Freelancers moving to small towns

boing
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I don’t doubt that the characteristics of addiction are different in rural vs urban areas. It makes more sense to me that opioid addiction would be worse in rural areas, as it seems like it would go along with lack of access to medical services to deal appropriately with pain management. Same for alcohol: self-medication with what is readily available. Earlier I was referring to rates of addiction, though. I’d still like to read more about the topic in general, though. If you want to share links to the sources you found most notable I would appreciate it.

Rural migration has been up and down since the 70’s, I don’t know if the current trend will continue. Maybe it will. There are parts of the rural U.S. that are socioeconomically spiraling down now, though. And the connection you made to Trumpism may well be true, although I don’t think that it explains the whole of the movement. There are far more people marching in step with him than the 20% of America that rural areas could provide. Rural Americans weren’t the only ones eager to go along blaming “the other” when Trump was decrying how the U.S. is more like a 3rd world country than the great nation it used to be.

The rise of U.S. fascism in the 21st century started before Trump and isn’t restricted to the purview of non-metropolitan America. Rural fascists do have a louder voice and are more cohesive as an identity than was possible prior to the age of social media, unfortunately. I wonder what sort of factors contribute to that increasing intolerance. It’s not solely because of socioeconomic decline and political disaffection. At least, I haven’t felt more fascist when I’m broke and pissed off at the government. Maybe I’m just weird.

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Spot on analysis of my own mental landscape for much of my adulthood.

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I know quite a few freelancers who would love to live in the greater Boston area, for example, but right now a one-bedroom apartment starts in the $2000/month range. If you want a place with laundry, air conditioning, and parking, you’re looking at $3000/month easily. With rents like that, and Trump Co. cutting more and more small-business tax benefits, freelancers can only survive in more rural areas.

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I think the volume being cranked up on American fascism is due, in large part, to the exploitability of our elections, specifically how our electoral system gives undue weight to lower-population areas (especially our Senate) combined with the two-party winner-take-all system tending to polarize politics.

Like you said, it’s always been a factor to a greater or lesser degree, but the real radicalization of the U.S. rural districts has occurred as the population there has plummeted. They’re easier to exploit when there’s few dissenting voices and a majority of the smart/talented people have left to make better money in the metro centers.

There’s also a ton of other factors, mostly having to do with continuing consolidation of corporate power, especially in the media, but really that only happened because, again, of the accumulation of power in the extremist right wing because of how our election system was exploited.

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There’s a huge difference between a small town and a “smaller” city than the big coastal ones that are currently in fashion. There’s dozens of underpopulated rust belt cities that can have a great affordable quality of life without being a town of a few thousand in the middle of nowhere.

For a window into this world, there’s a nice little blog called Rationalurbanism.com by a guy in Springfield Ma (pop ~150k) who was born there and raised his own kids there. It chronicles the challenges and small victories of a down on it’s luck 19th century mill town.

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BB just recommended that I PM you rather than continuing “your conversation with this particular user at length.”

You wrote about the radicalization of rural America as though it were a given, but I guess I don’t know what leads you to the conclusion that rural America is radicalized (at large…I’m not going to say that there aren’t radical elements to rural America - - the militias and Westboro Baptists and such). Here is what I understand to be happening in the U.S.:

  1. Corporate power has been increasingly consolidated since WWII. This is a function of the amount of political influence that can be bought, and has gotten worse since Citizens United. While that decision in particular was detrimental to our electoral system, both parties have been complicit in this trend (such as Bill Clinton signing off on the repeal of Glass-Steagall).

  2. Fox News. The most popular cable news network in the country is/was owned by someone whose mission was to use its influence to move U.S. politics to the right. This is sort of a chicken-egg scenario. Two-party politics pushes conservatism. Corporate consolidation of power has meant that Fox has been able to safely hold its position as the voice/hive-mind of the right without worrying about competition in the television media realm.

  3. Republicans exploited the congressional electoral system through a combination of gerrymandering and voter suppression. Now the GOP has had a comfortable lead in the House for the last…10 years?

  4. Social media has abetted the siloed thinking of a huge swath of Americans. GRU social media influence campaigns perhaps helped to shift public opinion enough in the 2016 election for Trump to win in a few key high-impact states - Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. I don’t really believe the “perhaps” qualifier in the last sentence. I’m also still incredibly pissed that Michigan played an important part in this debacle.

Those are the main points that I believe have led us to this particular point in history. I don’t see a radicalization of rural American as part of it. Social media has helped popular opinion, especially in Metropolitan America, to take the compassionate and progressive side in social issues more quickly than ever before. Conservative Americans, being conservative, haven’t adjusted to the changes as quickly. I feel like older conservatives are getting left behind, but not radicalizing. Of course, the talent drain that you referred to has led to a demographic shift in rural America, too. Older, more conservative voters are left in the small towns, presumably yelling at each other to stay off their lawns for a lack of younger targets (when they’re not watching Fox News, I mean).

The outsized political power of the minority from this demographic shift would normally get recalculated by the Census. But the current Administration has either a) realized this, or b) just fucks up government operations indiscriminately; and nearly ensured that the upcoming 2020 Census fails to provide reliable data. So there’s that.

Holy crap I’m depressed now. At least I can go home, play banjo on the porch, shoot some tin cans off the fence, and marry my cousin. That usually cheers me up.

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Stay off Spanky’s Twitter thread.

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Apropos (or at least the very first thing I thought of when I saw Rob’s post): Journalists James and Deborah Fallows have been spending a lot of time in smaller cities out in the heartland, looking for examples of how successful small cities came to thrive. They’ve written a ton of interesting stuff about it. If you’re interested, then here’s a good place to start: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/reinventing-america/556856/ More recently: “talent dispersal” seems to be trending.

They’ve also written a book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America, recently released. (Endorsed by Tom Hanks!)

At any rate, I read it a couple of weeks ago, and was pretty thrilled by it. As someone who moved to an extremely cool, comfortable, if a bit sleepy, small city in Texas back in 1979 – which over the years transformed itself into a very large, frenetic, dull, “cool” city – and as someone who is currently scouting for a new small- to mid-sized city to relocate to, this book gave me a lot of hope about finding a new town to call my own.

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Rural regions have been radicalized rightward since the days of populist Tom Wallace. He and his wanted economic equalization, but only for white gentiles.

I left a mid-sized area for a small town. My income will not handle Northern heat bills so this is 100% Southern. Meth and opiate addiction are fueling quiet crime epidemics. The days of leaving doors and computers unlocked are gone for good. Starting wages for police are around $25G and they are selling drugs, on the take, or furnishing their homes with stolen merch.

The Internet can serve rural residents enticing slices of life elsewhere and, if you are skilled, the recipes to go with the websites or YouTube videos. Shopping online eliminates mileage. But hospitals routinely are closed because of lack of reimbursements for opioid addict visits so prepare to have your lifespan slashed.

Finally, when you move to a three liberal town, one dies and the other moves away, ya better learn to love solitude.

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I don’t know who this is. Did you mean Tom Wattson or George Wallace? I don’t know if I would call the influence of either of them radicalization. They were running on traditional, conservative sentiments - immigrants are bad, or the civil rights movement is bad.

Finally, when you move to a three liberal town, one dies and the other moves away, ya better learn to love solitude.

If this happened to you I am very, very sorry. Finding solid, like-minded friends was an issue in my small town, too. It took about 5 years. Thankfully, both are currently healthy and not planning to move.

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This looks good, thank you for the tip and good luck on your town search!

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If you are trying to figure out where to live—and where to place roots—you really ought to factor in climate change.

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I’ve been living in Seattle most of the past decade and it’s been nice but this past year or so I keep on giving really really serious thought to moving back home.

Which for me is New Orleans. Maybe not such a great idea what with global warming (more hurricanes! more heatstroke!) but it sure is cheaper, and pretty accepting of weirdos.

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If any kind creatives want to give Tijuana a try, give me a holler. No loose cannons, please.

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My wife and I were raised in the suburbs of a vast, dense, complex U.S. metropolitan area. By a series of misadventures, we have since sampled U.S. “small town” life. This started off with four years spent in St. Albans, WV. After that, we lived for a few months in a very idyllic yet economically isolated small town. Now we live in another isolated small town that is connected to a massive U.S. metropolitan area by a (almost completely) straight, sixty mile strip of interstate. I suck up the long commute (I use a van pool and it is 1 hour ten minutes door to door) to live in the isolated little town in the mountains yet still work the city-job. Been doing this for years now.

When you say rural Murica is dying, this is currently true for a lot of places (Appalachia, for example ). Other places are not dying (quite the opposite - they are real treasures) but yeah really you need to get creative to make a living. Other places, like the one we have lived in now for seven years, are real “sweet spots.” We pay small town housing prices, enjoy the benefits of small town life, yet someone like me who still needs to work in an office building for their daily bread can still connect to a large, viable job market without having to abandon their family.

It is completely reasonable for people to entertain the thought of getting the heck out of over priced cities, especially after they take on parenthood. Based on my experience, it is possible. You just have to, like anything else, do your research and do a LOT of lurking before you leap.

Do NOT try to come out to one of these towns and start a brick and mortar business. Forget books stores, restaurants, or art galleries. These small towns just ain’t that kind of place. You will have zero customer base. Figure out a real, viable way to make a living that is not dependent on the local population, unless of course you are a doctor or some type of trades person. I, for example, work in IT and can commute to a nearby IT job market. There are a tone of people like me in this town who do the same thing. Others I know are software developers and work remotely and thus are able to live here. Others do things like video production for clients across many states but have the studio here.

Once you have a viable income figured out, then move to one of these towns for the low cost of housing, the low crime rate, and the non-existent traffic jams.

As for the problems that manifest themselves when the population and economic opportunities are low - that may be more pronounced in some places than others. You’re gonna run into the meth epidemic anywhere. It is not some black hole that sucks everything nearby into it. I’m not so sure about intolerance because that beast is nastier to one person than it is to another. My town for example has just enough of a population (13000+) with just enough diversity (less than 88% white people) that some of that stuff starts to get diluted out of the equation. Obviously, do your research about that be fore moving to a small town but remember half the stuff you hear will most likely be apocryphal.

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