4 ms·

Maybe, but it's also clear that rural electrification was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical

Maybe, but it's also clear that rural electrification was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision electric lines (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: mile after mile of transmission and distribution equipment serving dispersed houses in forests. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4638277,-120.656418,3a,75y,303.07h,100.82t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sfib7zJBdnKVsH3yzgIV0Jw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-10.821915535625621%26panoid%3Dfib7zJBdnKVsH3yzgIV0Jw%26yaw%3D303.0698026053538!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4638277,-120.656418,3a,75y,3...

hypothesis 2y ago
Eh, but we should not leave people without basics of civilization. Yes, it’s a subsidy, but benefits outweigh hoarding of wealth.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  But we wouldn't have been "leaving" anyone. All this garbage was built in the 1970s because we incentivized it with subsidized roads and utilities. If we hadn't established those subsidies, all of these people would have lived in the established towns of Jackson or Ione, upon which they are totally dependent anyway.
  - fooker 2y ago
    > all of these people would have lived in the established towns And I assume your food would be conjured magically?
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      None of the people in the area to which I referred are undertaking anything productive. Food comes from farms, like always.
      - b112 2y ago
        Which are in rural areas. Which means the lines have to go there. Which means they pass less rural area to get there. Rural areas aren't just a farm all by itself. Farmers need schools, stores, supplies, workers, you know, rural areas. As well, when we electrified our nations, most people lived on farms. At the start of the 20th, as an example, most Canadians lived in rural areas. The reverse is now true. This conversation is absurd. Hydro Quebec runs power lines through areas far more rural than California, through weather more severe and wide ranging, over greater distances, with more wild land, and just as much danger of fire. It does so at the cheapest rates, shows a profit, maintaining its lines and clearing vegetation. PG&E is a pathetic company, and if people look outside of California, you can see how cheap rural electrification is Really, cities cost more to electrify. Burying lines is mega expensive, stringing power lines on poles os quiet cost effective. You can easily run miles of lines, for the cost of a crew digging up a street and repaving. Lastly, rural people pay for hookups. Each house often pays thousands per pole.
        jeffbee 2y ago
        Out of context Canadians are ... out of context. We are discussing utilities in California. California and Quebec could not be more different in terms of climate and fire risk. I can't wait for you to justify the claim that fire risk is the same in California and Quebec. Every place in Quebec can generally expect precipitation every other day on average and the normal number of consecutive dry days in California every year would shatter the same record in Quebec.
        b112 2y ago
        Quebec is 4x as large as California, has far more forested land, and is often very dry in late summer. It also has massive snowstorms, ice storms, which bring down vegetation, and ranges from -40F up to 100F yearly, depending. We can nitpick on specifics, but by no means is California more rural, or more forested. Quebec is also far less populous, and has a far more hostile environment. Hydro Quebec does well, because vegetation is cleared, maintenance is performed, and corners aren't cut. Unlike PG&E.
chasd00 2y ago
Who cares about the way things should be when it comes to utilities. There’s no feasible way you’re going to cut power to rural communities and people. Deal with it.
- thinkcontext 2y ago
  That's what the article is about.
Nimitz14 2y ago
Interesting perspective. I guess even in very rural areas it would have pushed people to build villages. On the other hand people already were living far apart and lack of electricity meant they had to do massively more work. LBJ's biography has a section on this, explaining that life on west texas farms was incredibly hard without electricity (and as congressman LBJ worked very hard to expand that to rural people).
- ghaff 2y ago
  It sort of has. Lots of people you think of as living in fairly rural locations are still in small towns rather than the middle of nowhere.
apercu 2y ago
That basically describes my area. There are 3 streets (2 connect, the 3rd doesn't). There are 11 houses on my (dead end) street and maybe 25 on the other two streets. Because of this clustering - I live in a pretty rural area - but have natural gas and cable internet (only one option, so not that awesome). But, I also have a well and a septic system. And I'm very thankful. As I was moving back to the US after 2 decades in a city, I did a winter with no high speed internet (used a mofi router with a SIM card as Starlink was overprescribed in the area) and propane for heat. It was a small house but heating with propane is crazy expensive.
sgarland 2y ago
This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. The Rural Electrification Act not only brought power to rural areas, but also jobs to Americans when they were most needed, and countless follow-on benefits: increased farm productivity, longer lifespans and higher quality of life, etc. It’s also not that subsidized compared to many other industries; the entire point of co-ops is purchasing something in bulk, with no one taking the profits. They get loans, yes, but the default rate on them is absurdly low. And on that point, electric co-ops consistently produce reliable power at a lower cost than privately-owned utilities. I’ve experienced both, in multiple areas of the country, and by far co-ops beat everyone else. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the infrastructure enabled by the REA is also the only reason high speed internet ever made it to rural areas. Fiber everywhere should absolutely be a goal.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. It’s funnier if we alter it a little, is it more or less true this way? >> It's also clear that rural voting was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision government (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: dispersed houses. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies.
  - sgarland 2y ago
    I don’t see how voting works as an analogy. Suburbs would be more apt. I live in one, but I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no defensible reason to do so beyond “I want to.” They’re typically a net negative for counties in terms of tax revenue, they perpetuate car-first infrastructure, they contribute to high housing costs, and they don’t produce anything of value, like rural areas can (farms, land preservation).
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Well, people have to live somewhere, and that place will not generate a lot of revenue. US suburbs have problems due to single-use areas and forced low density. But you will aleays have some area that don't pay a lot of taxes.

hypothesis 2y ago

Eh, but we should not leave people without basics of civilization. Yes, it’s a subsidy, but benefits outweigh hoarding of wealth.

jeffbee 2y ago
But we wouldn't have been "leaving" anyone. All this garbage was built in the 1970s because we incentivized it with subsidized roads and utilities. If we hadn't established those subsidies, all of these people would have lived in the established towns of Jackson or Ione, upon which they are totally dependent anyway.
- fooker 2y ago
  > all of these people would have lived in the established towns And I assume your food would be conjured magically?
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    None of the people in the area to which I referred are undertaking anything productive. Food comes from farms, like always.
    - b112 2y ago
      Which are in rural areas. Which means the lines have to go there. Which means they pass less rural area to get there. Rural areas aren't just a farm all by itself. Farmers need schools, stores, supplies, workers, you know, rural areas. As well, when we electrified our nations, most people lived on farms. At the start of the 20th, as an example, most Canadians lived in rural areas. The reverse is now true. This conversation is absurd. Hydro Quebec runs power lines through areas far more rural than California, through weather more severe and wide ranging, over greater distances, with more wild land, and just as much danger of fire. It does so at the cheapest rates, shows a profit, maintaining its lines and clearing vegetation. PG&E is a pathetic company, and if people look outside of California, you can see how cheap rural electrification is Really, cities cost more to electrify. Burying lines is mega expensive, stringing power lines on poles os quiet cost effective. You can easily run miles of lines, for the cost of a crew digging up a street and repaving. Lastly, rural people pay for hookups. Each house often pays thousands per pole.
      - jeffbee 2y ago
        Out of context Canadians are ... out of context. We are discussing utilities in California. California and Quebec could not be more different in terms of climate and fire risk. I can't wait for you to justify the claim that fire risk is the same in California and Quebec. Every place in Quebec can generally expect precipitation every other day on average and the normal number of consecutive dry days in California every year would shatter the same record in Quebec.
        b112 2y ago
        Quebec is 4x as large as California, has far more forested land, and is often very dry in late summer. It also has massive snowstorms, ice storms, which bring down vegetation, and ranges from -40F up to 100F yearly, depending. We can nitpick on specifics, but by no means is California more rural, or more forested. Quebec is also far less populous, and has a far more hostile environment. Hydro Quebec does well, because vegetation is cleared, maintenance is performed, and corners aren't cut. Unlike PG&E.

chasd00 2y ago

Who cares about the way things should be when it comes to utilities. There’s no feasible way you’re going to cut power to rural communities and people. Deal with it.

thinkcontext 2y ago
That's what the article is about.

Nimitz14 2y ago

Interesting perspective. I guess even in very rural areas it would have pushed people to build villages. On the other hand people already were living far apart and lack of electricity meant they had to do massively more work. LBJ's biography has a section on this, explaining that life on west texas farms was incredibly hard without electricity (and as congressman LBJ worked very hard to expand that to rural people).

ghaff 2y ago
It sort of has. Lots of people you think of as living in fairly rural locations are still in small towns rather than the middle of nowhere.

apercu 2y ago

That basically describes my area. There are 3 streets (2 connect, the 3rd doesn't). There are 11 houses on my (dead end) street and maybe 25 on the other two streets. Because of this clustering - I live in a pretty rural area - but have natural gas and cable internet (only one option, so not that awesome). But, I also have a well and a septic system. And I'm very thankful. As I was moving back to the US after 2 decades in a city, I did a winter with no high speed internet (used a mofi router with a SIM card as Starlink was overprescribed in the area) and propane for heat. It was a small house but heating with propane is crazy expensive.

sgarland 2y ago

This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. The Rural Electrification Act not only brought power to rural areas, but also jobs to Americans when they were most needed, and countless follow-on benefits: increased farm productivity, longer lifespans and higher quality of life, etc. It’s also not that subsidized compared to many other industries; the entire point of co-ops is purchasing something in bulk, with no one taking the profits. They get loans, yes, but the default rate on them is absurdly low. And on that point, electric co-ops consistently produce reliable power at a lower cost than privately-owned utilities. I’ve experienced both, in multiple areas of the country, and by far co-ops beat everyone else. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the infrastructure enabled by the REA is also the only reason high speed internet ever made it to rural areas. Fiber everywhere should absolutely be a goal.

lostlogin 2y ago
> This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. It’s funnier if we alter it a little, is it more or less true this way? >> It's also clear that rural voting was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision government (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: dispersed houses. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies.
- sgarland 2y ago
  I don’t see how voting works as an analogy. Suburbs would be more apt. I live in one, but I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no defensible reason to do so beyond “I want to.” They’re typically a net negative for counties in terms of tax revenue, they perpetuate car-first infrastructure, they contribute to high housing costs, and they don’t produce anything of value, like rural areas can (farms, land preservation).
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Well, people have to live somewhere, and that place will not generate a lot of revenue. US suburbs have problems due to single-use areas and forced low density. But you will aleays have some area that don't pay a lot of taxes.