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darkpaladin t1_itpsudc wrote

Reply to comment by Wild_Garlic 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

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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