11 ms·

Lightbulbs powered by electricity were a convincing app, and so was the electricity-powered washing machine and similar labor-saving appliances: https://pennto

Lightbulbs powered by electricity were a convincing app, and so was the electricity-powered washing machine and similar labor-saving appliances: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/how-appliance-boom-moved-more-women-workforce https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/how-appliance-boom-moved-mo... Notably, electrification of rural areas lagged well behind that of cities and towns until the Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1935: https://livingnewdeal.org/a-light-went-on-new-deal-rural-electrification-act/ https://livingnewdeal.org/a-light-went-on-new-deal-rural-ele... > "The REA continued into the postwar era and helped the percentage of electrified farms in the United States rise from 11 percent [1935] to almost 97 percent by 1960. The New Deal had helped rural America achieve near-total electrification." This is comparable to the situation with high-speed internet in the US at present: > "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a New Deal agency established in 1934, estimates that today a quarter of rural Americans and a third on tribal lands do not have access to broadband internet, defined as download speeds of at least 25 megabytes a second. Fewer than 2 percent of urban dwellers have this same problem." This is what you get if you privatize and deregulate basic infrastructure services: huge holes in coverage and overpriced monopolistic control of the rest of it.

nonethewiser 4y ago
How is 11% having electricity comparably to 75% having broadband? Feels like you’re really reaching to make this segway to politics.
- zamnos 4y ago
  Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government investment, not through market forces. That's not reaching to bring up politics, that's the history of what happened. Rural areas are more expensive to run physical infrastructure for, for fewer people, compared to an urban or suburban environment; that underlying fact hasn't changed since the 1920's when electricity was being run. How it immediately becomes political is the question of who pays for what, and how much of my taxes are going towards something that doesn't direct benefit me.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    But that proves my point. There was no “new deal” that got us to 75% broadband coverage. 75% is clearly way better than 11% therefore not a valid parallel.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      75% broadband coverage is a generous interpretation, especially as the floor of what is broad has grown. 25MB down, 5MB up isn't actually that broad or useful as 4K TVs and multiple simultaneous video calls become the norm.
    - zamnos 4y ago
      There absolutely has been a ton of government money funneled to, basically Verizon and Comcast shareholders to try and provide rural Internet service via the Telecomms Act of 1996 along with everything else that came after that. That the government hasn't been getting good value for its money, and 75%, and at only 25 Mbit, compared to 97% for electricity is a whole other topic.
    - mauvehaus 4y ago
      Arguably, having broadband now is more important than having electricity then. The network effects of nearly everyone having broadband are reducing access to offline alternatives (e.g. bank branches closing), whereas anything you can do with electricity can likely be done without electricity or any additional infrastructure beyond what's on the farm.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago
      https://www.usda.gov/broadband https://www.usda.gov/broadband > "USDA has been investing in rural telecommunications infrastructure for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars are annually available in the RUS programs both by loans and grants all to support modern broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities." > "In 2018, USDA introduced the ReConnect Program, which has invested over $1 billion to date to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved rural areas and tribal lands." We don't let shady private corporations squat on the roads and freeways and charge tolls to anyone who wants to drive on them, why should we allow such behavior on the internet trunk fiber optic cables either - or on the copper/aluminum electricity grid, for that matter?
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-rural-internet-speed https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-ru... The issue isn't politics (though it is true that the ISPs have bought both political parties in Congress), it's economics. Building out basic infrastructure is one of the core necessities for widespread economic growth, and that includes roads and bridges, the electricity grid, the water supply, and the fiber-optic network. It's not a very complicated issue, and I've never seen anyone present a coherent argument that privatized infrastructure improves economic activity overall, it's generally the opposite isn't it? I suppose if your metric is the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, then yes, private infrastructure facilitates that outcome, but it shrinks the overall economic activity in terms of production of goods and services (i.e. consider the farmer who can't get to market because the bridge is washed out, the washing machine manufacturer who can't sell to the farmer who has no electricity, and so on).
  - revelio 4y ago
    There's plenty of arguments for privatized infrastructure, if you never heard them then you weren't looking for them. For example telecoms, energy and TV monopolies have been broken repeatedly in the 20th century in countries around the world, nobody wants them back. There were way more infrastructure monopolies in the early parts of the 20th century than there are now.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago
      I'm sorry, isn't that an argument against privatized infrastructure, which always becomes monopolistic control of infrastructure by private interests? It's not like competing systems of basic infrastructure are at all plausible, we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we?
      - revelio 4y ago
        No? Private infrastructure doesn't always become monopoly, that's why most infrastructure monopolies were created by nationalization at a time when that was all the rage. Railway monopolies, radio (e.g. BBC), telecoms, steel, water, electricity ... lots. > we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we? Toll roads exist but indeed, roads are one of the cases where building and maintaining them is easy so you don't lose much from a state monopoly, and they take up a lot of space so duplication is unfortunate. But there are relatively few cases like that.
throwaway33381 4y ago
Ah just from how this is all written is obvious someone with a financial interest is trying to promote GPT-4.
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  I'm sure the person promoting electricity had financial interest in it. You know there is much nuance here yet you still had to make this simplistic comment. Put your real name and email address in your profile and respond with your full identity exposed. I want to see how history plays out. Then I can go back on these old threads to see who was actually wrong. Who were the idiots against the reality of global warming? The people who so fervently used every excuse to deny the reality of an impending catastrophe? There is no difference between those people and the people who consistently attempt to use every avenue available to attack the abilities of AI. These aren't rational people. They are people with an agenda that pushes them to modify their perception of reality around them to fit that agenda. That agenda is fear. Fear that a machine can surpass us and replace the software craft we have spent years honing. My advice to you is to open up your mind a bit. Heck I put my full identity and contact info in my profile. I stand by my views without hiding behind a throwaway account. If history proves me wrong the record is here for everyone to see.
  - edc117 4y ago
    Some might fall into the category you've described, but I'd hazard a guess that a lot more are afraid of the rise of AI due to its owners. The cost to develop and operate these machines is high, and you can be sure whoever is using them to replace work done by people today will capture and hold every possible penny. People are afraid that AI will not serve the common good, and will instead serve a very rich few. Why? Because that's how it's always been with new advances, and more than ever how it is today. The vast gaps in wealth inequality will grow much larger with AI - it needs to be addressed first.
    - HervalFreire 4y ago
      Agreed. But why be delusional? The tool is right at your fingertips. Why deny the reality of the situation rather then face the truth? If they fear the AI owners attack the owners directly. Don't attack reality itself and say the AIs are just stochastic parrots and there's no risk to jobs at all.
aksss 4y ago
25 MB?? Holy schnikes..
NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
25 megabytes per second is 209,715,200bps. That's over twice as fast as my cable ISP's present downstream connection. Is that what they really meant?
- wonnage 4y ago
  No, looks like they confused the units. It should be Mbit.
  - rhacker 4y ago
    Even if they mean MBit, I rarely need more than 8. What are some of the things people do that they need something that fast?
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Docker.
      - rhacker 4y ago
        I use that too. And beyond that, the original analogy was that the light bulb was so helpful that it spread to all the farms and rural lands by 1960. Why do we need 25 MBit on all the farms and rural lands?
        misnome 4y ago
        All that tractor DRM has to phone home somehow!
        smoldesu 4y ago
        Well, because people live on those lands. I grew up in a rural area, and my limited access to internet almost failed me in multiple classes that required online testing. My bare-minimum Hughesnet setup would only give you 50kbps after you depleted the "Full Speed" 50 gigabytes a month of 25MBit speeds. No worries though, only $10/gigabyte to get back online so you could take your Biology quiz without getting kicked off halfway through. Now that stuff like Starlink exists, it's easier to give the finger to Hughesnet and exploitative WISPs. Even still, the years I spent growing up with bare-minimum internet at cable-package prices has made me spiteful. It should have been addressed long before the private sector got around to fixing it.
Johnny555 4y ago
>> "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a New Deal agency established in 1934, estimates that today a quarter of rural Americans and a third on tribal lands do not have access to broadband internet, defined as download speeds of at least 25 megabytes a second. Fewer than 2 percent of urban dwellers have this same problem." The current FCC broadband speed is 25 megabits/second, not bytes.
itake 4y ago
The alternative of what? Socialize and subsidize infrastructure costs even more for rural dwellers so the city folks pay for the $20k cable a single rural family requires?
- jjj123 4y ago
  Yes. Edit: to be less snarky, there are plenty of examples of doing something inefficient for the benefit of society as a whole. The New Deal and the ADA are two examples that come to mind. Unfortunately, we don’t do much of that anymore in the US.
  - analog31 4y ago
    We could do better, but there are still some contemporary examples. For instance it's costly to provide comprehensive medical care in rural areas. One of the effective functions of medicare / medicaid is to subsidize rural medical care.
  - itake 4y ago
    We should minimize our eco-footprint with high density living, not subsidizing high environmental impact lifestyles. How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit society?
    - nibbleshifter 4y ago
      Enjoy starving to death then.
      - lmm 4y ago
        If farmers feel their lifestyle isn't good enough in proportion to the work they do, they should raise the prices of the food they sell, not get paid by the backdoor through subsidies.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Let's cut off their electricity and phone too and forcibly relocate them. It's not like other countries haven't done that in the past. /s
hyperthesis 4y ago
Agree, infrastructure is worthless, applications are everything. Mr Edison is famous for "the lightbulb" (actually, "a"), but what he really did was lightbulbs + power stations (through General Electric). Mr Birdseye is famous for frozen fish, but what [the company who bought his patent] really did was frozen fish + freezers in supermarkets. The joke about the first telephone being the hardest sell (because there's no-one to call) has another problem, of no phone-lines, exchanges or (today's) cell-towers. \muse I wonder if a solution to holes/monopoly abuse is to ease entry-to-market? The standard incumbent response is to deny oxygen to entrants, by giving great deals at the low end (like today's "free tiers"). Though, historically, regulatory capture instead raises barriers to entry.
- bumby 4y ago
  Infrastructure is an enabling function. To claim it’s worthless is largely missing the point. It reminds me of the mechanical engineers I once worked with in rocket engine testing. Many claimed software was largely worthless because it was only replacing existing analog alternatives. To the articles point, the problem is about helping people connect the dots between the infrastructure and the work they really care about.
  - asciii 4y ago
    > Many claimed software was largely worthless because it was only replacing existing analog alternatives. Reminds me of the famous and unfortunate quotes [1] [1]https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html
    - tialaramex 4y ago
      The Bill Gates quote at the end is unsourced. In the unlikely event Gates ever actually said or wrote that, somebody would have a citation.
      - OJFord 4y ago
        He denies it himself, but a plausible explanation given here is that he perhaps meant '~ in the lifetime of this system': https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-bill-gates-say-640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-everyone https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-bill-g... (It goes back to 1985 apparently, so does seem unlikely it came from nowhere, since it wouldn't have seemed so ridiculous then.)
drstewart 4y ago
>deregulate basic infrastructure services What part of ISPs have been deregulated? Is it the bit where they're legal monopolies in many jurisdictions?
oatmeal1 4y ago
It isn't by definition a problem that there are holes in coverage. People in the US live hugely far apart from each other because the government has paved far more roads than they should have. Bringing broadband to people in rural areas is hundreds of times more expensive than in urban areas because people are too far apart.
fsckboy 4y ago
> This is what you get if you privatize and deregulate basic infrastructure services: huge holes in coverage and overpriced monopolistic control of the rest of it. shouldn't every square inch of Alaska be electrified, internetted, and cellphone towered? that way, just in case I consider whether to live there, I won't have to think about the inconvenience of it, it will make my decision easier. i.e. spending money on expensive infrastructure to service small numbers of customers is not necessarily a brilliant idea. Who knows, it may not have even paid itself back for all remote communities within the lower 48; many rural communities are even smaller now then there were then. That doesn't mean there weren't net benefits from the rural electrification act, but you are wrong to pitch it as "evil corporate barons vs everybody else". How about all of us together decide what we can afford? Would you accept your kid's argument that you pay to electrify (to code, mind you, and union electricians) your kid's treehouse in the backyard just because he accuses you of being a greedy tyrant if you don't?
- b112 4y ago
  The problem is, no farmers, no food. No resource extraction, no stuff. Cities cannot exist without rural workers. But what rural worker wants to leave their children to unfair advantage? These things have value beyond economics, they are required to maintain population and workers of absolutely essential jobs. (Otherwise, these areas further depopulate, and you have to provide other incentives to get people to do said work.)
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    what you are saying is, it's an economic decision, which is what I am saying. But you're not recognizing it as an economic decision, you're just saying "food. do it"
    - b112 4y ago
      Not quite. What I will agree with, is that while it could be wrapped into an economic decision, if so, then "making sure there are hospitals there", or police, or schools is also an economic decision. Which pretty much means that with such reasoning, all centralized planning is. Many economists might disagree.

nonethewiser 4y ago

How is 11% having electricity comparably to 75% having broadband? Feels like you’re really reaching to make this segway to politics.

zamnos 4y ago
Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government investment, not through market forces. That's not reaching to bring up politics, that's the history of what happened. Rural areas are more expensive to run physical infrastructure for, for fewer people, compared to an urban or suburban environment; that underlying fact hasn't changed since the 1920's when electricity was being run. How it immediately becomes political is the question of who pays for what, and how much of my taxes are going towards something that doesn't direct benefit me.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  But that proves my point. There was no “new deal” that got us to 75% broadband coverage. 75% is clearly way better than 11% therefore not a valid parallel.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    75% broadband coverage is a generous interpretation, especially as the floor of what is broad has grown. 25MB down, 5MB up isn't actually that broad or useful as 4K TVs and multiple simultaneous video calls become the norm.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    There absolutely has been a ton of government money funneled to, basically Verizon and Comcast shareholders to try and provide rural Internet service via the Telecomms Act of 1996 along with everything else that came after that. That the government hasn't been getting good value for its money, and 75%, and at only 25 Mbit, compared to 97% for electricity is a whole other topic.
  - mauvehaus 4y ago
    Arguably, having broadband now is more important than having electricity then. The network effects of nearly everyone having broadband are reducing access to offline alternatives (e.g. bank branches closing), whereas anything you can do with electricity can likely be done without electricity or any additional infrastructure beyond what's on the farm.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    https://www.usda.gov/broadband https://www.usda.gov/broadband > "USDA has been investing in rural telecommunications infrastructure for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars are annually available in the RUS programs both by loans and grants all to support modern broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities." > "In 2018, USDA introduced the ReConnect Program, which has invested over $1 billion to date to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved rural areas and tribal lands." We don't let shady private corporations squat on the roads and freeways and charge tolls to anyone who wants to drive on them, why should we allow such behavior on the internet trunk fiber optic cables either - or on the copper/aluminum electricity grid, for that matter?
photochemsyn 4y ago
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-rural-internet-speed https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban-ru... The issue isn't politics (though it is true that the ISPs have bought both political parties in Congress), it's economics. Building out basic infrastructure is one of the core necessities for widespread economic growth, and that includes roads and bridges, the electricity grid, the water supply, and the fiber-optic network. It's not a very complicated issue, and I've never seen anyone present a coherent argument that privatized infrastructure improves economic activity overall, it's generally the opposite isn't it? I suppose if your metric is the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, then yes, private infrastructure facilitates that outcome, but it shrinks the overall economic activity in terms of production of goods and services (i.e. consider the farmer who can't get to market because the bridge is washed out, the washing machine manufacturer who can't sell to the farmer who has no electricity, and so on).
- revelio 4y ago
  There's plenty of arguments for privatized infrastructure, if you never heard them then you weren't looking for them. For example telecoms, energy and TV monopolies have been broken repeatedly in the 20th century in countries around the world, nobody wants them back. There were way more infrastructure monopolies in the early parts of the 20th century than there are now.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I'm sorry, isn't that an argument against privatized infrastructure, which always becomes monopolistic control of infrastructure by private interests? It's not like competing systems of basic infrastructure are at all plausible, we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we?
    - revelio 4y ago
      No? Private infrastructure doesn't always become monopoly, that's why most infrastructure monopolies were created by nationalization at a time when that was all the rage. Railway monopolies, radio (e.g. BBC), telecoms, steel, water, electricity ... lots. > we're not going to have multiple private roads systems are we? Toll roads exist but indeed, roads are one of the cases where building and maintaining them is easy so you don't lose much from a state monopoly, and they take up a lot of space so duplication is unfortunate. But there are relatively few cases like that.

throwaway33381 4y ago

Ah just from how this is all written is obvious someone with a financial interest is trying to promote GPT-4.

HervalFreire 4y ago
I'm sure the person promoting electricity had financial interest in it. You know there is much nuance here yet you still had to make this simplistic comment. Put your real name and email address in your profile and respond with your full identity exposed. I want to see how history plays out. Then I can go back on these old threads to see who was actually wrong. Who were the idiots against the reality of global warming? The people who so fervently used every excuse to deny the reality of an impending catastrophe? There is no difference between those people and the people who consistently attempt to use every avenue available to attack the abilities of AI. These aren't rational people. They are people with an agenda that pushes them to modify their perception of reality around them to fit that agenda. That agenda is fear. Fear that a machine can surpass us and replace the software craft we have spent years honing. My advice to you is to open up your mind a bit. Heck I put my full identity and contact info in my profile. I stand by my views without hiding behind a throwaway account. If history proves me wrong the record is here for everyone to see.
- edc117 4y ago
  Some might fall into the category you've described, but I'd hazard a guess that a lot more are afraid of the rise of AI due to its owners. The cost to develop and operate these machines is high, and you can be sure whoever is using them to replace work done by people today will capture and hold every possible penny. People are afraid that AI will not serve the common good, and will instead serve a very rich few. Why? Because that's how it's always been with new advances, and more than ever how it is today. The vast gaps in wealth inequality will grow much larger with AI - it needs to be addressed first.
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    Agreed. But why be delusional? The tool is right at your fingertips. Why deny the reality of the situation rather then face the truth? If they fear the AI owners attack the owners directly. Don't attack reality itself and say the AIs are just stochastic parrots and there's no risk to jobs at all.

aksss 4y ago

25 MB?? Holy schnikes..

NoZebra120vClip 4y ago

25 megabytes per second is 209,715,200bps. That's over twice as fast as my cable ISP's present downstream connection. Is that what they really meant?

wonnage 4y ago
No, looks like they confused the units. It should be Mbit.
- rhacker 4y ago
  Even if they mean MBit, I rarely need more than 8. What are some of the things people do that they need something that fast?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Docker.
    - rhacker 4y ago
      I use that too. And beyond that, the original analogy was that the light bulb was so helpful that it spread to all the farms and rural lands by 1960. Why do we need 25 MBit on all the farms and rural lands?
      - misnome 4y ago
        All that tractor DRM has to phone home somehow!
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Well, because people live on those lands. I grew up in a rural area, and my limited access to internet almost failed me in multiple classes that required online testing. My bare-minimum Hughesnet setup would only give you 50kbps after you depleted the "Full Speed" 50 gigabytes a month of 25MBit speeds. No worries though, only $10/gigabyte to get back online so you could take your Biology quiz without getting kicked off halfway through. Now that stuff like Starlink exists, it's easier to give the finger to Hughesnet and exploitative WISPs. Even still, the years I spent growing up with bare-minimum internet at cable-package prices has made me spiteful. It should have been addressed long before the private sector got around to fixing it.

Johnny555 4y ago

>> "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a New Deal agency established in 1934, estimates that today a quarter of rural Americans and a third on tribal lands do not have access to broadband internet, defined as download speeds of at least 25 megabytes a second. Fewer than 2 percent of urban dwellers have this same problem." The current FCC broadband speed is 25 megabits/second, not bytes.

itake 4y ago

The alternative of what? Socialize and subsidize infrastructure costs even more for rural dwellers so the city folks pay for the $20k cable a single rural family requires?

jjj123 4y ago
Yes. Edit: to be less snarky, there are plenty of examples of doing something inefficient for the benefit of society as a whole. The New Deal and the ADA are two examples that come to mind. Unfortunately, we don’t do much of that anymore in the US.
- analog31 4y ago
  We could do better, but there are still some contemporary examples. For instance it's costly to provide comprehensive medical care in rural areas. One of the effective functions of medicare / medicaid is to subsidize rural medical care.
- itake 4y ago
  We should minimize our eco-footprint with high density living, not subsidizing high environmental impact lifestyles. How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit society?
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    Enjoy starving to death then.
    - lmm 4y ago
      If farmers feel their lifestyle isn't good enough in proportion to the work they do, they should raise the prices of the food they sell, not get paid by the backdoor through subsidies.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Let's cut off their electricity and phone too and forcibly relocate them. It's not like other countries haven't done that in the past. /s

hyperthesis 4y ago

Agree, infrastructure is worthless, applications are everything. Mr Edison is famous for "the lightbulb" (actually, "a"), but what he really did was lightbulbs + power stations (through General Electric). Mr Birdseye is famous for frozen fish, but what [the company who bought his patent] really did was frozen fish + freezers in supermarkets. The joke about the first telephone being the hardest sell (because there's no-one to call) has another problem, of no phone-lines, exchanges or (today's) cell-towers. \muse I wonder if a solution to holes/monopoly abuse is to ease entry-to-market? The standard incumbent response is to deny oxygen to entrants, by giving great deals at the low end (like today's "free tiers"). Though, historically, regulatory capture instead raises barriers to entry.

bumby 4y ago
Infrastructure is an enabling function. To claim it’s worthless is largely missing the point. It reminds me of the mechanical engineers I once worked with in rocket engine testing. Many claimed software was largely worthless because it was only replacing existing analog alternatives. To the articles point, the problem is about helping people connect the dots between the infrastructure and the work they really care about.
- asciii 4y ago
  > Many claimed software was largely worthless because it was only replacing existing analog alternatives. Reminds me of the famous and unfortunate quotes [1] [1]https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    The Bill Gates quote at the end is unsourced. In the unlikely event Gates ever actually said or wrote that, somebody would have a citation.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      He denies it himself, but a plausible explanation given here is that he perhaps meant '~ in the lifetime of this system': https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-bill-gates-say-640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-everyone https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did-bill-g... (It goes back to 1985 apparently, so does seem unlikely it came from nowhere, since it wouldn't have seemed so ridiculous then.)

drstewart 4y ago

>deregulate basic infrastructure services What part of ISPs have been deregulated? Is it the bit where they're legal monopolies in many jurisdictions?

oatmeal1 4y ago

It isn't by definition a problem that there are holes in coverage. People in the US live hugely far apart from each other because the government has paved far more roads than they should have. Bringing broadband to people in rural areas is hundreds of times more expensive than in urban areas because people are too far apart.

fsckboy 4y ago

> This is what you get if you privatize and deregulate basic infrastructure services: huge holes in coverage and overpriced monopolistic control of the rest of it. shouldn't every square inch of Alaska be electrified, internetted, and cellphone towered? that way, just in case I consider whether to live there, I won't have to think about the inconvenience of it, it will make my decision easier. i.e. spending money on expensive infrastructure to service small numbers of customers is not necessarily a brilliant idea. Who knows, it may not have even paid itself back for all remote communities within the lower 48; many rural communities are even smaller now then there were then. That doesn't mean there weren't net benefits from the rural electrification act, but you are wrong to pitch it as "evil corporate barons vs everybody else". How about all of us together decide what we can afford? Would you accept your kid's argument that you pay to electrify (to code, mind you, and union electricians) your kid's treehouse in the backyard just because he accuses you of being a greedy tyrant if you don't?

b112 4y ago
The problem is, no farmers, no food. No resource extraction, no stuff. Cities cannot exist without rural workers. But what rural worker wants to leave their children to unfair advantage? These things have value beyond economics, they are required to maintain population and workers of absolutely essential jobs. (Otherwise, these areas further depopulate, and you have to provide other incentives to get people to do said work.)
- fsckboy 4y ago
  what you are saying is, it's an economic decision, which is what I am saying. But you're not recognizing it as an economic decision, you're just saying "food. do it"
  - b112 4y ago
    Not quite. What I will agree with, is that while it could be wrapped into an economic decision, if so, then "making sure there are hospitals there", or police, or schools is also an economic decision. Which pretty much means that with such reasoning, all centralized planning is. Many economists might disagree.