4 ms·
Spot on. To me the "driving 15 minutes to get a gallon of milk" thing is absurd on the face of it because it's missing that urban and rural life are fundamenta
by esotericn 7y ago
Spot on.
To me the "driving 15 minutes to get a gallon of milk" thing is absurd on the face of it because it's missing that urban and rural life are fundamentally different in a lot of ways.
If you live in the centre of a city, it's normal to live a sort of 'just-in-time' lifestyle whereby you just pop to the shops whenever to grab an ingredient, perhaps wander to a cafe for lunch, etc.
In the country it's far more DIY. You have a big freezer / fridge and food stocks and just sort it out. If you want to cut up some wood, build a cabinet, whatever, you don't go to the community space or whatever, you do it on the land.
And if you do go to the store - well you think about what you actually need to buy. The idea that people are burning a gallon of fuel solely to grab milk is absurd, more likely they just do without it until the next time they're in town, or prepare in advance.
- analog31 7y agoI'd like to see stats confirming that rural folks are that efficient with their lifestyles and vehicle / fuel use. One thing to consider is that most rural folks still work regular jobs, and commute to those jobs every day. At my workplace at the edge of town, the main difference between the city and rural folks is how many hours are spent commuting every week.
- esotericn 7y agoSure, so in that case you pick something up on the way to/from work. I'm not arguing that rural lifestyles have lower transport requirements in their totality - they obviously don't - just that the '15 mins to get X' example is absurd, because it describes a strawman journey that very rarely actually occurs. Even in my youth living in the suburbs of a small town in the UK you rarely went "in to town" to buy one thing because it's just not worth it.