3 ms·

> On a per-capita basis, people who live in cities generate less externalities than rural dwellers. So I'm not quite clear on your point. Of course there's mor

> On a per-capita basis, people who live in cities generate less externalities than rural dwellers. So I'm not quite clear on your point. Of course there's more externalities, 3% of the population feeds the other 97%. Cities consume all the food, water and gas that those "wasteful" rural folk produce for them. Interesting that we don't account for that and just attribute the externalities to them, as if that's the whole story. Cities are certainly more efficient per capita, but they're not self-sustaining. If we demolished all those wasteful roads between cities and rural parts of the country, the cities would starve.

akiselev 7y ago
I was under the impression that most of what we consider rural populations are left overs from transportation arteries and extraction industries that popped all over the country during the industrial revolution. I thought the actual number of farmers is vanishingly small and I doubt it takes an entire 3% of the country to support a mostly automated industry. It's not a topic I've seen well quantified.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  The parent to you was trying to say we are somehow taking advantage of them. Before covad-19 at least, we could just buy food from some other place. We don't need a lot of the rural land. The same thing goes the other way, the people living in small town could get medical care from some international company, but it would cost way more than their subsidized us federal govt healthcare because in my hometown more than half the people are retired. In washington state we have the same arguments. If you really want to make people in rural areas made, point out that we are subsidizing them. i'm not against building infrastructure that we all need. But lets be honest about it. A significant amount of tax revenue from Seattle goes out to pay for things in low population counties. It does against the dishonest ideaology that they are the real producers of things and we somehow take what they make. We need each other, but we city folk like me subsidize your local docs so they don't leave, subsidize your schools, and we pay for roads that are used to then get to timber to harvest.

akiselev 7y ago

I was under the impression that most of what we consider rural populations are left overs from transportation arteries and extraction industries that popped all over the country during the industrial revolution. I thought the actual number of farmers is vanishingly small and I doubt it takes an entire 3% of the country to support a mostly automated industry. It's not a topic I've seen well quantified.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
The parent to you was trying to say we are somehow taking advantage of them. Before covad-19 at least, we could just buy food from some other place. We don't need a lot of the rural land. The same thing goes the other way, the people living in small town could get medical care from some international company, but it would cost way more than their subsidized us federal govt healthcare because in my hometown more than half the people are retired. In washington state we have the same arguments. If you really want to make people in rural areas made, point out that we are subsidizing them. i'm not against building infrastructure that we all need. But lets be honest about it. A significant amount of tax revenue from Seattle goes out to pay for things in low population counties. It does against the dishonest ideaology that they are the real producers of things and we somehow take what they make. We need each other, but we city folk like me subsidize your local docs so they don't leave, subsidize your schools, and we pay for roads that are used to then get to timber to harvest.