There was a big push to wire up rural areas in the early 2000s. It didn’t happen everywhere, but it happened in quite a few places that can serve as data points. Here in Maryland there is quite a bit of municipal fiber covering the areas Verizon FiOS doesn’t. Some of it has been in place since the early 2000s. Are those communities with fiber doing better than those without it, economically? They’re not doing any better than their neighbors without fiber. The limiting factor isn’t the availability of bandwidth, it’s the lack of desire to hire anyone from these places for remote work. This is not a “build it and they will come” situation. Many places built it. Nobody came.
People have these unfounded romantic notions about fiber and economic development. Here in Maryland, more than 60% of households have access to fiber. Has it revolutionized the economy? Not at all. Annapolis is a small city (pop. 40,000) that has had fiber more than a decade and almost all the tech jobs here are connected to the Navy (and we’re already here). What do people do with fiber here? Netflix. Fiber is not a catalyst for job creation and economic growth. It’s a means for content consumption. That makes it an awful investment of public dollars.
There's plenty of small business incentives out there. The problem is that the whole "fiber-fueled small rural business" concept is pure romantic fantasy. That's not viable in a modern economy. The future is about massive scale: Amazon replacing regional retailers, etc.
The crux of the problem is that people only talk about jobs, and other people/corporations creating those jobs. Everyone can agree we need more jobs and better jobs. The real issue is that people aren't finding ways to start their own business, make themselves a job. Politicians use the word "jobs" like saying it makes them appear. And too many people think that is how is should work. Those people miss out. Make a good business for yourself and people will throw money at you.
2. Raise enough money until the business becomes profitable and self sustaining
People in the tech industry are so use to being able to get money from VCs once they get to step 1 and aren’t concerned with step 2 because they are just trying to survive long enough to have an “exit strategy”.
i think it’s perfectly fine to invest public money on things that improve everyone’s lives. for me and and many others fiber provides a much higher quality of living even if it doesn’t bring extra growth economically.
Maryland is a pretty rich state, spoiled by military and government connections. It is a poor choice to use as a baseline for the entire nation when plenty of rural areas are still barely scaping by economically and in terms of access to the Internet. Raising the baseline ability of our communications networks is anything but a terrible economic investment, the fact that you cite Netflix shows your focus is only on the short term. I challenge you to look beyond your short sightedness, once people have had their fill with the benefits to media consumption afforded by higher bandwidth connections, and into the future where such connections will be necessary as our infrastructure and information expand in the decades to come
... They are proud of their small-town values ....
And this part of the issue. I come from a small town. The “values” of small towns are racist, homophopic, and nationalistic. I’ve known many people who moved away, started dating someone of another race and then come back home with their significant other and feel completely out of place - not because of family, but because of the city. I’ve also had gay relatives who refuse to visit family back home but welcome them to come to where they live in a larger city.
I’m Black and in conversations, when I tell people where I live - an infamous “sundown town” as recently as the 80s - the first thing I hear is “why do you want to live around all of those White folks”. People don’t understand how much of an anachronism small town America is. The brain drain is real, young people who are capable can’t wait to move as soon as possible to experience more of the world.
I can’t imagine anyone who is not a native born American ever wanting to live there.
I think it's more a question of the number of newcomers, and their desire to integrate into the community versus their desire to change it to be like their place of origin. Some small towns seem very happy to accept hard working immigrants who they perceive to have compatible moral values.
For non-straight, I'm occasionally surprised by how well integrated (and even beloved) some non-straight inhabitants have been in the small towns I've lived in (Wisconsin and now Vermont). The problem might be that a town which is 90% welcoming may have the effect of being extremely non-welcoming depending on how much the 10% objects and behaves.
I think it's more a question of the number of new comers, and their desire to integrate into the community versus their desire to change it to be like their place of origin.
How will a non Christian “integrate” into rural America and “share their values”, by converting to Christianity? How will either a gay couple or an interracial couple “integrate” where some Christians think their “lifestyle” is a sin?
But if you are a really lucky minority like I was and went to a predominately White Christian conservative school and knew the music, the hobbies, and “integrated” well enough you might get the reward of “not being like most Black people” or “being really articulate”. But still, don’t try to date our daughter.
As far as your article that says just the opposite of what you intended.
When you walk out here in the central park, if it’s a warm day, they’re sitting around on benches out here. I mean, it’s like Europe. They don’t stay in their apartments. They come out in the street, and they sit around and talk, and it’s all in Spanish.
They aren’t doing anything illegal. They are speaking to each other in their native language but it makes other people uncomfortable.
I don’t speak a foreign language, but I’m pretty good at “code switching”. I speak a lot differently when I’m at work where a lot of my coworkers are non native English speakers - I don’t use a lot of colloquialism, I speak slower, and I don’t reference a lot of pop references from 10 years ago. I also speak differently when I am back home - I am not as attentive about not letting my southern accent out.
When I am around my Black friends who are all professional software developers who live in the burbs, the last thing I am concerned about is “integrating” into my surroundings.
As far as your article that says just the opposite of what you intended.
I read the article, and realize it's not entirely pro-immigrant. I meant what I said --- that I was surprised by how welcoming some of the town was. I was less surprised that there was also resistance. It's also worth noting that in the continuation of that quote, the speaker claims that he's not against immigrants in general, just against those who don't intend to integrate. I found that part to be positive: “Don’t get me wrong,” says Heaton, who’ll retire from the legislature in 2019. “The only thing that upsets me is if they’re coming, they need to blend. I don’t need ‘barrios.’ I don’t need these certain sectors where everything is still the way it was where they came from. If you’re going to meld, then meld.”
How will a non Christian “integrate” into rural America and “share their values”, by converting to Christianity?
It's tough. I think (I'm white but not Christian) that it can often be done by practicing shared values, independent of belief. If you are working on the same food drive or Habitat-for-Humanity house, a majority of Christians are willing to (at least temporarily) overlook the error of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof). If you simply don't share their values, well, that's where I think the real problems are.
I do wonder if being black in America might actually be worse for integration than being Hispanic or Asian. Even in small towns, I'm frequently surprised by how fully integrated and accepted by the community the second and subsequent generations are. In some ways, this seems more complete than in larger cities where there is a sizeable enough immigrant community to avoid integration. I haven't seen that as frequently for black Americans. Thoughts?
The only thing that upsets me is if they’re coming, they need to blend. I don’t need ‘barrios.’ I don’t need these certain sectors where everything is still the way it was where they came from. If you’re going to meld, then meld.”
How are they “creating barrios”? By speaking their native toungue and maybe listening to Hispanic music? Would the city be happier if they all spoke English to each other and they listened to Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw?
I'm frequently surprised by how fully integrated and accepted by the community the second and subsequent generations are.
There are different levels of acceptance.
- serving people in a place of business.
- employment
- socially
- living in the same neighborhood
- going to the same church
- dating.
Statistically, most Black people live in a majority Black neighborhoods. Because of redlining, steering, economics, and just comfort.
Because we live in an overwhelmingly White area, if my (step)son is going to date anyone from school, more than likely they are going to be white. Parents haven’t had any problems with it but is that because he has an acceptable pedigree and he grew up in the burbs, doesn’t “talk Black”, and we live in “good neighborhood”? How would they feel if he were the same person, doing well in school but lived on the other side of the tracks? Also, both my wife and I know how to “code switch”.
If you are working on the same food drive or Habitat-for-Humanity house, a majority of Christians are willing to (at least temporarily) overlook the error of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
It takes an effort to just bring Christian churches of multiple races to come together. When you are constantly being brainwashed into believing that Muslims are trying to spread Sharia law and that there are already some cities in the US under Sharia law, it’s hard to shake those beliefs.
> How will a non Christian “integrate” into rural America and “share their values”, by converting to Christianity? How will either a gay couple or an interracial couple “integrate” where some Christians think their “lifestyle” is a sin?
Probably better than a gay in rural iraq, iran, syria, jordan, isreal, china, japan, india, africa and many other countries.
I can think of a few rural cities in Maryland, but I'm not going to list every city I've lived and frequent to some stranger on the internet to prove a point.
Blanket statement that all of anything usually is wrong.
>People don’t understand how much of an anachronism small town America is. The brain drain is real, young people who are capable can’t wait to move as soon as possible to experience more of the world.
Yeah, I'm one of those people, and after I moved I found out that I don't enjoy city life at all. The entire reason I want to go into tech is so I can get a remote job and go back.
Higher population density doesn't mean much for the city I live in now - there's hardly anything to do that I'm interested in, and urbanites are as closed-minded as their caricatures of everyone else. (Not having Netflix isn't as much of a problem as not being a socialist, or not being down with a nationwide gun ban or whatever, but it's in the same ballpark.) I had to abandon all my hobbies when I moved, for lack of space and proximity to the communities. And the threat of physical violence is much higher here - I've learned from experience that I can't go outside after dark.
Living in the burbs has a lot of the advantages of both the opportunities of a major city and the space and convenience of a small town. I live in the burbs and it’s very conservative - pro gun, religious, pro-life, pro-business, but not “build a wall”, “anti-immigration”, etc - ie they are more Bush conservatives than southern Confederate Flag waving conservatives.
It’s slso very safe and I wouldn’t be worried about getting robbed at night. I would be more worried about the police being called on me if I’m jogging at night for “looking suspicious” as a minority.
> And this part of the issue. I come from a small town. The “values” of small towns are racist, homophopic, and nationalistic.
As someone that comes from small towns and lives in the city, I find city dwellers to be much more racist and judging than rural folk. The fact that you put nationalistic next to racism probably tells me trying to get into a intellectual conversation about this though isn't going to get anywhere.
I was one part of a group of people who worked hard for several years to try to nurture a growing a tech scene in a rural area not far from Sacramento. I stepped away from that almost two years ago and my current thinking is it can't be done, not just because we largely failed at it but because there are a number of other towns trying to do the same and they aren't getting traction either.
I wonder if a healthy tech economy isn't more of an emergent behavior, and it tends to emerge in cities because there are more people, more resources, and more opportunities all mixing together.
You need good communications infrastructure, not just fiber but cellular too. If all you have available is satellite or (gulp) DSL, it's really painful to get work done. But that requires an enormous financial investment, especially in rural areas where RoI-per-mile is mostly negative.
Often the rural areas already have a culture there, and that culture doesn't necessarily want to get along with tech. Here, cellular providers can't deploy new towers because too many people are convinced that they'll get cancer, including some members of city council. Rural areas will tend to be mostly populated by people who either moved to get away from the city, or have never experienced life in a city. For those people, there's very little about a strong tech scene that sounds marketably attractive.
That also means that the talent just isn't there. And talent isn't there in part because opportunity isn't there. And opportunity isn't there because talent and infrastructure aren't there.
Nobody wants to just pump half a billion dollars or more into a small town just to see what shakes out, and if you did, you'd probably only end up ruining everything that made it an attractive enough small town to experiment with in the first place.
This is all really a shame, because it's contributing to a lot of the political and economic divide in this country, as rural areas are neglected, and shrink, and die slow deaths, while people all jostle for tiny amounts of space at high cost in dense population centers.
I grew up in a rural area near Sacramento. Culture is your big problem; when I was there, reading in public was "gay" and grounds for a (light) beating/physical humiliation.
Of course, I was in high school at the time, and high school is terrible everywhere; I'm sure it's different for adults. But, point being, at least in the '90s, it was not a place that encourages you to study or engage in intellectual pursuits.
One of the reasons why I love the bay area so much is that not only is it not hostile, it's actively supportive. Like people talk about their favorite tech companies the way people talk about football teams in other parts of the country.
Moving from Yolo County to Santa Clara county, for me, was going from a place where being what I am made me an outcast, to a place where being what I am made me... valued to an irrational degree. Like I am not saying the bay area is better for everyone, I've talked to some people who find it really unfriendly here, but... for someone like me? it was really amazing to go from being treated irrationally badly to being treated.. irrationally well.
I think that and the fact that this is home for so many people who grew up with parents in the tech industry is really the advantage the bay area has for tech industry work. I think everything else would follow, if you could move those things elsewhere. Getting good internet connectivity, even to a farm, really isn't that difficult or expensive, compared to the cost of a decent Engineer.
I grew up in the east bay, and my experience at school wasn't great, despite being lucky enough to go to one of the most technologically advanced school districts in the state at the time.
Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment.
Bend, Oregon has a great craft beer and outdoor culture that is the result of having Mount Hood and other features nearby, and being close enough to some metropolitan areas to get supplies but far enough away from them to retain its own identity.
Moab, Utah has a strong outdoors identity but little economy outside of that, because while they're one of the top destinations for mountain bikers, offroaders, hikers, and canyoneers, they're hours away from anything that anyone on HN would consider "a city".
Seattle's culture is largely the result of its location and history as a sea port and lumber area, and then a home to Boeing before Microsoft and the rest arrived. (And coffee for suffering through the winter.)
San Jose was a vast agricultural area when one side of my family settled in it a hundred years ago. Vast acres of easy-to-transform land, loose environmental regulations, nearby Stanford University, then Hewlett-Packard all transformed the culture there from agricultural to tech-driven.
So this is what I'm getting at: you don't set out to change the culture in an area. I don't think it works that way. I think the culture is an emergent effect of the conditions, and maybe you can change a few of the conditions a little bit, but mostly they work like natural processes. It's not economically feasible to just create a tech culture in a rural area, nor can you simply "change the culture" to make a rural area more tech-friendly.
There are a handful of people here who've had enough money to pay the $50k or more to get fiber lit up on their property. Doing that didn't make them more successful; they were already successful enough to be able to do it, and that success came from elsewhere.
>Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment.
my argument is that history and values are culture. "everything else" is just physical infrastructure, which is comparatively easy to build, compared to getting people who value the things that need to be valued if you want a tech hub.
well, germany is quite spread out and has lots of tech in smaller towns. It's not always perfect and we are also struggeling with some things, but I think a few approaches can be emulated. First, I think it's important that the small town is not on it's own, but in a close neighborhood of other smaller towns with which it's cooperating a lot. For a serious tech economy, even small towns need a working ecosystem (and I think can't be too small). They have to specialize, cooperate and develop the needed ecosystem, so that they can reach "critical mass" in some area. Ideally, this includes a small university nearby, so that there's a cooperation between the task of education and employement and the specialized, needed workforce can be trained. Also, research-institutes, which help small businesses which can't fund a research division on their own, are important. In germany, they are often coupled with thematic industrial clusters, a smaller patch of land where the city tries to get all the industry together. The research-institutes in germany are the Frauenhofer-institutes, public-private partnerships of applied reasearch with a focus and goal of supporting the local economy.
For example, the small town of Hof in bavaria with a population of 45.000. It has a university of applied science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof_University_of_Applied_Scie...), which is focused on educating the workforce suitable to the local economy (often in close cooperation). There's some research going on in the university, but it's not a research intensive one. Since the textile-industry in Hof is quite strong, there's a Frauenhofer cooperating with the university of applied science nearby (https://www.htl.fraunhofer.de/en/manufacturing-processes/tex...).
TLDR: I think tech in smaller towns is possible, but it needs a specialized economy, not too-small towns and a close cooperation between the public and private. Tech won't come by itself, it needs to be lured.
Germany has a good railway system that connects many (most? all?) small villages with nearby towns with nearby cities. More importantly, its rural population density is an order of magnitude greater than the US, at 237/km^2 vs 35/km^2 (source: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/rural-population-percen..., https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/rural-population-...). The biggest misconception that I’ve found my friends from other developed countries have about the US is that we are comparable to other developed countries; we aren’t; we’re more comparable to a continent, and more of a second-world country than a first-world one.
Moreover, the US system of government was designed to tilt the scales a bit in favor of rural areas than cities (that was maybe a fair trade-off a couple centuries ago). Combine that structural power dynamic with decades of rural depopulation as smart kids from small towns pursue opportunity in cities (I’m one) and it goes a long way towards explaining why we seem so crazy with our elected officials.
IMHO average population density is an almost meaningless number, because population density is not even close to a distribution where the mean is informative. I'm not sure whether it's the case in the US, but it's perfectly possible to have a tiny average population density and yet areas where small and medium towns are not too far apart from each other. You don't have to have rail service connection a tiny town in Arkansas to New York, it's sufficient if there is a train to the next city with its own cinema.
National population density in the US is misleading. Population density drops off sharply between the Rockies and somewhere around Iowa. East Coast states that we think of as mostly rural, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, have population densities that are squarely within the European range: 110 people/sq km in Pennyslvania vs. 106 in Hungary; 81 in Virginia vs. 82 in Romania. On the other hand, Utah (14) is less dense than Saudi Arabia (16) - both places are mostly desert.
Arkansas has a population density of 22 people/sq km, close to Sweden - but Arkansas is probably much less urbanized.
I agree that the population density is a big factor, i wanted to express that with "not-too-small-towns". I don't see how tech-jobs can move into the completely rural areas. But there are still areas left above the critical population mass.
If you speak French or German, there is this recent documentary about China linking up its villages to e-commerce [1].
The presented village specialized in silver manufacturing. The example supports your thesis that some form of specialization is needed to be competitive enough in a market.
That said, I think research facilities are only needed if the economy is focused on state of the art technology. Otherwise, the joined experience of the businesses seem to be enough to keep them competitive.
What's interesting to me is that the Chinese villagers seem to have jumped on the opportunity on their own, without any government incentives. I would like to know what's holding back other villages in China or around the world to look for their own opportunities?
From my experience visiting, Germany does a much better job of getting services into smaller communities. From Mainz, where my family lives, we took streetcar and then bus out into surrounding villages and towns which would be totally un-serviced by transit if they were in North America -- even in areas where the population density is equivalent or higher (such as where I live in southern Ontario).
Tech infrastructure is only one part of it. North America's rural economy is broken due to land use and industry problems. Once you get out of exurbia or areas that are appealing as retirement or vacation homes, the land is mostly just swathes of cash crop mega farms and towns mostly disappearing due to lack of jobs.
Europe's mostly small towns predate the industrial revolution and the green revolution. They have cultural and economic roots that seem to have persisted better through the 20th century's transformations.
Of the top of my head I can't remember a single big online thing targeting consumers that Germany does. The US has google, facebook, twitter etc, so rather than say Germany has figured out how to do tech in a small town, I would rather think it is accurate for Germany not to have figured out the tech at all.
I know they make cars with electronics in them, but honestly I haven't seen a car with electronics that fundamentally changed how most people approached anything (Cruise Control is nice; self-driving would be a fundamental game changer), Apple and Google have done so in my life time.
well, german tech is not really into the business of targeting consumers. You can critizise it, but you can't deny that germany has a large high-tech industry. I was making the observation that the tech industry in germany is quite spread out and that the solutions here could be applicable to rural america.
If cities are rich because of high concentrations of capital and talent, then it really is a choice between living in a poor area and living in a rich one. You can’t make the poor areas rich without giving them qualities of the rich areas, at which point they simply switch over and become “big cities”.
Trouble is that while cities may be rich, the people living there are not.
It is true that cities are the likely home to those with incredible fortunes, but they are also home to many in abject poverty. In fact, while average incomes tend to be higher in big cities, median incomes in big cities tend to be lower. This suggests that you have some people doing really well, and a whole lot of people doing not so great.
Which is all well and good if you are, say, a software developer and can move to the Bay Area to make $150,000+ per year, but that only describes a very small segment of the population who are able to do that. The typical person is going to find themselves in the "not so great" category. McDonalds pays more or less the same whether you are in the big city or in a small town. The average rural (or urban, for that matter) resident is not going to become a software developer on a whim.
Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life.
>Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life.
Maybe? but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near.
The location-based pay differential is much larger for people who don't have a college degree than for those who do.
That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible.
> but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near.
There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will result in earning more money, all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...?
What they are probably referring to is the fact that the education system filters out people who are less capable. Someone with, say, down syndrome is unfortunately unlikely to withstand the academic rigour required to graduate from college, and is unlikely to possess the traits that employers want to see in order to pay the big bucks, leaving the data to show that this person who did not graduate from college is also paid poorly. But it is faulty logic to think that if you don't graduate from college that you will contract down syndrome.
> That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible.
Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)?
>Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)?
If I inherited a bunch of debt-free land and equipment from my dad rather than a bunch of tech skills and contacts? sure, things would be very different. But I didn't, and agriculture is less than 2% of the labor force, and most of those people are hired workers, not the owner-operators, which is usually what we mean by "farmer" rather than "farm hand"
For that matter, the farmers of my famiy's ancestral lands? Both inherited family lands and are highly educated. Yeah, there's still physical work involved, but figuring out how to operate these million dollar machines they use? at least as compex as operating the computers I use; and figuring how to fertalize and otherwise maintain the soil quality? I'd argue is probably a lot more complex, and higher risk.
Perhaps I wasn't clear, but my comment wasn't really about agriculture specifically. What I meant was that you are able to make more in the Bay Area doing tech than doing tech in points outside of the Bay Area because of it being the centre of tech. Farmers are able to make more in rural areas than they would doing farming in the city because rural areas are the centre of agriculture. Farmers would not make more money farming in the Bay Area simply due to it being a densely populated area. Quite the opposite. They would take a massive pay cut if they tried.
ah, yes, that is completely true; some products are better produced in some areas than in other areas.
My argument is generalizing this to "if you fix things or otherwise provide services, you are better off fixing things or otherwise providing services to wealthy people than doing the same for people who are less wealthy" (edit: you can substitute "productive" for "wealthy" here, if you want to change 'are better off' to 'add more productivity to the system' in the previous sentence. Or you can leave it as-is, either way works, really.)
Which seems to me to follow, because my tech job involves a whole lot of "service" type fixing things for people. I'm a SysAdmin, and let me tell you, getting woken up in the middle of the night for a billion dollar product is way more renumerative (and better in other ways, too) than getting woken up in the middle of the night for a million dollar product.
My argument is that what I experience as a sysadmin would probably be pretty similar if I fixed cars instead; Fixing cars for wealthy people is likely to be a lot more renumerative than doing the same for people who aren't wealthy, and regardless of the direction of causality, the correlation between degrees and money is very strong; that's where I was going with my original point that as a dude without a degree who fixes things and helps people, I'm better off around educated people than otherwise.
Of course, you would be totally right to come back with other location based jobs; like if I were a mechanic, the path to income maximization would probably be to upgrade my skills to large diesel, and then move near some oil fields or something; jobs that are dependent on location are totally a thing. But most jobs depend on the people you are around more than any other location.
>As long as one doesn’t own land and has to rely on hired labour, there is no point in farming near a city. As a hobby, yes. Otherwise, no.
so, my understanding is that most of the farming that happens outside of CA, cereal crops and the like, is super capital intensive, but not very labor intensive. On the farm I was speaking of before that has been in my family for some time (though it has consolidated; there's one nuclear family that operates land that used to belong to a bunch of family units) - that one farm is mostly operated by one couple (and, of course, a whole bunch of equipment) mostly growing things like corn, soybeans and wheat.
Of course, the sort of vegetables you see grown in California are a lot more labor intensive.
I actually think your perception of rent vs buying land might be reversed? Land near cities is in high demand for speculation... for building houses on. So the purchase price would be higher than rural land. But if you are renting it out for agricultural use? Growing cereal crops near town isn't going to generate a whole lot more value than growing cereal crops in very rural areas, so I don't imagine the rent is that much different (though there's probably more "I can sell it to a developer" clauses in land near towns) - I mean, the thing is that a lot of places have zoning restrictions that make it really hard to convert ag land to residential use.
Again, the equation is probably different if you are farming vegetables; I don't really care if my cereal grains are shipped halfway across the country, but I'm willing to pay a significant premium for local, fresh vegetables.
On the other hand, unless you are farming fresh vegetables and charging a premium, there's no benefit to farming near a city, and even then, it's probably small. So, uh, were I able to, I'd probably delete my comment that you responded to, just 'cause the question was "would you see a bump by moving your farm to a urban area" not "could you make a decent living at farming, and would you need to be educated"
Many points. I will address them and this is just my 2c:
1. I think there has to be local food and food security in the form of local urban Ag even for big cities. Why?
2. Because. Supply chain is convoluted. We are entering a whole diff timeline when fossil fuel based Ag is just not going to be sustainable.
3. We are losing habitat and degrading environment by compartmentalising Ag. Even in rural Ag areas, watertable is polluted and the pristine fruit orchards have to be spared. Even if you practice organic ag(assuming), just the act of timing releases fungal spores from the soil causing valley fever. It’s a big deal here in central California. Children of farmers suffer high rates of asthma. They are obese and farmers are increasingly diabetic. Obesity from fast food is also a form
of malnutrition.
4. It’s ironic that in the Bay Area, we have built housing on the most fertile soils in the country..the world even. It beggars belief!
5. During a drought, most of our Ag went outside as exports. Our food came from South America. The commodity crops of Midwest was exported or sold for ethanol or HFCS or as fodder for hogs which is another water thirsty commodity. Everything we do, we are not taking water into account. It’s the next ‘gold’ and will be scarce and climate change reliant. These are serious issues.
6. Another reason food must be grown in cities for local food security as well as wastage is because billions of dollars lost every year because of supply chain. Too long. Everything is from elsewhere.
7. It’s easier now because of technology and indoor Ag. We must start protecting watersheds and aquifers..rehabilitate soil and start redirecting. It’s possible now because we have knowledge and awareness ..and we have technology to make up. What we need is a change in attitude and the political will as in the people demanding politicians that we can no longer have ‘politics as usual’. Politics of water..politics of development...politics of food and trade in food.
8. Cities are quietly allowing zone changes from
Ag and protected lands to real estate development. In CA..developers lobby has tremendous clout and want to challenge even CEQA..which is our California environmental quality act.
9. A lot of Ag land is actually owned by foreign investors. China, Middle East investors especially. How can Ag land be owned by foreigners? But it happens. Farm REITs are tapped into by investors for pension funds and insurance companies.
10. The entire economy of the USA must go to Gamblers Anonymous because it’s run on speculation. And it’s not even intelligent speculation.
11. If I were the Queen of the world(sadly..for the world..I am not)...I would make sure half the land is returned back to nature. I wouldn’t incentivize procreation of humans at the cost of other species. There is a certainly a cost to introducing more humans to this planet. I would look into technology to produce more without destroying our planet. Until then, we must tread carefully.
12. I don’t see a future in farming unless we automate farming. And it’s possible. But right now, it seems like what we do is just fine. It’s not because the price we have paid for farming wrt loss of soil biome, pollution from petrochemical based Ag processes and subsidied food(esp grains and dairy) and the reliance on animal based food that has introduced a greater problem than co2. Methane. Loss of carbon sequestration from lost grasslands and forests. Not to mention the staggering number of species loss and habitat destruction.
13. Without pointing fingers, we must move forward and implement new strategies. Live on half the land mass and return the rest to nature. We now have technology and know-how to do least harm and still live well.
But why don’t we do that?
Please don’t delete anything you wrote. I enjoyed this opportunity to share my thoughts(even though some of them were digressions) as they have been weighing heavily. I wanted to buy a 40-100 acre farm some five years ago and not being a generational farmer, I wanted to get my toes wet, as it were..in a small acreage. As I framed my little acre and spoke to other farmers and read more about what’s happening, I don’t think I am interested in farming unless I can do it differently. Farming as we know it is wasteful and harmful. In more ways than one.
This will likely be my last year if I can’t find a whole systems design for intelligent automation in farms. It makes me sad but I can’t be part of this circus. I am losing anyways.
Hey, so first, I might be reading your post wrong, but... it seems like you might want to check out intentional communities; like I think visiting one might be what you are looking for in that sustainable agricultural lifestyle you want?
I just think it's really important to know that there are other people in the world like you, that you fit in somewhere; even if you don't end up living in that place, I personally find it hugely comforting to know there's a place where I fit in. (for me, that place is Silicon Valley. I totally understand that not everyone feels welcome here, but I feel welcome here in a way that I've never felt welcome anywhere else. I think the place like that is different for everyone, and that it's important to find it.) and from reading your post, I think you might find something like that feeling at one of these communes.
they do a bunch of agriculture related stuff, and have a culture that is also very concerned about sustainability, but that also is interested in automation; they have several agriculture-adjacent businesses, and they grow most of their own food. (I don't know how much food they grow to sell; they certainly process and sell a lot of nut-butters, with a focus on nutbutters for people who need careful separation of types of nuts: https://www.eastwindnutbutters.com ) and, in fact, some of their alumini have gone on to start serious companies: NASDAQ: AGNC
Cat Kincade was involved (though she was more involved with Twin Oaks, a similar commune in Canada) - I mention this because she's a pretty good author, and wrote a lot about her experiences at the commune, so if you want to read up on it before giving it a visit, I'd start with her.
I also know of a bunch of smaller communes that do agriculture on a more hobbyish basis (though still with a focus on sustainability) - I generally think you should check out the big ones, first, but if you are more comfortable with a smaller, more 'large family' sized group, my email should be in my profile and I can do a few introductions, or at least one I can certify as not crazy, who often will take in strangers who have agricultural interests. (I still think a major community like East Wind or Twin Oaks is probably better for long term living...)
Thank you!! I am not enamoured with that kind of lifestyle. I love living in the Bay Area and especially Silicon Valley..love the weather here. I like sci fi and going to opera in the city ..I like hiking and still be able to slink back into my cave or just spend time needing out on soil and gardening by myself. Where else can we find a place like Silicon Valley..the hype is so spot on. That’s why I fret when it keeps getting close to not so positive changes. I love that electric feeling and the new ideas buzzing around here. Of course, family too.
There is also a lot of hostility to technology in Ag. Even amongst the young people(and I am not young myself). I like robotics and really do believe we can check out Mars in our lifetimes. I make non PC jokes and can be embarrassing company for people who are into this with a deep abiding purpose. Maybe it’s my delusion but it’s too late for me to give that up.
I also find that the farming community is allergic to money. I don’t know why. I like money. If it’s not making money to support the business, it’s a hobby. The younger generation is always looking for all forms of justice and resisting something or other. I am an immigrant myself and I am VERY grateful to be here in the United States. And Bay Area. I love it here and can’t get myself worked up too much. Because I have seen worse. No matter how bad things gets here, it’s still better here than most other parts of the world and I appreciate that.
I only end up irritating them when I try to share my dreams and visions. I have been told that I don’t have a farmer’s work ethic because I want robots to do the work instead of ‘dirt under my nails’ or because I think food must be at least 4x more expensive given the manual work that goes into organic speciality foods. I also think standing in a farmers market and hawking tomatoes for $2/lb is an utter waste of my time. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t jump into farming and sell the house to buy a farm!! I just realized after all these years that I don’t fit in..just like I don’t fit in as the tech worker in Silicon Valley...and I am relieved. Now..I can look for something else but not before I put it to sleep after giving it a final shot for the next 12 more months.
I would be happy even if I can make a prototype or even a low hanging fruit of a white paper of a sustainable full automation of small acreages. It will be worth the 5+ years I tried farming. To me, anyways.
But if there a tech friendly ecological minded natural farming community, I might fit in! That the community you mentioned is into automation makes me want to look them up and perhaps I can hope for a west coast chapter? I appreciate your response!
> There is also a lot of hostility to technology in Ag.
There is? As a farmer myself, I find that agriculture runs at the forefront of technology. It is why I love agriculture as we get to play with the cool tech before the masses do.
There are pockets of people who are more interested in a homesteading lifestyle than farming, but any serious commercial operation will jump over any advantageous tech available to them. Of course, not all tech is advantageous; there has to be a compelling business case more than "that is really neat" to justify adoption.
> I also find that the farming community is allergic to money. I don’t know why.
It is a high risk, high reward business. I'm not sure that is the same as being allergic to money.
> I have been told that I don’t have a farmer’s work ethic because I want robots to do the work instead of ‘dirt under my nails’ or because I think food must be at least 4x more expensive given the manual work that goes into organic speciality foods. I also think standing in a farmers market and hawking tomatoes for $2/lb is an utter waste of my time.
Seems like you got caught in one of those homesteading pockets mentioned before. This is not how most farm businesses operate. Farming benefits from scale. Your tomatoes should be sold to a major buyer by the truckload if you're serious about farming and not just enjoying the lifestyle.
As agriculture is increasingly mechanized, fewer farmers are needed. So it doesn’t really matter if all you know is farming, moving to the city is your best bet if you aren’t inheriting the family farm. That’s just how economics works.
I feel like you have missed some important nuance in my comment or misunderstood the context of our discussion. Rural flight says nothing about moving farms into the city. But, statistically, farmers make substantially more than most. Moving to the city (to find a new career) would not be one's best bet if farming is what they know.
Being a farmer these days is capital intensive and heavily mechanized, so even if they make more than most, most can’t be farmers. Even farmers have trouble being farmers these days, because they have to keep up with an increasingly mechanized profession that needs fewer of them every year.
Then most definitely, moving to the city might be your vest bet even if farming is the only thing you know.
> Being a farmer these days is capital intensive and heavily mechanized, so even if they make more than most, most can’t be farmers.
They are already farmers, so that's a moot point. How could you move your farm to the city if you did not have a farm to move?
> Even farmers have trouble being farmers these days, because they have to keep up with an increasingly mechanized profession that needs fewer of them every year.
Mechanization is causing attrition, but I am not convinced it is causing farms to fail. If you are established, it won't be mechanization that gets you.
> Then most definitely, moving tk the city might be your vest bet even if farming is the only thing you know.
Or you could just sell your business, retire off of the proceeds, and live wherever you want (which is probably not the city; I've never heard of a retired farmer keen to move to the city – in fact, rural areas are often thought of as retirement communities for former city dwellers). Like you said, it is a capital intensive business. There is an incredible amount of capital at your disposal.
You only have as much capital as the bank will lend you, and you are often living year to year on whatever your income is (which you’ll need to use a lot to either pay down loans or save so you don’t have to take out loans). And if you are successful, you buy out your less successful neighbor to expand your farm, where does your neighbor go?
Old farmers can probably retire, but what about young ones? They often just give up and move. This has been talked about a lot in the last decade, there is no big mystery or open question about it.
Other countries have it even worse than America; eg Japan.
> You only have as much capital as the bank will lend you
There are other ways to acquire capital. I see a lot of people who were doctors, lawyers, and tech professionals in the farming business. That is probably not a coincidence.
> And if you are successful, you buy out your less successful neighbor to expand your farm, where does your neighbor go?
The neighbour retires. If you are the neighbour, why would you sell your piece for any less than is required for you to retire? If you plan to keep working, you may as well keep working your farm.
> Old farmers can probably retire, but what about young ones? They often just give up and move.
The young ones generally don't start in the first place unless they have a line on capital that extends beyond the bank. And so, they also have that capital to sell. But why wouldn't they simply keep on farming?
> I see a lot of people who were doctors, lawyers, and tech professionals in the farming business. That is probably not a coincidence.
That is just the Green Acres phenomenon, they are doing it because they have capital from other professions, not because they make a lot in farming.
You have a very strange interpretation of farming in the USA, if you could provide some links/articles that back up your understand, I would take your argument more seriously. I can find a hundred articles on why farming is dying profession, and not any on why it is booming one as you seem to suggest.
I am not entirely familiar with the reference. I have heard of the show, but never seen it. But indeed they are able to start farming because they are more likely to have the capital than someone who is barely making ends meet. Nobody is questioning that it takes capital to start farming.
> You have a very strange interpretation of farming in the USA, if you could provide some links/articles that back up your understand
Well, my understanding is based on being a farmer. I have no idea what I would link to? Anything I have ever read about farming online is so dumbed down that it is basically worthless. It is a lot like when the mainstream media tries to write about tech.
> and not any on why it is booming one as you seem to suggest.
I don't know if it is booming. It can be lucrative. It is certainly not for everyone, but what is?
The Green Acres phenomenon is that a lot of city folk think that if they get the capital, they could go buy some land, equipment, and have a reasonable chance of becoming successful farmers without a long period of education or apprenticeship; It's part of what I call the myth of unskilled labor.
The remaining farmers can make very good money. The median wage for ranchers and other agricultural managers is $66,360/year and this is for generally low cost of living areas.
It’s farm hands that that really benifit from moving to city’s.
Yes, but the number of farmers significantly decreases every single year. What happens to those that are squeezed out? They have to be going somewhere....
There where ~2.2 million us farms in 1982. It dropped to ~2 million in 2002 but it’s still ~2 million today.
Many of theses are more hobby projects than giant industrial operations. Even still giant subsidy’s keeps the farm sector from the kind of massive consolidation you see in most industries.
> Even still giant subsidy’s keeps the farm sector from the kind of massive consolidation you see in most industries.
The bulk of the massive subsidy received by farms is crop insurance premium assistance though. No doubt a huge benefit if you have a weather disaster, but not anything you see directly until you have a disaster, and that only provides stability in those freak years. I am not sure that alone is keeping farms from consolidating like other industries as most other industries don't have the same kind of instability from the weather.
I would argue that in North America mega-farms, by and large, simply cannot compete with smaller farms. It takes farm expertise to run a farm and one person can only manage so much. Hiring more people with farm expertise is exceedingly difficult as anyone who has farming expertise would prefer to have their own business.
If your thing is developing search engines, chances are you're going to have to align yourself with for Google or Microsoft for the network advantage. You have almost no chance of succeeding on your own in the search engine space at this point. But food is quite different. If you produce food, there is guaranteed to be a buyer for it. There is no real network advantage to working for someone else there like you see in other industries, so why let someone else take their cut off the profit of your labour?
Crop insurance is 8.5 billion out of $23 billion in subsidies directly given to farmers. Divide by 3.2 million farmers and that’s 7,200$ per year each.
>There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will result in earning more money, all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...?
all incomes? are you seriously going to clam that incomes for tech workers and others of this (mostly highly-educated) caste haven't risen dramatically in the last three decades?
> all incomes? are you seriously going to clam that incomes for tech workers and others of this
Tech workers make up, what, about 5% of the workforce at best? I know software developers only make up 0.8% of the workforce. We are talking about an exceedingly small group of people. And not all of them are doing well. There are a lot of low-paid tech workers around, especially if you look beyond the Bay Area and outside of software. The lowly network admin working at Mom and Pops in Nowheresville is probably not even making the median income.
In the US, about 35% of the population graduate with a four year college degree or more, and 45% with a two year degree or more. That is a lot of people. Practically half of the population. They are in no way they are all seeing their incomes rise (beyond inflation). Incomes are stagnant and have been for many decades.
There are always outliers who buck the mold, but on the whole incomes are not rising even for those with education. And why would they? It does not follow from any realistic economic model that incomes should increase.
>There are always outliers who buck the mold, but on the whole incomes are not rising even for those with education. And why would they? It does not follow from any realistic economic model that incomes should increase.
My model is that technology has allowed us to produce more per unit effort; Even in my field, I can manage a whole lot more computers than I could when I started in the mid to late '90s.
For that matter, even if I was still fixing desktop computers, if I'm fixing desktop computers for EEs this year who are massively more productive than they would have been in the late '90s because of improved technology, it's natural that I'd still get paid more, because even if I'm only saving those people the same number of work hours, those work hours produce more and thus there's more surplus to pay me.
It seems totally reasonable that increased productivity could lead to increased wages. (I mean, there are a bunch of failure modes where it wouldn't, to... but I'm just saying, anyone who is even slightly ideologically capitalist or market oriented is going to argue that increased productivity drives increased income)
> all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...?
There are two issues that explain that.
First, the stagnation period begins from an artificially high point. A point where US global economic dominance peaked in the ~20-25 years after WW2, because the other dominant powers were mostly busy rebuilding their decimated cities and infrastructure. The US was able to immediately swivel its industrial base to traditional economic output. It pushed the US share of global manufacturing to over 50%. That extraordinary share of global manufacturing output provided a vast, artificial over-abundance of blue collar jobs. That's a ridiculous comparison point to start from and impossible to replicate (short of blowing up the world again).
Second, most of the compensation growth has gone into benefits that aren't counted in the salary figures that show income stagnation. Per capita healthcare costs have increased by ~$10,000 in 35-40 or so years (a six fold increase), and about ~40% of the US gets its healthcare through an employer.
The median full-time wage is $50,000 in the US. The cost to insure a solo 35 or 40 year old earning that median full-time wage, has gone from $40-$60 per month in the early 1980s, to more like $500-$600 today at a minimum. If you're earning $80,000 as an engineer for example, your insurance compensation might cost the company more like $800 to $1,000 per month.
A family of four - two full-time employed adults - earning $150,000 per year can easily be spending $25k-$30k per year on health insurance.
If you have two people earning $90,000 together, with one child, their insurance cost is going to be $1,500 per month or more - $18,000 per year - representing the equivalent of 20% of their salary. All of our wage growth potential is going into that blackhole of healthcare cost expansion.
The UK, Japan, Australia, Canada, France (elite healthcare systems globally) are all spending $4,000 to $5,000 per capita per year on healthcare costs. The US is spending more like $11,000 to $12,000 ($3.6 to $3.8 trillion per year roughly). The US share of its GDP going to healthcare costs, has about tripled in 40 years, from ~6-7% to ~18-19% today.
That's where most of the wage gains have gone, to a $1.4 trillion per year giant wealth transfer to the people working in all the layers of healthcare. The wage gains have been diverted to subsidize the existence of jobs and wages in healthcare that otherwise would not exist. Admin, doctors, nurses, insurance salespersons, pharma reps, scientists, shareholders, buildings, janitors, and the zillions of other jobs and costs (artificially high wages) in that system that otherwise wouldn't exist if you adjusted the US per capita spending to match other developed nations.
Did you know the US has 3x to 4x (43 CT and 38 MRI units per million people) the number of CT and MRI systems per capita that Canada has (15 CT and 10 MRI units per million people), and about 2x to 3x the number that France has? An example of wage diversion to feed the healthcare monster. That provides jobs that shouldn't exist for healthcare professionals, jobs for repair & maintenance people, jobs for sales people, profit/revenue for GE & Toshiba and so on.
The city has a concentration of talent and capital, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other things also. In fact, cities are seen as stepping stones for many that lack much talent or capital, which is why they have a lot of poor people: the cities are not creating these people themselves, quite the opposite actually.
The kid working st Mcdonads in the big city is probably making $15/hour vs. $8 back in their rural home. Still not enough to live in the big city, but then again that isn’t the only thing they are doing there (they didn’t move to the big city to work in fast food, they have their side gig going on, be it acting or education or whatever). Back home, they would simply be stuck with not much hope for improvement. Ya, their chances of striking it rich aren’t great, but in Seattle it is non zero while in Marysville it is pretty much zero.
Absolutely. Humans have a very long history of trying to emulate the rich, and not only with respect to choice of residence, in hopes that doing what they the rich do is the missing link in why they are not rich. We have even seen in the past times where people were leaving the city because that is what the rich had done (favouring large rural estates at the time), leaving the conclusion to be that living in the city is why one is not rich. Which, admittedly, is a fairly rational decision given the incomplete information we have about what makes one rich, no doubt, but a faulty decision due to that lack of information.
But choice or residence, choice of fashion, or the many other things that people have tried to emulate over the years is not why they are not rich. The missing link is not nearly that simple. If it was, we would all be rich.
It isn’t that they are copying the rich, they are going from places where there are few opportunities to where their are many opportunities. The Great Migrations, for example, involved African Americans moving from poor southern areas to rich northern cities because they had nothing going on back home, just pointless sharecropping. And you know what: their descendants are probably much richer than of those who stayed back south. The same with the “okies” during the Great Depression going Friday Oklahoma to big cities in California.
They were not emulating the rich, this never had anything to do with “fashion”, they were (and still are) surviving and have hope that they or their children will have a better future. Rural areas can’t provide much of this unless their is a natural resource rush (eg fracking in the dakotas).
> It isn’t that they are copying the rich, they are going from places where there are few opportunities to where their are many opportunities.
The appearance of opportunities. Sometimes the opportunities are real, usually not. Plenty of people move to California in hopes of becoming a star, where opportunities are abound, but only end up in dead-end jobs. It is quite likely that those people would have been far better off in a mundane job where competition isn't fierce and where living costs won't destroy you.
> this never had anything to do with “fashion”
Fashion is very much driven by the rich, through hopes that dressing like the rich will result in riches. It has been for as long as we have historical records about fashion. Nobody goes out of their way to dress like a hobo, unless the rich are dressing like hobos for some reason.
Moving to california because you want to be a star is not "fashion", its a dream.
> It is quite likely that those people would have been far better off in a mundane job where competition isn't fierce and where living costs won't destroy you.
Or they would have regretted the rest of their lives not taking chances when they were young instead doing poop work on the farm or working a dead end job in a small town.
> Moving to california because you want to be a star is not "fashion", its a dream.
I think you may have misinterpreted what fashion means. Fashion refers to clothing. Throughout the ages, poor people have tried to wear clothing that rich people have been seen wearing with the belief that the right clothing will help them become rich. This is very well documented over centuries, and something that remains ever-present today. It was another example of how the poor emulate the rich, as is human nature.
> Or they would have regretted the rest of their lives not taking chances when they were young instead doing poop work on the farm or working a dead end job in a small town.
Okay. Sure. Humans are indeed emotional creatures. Emotions are also the reason why the poor try to emulate the rich as it feels right, even if it not based in anything substantiative. But as far as outcome goes, such a person would be better off in a mundane job than chasing a dream.
> McDonalds pays more or less the same whether you are in the big city or in a small town.
...partially adjusted for local cost of living, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balassa-Samuelson_effect Which means that, yes, staying in the city is generally a bad deal for a low-productivity worker in the non-tradable sector. But not as much of a bad deal as it would be if those wage variations did not exist. And they might be able to make up for it and even come out ahead by being super frugal and saving most of their income (this is the archetypical "unskilled immigrant to a rich area" story).
That would suggest that it is not worth it for people who are only going to make a small amount of money over minimum income to move to SF, and that they shouldn't.
Alternatively, put a tax on rental income then use that to found more buildings. I am not a fan of taxes, but since rents will always expand they aren't a bad subject to tax.
> That would suggest that it is not worth it for people who are only going to make a small amount of money over minimum income to move to SF
Although, to be fair, it is debatable if most high earners even benefit from the move. It is not like you can't easily make $150,000+ in rural areas as well if you have the developer chops that the Bay Area seeks.
As unfortunate as it may be, poor areas are poor largely because of who lives there and them moving does not change who they are.
I'm a bit skeptical of the median income being lower than rural areas. I could see median income relative to cost of living being lower, but median income by itself being lower would be shocking. Do you have a source on that?
A reasonable solution is to start living in villages that are clustered to form bigger villages. The key is self governance and that would ensure self contained units.
The Dunbar number(for households) is a good number for each self sufficient ‘village city’. That would be 150 households with a max of 4 per household. 4-6 ‘village cities’ will make a networked cluster. They can share some common facilities(schools/parks) And so on.
Currently, in the Bay Area, the problem is centralized claw of Sacramento. We are a ‘mega region’. Infrastructure, essential services, schools, traffic, housing...everything is failing. Bay Area is starting to rot. One has to live here to feel the despair of the working stiff.
As an example: our city council has meetings every Tuesday starting at 7.00 pm. Nobody can attend and voice their ‘concerns’. Everyone is stuck in traffic. The other day, in one of our neighbourhood boards, a neighbour bemoaned Prop 13 and the retired ‘olds’ who aren’t pulling their weight. He said that he has two kids and his household makes only $500k and by the time he pays taxes and childcare and mortagage, he is broke. I had to shut down my computer and step away from the keyboard for a bit.
And he is not the only one. He isn’t the exception, but the norm. He is a Silicon Valley high tech worker statistic. The 2kid/2car/2million dollar home living/resentful BROKE paycheck-to-paycheck ..waiting for the windfall IPO because he doesn’t have a lifetime pension like the low paid clerk at PG&E or police officer..and is bitter because he is stuck in traffic ..because he is anxious..because he has to keep running faster to stay in the same place...because he can’t quit his job.
Meanwhile the govt is the mafia and we keep paying higher and higher taxes. Cities are getting denser, resources are getting thinner, schools overcrowded, roads are clogged. Everyone feels guilty because the average Silicon Valley worker is the poster child for unchecked privilege and the epitome of evil for promoting inequality.
This is Silicon Valley. This is the Bay Area. Let us contain our curse..our little dirty secret..our infectious virus..I hope we don’t spread it to other places.
How is it just a choice of living in a poor area vs a rich one? What if the people living in the poor areas don’t even have a high school degree? Can they suddenly decide they want to work and live in the rich area?
I’m a couple generations maybe. Moving from a poor area to a rich one and working your butt off for your kid’s education so they can reach professional successes you didn’t have the opportunity to is an archetypical immigrant story.
I'm convinced this is just another Protestant work ethic as secularized by capitalism, ala Max Weber. Each generation is supposed to work hard and devote everything (or almost everything) so their kids have it better, but who gets to say, I have it better, I'm not going to work hard anymore, so I can enjoy some of it? How the public general treats people who have amassed enough to live on but don't actively have a job, seems a testament to the religious foundations and origins of the idea, rather than anything drawn from what might be called reason.
It's not "move to a rich area". It's "move to an area with good opportunities for production (roughly 'good jobs', although self-employment is also a possibility of course)". That's a very different problem. An area with high cost of living, almost by definition, has a lower margin of production and thus lower real incomes for such, adjusting for productivity.
Well, until the rent seeking class figured out how to asset inflate the education and property market. If you look at exploding debt levels in property, education, housing, and personal credit something is extremely broken and shoving everyone in the big city is not the long term answer unless we are looking at some massive social upheaval in the near term.
Now that communication is quick, and data more available, more people have an idea of how to give themselves the best opportunity. The best school district you can send your kids to, the best colleges they can go to, the majors they can study, etc.
Problem is it's all concentrated to a handful of options, so everyone is chasing after those, and the sellers know it so they can price it such that almost all the value is extracted from the buyer.
It's funny to think that it could partly be a consequence of all the easily available school rankings, all the way form elementary to university, as people can sort themselves by socioeconomic class much easier. But it could go the other way too, with the concentration being a consequence widening gaps in socioeconomic class. Either way, it feels like a feedback loop to me.
True, but that applies to rural areas as well: how many farmers are renting their land these days, or are working for big farm corps that bought all the family farms in the area a long time ago?
There are several comments here noting that small towns are pretty well wired. I’m fortunate to have just purchased a vacation home in rural Wisconsin (close to family). In DC, I have 100Mbps fiber, a free upgrade from FiOS from the 25Mbps I ordered, with the option to get a gigabit. At my other house, I have a 6Mbps DSL that only delivers 1.5Mbps at best, with a couple hundred Kbps upload. There’s a cell tower only a mile away, but hills and trees obscure the signal; still with two bars I can get 20Mbps on my iPhone. Can I get a reasonable data plan? No. All the data plans cost a lot for a little, and throttle you to 2G after a hundred GB or so of download per month.
My hope is to spend a good portion of every summer working remotely in Wisconsin. I’ll be hard-pressed to make video conferences and pairing sessions work, and I sure won’t be streaming many shows for entertainment in the evenings.
Different locations have different issues, but I think your potential for great and affordable seasonal broadband is actually excellent. Conferencing, pairing, and streaming are going to be just fine. You're a techie --- you can solve this. Since I'm fond of rural Wisconsin, and have solved similar cellular problems elsewhere, allow me to make some suggestions.
If the tower you are able to hit with 2 bars is AT&T, buy a used/refurbished MR1100 cellular router for less than $150 from Ebay, buy a high gain 4G MIMO antenna and cables for about $100 (try to learn what frequency your tower is on first), and pay $50 a month for an unlimited AT&T data sim (I've used this guy: https://www.ebay.com/itm/4G-LTE-ATT-Unlimited-HOTSPOT-Data-5...).
If your closest tower is not AT&T, there's probably something comparable. There's probably not a great price advantage to the SIM card resellers, but they do make it easier to try things out. I'm currently using an excellent local provider instead of AT&T (VTelWireless), and a speed test just confirmed I'm at a delightfully usable 50/25 Mbit/s.
Why didn’t you buy a vacation home in a place that’s better wired? We stayed at an AirBnB is Putnam County, NY recently that had very solid 100 Mbps cable. You can get 100 Mbps cable throughout Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and Easton, a town of 15,000, is upgrading its municipal cable system to gigabit.
What does it say about the importance of high-speed broadband access as a differentiating factor that even someone in the tech industry will move somewhere without it? Is that a compelling fact for towns like Easton who believe that investing in municipal broadband will attract more residents?
Your question comes across as a bit rude. To answer it, because after half a year of looking, it was far closer to the ideal across a range of factors than anything else we’d found. I didn’t really notice how terrible the DSL was until after we purchased.
The Eastern Shore in Maryland can be pretty rural, but it’s still Maryland. Euston is 15,000; my place is between two villages, one of 900 and the other of 1600. In town, Internet access _is_ pretty decent. But the countryside is another matter.
Cities are economic powerhouses because they have network effects. My career has benefited from those network effects, and I think it would be a personal mistake for me to convert to a 100% remote position. But I can leverage a bit of that career capital to be remote sometime and take advantage of the vast cost differences between a coastal city and the rural Midwest, and get some lifestyle advantages from it (most importantly having my children see their extended family members far more frequently). I am going to have to invest a decent amount in equipment and services (e.g., MiFi, antenna, a router that’ll support line sharing with the cell, VPS, etc.) to make it work. That’s not to say “poor me,” far from it, but simply to point out that rural broadband can really suck in some places. And I’m lucky in that the cell signal exists; lots of places it doesn’t.
I'm trying to tease out what you value, in an economic sense. Khanna is proposing to spend a bunch of taxpayer money building fiber in rural areas, in hopes that it helps economically revitalize these places. But you're someone who already works in tech, and judges a house to be "closer to the ideal across a range of factors" even though it has nothing faster than DSL. If someone who already has a need for fast connectivity won't use connectivity as a dispositive factor in deciding where to buy a house, how valuable can fiber access really be? If people won't pick Town A over Town B because Town A has much better connectivity, what does that say about the value of Town A spending a bunch of tax dollars to build a fiber network?
I think this is an important point, because we shouldn't make policy based on platitudes. If fiber really has the value the platitudes ascribe to it, we would see places with fiber being measurably more desirable than places without it.
I'm probably in the minority but I don't really understand the obsession with fiber. I have about a 25 Mbit connection at home and that's fine for remote work most of the time. My cable is sometimes a little wonky on video calls but that's not the end of the world. [And TBH people calling in from our offices have their own problems off and on as well.]
Marginal DSL like my dad has--maybe 1 Mbit--is indeed something of an issue for my working from his house. (Also marginal cell coverage.) On the other hand, I know someone who works remotely from home who just has a satellite connection.
Yes, having an internet connection is important. But I'm far less convinced of the incremental value of high-speed fiber.
Well, for me, it isn’t about living there full-time, so the best possible connectivity wasn’t the biggest consideration; advertised DSL goes up to 18Mbps or more, and discounting that ideal to, say, 8-10 Mbps would still leave me in okay shape. The other factors were things like: size of property (35+ acres), quality of property (trails, garden space, places for kids to play outside, natural beauty, conservation), the house, and a balanced location between different families as well as airports. I will admit that I was surprised my DSL was _so bad_, considering we weren’t that far from town and not far away from a state highway.
I agree with you that spending tax money on fiber won’t be a silver bullet for a rural community in terms of encouraging economic growth from the tech sector. It does help counteract the monopolistic rent-seeking behaviors of local telecom companies, however.
I’m semi-optimistic about fixed wireless in the coming years. We’ll see about the Sprint/T-Mobile deal.
I might be a bit pessimistic because WiMAX ended up being such a bust. OTOH, it seems as if consumer bandwidth needs are probably plateauing to a certain degree so another generation of wireless can possibly get things to a good enough point for many purposes.
I'm not sure that there is enough demand for remote work. Many people enjoy and even require the social interactions provided at a workplace and don't want solitary remote work.
I’m currently at my third remote job. The first time, I was 29, newly single and I found it got old real fast. Moving back to an office environment was a major improvement for me. Fast forward 10 years, I’m married again, different living situation (in the city now) and I absolutely love the freedom and lifestyle of working remote again. There are a ton of factors involved but I suspect I’m not alone in finding remote work more appealing as I get older and more settled.
Much younger me worked in a very different environment with respect to communications, information availability, etc. of course. But I still can't really envision newly graduated me hanging out in my apartment and just communicating using my (then-nonexistent) laptop.
Today, I attend a lot of events, go into an office sometimes, have some off-sites, etc. But I'm much less interested in day-to-day coffees, lunches, work sports leagues, etc. than I once was.
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” — Western Union internal memo, 1876.
“The problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and that the average American wouldn’t have time for it.” − The New York Times, 1939
Digital nomads will go to places like Thailand where CoL is cheap and internet is fast, I wonder if a small town could emulate that experience. Doesn’t have to be quite as cheap, but won’t give you food poisoning and could be safer too.
I think a big part of the reason (western) digital nomads go to Southeast Asia is for the tropical weather and exoticism. It would be hard for small town America to replicate those experiences.
Exotic locations stop being so after you live in them for a few years. Time zone issues can end up as a real pain, which makes the US rather appealing.
Weather wise most of Florida is really cheap and Hawaii can be surprisingly affordable a few miles from the beach. So, I suspect the digital nomads living in Asia stereotype is more about them being interesting than that many people actually doing so.
Hawai'i is "surprisingly affordable" only relative to the Bay Area. All labor is at first-world American rates and so many things have to be shipped in.
Maybe it's an option for wealthy Silicon Valley escapees, but it's surely not a solution for the economic woes of middle America.
You can buy a nice 2br condo for 50k. That’s cheap compared to most major US cities. High speed internet for 50$/ month is generally available and you pay ~75c / lb to get computer equipment shipped out which is a minimal increase.
Mostly it’s just food and energy prices that are a little high, but that’s not nessisarily a huge budget item. 40k is easily comfortable if you don’t need to travel or have kids.
That said, the median income is also significantly higher than the rest of the US. And things get crazy if you want to live near the ocean, and travel regularly.
There are probably a lot of other reasons that it would not be socially acceptable to admit to.
Being an obvious foreigner can signal you have money and power without you having to say a word about it. In contrast, relocating to a small town in the US wouldn't bring such perks of establishing that the poverty stricken locals should defer to you and cater to you. Instead, you would be an outsider trying to "prove" yourself and get an in socially.
Going to a less developed foreign country allows some people to impose whatever mental models they desire on the landscape without having to try to understand local culture or respect it. To their mind, a less developed country is a social clean slate and folks their should just be grateful a rich Westerner has showed up with money to spend.
If you do run into problems, you can blame it on cultural misunderstanding and try to get a free "out" that no one would give you in a small town in your own country because you are expected to know better than that, even though the laws vary to some degree from state to state within the US.
For example, articles about Westerners drinking alcohol in a Middle Eastern country and being arrested for it are generally viewed sympathetically in the west. Readers are generally on the side of the person who drank alcohol and are critical of the "backwards" country forbidding alcohol. In contrast, if you smoke marijuana someplace where it isn't legal in the US, you get vastly less sympathy from most folks because you are supposed to know better than that.
The idea of moving to some other country that is super cheap and where the living is expected to be easy if you are a Westerner is rooted in historical colonialism. It's really rooted in an expectation of taking advantage of the locals and of their country while telling yourself you are doing only good things for these uneducated heathens -- so viewed because they are not educated in the same things you are educated in, a point of view that stands in part because of your own unquestioned ignorance of their culture and history that you probably think isn't worth studying.
I have considered relocating to another, cheaper country, both because I come from a multi-cultural household and haven't been out of the US in a long time and because I currently have a limited income and the idea of magically solving my financial problems by moving someplace vastly cheaper sounds like a wonderful easy answer. So I understand the appeal.
But I think a lot of people make it work for reasons I find problematic and can't mentally replicate, in part because my mother is an immigrant, so I can't manage to see the local economy as some kind of clean slate that I can impose myself upon and that appears to be a large part of the appeal for some people.
it's just natural extension of moving within your native country to maximize opportunity/cost of living
Extending something far enough can fundamentally change it's character. This is why we have concepts like predatory lending, a term we apply to loans whose terms are naturally extended to maximize returns.
Economic extraction doesn't have to involve resource extraction of the exact same type as old colonialism.
Sure. It's all about you and what works for you. No need to spend a nanosecond wondering how you impact the fabric of society by your choices.
(She says as she sits here wondering if anyone will get the irony of a rebuttal saying, in essence, "I'm not callously mistreating anyone! I was only thinking about me, me, me, me, me when I made this decision! I gave others no thought At All, thus my behavior couldn't possibly be negatively impacting them!")
Generally speaking, we see poor people going to rich countries as trying to take advantage. This is one reason Trump wants to build a wall.
But wealthy folks going to poor countries typically don't see themselves in similar terms at all. They typically feel superior to the people they live among and feel like they are clearly and unquestionably adding value and should be appreciated, obviously.
I did some research for a piece I wrote about a massacre of Native Americans that is little known. Natives hunted, fished, etc and lived lightly on the land. They were a mobile people. They had campsites they routinely used, but no permanent settlements.
Trappers and fur traders were the first to show up. They weren't that different from the natives. The natives were tolerant and welcoming, figuring there were plenty of resources to go around.
Then settlers came. The natives still saw no problem. They welcomed them.
But settlers built fences and homes and claimed land. Once they staked out a parcel of land, they saw the natives as tresspassers.
The early settlers took the best parcels. Soon, the natives were extremely restricted in where they could hunt and gather and were consigned to the least productive tracts.
Looking back on it, in order to protect themselves, the natives really should have murdered every trapper and settler as they showed up. They shouldn't have saved the settlers at Plymouth.
The Europeans coming here did not see themselves as theives taking the lands of the peoples who already lived here. The natives had traditional areas and an alien culture. The Europeans saw only open, undeveloped land free for the taking.
As the settlements grew, the natives became increasingly impoverished and we're soon begging for food from the settlers. The American response was to send in the military and massacre them. They were viewed as behaving badly, as troublemakers, as theives, as lazy, as unproductive.
The real theives were the oblivious settlers who did not see themselves as having taken anything from the natives.
People from developed countries routinely go into less developed areas, improve their own lives at the expense of the existing locals and then frame it like the locals are uneducated, stupid, unambitious, etc. They typically fail to acknowledge that they victimized them.
It's not quite that simple. The reality is that a hunter-gatherer lifestyle requires large amounts of land to support every individual. So tribespeople that live that way often have fairly brutal practices for limiting populations. Agriculture supports larger populations on the same amount of land and modern agriculture even more so.
Life expectancy is also generally higher in developed countries for various reasons. Quality of life can also be higher, though it isn't necessarily evenly higher.
But those gains frequently come at the expense of doing terrible things to local natives, natives who often helped the intruders initially survive at all. And this is how we repay their kindness.
My mother is an immigrant. I would love to spend some time in another country again before I die. But I'm not comfortable pretending that locals should just be thrilled I'm there, bringing my money and superior ways with me and so forth.
Education is not the issue, in my experience - career opportunities are.
I work remotely and live in a rural area. To get my career to the point where I could reliably find remote work, I moved to Charlottesville, VA for five years.
Meanwhile, of the 20 or so people I’ve tracked down with two-year degrees intended to train them for tech jobs, exactly zero have done so. The primary problem that I see is that no one wants to hire a remote junior developer. Senior, sure, but never junior.
Speaking as someone who mostly works remotely (after multiple decades of working in an office most of the time), I have a lot of trouble envisioning coming out of school and sitting in an apartment at my computer all day. Sure, there are consulting jobs where you spend most of your days at a client site or otherwise don't work from an office much. Perhaps had I had a job like that I'd feel differently. But going straight from school to a fully remote engineering position would, I think, have been very difficult for me.
What a nice article. I'm a programmer living in a rural area (and am usually politically conservative.) I really didn't expect to see such an article in the NYT, especially authored by a politician from the left side of the aisle.
> Shame on us for shipping over 211,000 of these jobs offshore to countries like Malaysia and Brazil. Americans have an advantage in doing them because of a cultural understanding of what businesses need and a more convenient time zone.
> When some of the Beckley students asked me what more they should do to bring tech, I joked that they would be wise to open up a few more Pakistani or Indian restaurants.
So the idea is one should not be a valuable tech employee working for a US company from abroad, they should come to the country and wash the dishes for a few years first? No, thank you.
Ro Khanna is my hometown progressive. So..obviously..I distrust the politician representing us.
Why can’t he do a better job with our multitude of problems? Bay Area is choking. In more ways than one.
Talking points is not the same as actually getting them done. It’s just a way to get elected. Again.
Also..am I the only one who found the Indian-Pakistani restaurant quip offensive? This is why some of the rest of the country smirks at Californians. I am from the same region as he is..and I would NEVER make that comment in Beckley, W.Va. It’s just..well...rude.
>Ro Khanna is my hometown progressive. So..obviously..I distrust the politician representing us.
As someone not from the Bay Area, will you please explain why this is obvious?
> Why can’t he do a better job with our multitude of problems?
Perhaps because he has only been in Congress since 2016 and in that time, the Democrats have been in the minority and mostly powerless to do much of anything
Because local constituents have a front row seat wherein we hear what politicians say and what they do and how they do it.
In any average Silicon Valley town(or college town for that matter) where there are more non voting residents than those who can vote, the policies are geared towards everyone and usually not in the interest of those who are long term residents and have voted and have paid taxes.
So politicians have to deliver for both the voting and non voting constituents, but they have to convince the voters to choose what’s sometimes not in their best interest.
This is the reason most politicians lie or back track. It is a most superior skill to be able to convince people to choose what isn’t in their best interest. In California..and especially the Silicon Valley mega region, politicians of all stripe have honed this skill to a fine art form.
Why do they have to deliver for people who don't vote for them? If they're some altruist who wants to do the Right Thing (TM), wouldn't they get replaced real quick by someone who knows who their constituents really are?
But even assuming that they do, why is that so wrong? You make it sound like it's terrible to think about our neighbours, whether they can vote or not.
They deliver promises to people who can’t vote because they spend money and earn money and pay taxes anyways.
An elected politician is not a monarch or a benevolent dictator or an altruistic philanthropist. He is a representative of those who voted for him.
And re: why is this wrong? Because the politicians necessarily have to lie and or fudge facts or back track on promises because there is a fundamental conflict of interest.
A great example of this is California Proposition 1A aka Governer Brown’s bullet train to nowhere. Voters approved $9 billion bond money in 2008. The estimate is 77 billion now. And nothing is done.
That’s money we could have spent locally and to improve our roads and infrastructure. There is no more local governance and only the tyranny of regional governance. We are not homogenized constituents and our needs vary greatly.
Another example is school funding and LCFF..local control funding formula. Which is anything but as it’s a melting pot of school funding and then redistribution. Schools in highly taxed..high density cities are deteriorating with their infrastructure crumbling. With education tied to property taxes, there is so much pressure to create more and more housing stock in Silicon Valley towns that are already beyond carrying capacity. Afterall, a 2 million $ matchbox condo home sold in Cupertino delivers more tax $$$ to the state coffers than a home in Manteca..so why build roads and maintain freeways and create networked public transport to allow the work force to move freely?
I see that you're not a fan, but there are many among us who support HSR and more housing in places like Cupertino. The fact that it's $2 million indicates it's desperately needed.
Though I agree that HSR has been suboptimal. I'd have preferred to have a massive improvement in medium speed rail than a focus on HSR specifically - just make the Coast Starlight take 8 hours from downtown SF to DTLA, not 13, and you'd have a reasonably viable service.
Do you have any example of higher density real estate development leading to affordable housing? High density only seems to stress existing resources and infrastructure while making cost of living more unaffordable.
It’s baffling. And yet, we keep buying the myth of high density sustainability. This year is going to be the year I give up all delusions and stop being naive.
It's a complex question. Higher-density areas are more affordable, other things being equal. They're also a lot more desirable and appealing than the lower-density alternative, and this is what can make them "less affordable" to some, while still being quite easily affordable to others. They have inbuilt gentrification potential. But gentrification is a great thing - it directly translates into a better quality of life! And if it spreads sufficiently, to the point that "higher density" is not a rarity anymore, it doesn't even have to mean high rents.
https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/where-is-gent... : it seems like gentrification means displacement of existing population that is lower income. It doesn’t address affordability. Cupertino doesn’t need to be more gentrified by becoming high density. Average condo price was 1 million ten years ago. How is high density in already affordable places more sustainable? Example:Oakland. Oakland was a poorer part of Bay Area and because of its proximity to San Francisco is becoming more gentrified and has even more high density buildings now. It displaces older long time poorer Oakland residents who were already living in a high density town.
Let’s take public school spending: OUSD spends average of $14534 per student. http://educate78.org/much-money-ousd-spend/ ..it’s spending has been increasing steadily as it gentrifies and its population gets displaced. They are always in debt.
Here is an even more brutal question of someone with $400k and can’t make it by buying a good school district home: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-survive-in-the-Bay-Area-with... : I had mentioned this elsewhere on HN(diff thread) about how children’s education is now based on speculation because property taxes are tied to public schools and their excellence. Rich parents donate or obtain private coaching classes. (The first answer is what makes it brutal)
I have a few more examples of other cities. But a quick search spits out shocking contradictions which only tells me why high density is a myth and that it was never meant to be a true solution.
This is the corroding of middle class. And this is how pitchfork factories get started.
I don’t know a single example in the Bay Area where high density has translated to sustainability. Or affordability. It only increase taxes and outgoing funds to the tax coffers in Sacramento.
An expected side effect(and probably planned one) is an increase in govt employees ..so basically all the revenue generated goes to the care and feeding of public sector employees that has left ginormous unfunded tax liabilities of these union backed employees. The city manager of san Jose makes 700k and fremont city manager makes 500k. The new one is this guy http://tbrnews.com/news/manhattan-beach-dismisses-city-manag... ... no one in fremont knew that this was the story behind their city manager. Why? Because they were all stuck in grid lock traffic trying to get back home while not being able to participate in the running of their city their tax dollars built. This is the reality of Bay Area.
There are no slum lords. Even the slum lords have to pay the piper. The real winner is the govt. this is the reality of gentrified Bay Area.
One of your Quora links is notorious Internet anger man Michael O'Church. He hates everything about the Bay Area tech industry and so his views are ridiculously flamebaity. His statements have low signal.
> How about “stop being actively hostile to people”. Most rural areas are populated by anti-people people. ...
I don't buy this. Have you ever been to some of these places (let alone "most" of them) or are you just repeating self-serving urbanites' stereotypes? Villeinizing rural folks is a pastime as old as history itself.
> ... They want the opportunities of a big city where there are more people, but they don't "like" people. That's why they choose to live rural and have that become part of their identity. That "identity" is wholly incompatible with a densly populated area. ...
Or maybe they just like living somewhere cheap and with plenty of space around them. You know, like anyone sensible would, other things being equal. It has nothing to do with them being misanthropes. Or are Chinese and Indian folks so much more empathetic than us Westerners also, because they live in such population density?
Improvement to YOUR life always comes from YOU. If someone else does something it is to improve THEIR life. They will certainly tell you that it will be good for you, but in the end your advantage would only be a nice-to-have side effect. If you feel the money is passing you by without you getting a share then YOU need to find out how to change. For instance by learning how to do "tech stuff".
And then, when there are a bunch of people who really want to improve actual problems arise. E.g. universities being too expensive for them. Even free online courses require some level of basic skill to start use them. How to get the funds for the equipment. And of course the technicl infrastructure to provide electricity, infrastructure and basic living needs one can't provide for when one spends 10 hours crunching technical problems.
These are problems I hoped to find answers for in the article, or at least suggestions. People being too proud to accept the new status quo and hoping for more icing on their apparently already tasty enough cake before they start moving their asses, that is nothing. Even if they get it they won't start moving. Cake makes fat and lazy.
I personally feel a lot of the mid-level towns in Western countries (not just in the US of A) actually have a good starting point. Roads and trains are already government supported and therefore good enough quality or better. Super markets and a few restaurants are there already as well. Internet is there, although it's maybe not the highest speed. Schools and libraries have some computers and wifi access if they want to. Office rent and land prices are cheap. Also with the internet location itself is less and less important, which is why so many administrative and create jobs can be outsourced. They could be outsourced to your town as well, if you could find a way to compete. No need to be close to natural resources, in a trade hub like a coastal town, etc. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with road and internet access is totally fine to start competing.
The only thing that is really missing badly is people moving their asses. They have a tv and enough money to buy beer. The car repair every once in a while is quite painful, but otherwise they don't feel motivated to do anything with their life. Some won't even travel to a nearby coastal town for a weekend on the beach or something.
In the meantime I'm friends with a Chinese cook who works for $100/month a 14h/7day cooking job and then after that at home spends time learning how to code to make more money and work fewer hours. I mean, if our rural folks could get up to do half of that, then they would be able to work a $50k remote work web/app developer position in no time, and boom they are part of the "tech elite".
People have these unfounded romantic notions about fiber and economic development. Here in Maryland, more than 60% of households have access to fiber. Has it revolutionized the economy? Not at all. Annapolis is a small city (pop. 40,000) that has had fiber more than a decade and almost all the tech jobs here are connected to the Navy (and we’re already here). What do people do with fiber here? Netflix. Fiber is not a catalyst for job creation and economic growth. It’s a means for content consumption. That makes it an awful investment of public dollars.