Smaller cities and towns= less need for taxation, more money

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Offtopic : Matt is officially a 777! welcome to the club....for now :p And i just noticed i was 1337 a few posts ago, oh well.

A valid point, but I will argue until I'm blue in the face that the simple fact is that cities are even more abominable for that flaw. How many major cities (over 100K) have an effective and reliable mass transit system so that people DO NOT NEED to own a car? I can only think of perhaps two...Chicago and New York City. Every place else that has mass transit is disorganized, time consuming, and unreliable. You're better off driving yourself to places than rely on the mass transit system. At least people in rural areas have a valid reason for why they must drive someplace....it's not cost-effective to have mass transit in a low density population area. What's the excuse for urban population centers?

And, in the end, if anything really bad happens, you don't have even 3 days worth of supplies to survive in a city. Without electricity, you won't even have water that long. You would see barbarism in its full glory if a city isn't maintained with electricity and a constant supply of goods FREQUENTLY OBTAINED FROM PEOPLE LIVING IN THE RURAL AREAS.

In contrast, if you cut the power to people in rural areas, it'd be an inconvenience, but life would go on. People would not have to turn on each other because they already know where to get water and how to grow food. Their biggest threat is from city folk thinking they can come out and take what they want.

No, not everyone should live in smaller establishments. They are not for everyone. Personally I'd feel more uncomfortable in smaller communities in general. They'd be OK for most people who conform more naturally to social norms. I know I for one have found it too difficult to live in a small community. I'm counting suburbs of Edinburgh in which I have lived as small communities which they effectively are, as they are clearly recognised, defined areas. A small town would be no better for someone whose face doesn't fit, as they say. If your face doesn't fit, central cities are better environments as you don't stand out as much, as there is less of a community.

The less people in a place - or within reasonable reach in an area - the less chance of meeting like minded souls with which to enjoy positive interaction, if you are deemed different from the norm.

Anyway, whatever advantages countries like Ireland and Switzerland have in having a range of smaller communities, they weren't designed that way nor designed themselves that way.

I agree about the logistical efficiency of a network of larger centres, and networks within said centres.

Small towns, such as in Scotland, vary greatly in their economic affluence, crime levels etc. Some are quite poor and high on crime, particularly the places that are based on industries that have declined. There are quite a lot of towns like that in Scotland, and they would be nightmare places for a nonconformist, similar to what I hear about a lot of American small towns.

Cities are more efficient over here in terms of transport and infrastructure etc. as more people live in central parts of the city, different to how the situation often is in the US. A lot more people can and do walk to work, leisure etc.

The myth of the self reliant country folk always makes me laugh.

Throughout most of history farmers hauled food into the local market town to sell.

In return the town supplied candle makers and shoe makers and tailors and teachers and wagon makers and furniture makers etc.

It was almost a closed circle.

Each district or country was almost entirely self sufficient.

If you're talking about the city transplants that think they're mountain men, you're right.

Don't hedge your bets with people who are born and raised out in the country.

The country folk could be self-reliant at the barely subsisting level of existence. If the C.F. want more than just food, they have to trade with people located at a distance from them.

ruveyn

Most rural people are not capable of growing their own food, just to make that clear. Especially not without the aid of manufactured goods and machinery that they get from the cities.

How did the human race survive in the earliest stages of the agricultural revolution (circa 8-9 thousand years ago)? This was before cities and permanent communities.

ruveyn

With people who did know how to grow their own food. Modern rural people do not possess that skill.

You are correct that without modern technology, modern farming would not be possible. However, if you know how to farm, the technology is irrelevant. Loss of the technology means you have to improvise to do stuff the old fashioned way. That means radically lower yields.

Country folk could grow enough to take care of themselves...likely have some extra for trading. They could not be the breadbasket for the nation or the world.

That's why they would have to kill those coming out to take what they have.

Even if you know how to farm, the technology is very relevent. Knowledge in the absence of supplies won't take you very far. How many modern farmers can make a horse-drawn plow? For that matter, how many modern farmers have access to the horses needed to pull that horse-drawn plow? How many modern farmers have access to sufficient well water to irrigate these suddenly low-tech farms? And while we're at it, bullets are technology and not grown on farms. I've read S.R. Stirling's low-tech apocalypse fiction too and the only way he got it to work was the fictional conceit of having most of the survivors somehow have been members of the Society For Creative Anachronism so that they knew how to use swords. Back in reality, the handful of people truly able to live off the land independently would be quickly overrun by the thousands upon thousands of people who made it out of the suburbs alive. Bullets run out.


Like Orwell said, the don't-need-nothing-from-nobody rural; person is a myth. Wasn't a myth 100 years ago but a lot has changed since then.

Um... my point was that modern rural people do not know how to farm, period. With or without modern technology, leave them alone and they'd pretty much be screwed. Only about 1-2% of the US population is directly engaged in agriculture, and the rural population certainly exceeds that number by quite a bit, so that means a large number of country bumpkins who have absolutely no more clue about farming than the typical city slicker. And even those 1-2% would almost certainly be helpless without their machinery. And since modern agriculture is specialized, the typical farmer of today certainly could never be self-sufficient. My aunt runs an apple orchard, but that certainly is not going to keep her fed if it's her only source of food, and she doesn't have the means or the knowledge to grow other crops.

The modern rural person is just a hick. Not a self-sufficient man of the land, just a dumb hick living in a backwards region. They can't do any more to take care of themselves than the urbanites. Just because they know how to ride a horse and drive a tractor doesn't mean they're capable of going back to pre-modern lifestyles and actually surviving.

Didn't small towns and villages that weren't along any major travel route have quite a bit less of a problem with the plague?

By the way, I frequently see people complain about property taxes. Many of those who do want to replace property taxes with sales taxes.

One time I calculated what the sales tax would have to be in my county to raise the same money as the property tax assuming that nobody changed their buying behavior as a result of the sales tax. It came out to about 160%. That's right -- a $10 dinner at a local restaurant would include an additional $16 in sales taxes. How long would a restaurant stay in business if it cost $26 total to eat a $10 meal?

The only solution would be to do away with all local sales taxes and set one statewide sales tax high enough to cover the previous property taxes and decide for themselves how much each municipality and county would get of the sales tax. In effect, the people in the major cities would end up subsidizing the rural areas throughout the state because the rural areas don't have all that much in the way of sales outlets.

It wouldn't affect me much since the house is pretty much equally close to a town in the next state as it is to the one in my state. Replace property taxes with sales taxes in my state and I would just do my shopping in the next state over. I suspect that most would do that. Of course, anyone depending on retail jobs in the area would end up having to move.

Well having lived in small towns many come off as very cliquish...I tend to be sort of out of places as no matter what I come off as at least 'a little off' or 'weird' and so I just end up feeling like an outsider. I grew up mostly in small towns, going to small schools and was usually just bullied and ostracized due to not fitting in. People much of the time seem less tolerant of differences and such in smaller towns/communities...not all and maybe it varies depending on region and even countries but I have not had the experience you describe with small towns.