helen___keller 8y ago
I think if (and that's a big if) our tech sector begins to wholly embrace remote work, even that would probably not be enough. Most likely, most highly educated tech workers who don't like the city would still prefer typical postwar American suburbs where they can occasionally drive into the city for pleasure and still have access to a first rate health care system, education system, and so on.
vinceguidry 8y ago
I think the only realistic solution here is to offer relocation assistance to folks to migrate to urban areas. America's backyard is enormous. Attempts to make it more prosperous are basically urban development. There's just too much of it to make any kind of dent in with any kind of money. We can't make cities everywhere like China and wait for people to move in, we just don't have that kind of population. We need to move the people to the cities. That's the only real solution.
camhenlin 8y ago
Personally I feel that one way to help small towns is more companies embracing remote work and the benefits that remote work provides. Additionally companies or municipalities must continue to build out high speed infrastructure to support those workers and empower the residents of those areas to have the opportunity to be highly connected. For many companies, embracing remote work when possible is to their benefit. No longer do they have the small hiring pool of a handful of office locations, but they now have the entire country at their fingertips at very little effort. My personal experience is that I work remotely outside of a small rural town, and I know two others in my area who do the same, so it seems like this trend may already be happening. The nice thing about this is that there is no hub required! If the job doesn’t need an office, why have one?
ph0rque 8y ago
A bit off-topic, but I love the "Population density by county" graph. Is there any way to plot the whole world that way, and then make an animation of how it changes over time?
rb808 8y ago
I can't read the article - did it mention globalization? I don't know why you'd want to hire someone remotely in small country town USA when you could get 10 people for the same price in other countries. Now there are pretty resort towns where skilled people want to live, that is different. But old Mid-Western agricultural towns don't have that draw.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  Here's two reasons to hire small town USA: 1. Culture fit. (This is a huge reason for customer service centers onshoring.) 2. Same/similar working hours.
jbhatab 8y ago
I feel a sense of inevitability with rural America fading in importance and massive hubs being the dominant players. The only solution I can think of is pushing for more remote labor in these rural areas as an acceptable lifestyle choice. Maybe restructuring the towns with more of an appeal for 30-45 year old software engineers to work out of. The biggest problem I see though is top tier education systems in these places being the biggest deterrent.
mohankumar246 8y ago
Whenever people question the concentration of tech jobs in cities like SF it always makes me think: 1) Why do most jobs related to show business(movies) are concentrated in LA? 2) Why are most jobs in banking concentrated in NYC?
- schnevets 8y ago
  Because LA is where all the movie stars are and New York is where all the bankers are!
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Face to face, non audit-able interactions are important in finance. Maybe the same for show business, plus LA has really nice weather and scenery.
felipeccastro 8y ago
This looks somewhat familiar with the centralization vs decentralization debate in tech. It seems the network effects benefits don't apply only for tech products, but for cities as well. While there are many efforts in overcoming those effects through decentralization in various aspects (from remote work to blockchain projects), it seems none of these really achieved as much success as we were expecting, probably because the benefits of decentralization don't outweigh (yet) the advantages of strong networks. Perhaps once we solve this equation in tech, and make decentralized options more appealing than their centralized counterparts, we may be able to transfer that knowledge to city planning somehow.
sunshinelackof 8y ago
The only solution that will save small towns is dismantling some of the industrialisation that freed people up to work in the factory or mill that no longer exists. It's a trivial example, but ban preservatives in bread and now they need a bakery that can deliver bread everyday. Bread that lasts two weeks on a shelf is an optimisation for communities that support advanced professions. Heavy industrialisation is a model that no longer fits these communities and while some might be able to attract select tech workers--in effect patchwork, others should realise that they're optimised for a workforce that no longer exists. All of that may not even be possible. First try and sell your community their way of life is unsustainable, then try and shake the Walmart, McDonalds dependency.
- lubujackson 8y ago
  There is a bit of this idea emergent in some small towns. I know a chef in Vermont who focuses on foraged ingredients, smaller farm-sourced produce and getting everything fresh and local. Which is also much a fad in places like SF! It is one area where small towns can actually show uniqueness via their geographic differences. And if it continues to develop naturally as a choice (rather than a ban on preservatives...) it could contribute to giving small towns a reason to persist.
nimbius 8y ago
speaking as someone who works in a small town in the midwest as an auto mechanic, the people that shot themselves in the foot with this idea were the very ones who proposed it. I got 5 months of free online Python classes from the local government. This was part of some larger state plan to 'revitalize' us as a 'web 2.0' something or other for the 'silicon valley' of the midwest. The whole thing read like snake oil but I learned some pretty good skills in python and a lot more about Linux than I knew before. Our state has these lofty goals but couldnt attract more than a mega-truck-stop diner in the past 8 years. The reason for this is that unless you have a winning complexion (are white and male) you arent going to have a lot of fun here. Want birth control? well thats a 2 week waiting period and a mandatory consultation. Did you run out? well you have to renew that script every month. Want it covered by your insurance? tough, legally, our state outlawed that. Need an abortion? book a flight, we require a trans-vaginal ultrasound and a waiting period. Are you LGBTQ? enjoy our bathroom law. adoption providers can also legally discriminate against you for even asking to adopt. theres also no protections in the workplace, so enjoy being fired for "gay." Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible. our bowling alleys and food courts/theaters also enforce a dress code thats loosely translated to "no blacks."
- weberc2 8y ago
  What state is this? How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites? Apologies if these questions are naive, I'm not particularly familiar with midwest politics.
  - aurailious 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure the comment didn't say that.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      To be clear, I was responding to this: > Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible. How else can you interpret this? Blue-collar minorities are less capable of knowing where/when to get a license than blue-collar whites? Or perhaps the "minority" bit is a red-herring altogether and the salient criterion is "blue-collar"?
michaelbuckbee 8y ago
In the mix with this are the tax incentives that are being offered up for tech companies to move into rural areas. While there has been a lot of attention on HN focused recently on Amazon's and Apple's move, the really interesting one to me is Foxconn. Foxconn really seems to have suckered a small Wisconsin community (and the state) into giving them an incredibly lopsided tax incentive deal - as detailed in this amazing episode of ReplyAll [1] I think a far smarter idea is to pay tech workers an incentive to relocate to the state, as Vermont is doing [2]. The payback is quicker and the results far easier to scale. 1 - https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount-pleasant#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount-ple... 2 - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/us/vermont-moving-money.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/us/vermont-moving-money.h...
carapace 8y ago
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful > Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by German born British economist E. F. Schumacher.
motohagiography 8y ago
I think there is a reckoning coming in terms of what "educated worker" means, as increasingly, it does not mean "competent." Competence and specialization is what drives rural economies. Machine repair, fabrication, feed mills, legal services, construction, teaching, child care, animal and livestock services, all require physical competence. These are considered blue collar jobs, because they require someone to actually do something to create value. I would argue that the soft skills that corporate environments require do not create value, they at best manage capital, and usually deal in the factors and derivatives of negotiating wealth transfers and businesses that reduce to forms of amusement, posterity, and entertainment. The urban/rural resentment has a lot to do with the relative dependency of each on the other. Cities need food, and farms need capital. Globalization means cities can get food for less from around the world, and the margins on farming are so thin that capital is mostly only accessible at the conglomerate scale. Competence can be bought from a global supply chain, so rural economies are collapsing precisely because of globalization (e.g. international trade liberalization), and because of distorted fiscal policies that destroy local wealth in favour of centralizing it from global sources. The results have been, and remain predictable. What is very likely is that city housing prices will become so high that companies will have to use remote workers to produce goods while paying the cost of living, and this will drive broadband investment. However the real crisis is that the traditional urban/rural dependency and cultural divide is polarizing in favour of the urban side, who can be defined as the sort of people who use phrases like, "left behind," and who lack an apprehension of what follows ecological imbalance at this scale. Adding educated workers to small towns will not revitalize them, and nor will building public works with public administrative jobs. Until there is a way to generate productive and competitive capital and build real wealth in them, without suffering predation by both their respective governments and globalized markets, they will continue to disappear.
andmarios 8y ago
If a small town in the US could become a tech hub, then every capital in the world would already be one. Significant amounts of money are spent around the globe, yet it seems tech hubs are the one thing you cannot disrupt. :)
amyjess 8y ago
Ultimately, if you're going to do it, do it the way TI did. Texas Instruments set up their headquarters next to Richardson, TX. When they realized there weren't enough engineers in the area, the TI founders started their own university so they could farm engineers to grow TI. Ultimately, once the university got big enough, they turned it over to the state, and now the University of Texas at Dallas is the largest engineering-centric university in the southwest, and its existence is probably responsible for the Silicon Prairie and the Telecom Corridor being a thing.
DoubleCribble 8y ago
I tend to agree with an idea that's mentioned in the article. Perhaps much of the land in certain flyover states should just return to the bison? While it means most of the towns would disappear, some would greatly succeed. I'd be FAR more likely to regularly visit Podunk-Nowheresville if I could witness the annual migration of 10 million bison. After having traveled to the other side of the planet and seen such a migration, developing an American safari industry seems like an outcome worth pursuing.
- nemo44x 8y ago
  It's all mainly farmland.
  - DoubleCribble 8y ago
    But if left to it's own devices (or with a little assistance from the bison), may return to prairie very quickly. I suspect it wouldn't take long for native grasses to outcompete any residual farmable crops.
    - nemo44x 8y ago
      We need this farmland, right?
      - DoubleCribble 8y ago
        Nope.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_Sta...
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honkycat 8y ago
I grew up in a town of 2,000 in rural Illinois. My parents ran a business, until it shut down of course. A lot of people have this idyllic vision of small town life. Everybody knows everybody, you can let your kids walk home from school, happy cows chewing cud in verdant fields. I will add a caveat to this: I lived in a small town during the decline. The place my parents grew up in was a much more lively, happy place. There were jobs and prosperity, it made sense for them to not leave. My town no longer has a grocery store, has a single restaurant, and I am hard pressed to think of a small business doing well. There are other small towns in the US that I am sure are lovely. I'm just speaking from my own experience. Unstructured list of thoughts about small town life: - People are poorly educated and constantly make bad decisions about everything. - Years of poor decisions and management have buried my town in bad expensive infrastructure. - Our mayor was an extremely incompetent, unqualified barber. - The schools are falling apart and the good teachers quickly move on to more lucrative jobs in other areas. The good ones leave. The bad ones stay. - Picture the Simpsons monorail episode, but replace the ambitious public transit project with a strip mall they can put a buffalo wild wings and a huge parking lot into - Picture the Simpsons monorail episode, but instead of the town agreeing to build affordable housing, they reject the free government development because, and I was at this meeting, `They don't want the black people from Chicago moving into town.` - The people... kinda suck. - Conservatism in small town America exists, it is not some abstract concept. They are racist. They are poorly educated. They think global warming is a hoax. - There is a special breed of large, swaggering, ignorant, low, angry white men that tend to live in small towns. They exist in cities too, but there are also other people around. - As the article suggests: The educated leave. The info-wars fans stay. - Poor diversity. Still know 30 year olds who think it is edgy/cool to slur constantly. Experiencing other cultures breeds empathy. Full stop. - RAMPANT drug abuse. Alcohol. Meth. Opiates. You name it. - Mind numbing boredom. - Just because there is less civilization does not mean it is a beautiful forest. - Is often a polluted creek people would be happy to replace with a Walmart, or a corn field that stinks of fertilizer for months on end. ( poop ) - There is no culture to interact with. - Want an education? - Good luck finding a decent college nearby. - Want to see a band? Too bad. You will have to drive 4 hours to see anyone. - Want to start a band? - Good luck finding a community. - Good luck finding an audience. - Good luck finding a mentor. - Good luck finding a place to perform. - Who you surround yourself with matters. - Who are you going to hang out with? - Who is going to be hanging out and collaborating with your kids? Would you rather it be the smart, cosmopolitan Muhammad, or Cletus the pig-farmer's feral son? - Kind of obvious, but: What are you going to do for a living? - There is nobody to network with. - What are you going to do when you lose your remote gig? - Personally I would rather have the opportunity to get a local job if remote work goes out of style. - Small town gossip is a THING. - People will see your success, covet it, and hate you for it. They will want to knock you down. Small towns destroyed themselves by deciding to build giant roads, shopping malls, and walmarts instead of maintaining their main street, building parks, and upgrading their schools. You know, enhancing the life of people living in your city, instead of enhancing the lives of the people who drive through it at 60 miles an hour. Now the malls are empty ( They were always a bad, dumb experiment ). Now all of their pointless expensive roads are crumbling and eating up a massive amount of tax revenue. Walmart pays the community a pittance and funnels all of their wealth to the CEOs. It stinks people are suffering and losing a way of life, but I feel that much of this pain is self-inflicted. So to small towns: Bye, Felicia. Some interesting reading: - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
Terr_ 8y ago
> For the last quarter century the story of these places has been one of relentless economic decline. [...] The election of Donald Trump, powered in no small degree by rural voters Counterpoint: "Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds" [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economi...

118 points by petethomas 8y ago

Are these same small towns also insulated from market crashes and recessions? Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence? Edit: apparently people are interpreting my comment negatively. I was seriously asking if these small town communities can act as a sort of buffer during recessions because of their relative isolation, thereby limiting negative effects. I'm not questioning whether they should exist or anything nonsensical like that.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
Is there some benefit to greater America from their existence? Are you asking if there's a good reason why these small towns should exist?
- madengr 8y ago
  Maybe rural america (energy, food) do Master Blaster style embargo on big cities.
  - troygoode 8y ago
    You’re assuming rural Americans actually own the food and energy they produce.
  - eropple 8y ago
    "Rural Americans" own neither the energy nor the food production located near them. By and large, rural America is subsidized by the rest of America, be they urbanites or large companies. And to be frank, that's fine; I support generally allowing people to find the best way for them to live, within reason. (Where people like me start getting snippy--and we do, we aren't saints--is when that's not acknowledged. "Real Americans" and the like.)
    - Rapzid 8y ago
      The Rest of America
- nine_k 8y ago
  Or, maybe, rather, should small towns be additionally supported. Say, there are benefits for the whole nation (and the whole humankind) from maintaining and supporting national parks and national monuments, even if they don't and can't turn a profit. Or, there are various considerations leading to support for local farming, even if it would not make business sense without donations. Are small towns equally important, and require some degree of support, or should they naturally close shop and disappear sometimes, when they stop making sense, the way businesses do?
  - davidw 8y ago
    > rather, should small towns be additionally supported. This is the key question. No one wants to up and remove those towns. The question is: should we subsidize their existence beyond the infrastructure like road, mail, etc... that we already pay for? And if we want to do that, how do we go about it to get the most bang for our buck?
- deleted 8y ago
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ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
That's a good question... I have often wondered if many of our environmental/political problems would be solved if we helped everyone move to major cities. But the city environment undeniably makes many people less happy. Studies have shown a link between urban living and mental illness. So it might be nice to maintain options for humans who thrive in a more rural environment.
- caseyohara 8y ago
  > the city environment undeniably makes many people less happy. Studies have shown a link between urban living and mental illness. Do you have a link for these claims? Genuinely curious, I've always wondered about this.
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    This is from the National Institute of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5374256/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5374256/ I'm not an expert at knowing what studies are good... so someone will probably comment about why this study is problematic, and that's ok. "Studies have shown that the risk for serious mental illness is generally higher in cities compared to rural areas. Epidemiological studies have associated growing up and living in cities with a considerably higher risk for schizophrenia. However, correlation is not causation and living in poverty can both contribute to and result from impairments associated with poor mental health. Social isolation and discrimination as well as poverty in the neighborhood contribute to the mental health burden while little is known about specific interactions between such factors and the built environment."
    - caseyohara 8y ago
      Thank you, that is interesting.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    Sure, living in a city drives me crazy.
snackbugs 8y ago
The people who lived in towns which thrived long before the economy failed them don't need to justify their existence in economic terms. The question you should be asking is whether or not this economy has any benefit to those people. What an absolutely inhuman comment this is.
- ubercore 8y ago
  I don't know the original intentions but I didn't read it that way. Seemed more like a question of the premise that a town _needs_ to be a tech hub to survive, which is sort of half implied by the article.
- tryptophan 8y ago
  >economy failed them Its everyone else fault that nobody wanted to buy the crap their local industries made?
  - snackbugs 8y ago
    You're better off just not posting if the first infantile misfiring of your brain is what you decide is fit to type into the comment box.
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vitaflo 8y ago
>I was seriously asking if these small town communities can act as a sort of buffer during recessions because of their relative isolation, thereby limiting negative effects. It goes both ways though, because they're small towns, they can have their own recessions that have little to do with national recessions. When a factory is shuttered, it can have devastating affects for a small town, much worse than a typical recession, but nobody outside that community would notice much. This has been happening all over the rural US for the past 20 years. Everyone talks about the past 8 years of stock market booms, and low unemployment but there are a lot of small towns all over the US that are getting crushed by globalization. Nobody talks about because the problems are local to those towns, but for those that live there, the problems are very real and dire.

edaemon 8y ago

For what it's worth the submission title here ("Turning small towns into tech hubs isn't working") doesn't appear in the article. The basic reasoning of the article: ...the high-tech industries powering the economy today don’t have much need for the cheap labor that rural communities contributed to America’s industrial past. They mostly need highly educated workers. They find those most easily in big cities, not in small towns. In a report published in November, Mark Muro, William Galston and Clara Hendrickson of the Brookings Institution laid out a portfolio of ideas to rescue the substantial swathe of the country that they identify as “left behind.” They identify critical shortages bedeviling declining communities: workers with digital skills, broadband connections, capital. And they have plans to address them: I.T. training and education initiatives, regulatory changes to boost lending to small businesses, incentives to invest in broadband. ...the authors concede that they may not be up to the task. “I don’t know if these ideas are going to work,” Mr. Galston acknowledged when I pressed him on the issue. “But it is worth making the effort.” The article is essentially laying out the idea of encouraging the tech sector to develop in rural communities and says it might work, but notes that even proponents aren't certain. The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities.

protonimitate 8y ago
If the idea is for the Tech Industry to 'revitalize' these small towns (which I'm not sure I buy into), then the only way to do is to incentivize companies to hire workers from these areas (i.e. better education and early awareness of 'tech jobs'), or incentivize companies to move existing employees to these areas and allow them to work remotely. > The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry Which is for nothing. Old school business ideas and stubbornness is the only reason this is true. Keep your gaudy glass building in the hot new section of downtown if you wish, but let your workers choose where they live and work from.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Reality shows it is for something. People must be getting something out of density, otherwise the most in demand people (i.e. highly paid) wouldn't be opting to live there. At the very least, trust is a very valuable thing and knowing people who know people is very valuable, which is much easier to accomplish in cities.

jammygit 8y ago

Counterpoint: I hear there are some startups thriving on Vancouver island in a few small towns.

troygoode 8y ago
That’s not a counterpoint. Of course _a_ (or some) startup can thrive there, or anywhere. That is not what a hub is. We don’t have to change small towns at all if all we want is a diverse assortment of small businesses, some of which may be tech.

thinkingkong 8y ago

Small towns cannot be tech hubs, because that's not even what a 'hub' is. It would be the end node, or an outlier constantly. I'm from a small town but we have one huge industry which employs around 80% of the local community. The rest of the folks are in construction, service industries, schools, etc. No amount of effort would turn that region into a tech or innovation hub without it also turning it into a city. Instead of trying to shore up the weaknesses of rural communities how can they play to their strengths? A small community and lifestyle has lots of benefits over living in the city but you have to value both working in tech (remotely) _and_ what a small community has to offer.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
that's not even what a 'hub' is Exactly, they're called "economic clusters" for a reason. It's like these municipalities are merely play-acting.
hopefulengineer 8y ago
The biggest problem for small and medium communities is brain drain. It's a vicious death spiral because the smart and ambitious kids basically have to move away to large cities to get quality jobs. The only solution I can think of is incentivizing remote work so people don't have to be concentrated in cities. You might not even have to incentivize it because it's a tremendous advantage as a tech company to be able to recruit from any where in the country where lots of talented people don't want to move for family reasons or don't want to live in a city
- Kalium 8y ago
  You're absolutely right. Incentivizing remote work could definitely help! With that said, it may be worth considering that there is some subtlety here. It's surprisingly difficult to integrate remote workers into a company that has and uses offices. A lot of communication is lost when people aren't regularly sharing the same physical spaces, and cultural practices and technologies to date are mostly limited to mitigating this loss slightly. There's a drop in productivity, and it appears to be (in general, at scale, individuals can and do vary wildly) inevitable. Building a small company entirely from exceptional individuals is workable, but as a model it can't scale. Right now the major incentive is that remote workers can be paid the local-to-them pay rate. This is a problem, as it rarely matches the model of remote work that smaller towns and would-be remote workers have in mind. There's also some major wins that individuals gain by congregating in urban areas with their industry. It's harder to replace these with remote work, as much of it depends on concentration enabling serendipity. Again, you're completely right. Remote work could definitely help! There might be some subtleties worth considering is all.

randomdata 8y ago

It seems to be working for the small town I grew up in. However, it gained its tech industry rather organically with a tech business in town hitting the tech lottery. It comes as no surprise that you cannot force an industry to flourish in small towns, or even big cities for that matter.

jackbravo 8y ago
So your small town has now several small tech companies? Or one that grew and employs now a considerable percentage of the workforce?
- randomdata 8y ago
  Both.

johan_larson 8y ago

Maybe we shouldn't be trying to keep these small town alive. Maybe we should focus on shutting them down in an orderly fashion and help the residents move to more dynamic areas, probably in large part by helping them acquire skills that are actually in demand there.

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thrwthrw93223 8y ago
Easy for you to say as an outsider with a comfortable salaried job. A lot of people in these rural communities aren't educated and live paycheck-to-paycheck. Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution. <tinfoil> If your goal is to make rural people (historically a very hard group for governments to control, everywhere, not just in the US) more dependent on and controllable by the state then it works great. </tinfoil> (Yes, I know I'm just stirring the pot by saying this)
  - krapp 8y ago
    All a man needs is a horse and a gun and he can rule the world, right? I know many rural Americans like to imagine they're still living on the lawless frontier uncorrupted by civilization and Federalism, but.... it's not actually true that they're less dependent on the state than "city folk." Hell, in many cases rural areas are more dependent on the state. And ironically, it's that pastoral, romantic delusion of the statelessness of rural America that leads to the very same populist ideology that makes them easier to control. Like believing a billionaire globalist with a history of exploiting low wage employees and a loose relationship with the truth is an honest, God-fearing hard working friend of the common man.

InGodsName 8y ago

As someone who has lived in a small town, I'd suggest Government to offer: 1. Cheaper and faster internet in the remote locations. Then people can work remotely, have skype HD chats which don't disconnect in middle. Even free internet with 400gb limit per month per house would be good enough. 2. Faster ecom delivery - If we can order the same machines which city dwellers use, well it would suck less. Leave the rest on the people. The people who lived around me in the small town weren't less intelligent, they had to keep up with more issues like flaky internet, not finding the supplies, not getting the work. Internet/ecom can solve many of those issues.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
Cheaper and faster internet in the remote locations. I think SpaceX Starlink could be a game changer here.
zachguo 8y ago
Meanwhile in China https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of-chinese-e-commerce-is-in-its-rural-areas/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of-chinese-...

ryanmarsh 8y ago

I recently applied to be part of Tulsa, Oklahoma's program offering $10k for tech people to move there. I'm a high income tech person and I love to teach and mentor others (it's literally my business). I never received a response. Not even a, "hey we can't offer you $10k, but here are some other reasons you may still want to move here...". I can live anywhere in the country. I'm not tied to Houston, TX where I live I just haven't been motivated to move since I travel to fun places so much anyway. I flat out do not understand the strategies of these cities who are trying to become tech hubs. I also don't understand the "economic development" consultants that advise them. You want remote workers? That's a strategy, but you have to work at it. You want tech companies to move there? You have to work hard at it. The best kept secret about business in Texas is how our previous Governor got on a plane with pitch deck in hand and worked hard to lure businesses to Texas. This even included ad campaigns in other states. The mentality of most city councils, economic development committees, and governors seems to treat "building a tech sector" as some kind of magic requiring a secret incantation. It's sales, beat the bricks.

Kalium 8y ago
> I flat out do not understand the strategies of these cities who are trying to become tech hubs. The known-good approach, of spending decades building educational, financial, cultural, and business conditions that enable tech hubs is difficult and slow and expensive. Cities are looking for ways to shortcut this that are palatable to voters who often don't really see a need to change things. I think you've hit on it: a lot of people and places see tech businesses as something not significantly different from a car plant.

danzig13 8y ago

I work in information systems in a manufacturing company in a small town. The power of agglomeration is quite apparent in its absence. Most everyone in this company has only ever worked there and accepts the status quo of how things are done. Typically, “the worst way that works.” It would be nice to be in an area where we could have some turnover and occasionally get people from more mature/professional companies.

jhowell 8y ago

We've spent so much time and money gentrifying urban areas, now we're going back to the burbs. This is like going back to the mainframe, or from the cloud back to physical hardware. We toggle between the two extremes. My only hesitation is that the burbs haven't historically been so diverse and welcoming in the past and likely part of the reason "the kids" flee to the city. Maybe that will change.

rm8x 8y ago

Halifax anyone?

winthrowe 8y ago
I would think that having multiple universities within the city disqualifies it from being called a 'small town'.

mml 8y ago

Dirt can’t be turned to gold. Film at 11. Unfortunately, it can still vote for some reason.

deleted 8y ago
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sctb 8y ago
Posting like this will get your account banned. If you can't comment civilly, don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
rabidrat 8y ago
Too bad we can't eat gold.

lubujackson 8y ago

I grew up in a small town in the Berkshires and recently went back there to see family. It is interesting to see the shift from where it was 100 years ago to where it was when I was a kid, to where it is today (and where it's heading). 100 years ago there was a ton of industry: paper mills, textile mills, marble and limestone quarries. These were supported by a train that ran through town to transports goods to and from Boston, and the town sprouted up organically around these industries. One by one, they all faded away but when I was little the town still had much of the residual glory: a downtown full of shops, a mahogany-lined library and school, plus a big new mall 15 minutes away. Then as I grew up all the things started to go away. The two drive-in theaters, the entire downtown shopping area, the malls. All of it bottomed out when the Walmart came to town (familiar story...) But now there is a bit of a revival around art, nature and tourism, which they have been pushing my entire life. The old train tracks are now a walking/bicycle path. The old textile mill is a modern art museum. The shell of its former existence gives the town a very unique character now. But there is a big disconnect between people who grew up there and the tourist mindset, and it's interesting to be able to see and understand both sides of it. The people that are moving there or want to visit there have a COMPLETELY different mindset than the people who do live there, even most the people trying to drum up the tourism. Most small towns aren't going to revive via tourism, of course, but I think the bigger problem is every small town is trying to find some big "thing" to come save them. A new plant, a new business hub of some sort. Instead they should be focusing on their strengths, such as they exist: cheap housing, open spaces, access to nature, no commuting traffic. Cut out red tape and let people redefine these town husks like hermit crabs changing shells. I think the best approach is to focus on local community elements that are attractive to people who can work remotely. It's got to be success by a thousand cuts, because most of these communities have no chance at a real influx of business.

nwhatt 8y ago
Well said. I have no data to back this up, but I feel like a lot of remote workers prefer smaller cities that still have lots of amenities - think Portland, Austin, Madison, Boulder. You present a solid blueprint for even smaller communities to start to attract remote workers.

mr_tristan 8y ago

I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run. (Subsequently, if their life continues to get worse, well, I suspect more tendencies towards authoritarianism.) This is where I sense the tension. At least in the US, the political system seems to want to maintain people in rural areas, but the economic system doesn't. And I'm not sure a politician running on a platform of "we're gonna get you out of dodge" is going to be very popular. Advocating for moving people out of rural areas seems like political suicide. I can't find anyone pushing for this idea.

theseatoms 8y ago
Plenty of economists push that idea. The way to make people richer is to move them to rich places. (Even more so internationally.) Your point about politicians stands. That's a great assessment of the tension between the two worldviews.
- pesmhey 8y ago
  Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’. That economists push that idea begs the question. I’m not placing a value judgement on either worldview, just pointing out that in one worldview, there’s an assumption of constant growth. I happen to fall into this worldview, but I’ve grown an appreciation for those who don’t. Unbridled growth = cancer.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    > Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’. They say that, but if you write them a cheque, they'll cash it. It's the things that come along with wealth that they may disagree with, but certainly not the wealth itself. No doubt, there are pockets (even in Canada#) that refuse government welfare programs like health insurance because they feel that they shouldn't be dependent on others like that, but it's much less than 1%. # Some of our old-order Mennonites refuse to get a government health card.

threatofrain 8y ago

I think some small towns become retirement targets because outside of California the spots that fit multiple dimensions of quality like (1) good schools, (2) good incomes, (3) good weather, (4) affordable living, (5) decent commercial activity, etc., you end up with a narrowing space of options. Some of those towns grow enough to attract a tech company, and will continue to attract growth because it's just harder and harder to get the nice balance of factors.

msluyter 8y ago

I'd love the idea of living in a quiet, small community, were it not for a number of practicalities: Schools -- We're trying to provide the highest possible quality education for our daughter, which means living in the best public school district we can find or within range of the best private school we can afford. And while I'm sure there are exceptions, this means living in a city. Jobs -- Even though in theory I could work remotely, my wife (a lawyer) couldn't. Wherever we live has to be able to provide employment opportunities for two disparate professions. Arts/Culture/Etc... -- I take my daughter to the Thinkery (a neat kid's museum here in Austin) monthly. She takes ballet and swim lessons, perhaps music lessons soon. It's important for our family to be in proximity to a vibrant art/music scene. None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...) I merely mention this to indicate how difficult the project is.

pastor_elm 8y ago
>None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...) Many rural areas in Vermont (particularly in the Northeast Kingdom) will give you a school voucher to use at any school you want (public or private) because there isn't a local public. As a consequence, there are some really good private schools up there. The public schools are good too. It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving there.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  > It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving there. Depends on the Vermonters you ask. I take it you weren't canvassing a trailer park. A lot of people will give you some wise ass answer that people from MA and NY made their money in NYC or Boston and once they had a family to raise or when they were ready to retire they realized had to move to a state that hadn't been turned to crap by the people in NYC or Boston. Considering the political difference between NY/MA and (a good chunk of) people in rural areas of VT (or any other state in northern New England) you can see why they might say something like this.

helen___keller 8y ago

I think if (and that's a big if) our tech sector begins to wholly embrace remote work, even that would probably not be enough. Most likely, most highly educated tech workers who don't like the city would still prefer typical postwar American suburbs where they can occasionally drive into the city for pleasure and still have access to a first rate health care system, education system, and so on.

vinceguidry 8y ago

I think the only realistic solution here is to offer relocation assistance to folks to migrate to urban areas. America's backyard is enormous. Attempts to make it more prosperous are basically urban development. There's just too much of it to make any kind of dent in with any kind of money. We can't make cities everywhere like China and wait for people to move in, we just don't have that kind of population. We need to move the people to the cities. That's the only real solution.

camhenlin 8y ago

Personally I feel that one way to help small towns is more companies embracing remote work and the benefits that remote work provides. Additionally companies or municipalities must continue to build out high speed infrastructure to support those workers and empower the residents of those areas to have the opportunity to be highly connected. For many companies, embracing remote work when possible is to their benefit. No longer do they have the small hiring pool of a handful of office locations, but they now have the entire country at their fingertips at very little effort. My personal experience is that I work remotely outside of a small rural town, and I know two others in my area who do the same, so it seems like this trend may already be happening. The nice thing about this is that there is no hub required! If the job doesn’t need an office, why have one?

ph0rque 8y ago

A bit off-topic, but I love the "Population density by county" graph. Is there any way to plot the whole world that way, and then make an animation of how it changes over time?

rb808 8y ago

I can't read the article - did it mention globalization? I don't know why you'd want to hire someone remotely in small country town USA when you could get 10 people for the same price in other countries. Now there are pretty resort towns where skilled people want to live, that is different. But old Mid-Western agricultural towns don't have that draw.

theandrewbailey 8y ago
Here's two reasons to hire small town USA: 1. Culture fit. (This is a huge reason for customer service centers onshoring.) 2. Same/similar working hours.

jbhatab 8y ago

I feel a sense of inevitability with rural America fading in importance and massive hubs being the dominant players. The only solution I can think of is pushing for more remote labor in these rural areas as an acceptable lifestyle choice. Maybe restructuring the towns with more of an appeal for 30-45 year old software engineers to work out of. The biggest problem I see though is top tier education systems in these places being the biggest deterrent.

mohankumar246 8y ago

Whenever people question the concentration of tech jobs in cities like SF it always makes me think: 1) Why do most jobs related to show business(movies) are concentrated in LA? 2) Why are most jobs in banking concentrated in NYC?

schnevets 8y ago
Because LA is where all the movie stars are and New York is where all the bankers are!
lotsofpulp 8y ago
Face to face, non audit-able interactions are important in finance. Maybe the same for show business, plus LA has really nice weather and scenery.

felipeccastro 8y ago

This looks somewhat familiar with the centralization vs decentralization debate in tech. It seems the network effects benefits don't apply only for tech products, but for cities as well. While there are many efforts in overcoming those effects through decentralization in various aspects (from remote work to blockchain projects), it seems none of these really achieved as much success as we were expecting, probably because the benefits of decentralization don't outweigh (yet) the advantages of strong networks. Perhaps once we solve this equation in tech, and make decentralized options more appealing than their centralized counterparts, we may be able to transfer that knowledge to city planning somehow.

sunshinelackof 8y ago

The only solution that will save small towns is dismantling some of the industrialisation that freed people up to work in the factory or mill that no longer exists. It's a trivial example, but ban preservatives in bread and now they need a bakery that can deliver bread everyday. Bread that lasts two weeks on a shelf is an optimisation for communities that support advanced professions. Heavy industrialisation is a model that no longer fits these communities and while some might be able to attract select tech workers--in effect patchwork, others should realise that they're optimised for a workforce that no longer exists. All of that may not even be possible. First try and sell your community their way of life is unsustainable, then try and shake the Walmart, McDonalds dependency.

lubujackson 8y ago
There is a bit of this idea emergent in some small towns. I know a chef in Vermont who focuses on foraged ingredients, smaller farm-sourced produce and getting everything fresh and local. Which is also much a fad in places like SF! It is one area where small towns can actually show uniqueness via their geographic differences. And if it continues to develop naturally as a choice (rather than a ban on preservatives...) it could contribute to giving small towns a reason to persist.

nimbius 8y ago

speaking as someone who works in a small town in the midwest as an auto mechanic, the people that shot themselves in the foot with this idea were the very ones who proposed it. I got 5 months of free online Python classes from the local government. This was part of some larger state plan to 'revitalize' us as a 'web 2.0' something or other for the 'silicon valley' of the midwest. The whole thing read like snake oil but I learned some pretty good skills in python and a lot more about Linux than I knew before. Our state has these lofty goals but couldnt attract more than a mega-truck-stop diner in the past 8 years. The reason for this is that unless you have a winning complexion (are white and male) you arent going to have a lot of fun here. Want birth control? well thats a 2 week waiting period and a mandatory consultation. Did you run out? well you have to renew that script every month. Want it covered by your insurance? tough, legally, our state outlawed that. Need an abortion? book a flight, we require a trans-vaginal ultrasound and a waiting period. Are you LGBTQ? enjoy our bathroom law. adoption providers can also legally discriminate against you for even asking to adopt. theres also no protections in the workplace, so enjoy being fired for "gay." Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible. our bowling alleys and food courts/theaters also enforce a dress code thats loosely translated to "no blacks."

weberc2 8y ago
What state is this? How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites? Apologies if these questions are naive, I'm not particularly familiar with midwest politics.
- aurailious 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure the comment didn't say that.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    To be clear, I was responding to this: > Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible. How else can you interpret this? Blue-collar minorities are less capable of knowing where/when to get a license than blue-collar whites? Or perhaps the "minority" bit is a red-herring altogether and the salient criterion is "blue-collar"?

michaelbuckbee 8y ago

In the mix with this are the tax incentives that are being offered up for tech companies to move into rural areas. While there has been a lot of attention on HN focused recently on Amazon's and Apple's move, the really interesting one to me is Foxconn. Foxconn really seems to have suckered a small Wisconsin community (and the state) into giving them an incredibly lopsided tax incentive deal - as detailed in this amazing episode of ReplyAll [1] I think a far smarter idea is to pay tech workers an incentive to relocate to the state, as Vermont is doing [2]. The payback is quicker and the results far easier to scale. 1 - https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount-pleasant#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/132-negative-mount-ple... 2 - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/us/vermont-moving-money.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/us/vermont-moving-money.h...

carapace 8y ago

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful > Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by German born British economist E. F. Schumacher.

motohagiography 8y ago

I think there is a reckoning coming in terms of what "educated worker" means, as increasingly, it does not mean "competent." Competence and specialization is what drives rural economies. Machine repair, fabrication, feed mills, legal services, construction, teaching, child care, animal and livestock services, all require physical competence. These are considered blue collar jobs, because they require someone to actually do something to create value. I would argue that the soft skills that corporate environments require do not create value, they at best manage capital, and usually deal in the factors and derivatives of negotiating wealth transfers and businesses that reduce to forms of amusement, posterity, and entertainment. The urban/rural resentment has a lot to do with the relative dependency of each on the other. Cities need food, and farms need capital. Globalization means cities can get food for less from around the world, and the margins on farming are so thin that capital is mostly only accessible at the conglomerate scale. Competence can be bought from a global supply chain, so rural economies are collapsing precisely because of globalization (e.g. international trade liberalization), and because of distorted fiscal policies that destroy local wealth in favour of centralizing it from global sources. The results have been, and remain predictable. What is very likely is that city housing prices will become so high that companies will have to use remote workers to produce goods while paying the cost of living, and this will drive broadband investment. However the real crisis is that the traditional urban/rural dependency and cultural divide is polarizing in favour of the urban side, who can be defined as the sort of people who use phrases like, "left behind," and who lack an apprehension of what follows ecological imbalance at this scale. Adding educated workers to small towns will not revitalize them, and nor will building public works with public administrative jobs. Until there is a way to generate productive and competitive capital and build real wealth in them, without suffering predation by both their respective governments and globalized markets, they will continue to disappear.

andmarios 8y ago

If a small town in the US could become a tech hub, then every capital in the world would already be one. Significant amounts of money are spent around the globe, yet it seems tech hubs are the one thing you cannot disrupt. :)

amyjess 8y ago

Ultimately, if you're going to do it, do it the way TI did. Texas Instruments set up their headquarters next to Richardson, TX. When they realized there weren't enough engineers in the area, the TI founders started their own university so they could farm engineers to grow TI. Ultimately, once the university got big enough, they turned it over to the state, and now the University of Texas at Dallas is the largest engineering-centric university in the southwest, and its existence is probably responsible for the Silicon Prairie and the Telecom Corridor being a thing.

DoubleCribble 8y ago

I tend to agree with an idea that's mentioned in the article. Perhaps much of the land in certain flyover states should just return to the bison? While it means most of the towns would disappear, some would greatly succeed. I'd be FAR more likely to regularly visit Podunk-Nowheresville if I could witness the annual migration of 10 million bison. After having traveled to the other side of the planet and seen such a migration, developing an American safari industry seems like an outcome worth pursuing.

nemo44x 8y ago
It's all mainly farmland.
- DoubleCribble 8y ago
  But if left to it's own devices (or with a little assistance from the bison), may return to prairie very quickly. I suspect it wouldn't take long for native grasses to outcompete any residual farmable crops.
  - nemo44x 8y ago
    We need this farmland, right?
    - DoubleCribble 8y ago
      Nope.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_Sta...

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honkycat 8y ago

I grew up in a town of 2,000 in rural Illinois. My parents ran a business, until it shut down of course. A lot of people have this idyllic vision of small town life. Everybody knows everybody, you can let your kids walk home from school, happy cows chewing cud in verdant fields. I will add a caveat to this: I lived in a small town during the decline. The place my parents grew up in was a much more lively, happy place. There were jobs and prosperity, it made sense for them to not leave. My town no longer has a grocery store, has a single restaurant, and I am hard pressed to think of a small business doing well. There are other small towns in the US that I am sure are lovely. I'm just speaking from my own experience. Unstructured list of thoughts about small town life: - People are poorly educated and constantly make bad decisions about everything. - Years of poor decisions and management have buried my town in bad expensive infrastructure. - Our mayor was an extremely incompetent, unqualified barber. - The schools are falling apart and the good teachers quickly move on to more lucrative jobs in other areas. The good ones leave. The bad ones stay. - Picture the Simpsons monorail episode, but replace the ambitious public transit project with a strip mall they can put a buffalo wild wings and a huge parking lot into - Picture the Simpsons monorail episode, but instead of the town agreeing to build affordable housing, they reject the free government development because, and I was at this meeting, `They don't want the black people from Chicago moving into town.` - The people... kinda suck. - Conservatism in small town America exists, it is not some abstract concept. They are racist. They are poorly educated. They think global warming is a hoax. - There is a special breed of large, swaggering, ignorant, low, angry white men that tend to live in small towns. They exist in cities too, but there are also other people around. - As the article suggests: The educated leave. The info-wars fans stay. - Poor diversity. Still know 30 year olds who think it is edgy/cool to slur constantly. Experiencing other cultures breeds empathy. Full stop. - RAMPANT drug abuse. Alcohol. Meth. Opiates. You name it. - Mind numbing boredom. - Just because there is less civilization does not mean it is a beautiful forest. - Is often a polluted creek people would be happy to replace with a Walmart, or a corn field that stinks of fertilizer for months on end. ( poop ) - There is no culture to interact with. - Want an education? - Good luck finding a decent college nearby. - Want to see a band? Too bad. You will have to drive 4 hours to see anyone. - Want to start a band? - Good luck finding a community. - Good luck finding an audience. - Good luck finding a mentor. - Good luck finding a place to perform. - Who you surround yourself with matters. - Who are you going to hang out with? - Who is going to be hanging out and collaborating with your kids? Would you rather it be the smart, cosmopolitan Muhammad, or Cletus the pig-farmer's feral son? - Kind of obvious, but: What are you going to do for a living? - There is nobody to network with. - What are you going to do when you lose your remote gig? - Personally I would rather have the opportunity to get a local job if remote work goes out of style. - Small town gossip is a THING. - People will see your success, covet it, and hate you for it. They will want to knock you down. Small towns destroyed themselves by deciding to build giant roads, shopping malls, and walmarts instead of maintaining their main street, building parks, and upgrading their schools. You know, enhancing the life of people living in your city, instead of enhancing the lives of the people who drive through it at 60 miles an hour. Now the malls are empty ( They were always a bad, dumb experiment ). Now all of their pointless expensive roads are crumbling and eating up a massive amount of tax revenue. Walmart pays the community a pittance and funnels all of their wealth to the CEOs. It stinks people are suffering and losing a way of life, but I feel that much of this pain is self-inflicted. So to small towns: Bye, Felicia. Some interesting reading: - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

Terr_ 8y ago

> For the last quarter century the story of these places has been one of relentless economic decline. [...] The election of Donald Trump, powered in no small degree by rural voters Counterpoint: "Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds" [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economi...