[thrwthrw93223]

Easy for you to say as an outsider with a comfortable salaried job. A lot of people in these rural communities aren't educated and live paycheck-to-paycheck. Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution.

[johan_larson]

Indeed. But the skills mismatch is one of the things I am proposing to address. People can be retrained, at least if they're on the younger side. Trying to retrain a 55 year old factory worker whose employer moved the plant to Mexico or China probably wouldn't work too well. It might be better to let him retire early.

[dsfyu404ed]

>Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution.

<tinfoil>

If your goal is to make rural people (historically a very hard group for governments to control, everywhere, not just in the US) more dependent on and controllable by the state then it works great.

</tinfoil>

(Yes, I know I'm just stirring the pot by saying this)

[krapp]

All a man needs is a horse and a gun and he can rule the world, right?

I know many rural Americans like to imagine they're still living on the lawless frontier uncorrupted by civilization and Federalism, but.... it's not actually true that they're less dependent on the state than "city folk." Hell, in many cases rural areas are more dependent on the state.

And ironically, it's that pastoral, romantic delusion of the statelessness of rural America that leads to the very same populist ideology that makes them easier to control. Like believing a billionaire globalist with a history of exploiting low wage employees and a loose relationship with the truth is an honest, God-fearing hard working friend of the common man.

[mjsaah]

> it's not actually true that they're less dependent on the state than "city folk." Hell, in many cases rural areas are more dependent on the state.

I'd like to see you back up this claim, but either way dependence on "the state" isn't really what matters.

What matters is the interdependence between the two locales. Cities are almost entirely dependent on rural areas for their food. Rural areas could continue to exist without cities; the reverse is not true.

Cities are also more fragile than rural areas. Say something catastrophic were to happen to some region of the US, something that wiped out communications infrastructure, electricity generation, supply routes (roads, rail), etc. The cities in this region would be foodless within a few days. Depending on the city, there would be either no running water or dirty running water. Even if martial law were quickly instituted, violence and starvation would result.

Contrast this to the rural areas. Food would certainly be an issue, but it is more likely that the population is either (a) near agricultural infrastructure or (b) prepared to fish/hunt/forage. It helps that there are less mouths to feed.

Furthermore, most people are on wells and/or septic tanks, which barring damage gives them a much longer timeline before water/sanitation becomes an issue. Again, it helps that there is a lower density of people needing drinking water and sanitation.

I guess my ultimate point is that strategically, it is the rural areas holding the cards. Would they be poorer without the cities? Absolutely. Could they survive? They did for generations.

[krapp]

There are very few rural areas in the US in which most people don't get their food from the supermarket, water from utilities and power from a power company, just like everyone in a city. They didn't build their homes from trees they felled by hand, they don't grow their own food, or sew their own clothes.

As far as hunting and fishing goes, few people living in rural areas would be capable of living entirely off the land for an extended period of time, so the premise that they would be able to survive a disaster more or less unscathed while the city dwellers starve is just really not true, at least not as true as Americans would like to believe.

One problem rural areas do have is lack of disaster preparedness funds. I live in Texas, and I've seen what happens when disasters hit rural areas. The same people who complain about Washington and city dwellers wind up in tent cities being tended to by the Red Cross and FEMA.

See how well agricultural communities do without farm subsidies, housing loans or food stamps. Without the state keeping them alive, a lot of them would simply die out.

And this is my ultimate point - most Americans who live in rural areas are little less domesticated than their urban counterparts.