The question is to what extent should grid connections to new rural homes be subsidised by taxpayers, which is of course a political decision - just like to what extent roads, military, healthcare, education, oil production, etc should be subsidised.

A better solution may be to allow the subsidiy money to be used to provide grants for off-grid. It may be better for the taxpyer to give someone $30k to sort their power out, than to spend $40k on an electric line to their house.

100% agree. Not only that, but rural development is inherently connected to these other subsidies. Rural populations tend to have worse education, worse health outcomes, and more expensive roads/mile/capita. Not to mention the negative political externalities rural populations produce (maybe a modern US-only phenomenon).

I'd argue that the causality goes the other way - people move to rural areas to escape the demands of the high-interdependency core. And I'd say much of our political divide is from that highly connected core extending its influence into the previously left-alone areas, first through broadcast media consolidation and now through social media and its consolidation.

From an economic perspective, rural areas are still highly connected and interdependent - think roads, infrastructure, food, water, electricity, internet, transport networks. Those who move from cities to rural areas to "escape the demands of the high-interdependency core" simply shift from majority "producing" to majority "receiving" benefits from our interdependent society.

I'm a huge fan of rural living, but it is expensive. We as a society have decided to subsidize it to various degrees. I'm OK with this, but also think cheap, individual solutions should be used when feasible. For example, sewer lines are very expensive in rural areas, so most houses maintain their own septic tank. Rural houses often use a Propane tank they refill rather than a gas line hookup. They often have their own well for water. Thus, the high grid-connection fees in the article make sense, as rural residents can just build their own off-grid electricity production.

The main political wedge we're facing is the absolute destruction of the manufacturing-production economy (which requires open space and other distributed capital), in favor of the finance-metagame economy (which doesn't). In this wider context talking about subsidies is a bit disingenuous, because if we had a balanced economy then resources would be flowing to the rural areas from the urban areas as revenue of private companies. Instead, most of the resources for building out non-urban infrastructure are flowing abroad, while the little remaining bit trying to mitigate the hollowing out gets called a subsidy.

It's easy to get frustrated with the regressive hypocritical politics, especially with the last few years of objectively utter nonsense. But if that is ever going to get fixed it's going to require even more resources going to rural areas to alleviate the poverty driving the anger and spite. Ideally this would happen by fixing the market dynamics, but really it needs to happen any way possible.

In my mind I am very willing to help and support many parts of a community and society. We need all sorts of work to build a society - finance, tech, manufacturing, non-remunerated work (raising children, etc).

I’m in favor of gov investment in infrastructure as I believe it helps all of us grow. Same with healthcare and education.

But it is _very_ important to make these benefits transparent and clear, otherwise we end up in the situation we now face, where the same voters that would be most helped by these investments argue against such programs and are strongly anti-government (see Trump, Brexit, Jan 6, etc).

Farming in the US rather consolidated around massive economies of scale, where a few large industrial-scale players with large capital available can produce vast amounts of food at a very low unit cost.

This was partially the result of government subsidies and policy ("go big or get out" in the 70s) and partially the result of large technological advances yielding huge productivity gains. Far less labor is now required to produce a unit of food. Petroleum-based fertilizers developed in the 1940s improved crop yields in many cases by thousands of percent. At the same time, mass produced mechanized farm equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc.) became far cheaper and widely available.

The traditional family farms that dominated agriculture until the mid-20th century have become largely uncompetitive in the commodity market, leading to many social problems in rural areas and a widespread perception that American farming is no longer a thing. A few find a niche in organic farming or specialty crops. Many just sold their land to a large operation, lived off of the proceeds for a while, then became poor.

It's important to note too that this consolidation has had beneficial social effects: in inflation-adjusted terms, food is extremely cheap now as compared to any prior point in history. Put another way, the amount of minimum wage hours of labor required to procure 2,000 calories a day is lower than ever before in human history. _Obesity_ is now a significant health problem among lower income Americans, whereas historically starvation and malnutrition due to high food costs were the main food issues for the poor.

American farming is bigger than ever; it's just done on a vast industrial scale now.

[1] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/03/05/look-agricultural...

I strongly disagree on the causality here. The red state subsidies are a blue team talking point. To the extent the reality gets through to the red team, it's anticonvincing because the main thing they feel they're missing is self determination.

Telling them to be appreciative of federal welfare, and they can get even more of it (eg UBI), is the exact opposite of what they want. They want purpose, hence the attraction to regressive ideologies promising that there is purpose to their suffering. Purpose cannot be provided by overt direct subsidies - it can only come from the feeling of earning one's way, regardless of the truth of the matter (eg how the metagame industries suffice). By extension this means revitalization of rural economies, no matter how artificial. Then again after decades of ZIRP what does "artificial" even mean?

If people want self-dependence and self-determination, they should strive for it - not play acting that they are independent. What they should not do is complain about the entire concept of government intervention ("socialism!") while benefitting from the exact same thing, paid for disproportionately by the groups they demonize.

From my libertarian perspective I'd rather not use a loaded term like "subsidy" due to the larger context where the government printed massive amounts of money over the past several decades, benefitting the centralizing/urban metagamers at the expense of the distributed/rural economy. Loaded terms make it too easy to condemn specific aspects while ignoring others that are quite similar.

I don't think it's too hypocritical to accept government handouts because you need it while at the same time wishing you had a job so you didn't have to take handouts

However not everyone feels that way and they use a very broad stroke when it comes to Government assistance which was referred to by some as "socialism" and later "communism"

They loved the $1500 checks in their accounts. They see rising cost of housing and several have suggested government subsidies for homes or a massive government program to build more houses.

I agree people want purpose, but I don't think rural conservatives are actually against government programs or subsidies, as long as it benefits them and is not presented from the perspective of modern culture war and media. They don't like "handouts" but they DO like roads, water, electricity, farm insurance, military bases, post offices, etc.

But sure one doesn't need to be so indirect as I went on to say in the second half of my comment. I feel like that's playing awfully close to the cognitive dissonance though, in that any given program can very easily end up on the talking point shitlist and become permanently unwelcome. Ideologically I'm a fan of decentralization so I'm inclined to focus on fixing the distributed economy, even though it requires a similar amount of forcing.

We both agree that this situation of expensive grid hookups in rural areas is simple economics. We both agree to make it affordable would require a subsidy. Rural residents seem to want this cheaper/subsidized, but several in the article are also happy to build their own infrastructure instead. I think that's great!

It seems where we may have disagreement is around wider political issues regarding perspectives on government, media, and culture. Specifically, I think we have slightly different perspectives and theories about the mindset and views of conservative rural residents.

That's totally fine! However, it feels a bit like we're both talking in circles without a clear topic / thesis or enough personal experience to provide strong insights.

Enjoyed the discussion though!

This is a commonly repeated factoid, but it's not really true. Or at least, it's very misleading. Let me explain.

Rural populations tend to be older. That means more spent on Social Security, more spent on Medicare, and so on. This is by far the largest reason why people say that cities "subsidize" rural areas. But if those old people moved to cities, they would still be receiving Social Security and Medicaid. So it would be more accurate to say that young people subsidize old people.

Farm subsidies exist and probably should be reduced (or eliminated) but in the grand scheme of things, we're not talking about much money. It was about 22 billion in 2019, according to NPR [https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/fa...]. That's comparable to some of the increases in yearly budget that are being talked about for Amtrak, a program that mainly benefits cities.

So don't move to a rural area believing that the federal government will shower you with cash. In general, it won't, or at least not more than it does for city dwellers.

On the other hand, being old or poor may cause the Feds to shower you with cash, but not more than you would have gotten in a city (and many things will be more expensive in a rural area than a city).

One of the best analyses I've seen is from Strong Towns - a blog devoted to building livable and financially solvent towns and cities. In their deep-dive analysis of Lafayette, LA, they find that the only part of the region generating enough revenue to sustain the maintenance costs was the dense old-town city center. [1] Most of the costs examined come from infrastructure (roads, power, gas, water), not social services.

I imagine the calculus is different when considering federal government expenditures (as you point out), as the majority of federal expenditures are towards social security, medicare, medicaid, and the military. However, there is significant federal subsidies to farmers as you point out, and huge sums of cash for highways, power, and other infrastructure.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

So you'd be happy with them if they agreed with you politically....

I do appreciate the honesty.

This isn't mere "disagreement," unless the Overton window is that large now.

As another poster suggested, I could have the causality backwards. Either way, the rural population is where the problem lives.

Lets rephrase it then. How many hours of electrical engineer time should be spent hooking up a new home in rural Ontario? Why would an electrical engineer who lives in the Toronto suburbs want to do this? How much time and effort should a country devote to running and maintaining this connection? What does the engineer get in return?

Either he gets more in return (thus "makes money"), gets less in return (thus "requires subsidy") or it's even (thus "breaks even")

How much should the person who wants to live in rural ontario give for the engineer's time? It seems Canada decides they should give a little, but not the same amount of time the engineer gives (and instead the engineer should be compensated by time from the rest of the country)

As to what that electrical engineer could be doing that would be better? Well how about fixing the electrics in a childrens hospital? Or maybe they could spend the day working on their garden, or watching netflix.

Do they not have their own engineers? In which case what are you doing about the shortage of engineers.

Again this is all fixed amount thinking. Are you sure you are supply limited in engineers? It's only then that you need to think about taxation. And then the taxation has to be targeted at those using engineers - to free them up for the public use.

Are you absolutely sure all engineers and equipment is engaged doing things that are required?

There isn't a fixed amount of stuff, and if there is any unemployment at all then there is capacity to expand.

"Or maybe they could spend the day working on their garden, or watching netflix."

Why should engineers work any less hours a week than anybody else? The person growing their food needs to work a full week, why not engineers?

Government deploys resources, not money. And whether those resources are used hooking up people to the grid, or fitting out another server room for Pornhub is a political choice, not a financial one.

But the article says "he expected to pay a few thousand dollars, given that the nearest pole was across the street, about 45 metres away. He was shocked to find out it would cost $80,000".

So it's not the case of a house in the middle of nowhere...

Should we foot the bill for connecting every rural home because people wanted to move out of the city - increasing the urban sprawl? Maybe if there 5-10 people at a time in batches they could do it at cost. . but custom jobs for every individual homeowner, come on be realistic instead of entitled.

In this case, going off-grid is exactly that: private enterprise offering a more suitable alternative for this use case. In fact, it's the correct solution, because the public should not be required to subsidize the choice of an individual to live in an area not well served by power distribution infrastructure shared across many homes.

It's just like how the government won't pay for paving a long driveway (AKA road) that connects a rural house to the main highway.

Government should only get involved in subsidizing these things when the goal is to scale access to millions, i.e:

- High impact nascent and early stage technology (i.e. EVs, renewables)

- Generational scale investments in human capital and infrastructure that private industry is too risk averse to undertake.

Subsidizing rural home builders to the tune of 80K does nothing for anyone except that home builder. It would be undoubtedly nice for them, but that's not a justification for allowing it.

Look, there's 'shouldn't be run for profit' and then there's 'Simply infeasible to do some things regardless of profit motive simply due reality.'

Pull up a map of Ontario and pick some locations at random and then figure out the distance from those locations to the nearest town that likely has a utility tie in. Tell me the distance and what you think the cost per km would be in that kind of situation. Now tell me if the government should cover that kind of service for whoever wants it, whenever they want it, for free.

You vastly underestimate the size of a Canadian province like Ontario and the costs of installing and maintaining infrastructure in a place with that kind of climate.

Except when the service is being provided to people you don't like. (not sure if I should /s this since based on my observation this is what most people unironically want).

When the govt spends money on something, it is asking/telling people to spend their effort on that task/product, instead of something else that they would/could have been doing instead.

So if the govt spends $80k of people's effort on the rural line, what doesn't get done as a result?

People should likewise not be able to run up arbitrary high costs and expect the government (i.e., other people) to pay for it.

You cannot run anything, including governments, forever at a loss. People pay for things in every case.