It's not just culture. Not being American, I don't know what's really up with Detroit, but I categorise it as "like Blackpool" in that it was an economic powerhouse and then industry shifted and it became poor; there's now a lot of empty (or at least cheap) homes.

"One consideration is that, from a legal rights and social inclusion perspective, places aren’t fungible."

You do understand that works both ways? If you reverse the areas you're thinking of, there are people who prefer the rights or social environment in the opposite direction. Shouldn't we be trying to bring similar opportunities to all social groups? If we want to look at how this turns out, take a look at Native American reservations.

Edit 3:

Originally I'd replied about population demographics and migration; @giantg2 has a good reply to that, which you can see below. In reviewing the conversation, I got mentally stuck on the comparisions to reservations, because I think it's a severely fucked up comparison. But saying that alone isn't a helpful or effective conversation, so -

> Shouldn't we be trying to bring similar opportunities to all social groups? If we want to look at how this turns out, take a look at Native American reservations.

In terms of "should we be trying to bring..." - yeah, more or less, yeah, we should. The issue, for me, comes first from trying to say that the social group that is a reservation is the same kind of social group that is a disappearing small town; second, that "bring[ing] similar opportunities" to both would look similar (ye olde equality/equity conversation), and lastly that a meaningful comparison of outcomes can be made between the polities, due to, you know, all the ethnic cleansing (Trail of Tears, etc). But, that's a a hard conversation to have, or to continue, and it's based off of me making a lot of assumptions about what comparison actually is trying to be made.

So, to be constructive about it:

> If we want to look at how this turns out, take a look at Native American reservations.

Can you walk me through this? What are you seeing as the outcome, and why do you think these polities are comparable?

Yeah, but you generally need the money from the businesses and employment to grow the other amenities. For example, TX is almost the opposite of CA in many political areas, yet it seems they have been successful in attracting businesses and people to migrate to them. The amenities and infrastructure has been increasing in many of those cities.

"That’s (part of) why the places that are emptying are emptying, and then they’re surprised when only trying to be attractive to businesses doesn’t work out."

I'm not sure I understand you. Places like TX, FL, AZ, etc are actually growing populations while being hailed as business friendly. Yet places like CA and NY are losing population while considered being tought for business and progressive (rights, social atmosphere fron your prior comment?).

Ah; it looks like my impressions are /somewhat/ out of date: https://www.ppic.org/publication/whats-behind-californias-re... Although I’d say trying infer things from numbers during the pandemic is going to, uh, run into some pretty serious confounding factors. Still, looks like the trend was happening /before/ that, so.

The main comparison points for the rural areas and the Native Americans are:

- Both groups had pressures, albeit to very different degrees and methods, to remove rights and land. We see that rural populations are losing farm land due to the way the market treats commodity crops and the way the government subsidizes - get big or get out. Many people in rural communities feel ignored and even mistreated by their governments on a variety of issues, including things like eminent domain, property rights, due process, and constitutional rights, especially the 10th and 2nd amendments. As urbanization increases the rural areas just have things pushed down their throats. While reservations have a lot of autonomy, they miss out out on a lot of programs and incentives due to having almost no representation at various levels of government.

- The general attitude towards each is that they are dumb, superstitious/religious, and they should stay in their backwater areas if they don't want to get in line with progressive agendas. That it's their own fault they're choosing to be poor by not moving to the cities, or they don't deserve the same sort of opportunities in their area.

- There has been animosity towards both groups. We've had presidents make fun of both groups. While the Native Americans were targeted with more active methods of elimination, there are passive methods of eliminating people - most of it unintentional. If you eliminate enough opportunities the people have to move, as we've seen with the increasing urbanization. It can be hard to believe that things like free trade (elimination of many factories) and elimination of fossil fuel industries without any geographic replacements aren't politically strategic.

Those make sense, and they’re useful to bring up, but I do think that generally considering one informative to the other is A Problem - reservations are from forced relocation and generations of systematic cultural destruction. Even if you’d argue rural areas are facing cultural destruction, it’s (a) not a specific, deliberate aim and (b) has been occurring for a fraction of the time (1-2 generations, vs what, 6 to 20?).

So like, I’d buy that it’s worth taking about both, due to their similarities, but I wouldn’t buy that any conclusions could be made on those alone.

PS - I also want to say, I really appreciate your response; you’ve spoken with a measured an informative tone/etc, and that’s worth celebrating.