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Can Tech Save Small Town America?
theodp writes "Declaring that small town life no longer has to be separate from financial success thanks to technology, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos told North Dakota state officials to take hope in people such as Napster's Shawn Fanning. Interesting remarks, considering that Fanning conceived Napster in small-town Boston and the jobs Amazon's brought to rural areas don't exactly scream financial success."
I think ultimately whether a town (small, that is) can be a place to be financially successful depends on:
Limited anecdotal cases show one can set up shop and make money in small town, USA, but a lot of what drives economies and business requires socially connected communities, typically large (larger than small towns).
People are still social creatures, business products are still tangible, and communities larger than small towns provide optimal management and distribution. I'm not sure this will change much in the forseeable future.
Yes, some people may make their fortune in small towns, but it remains the exception. And some big-money companies may toss a financial bone at small towns, but it remains only that. They're not developing a community, they're saving money -- it's little more than rural out-sourcing.
And for IT folks considering putting out a small town shingle, you can do it, but you'd better be good, and you'd better be prepared to sacrifice most of the small town life you'd anticipate, because, to land big-money gigs, you're going to have to be good above and beyond to assuage the suspicions of clients, and you're going to have to travel a lot, because they're still going to want to get a lot of face time with you.
On the yes side: It is nice to have access to things that you wouldn't before the internet. You don't have to travel to a mall or specialty shop. This makes living in a less urban city not nearly the negative it used to be
On the no side: The mom and pop shops have dried up, losing a lot of the local economy. Towns that cannot adapt die. Neighbors do not talk to neighbors as much (why go outside), and the "homeyness" goes away.
Bottom line: Things change. For those who can adapt, it is a good thing. For those who cannot it is bad.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Can technology ever solve social problems?
And now, for no additional charge, I provide the answer!
No!
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Translation: we can drive down wages and increase management bonuses if we do this. This has nothing, I repeat NOTHING to do with saving small town America. CEOs don't give a rat's ass about small town America. What they do care about is increasing their profits, and if they can use our nostalgia for the past to get it, all the better.
All of these articles drive me crazy. I ran a business in "small town" America -- it was a retail store. I made sure my prices were just as competitive as Amazon or other dotcoms, and the local customers loved it to a point.
Yet the small town was the reason I had to leave the business. They wanted more sales tax revenue (which made me less competitive than the dotcoms once you factored in almost 9% additional cost). They wanted to raise minimum wages, which made it impossible to stay competitive with the dotcoms. They wanted me to add a bathroom once I doubled my square footage (I was the most successful ma-and-pa retail store in that town's history). They wanted me to add an additional handicapped parking spot (which ended up occupying more than 22% of my total available parking spots even though I had never had one handicapped customer in 4 years of business -- we sold sporting equipment).
In the end, I wouldn't surive even if a paperwork error forced us out of business anyway. The demands of small town USA made it so I couldn't be make it in small town USA.
People move to small towns often to get away from the high overhead of living in the urban areas. Rural living can often mean rural salaries. Yet the rural communities that I ran 2 out of my 3 retail stores in were trying very hard not to be rural. Taxes went up (sales, property and residual regulatory user fees). Citizen services went WAY up (volunteer fire and ambulance squads because taxpayer funded unions).
In the end, small town USA will destroy itself by pretending it can mimic the high debt, high tax world of the big city. The only thing they don't realize is that they will chase away the customers that drove to small town USA to save a buck or three. Who will pay for the "gentrification" changes then? Tech companies? Ha!
Jeff is more wrong than he is right. Tech companies are going to spring up in areas where techies are, that means mostly (good) university towns. Also, if the startups do get lucky, I think the newly minted founders would rather live in a nice(?) area than some backwater where the only hangout is some spit-and-saw-dust joint.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Did anyone read this link from the summary?
The folks get to ride a bus for 3 hours each day to/from work. Their shift is really a 12-hour shift because of this, since they get it at 15:00 and get home around 03:00. The day shifters get 9.50$ US/Hour, and night people get 50 cents more (a whole 4$ more/day; 1,040$ more/year).
Given 52 weeks with 5 business days, 8 hours/day, gives a salary of $19,760 before taxes for the day shifters. Is that above the US poverty line? In Saskatchewan (where most of basic healthcare is taken care of, and things like food are a bit cheaper), our poverty line is around $16,000/year. Any medical problem in the US is going to cost hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars -- I've seen what your drugs cost at the corner store. If you adjust it, I'd say they're probably pretty close to the poverty line.
Adjusting the 8/hour wages for the true 12/hour day with commute, the poor folks are actually earning $6.34 an hour, which is a lot closer to minimum wage. You can argue that the time on the bus isn't lost to them, but I don't see them being able to pursue most hobbies, clean their houses, or be there for their children in that time.
So, in fact, tech is not saving small town America. These folks are just as poor and not well off as any inner-city folks who have to bus for hours to work for almost nothing, while their children are home alone. They live in poverty, and they have no time to themselves for self development.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I just moved from Washington DC to a small riverfront town in Maryland to start my business. A large component of this decision -- aside from the reduction in stress -- was the ability to function on less money than I could in the city. A new business doesn't make a lot of money, but when your overhead is low you have more time to make it work for you. In the city, my overhead would have been too much. It's also cheaper to buy property in a small town than a city like DC.
I don't quite understand the editorialization on the summary. Theodp tries to make it sound like Amazon.com's hiring practices are bad for rural America. But his links don't support that. They talk about having to bus workers in from out of town (as far away as the next state) to work seasonally in the warehouses.
But it's not like Amazon is turning down local workers in favor of out of town workers. According to one of the articles linked "more than 85 percent of the yearly labor needs are supplied by the local labor pool. Staff management works with local employment agencies, recruits at colleges and works with high schools to provide jobs for graduating seniors," and "we first start with the local labor pool, then broaden our search." Amazon is employing the locals and out of town people (which also help the locals by staying in hotels paid for by Amazon and patronizing locals businesses).
Amazon has also set up education programs to help potential-workers complete their GED, and supported other local programs. "Amazon.com has partnered with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Team Taylor County and Kentucky Adult Education to form the Go, Earn, Do program, which helps people earn their GED." According to an Amazon spokesman, "we've hired several graduates of the program so far and as the program grows we hope to hire even more."
So I really don't see Theodp's snarky objection to Amazon and Bezo's stand on how tech helps out rural areas. If anything, the articles he links actually support Bezos' claims.
Bezos' remarks on Shawn Fanning are on the mark, too. Sure, Fanning was in a Boston dorm room when he wrote Napster, but it's not like he needed the massive infrastructure of a huge city to do it, just an Internet connection. As Bezos points out, "that's the kind of thing people can do anywhere. They can do it in Seattle, they can do it in North Dakota."
So pretty much all of the editorializing in the summary is wrong, and doesn't seem to server any purpose other than to troll us. I guess I bit.
(An off topic ad hominem: theodp@ aol.com ? On Slashdot? Puh-leaze. I see September still hasn't ended.)
Stupid like a fox!
How is this flamebait? The guy's being honest, and everything he said is true.
There's a big tendency in this country to suggest that anything that's not on the upper northeast of the country or on the left coast isn't worth living in.
I'm not sure how people can say that. When I listen to those people talk, they complain about (1) Housing prices, (2) how bad the schools are, (3) how bad the traffic is, and (4) the crime. (Basically, in that order). Then they turn right around and say how they could never live in "fly-over country".
But, you can get a damn big house for $200,000-$300,000 (like between 2000 and 3500 square feet), some great schools (if you pay attention to where you buy), traffic that actually moves at more than 20 miles per hour on the expressway, 4) lower crime rates.
Granted, no everyone likes small town America. If you tried it for a number of years, or grew up here, you gave it a shot.
But, if they don't want to live in a place they have no direct experience with, that's up to them.... however, ripping on a place when you have no experience with it... well, that makes you look foolish and very close-minded.
Of course rural America understands technology. Let's see you operate or repair some of the newer combines, tractors, or farm implements. Rural America has always pushed the bill on farm and industrial technology. There is no reason why computers couldn't be next. Hell, Gateway sprouted up in South Dakota, of all places. If a tech company can come into fruition in South Dakota, it can happen pretty much anywhere.
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i suggest that you tread carefully around the stereotype of the backwoods hick bigot lest you play into the city-slicker know-it-all stereotype. you have every right to disagree with the faith and values of Snakeville, KS and/or Islamabad, Afghanistan. but you would be wise to offer them the benefit of some doubt.
you can find competent knowledge workers among every race, creed, and sexual proclivity. i know some excellent software engineers who are "young earth creationists." their rational skills have been honed by virtue of defending their right to breath against eye-rolling Darwinists. in fact, out-groups are often the source of highly competent experts. it takes zero brainpower to roll the eyes and affirm conventional wisdom. and unless you're going to reengineer the Origin of the Species unconventional personal notions do not get in the way of the work.
i hope the a post-geographic society of smart folks collaborating where each person's talents are exercized regardless of their personal context. i tend to agree with you about Joliette and/or Gary (Grand Rapids, MI is quite comfortable), but if one can't work with a team-member from Snakenavel (and i'm not suggesting you can't), i won't want him on my team.
But we are talking past each other a little. I've focused on the local boy who chooses to telecommute from Hickville to the Big Apple, and you're talking about the city slicker who moves to Green Acres. If Snakeville, KS wants to prosper by attracting city slickers, then it had better make them comfy, otherwise they'll just up and move to Bugtussle. This dynamic could make for some interesting satellite communities...