[strbean]

> Or, we could zone areas to encourage people to live in towns where it's feasible for both corporations and the government to provide infrastructure and services at a reasonable cost.

This is assuming there isn't a good reason why we might want some percentage of the population to be rural. To have farms and ranches, for example.

[TulliusCicero]

Sure, if we restrict the subsidy to farmers and others where we need them to live in rural areas, that's fine.

[strbean]

But not the educators teaching the farmer's kids, or the doctors and nurses treating their wounds? What about the clerks at the grocery store serving those farmers? The liquor store?

Trying to create an elaborate regulatory regime to decide who is justified to live in a rural area is absurd and a waste of money. Especially considering that most people living in rural areas are either employed in a necessary industry that needs to be rural, or work in professional or service industries either directly supporting said rural industry (e.g. tractor repair) or indirectly supporting it's workforce.

Furthermore, the marginal cost of providing broadband to all those "slightly-less-necessarily-rural" people is minuscule. Skipping every other house doesn't save you much when the majority of the cost is building infra to get broadband to the town/road in the first place.

[TulliusCicero]

> But not the educators teaching the farmer's kids, or the doctors and nurses treating their wounds? What about the clerks at the grocery store serving those farmers? The liquor store?

They can be in a small town in the region, which is where the school and liquor store probably already are.

[iknowstuff]

Farmers and ranches don’t need any more incentive to live there on top of the boatload of money they make selling their produce