7 ms·
Only people living in big cities think this isn’t still true. If you so desire, huge portions of land in the country “flyover” USA are yours to be had for very
by dev_dull 8y ago
Only people living in big cities think this isn’t still true.
If you so desire, huge portions of land in the country “flyover” USA are yours to be had for very cheap.
Of course it’s difficult to get internet there, so how will the millennials make it?
- fastball 8y ago4G coverage is actually pretty good these days.
- mruts 8y agoThat’s good to hear. I went to a small college in Massachusetts that only had dial-up in 2008 and no cell service. The entire school shared a custom symmetric 10 mbit/s split over 500 people. Man those were the days...
- derekp7 8y agoCan you rely on that as your only internet coverage though? Most of the "unlimited" plans start to degrade the service once you go over 20 GB/month. Of course, depending on what you are using it for it could work (such as ssh over vpn tunnel, which is low bandwidth usage, however OS updates can blow away your monthly data allowance in a short period).
- fastball 8y agoI'm currently using Ubifi[0] and the experience has been pretty great so far. I'm a few miles away from the nearest cell tower and I consistently get real world download speeds of up to 10Mb/s, with usage in the 100s of GB per month. To be fair, I did need to buy a Yagi antenna to get those speeds to be consistent, but that is a distance issue, not an ISP issue. Costs $89.99 and I can use my router anywhere in the US if I want to. I've even taken it on a roadtrip and plugged it into my car's AC adapter, continued to work like a charm. 0: https://www.ubifi.net https://www.ubifi.net
- fartcannon 8y agoSome millennials are in their mid 30's. Isn't it time to pick on a new generation?
- 0xffff2 8y agoI mean, they're not wrong. I'm a millennial in my early thirties who actually owns several acres of rural land. I would love to make it my full-time residence, but can't because I can't get decent internet out there. I'm a software engineer whose company lets me work remotely, but only if I can actually do my job. Until I can get good enough internet/phone service to call in to meetings and reliably access various remote servers, I'm stuck in civilization.
- derekp7 8y agoThis will hopefully change in a few years, esp. with low-latency GEO satellite internet coverage (SpaceX, and other competitors).
- 0xffff2 8y ago(I think you meant LEO, not GEO.) I completely agree. It's funny that I didn't care at all about SpaceX and Oneweb before I bought this property, but they can't launch soon enough for me now.
- derekp7 8y agoYes, I meant LEO (weird, can't figure out how I made that typo) -- or VLEO is the new term for what SpaceX is trying to do.
- nfriedly 8y agoI was just talking about this in a different thread; I'm a similar age to you and my house is in a rural area that has mediocre DSL as the only internet option. So, I rent an office in the nearest town. I have a quiet space to work and 5x better internet there. It's close enough to bike in when the weather is nice, and a pleasantly short commute the rest of the time. It really is the best of both worlds.
- deckar01 8y agoYou can get satellite internet in the middle of nowhere. It's much harder to get water, power, waste management, medical services, and grocery stores.
- koolba 8y agoIf you have power then water is straightforward. Just dig. We’ve been doing that for hundreds of years.
- moate 8y agoI mean, that's a pretty big "if" qualifier there. Getting water might be easier than getting the power once you have the power, but that also means its harder than getting power because it requires an extra step. Also, it's straightforward, but that doesn't make it easy or cheap. If you want to go to the ISS, become an astronaut is straightforward, but it's not exactly helpful.
- msla 8y ago> If you have power then water is straightforward. Just dig. We’ve been doing that for hundreds of years. Spoken like someone who's never had to rely on a well in marginal country. My advice: Drill your well carefully, put in a cistern, and buy a truck which can haul lots and lots of water.
- jjeaff 8y agoIt depends on where this land is. Many wells in the south never have problems running dry.
- 0xffff2 8y agoI own several acres of rural land. Internet is by far my biggest hurdle to making it my full-time residence. Satellite internet is high latency, low data caps, and very sensitive to any kind of weather, all for more money than I spend on cable for my apartment in civilization. It's completely and utterly unsuitable for remote work.
- 8y ago
- msla 8y ago> Of course it’s difficult to get internet there, so how will the millennials make it? Difficult to get medical care and water out there, so how will the Boomers make it?
- jjeaff 8y agoMedical care isn't usually that far. You would have to be very much in the middle of nowhere to be very far from a decent hospital with a medivac helipad. Rural water coops are very common and you can always just dig a well.
- asdff 8y agoCan you get a medivac to your appointment with the specialist?
- wnevets 8y agoIf it wasn't for the urban dwellers flyover usa's subsidizing water, electricity, mail delivery, telephone, etc they would have a very different about the free market.
- johnmaguire2013 8y agoCan you rephrase this comment? I couldn't follow it at all.
- ed312 8y agoI think the argument is something like: It is not profitable to provide the current level of service to rural areas. Because of the high productivity of urban areas, we can redistribute resources and improve rural public infrastructure.
- wnevets 8y agoBeyond that, it required interference of the free market by the federal government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoFor scale, you could just about give everyone in the US an Acre in Alaska and not even touch the lower 48.
- adamredwoods 8y agoOr an inch, and throw it in a cereal box: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Big_Inch_Land_Promotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Big_Inch_Land_Promoti...
- pmoriarty 8y agoCouldn't you just get internet over satellite link? Of course there'll be lag, and perhaps lower bandwidth, so you might not be able to play multiplayer action games or download 4k videos, but you should be able to get the news, send email, and surf the web without too much of a problem.
- rafiki6 8y agoOf course it's difficult to get jobs there, so how will you buy the cheap land?