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Wild_Garlic t1_itpoe90 wrote

Reply to comment by darkpaladin in Rather than heralding a new era of prosperity for rural and remote regions, remote working, inspired by the pandemic, is exacerbating the global urban-rural divide in the digital platform labour market by giuliomagnifico

Many of those things you mentioned have solutions but would require a pretty dramatic policy change in the United States. I wonder how applicable those scenarios are in other countries.

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darkpaladin t1_itpp2vs wrote

The sheer amount of infrastructure required makes it near impossible to address at scale. Problems like this are why cities exist in the first place. By the time you add enough amenities to make a place appealing to live, you'll have driven the cost of housing up enough that is not financially attractive anymore.

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Wild_Garlic t1_itps5cn wrote

I mean...it was done with other utilities.

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darkpaladin t1_itpsudc wrote

Yes and no. Sure these houses have power and phone lines but both are flakey and outages last a long time because they're low priority for repair. You could add internet to that but remote workers can't just disappear for 3-5 days cause a storm rolled through last night. Even then, food and entertainment options are severely lacking.

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sanciscoyo t1_itpv21e wrote

Where specifically are you referring to in the US that power and telephone lines are flaky and low priority for repair? This is kind of ridiculous, and I think you’re partially making up a problem in your head. Maybe there’s a few isolated individuals where that is the case, but it would literally only be a few thousand people

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darkpaladin t1_itpzgmm wrote

People I know in rural Texas and my extended family that comes from rural Illinois.

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QuickComplaint9 t1_itqh3ag wrote

That's because Texas privatized their electricity. AKA instead of being a government run service, they sold out to private companies who care only about profits.

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dirtyploy t1_itqkia5 wrote

And Illinois? I have seen similar issues in rural Michigan, friends in rural Virginia, and family in rural Florida

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blahblahsnickers t1_itsawj9 wrote

I am in Virginia and not even urban and still lost electricity for a week this past winter.

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TheGeneGeena t1_itqke44 wrote

It's very rare that it happens here, but we've had ice storms take out power for a week. The last time I remember it going out that long here was over a decade ago though (Arkansas), but Oklahoma had parts that went out close to that a couple of years ago.

The power companies here have done a lot of work burying their lines where they can. A lot of power lines can't be buried in parts the country for various geological reasons though, so outages are always a risk.

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