6 ms·
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 t
by 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 agoWe 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 agoWe 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 agoEnjoy starving to death then.
- lmm 4y agoIf 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 agoLet'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
- itake 4y agoRural people need reliable access to power for farming.
- SamReidHughes 4y agoWe can just make them pay for it instead of mooching off everybody else.
- oatmeal1 4y agoExactly. People in this thread are perfectly happy to throw unknown heaps of other people's money at the problem until it is solved. And it's not like the government has a track record of efficiently spending money in the first place.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scatters 4y agoWhen? I can't think of any examples of forced rural-urban migration other than the Highland Clearances in the UK, which isn't really comparable.
- paradox460 4y agoPol pot did it in Cambodia
- scatters 4y agoThat was urban-rural migration.
- vb6sp6 4y ago[dead]
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoSomeone's gotta grow the food. Our farmers deserve Netflix.
- elcritch 4y agoAnd eDoctor visits, farmer forums, IoT data services, banking, accounting apps, etc
- scatters 4y agoOr perhaps they deserve to be treated like adults and decide for themselves what infrastructure they want to pay for.
- bumby 4y agoI think the larger point is that guaranteeing access ensures they have the opportunity to make that choice.
- compiler-guy 4y agoA great idea! A terrific plan like this needs a clever name. We could call it the Great Leap Forward, or maybe the Cultural Revolution.
- scatters 4y agoNeither of those had anything to do with moving people from the countryside into the cities, as far as I'm aware. The Chinese Communist Party is still trying to suppress rural-urban migration (e.g., via hukou).
- JaimeThompson 4y agoHow do the food, livestock, minerals, and wood that grows in rural areas benefit society?
- itake 4y agoThose are priced into the economy. The value the cities provide is transferred to rural for food, livestock, and minerals. Handing rural people an extra $50k in addition of the payment for the goods ands services to install the infrastructure doesn't seem right to me.
- gameman144 4y ago> How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit society? How does an urban population having high speed internet benefit society? Whatever your answer, that's the benefit for rural folks too.
- edmundsauto 4y agoOne difference is that urban areas get that benefit with lower cost due to the inherent scaling available in dense population. The benefit might be the same, the cost is not. I’d argue the isolated benefit is the same, but the network effect amplifies it. When a ton of people do music together, it becomes part of the culture. That effect is more difficult to scale in low density populations, which means their rate of improvement is probably lower.
- gameman144 4y ago> When a ton of people do music together, it becomes part of the culture. I can't think of a better reason to subsidize the additional cost for rural broadband: without it, there is no nationally accessible "culture" that unifies us.
- bumby 4y agoThe utility market is generally a regulated monopoly. The market and govt both recognized the economies of scale with public infrastructure. As part of the tradeoff to be allowed to operate as a monopoly, utilities must also ensure rural or unprofitable customers still receive access. It’s all part of the deal and intrinsically tied to your point.
- ghaff 4y agoI agree with your basic point--and subsidies are a complicated topic. Cities can't exist in isolation. That said, Starlink, and presumably competitors at some point, does change the game. As does probably 5G and successors. They don't replace last mile/last 10 mile wired Internet for all cases but we do increasingly have viable alternative for more rural locations. My brother's house had a 1Mb/s down ADSL wired connection and he was the last house on the road that could get "broadband" at all. With Starlink, he's able to work, stream video, etc. which wouldn't have been possible before.
- bumby 4y agoIt’s also important to recognize companies like SpaceX benefit heavily from socialized infrastructure. For example, they lease a pad at Kennedy Space Center and use DoD infrastructure at Vandenberg.
- ghaff 4y agoWhile there's perhaps some excessive idolatry of SpaceX and shade on ULA and NASA initiatives, I'm not sure that subsidies--somewhat overt or otherwise--are necessarily a bad thing. Certainly DARPA has a long history.
- bumby 4y agoI tend to agree. I think the hybrid system has a lot of benefits, but unfortunately many of these discussions seems to devolve into framing the issue as a false dichotomy.
- revelio 4y agoStrictly speaking, that's doing something inefficient for the benefit of people living in rural areas, not society as a whole.
- bumby 4y agoSometimes the benefit comes in the form of a stable society. The idea that there is a clear a 1-to-1 transactional benefit is myopic.
- revelio 4y agoAre you saying farmers would revolt if their internet was slow.
- bumby 4y agoI’m saying society can only tolerate a certain amount of inequality.
- revelio 4y agoSociety can clearly tolerate huge amounts of inequality and has done in the past, far moreso than what we have today (kings vs peasants). Also see my comment above for my views on people who claim to speak for all of society.
- bumby 4y agoI didn’t claim society can’t tolerate any inequality. The question is how much it can tolerate and remain stable. There’s an argument that feudal systems you mentioned are now longer the norm because that inequality led to alternate systems. Regarding your first response, you may want to visit the HN guidelines regarding shallow dismissals.
- revelio 4y agoClearly it's a lot more than slow internet for farmers? Feudal systems didn't end because of inequality, they were the opposite: the feudal system ended when serfs were allowed to enclose their communal land and were given it as private property. It went from an equal system that suffered a tragedy of the commons ("the commons" literally referring to the common land that existed under the feudal system), to a system of private farmers who were able to capture some of the wealth from their effort and land.
- nayuki 4y ago> doing something inefficient for the benefit of society ... ADA Having a disability isn't a choice. Living rurally is.
- creato 4y agoFor the individual, maybe. At a societal level, at least some people are required to live in rural areas, so we can have the raw materials society requires.
- nayuki 4y agoThe fact that disability isn't a choice means that disabled people can't become undisabled, and abled people probably shouldn't make a choice to become permanently disabled. Because rural/urban living is a choice, this means people can come in and out in response to supply and demand via the price mechanism. If rural areas are viewed as undesirable, rural wages will rise until it justifies people being there.