In what way are they more energy efficient?

Every statistic I've seen along those lines laughably compares rural households to apartments... ignoring office buildings, shopping malls, the energy cost of all the public buildings, the energy cost of basically everything but the apartments.

For the stat to mean anything you'd want the total gross energy consumption of the city divided by the population vs the total gross energy consumption of some other area divided by its population.

I've never seen anyone cite that stat so I'm a little dubious that anyone has it.

I like to be able to toggle flash on and off. What is more, i whitelist some sites only to have them annoy me with flash videos.

I've been using bing for years mostly because I didn't want there to be only one search engine. Try them out. They have boolean searches. I know... the evil microsoft... but the search engine is good.

As to bad schools, the education statistics say the opposite. But if facts are hard for you then I can understand why you'd have a hard time with that.

As to rednecks, that depends entirely on where you've set down roots. There are different places with very different sorts of people. Its not like the area outside the cities is homogenious. Some of those areas will have rednecks. And lots of others will not.

A lot of them are just a little old fashioned. Think of your grand parents. But then you have some that are as up to date as anyone. You wouldn't know the difference at all in some places.

As to social isolation, you're less isolated because potentially everyone you meet will be someone you know. Where as in the city you know practically no one. They're not part of your social circle. So pretending they are is silly. How many people in a city do you actually know? Less then a thousand probably. Okay... so why do you need the other 10 million people? Any of them could die and you wouldn't even know or really care.

As to physical isolation, depends, you can live in the town at which point you will see people all the time. You can walk to the coffee shop, order food at the restaurant, etc. You have fewer choices but at the same time you will know these people so if you want something else just tell them. They'll figure out what that costs in time and ingredients and probably give you a good deal on it. They might even name a menu item after you because why not. Try to get that in a big city.

As to not wanting to drive, you can avoid driving in a small town if you want. Just live in the small town itself and its no big deal. You'll walk less there then in most big cities and you won't even need to deal with mass transit. A town of 70 thousand can be walked from one end to the other in about 5 to 10 minutes depending on how much of a hurry you're in.

As to poor services, again it depends on what you mean by that? Generally anything a city provides you can be found in small towns without any trouble at all. What do you mean by this?

As to few jobs, that is a valid point however, I think with the internet there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to telecommute to any job anywhere in the world that simply requires us to do mental labor. If you need my physical hands to do something then sure I can't telecommute. But I doubt those are the jobs you're saying you can't get unless you live in the city.

lets say you want to be an investment banker or a programmer or any of the more typical jobs you'll find in a city. Why can't you do that anywhere on earth with decent internet?

As to going out your door and doing something, you're going to have to define that. They have that in small towns as well so I don't think you're aware of the options. Many small towns make a great effort to provide social activities, concerts, some have full opera companies, plays, etc. So I don't know what you're talking about here. Night clubs? They have night clubs in small towns as well... you just won't see too many new people in them.

As to it being different in different places. I've lived in a lot of places. You just have know what to look for... you can find a place for everyone.

What I find galling is that the cities exert political control over the countryside while at the same time only being able to do that because of the subsidies that allow for that population density.

Make areas more autonomous or cut the subsidies off and I'm happy.

but noscript does. ADblock + NoScript + Flashblock = no ads at all.

Its unacceptable if any third party controls it. If I buy the phone and its mine... then I am the ONLY one that should be able to brick it.

Something we should push for at some level is physical access to the ROM on these smartphones. The "drives" or "disks" used to store whatever. They only get away with this protected bootloader crap because we can't just pull the drive out, pop it into another machine, overwrite it with what we want, and then reinsert it.

How impractical would it be if the phones for example had no "chip" that stored the firmware but rather everything was stored on a micro SD card in the guts of the phone. If it worked that way you could take a screw driver to the phone, pop the microsd card out, and get complete write access to the whole thing.

why not.

Just pick up a knife and come at me... I'm tired of all the little games from you people. You want to fight? Come on... and when one of us is dead, the other can decide how things will be... till then... I reserve the right to ignore, undermine, and mock you.

Without the subsidies that allow those people to live in those cities, the cities themselves would likely collapse.

Imagine if the cost of labor went up to compensate for everyone that lives there actually paying the full price for rent?

That would squeeze the middle class which would force them to increase their cost of labor on the companies that operate in NYC.

That would drive those companies out of the city in a search for more economical labor. Which would mean the middle class wouldn't be able to find jobs. Which would mean they would leave. Which would mean you'd lose low income population to the same process until the density dropped low enough that that the cost of rent/lease/ownership dropped low enough that someone on a low income wage would actually afford to live there without subsidy.

Care to guess how low NYC's population would have to drop for that to happen? We can only guess. But the point is that you couldn't maintain those cities without the subsidies.

The country side doesn't need subsidies to exist. Those little towns are so close to the ground in most cases that some of them might even be able to self support if they were willing to accept doing away with some modern conveniences. The cities are utterly dependent on importing all sorts of things and people literally die if that doesn't happen. In the small towns and rural communities... they're often on well water and could if needed provide their own food in many cases.

I'm just pointing out that the cities are utterly reliant on trade to literally survive. Where as the rural communities LIKE the trade and economically need it. But if they were in a disaster situation they could probably survive.

100,000 in the 21st century isn't really a city. Its not even a million people.

I gave other examples of cities with populations lower then that with full opera companies. The point is that you can have big city entertainment in a small city or large town without much trouble.

Wrong.

You're assuming they are able to put taps on the email servers. We can lock down or decentralize our email systems enough that putting taps on our email is not practical.

For example, lets say rather then putting all our email in big ISP servers or gmail we instead put all the email in small private hosts. Tiny operations that might have only a couple thousand clients. Or possibly better yet you just self host your email.

Technically there is no reason email cannot be self hosted. The biggest problem with this idea now is that email spammers use self hosting to spam so big email servers reject small email servers. But there are other ways to either authenticate your server so it is accepted and keep spammers out.

My objective here is not to make it impossible for the NSA to snoop on me... just impractical enough that they wouldn't bother unless they really wanted to snoop on me specifically. That alone is going to protect 99 percent of the population from spying.

  For the remaining 1 percent... some of them we want to be spied upon because they might actually be bad people. And for the small portion that is both of interest to the NSA and not at fault... they can encrypt and use other security precautions.

The politics are fucked sir... I won't waste my time on them. Find a technological solution.

As to congressman... you have a parliament... in the context of this discussion is there a relevant distinction?

As to runways, finland might be similar to Alaska in the US. They deal with that situation with sea planes and ski planes. For small communities of a few thousand people that should be enough.

As to the interstate system, I was talking to some other people that were expanding the discussion to something about cities and rural areas in general and not just finland. What is more, the point remains apt for finland.

Lets say everyone left the rural areas entirely and lived only in the cities. Would you then not need roads in the rural areas? Obviously you would need them still so you could get out there efficiently. Thus the road maintenance is a zero sum game. Which was my point about rural areas and roads. Whether people live out there or not you will need the roads. Possibly slightly less of them and possibly you won't have to maintain them as much. But you can then only bill the rural areas for that difference.

As to being afraid of dying of exposure in the wild. Very few people actually die from that. Worst case, you stay by the road and someone will help you out. You might need to pay to get your car towed but you won't die.

As to being disgusted by the need to drive to get groceries, the local restaurants you frequent drive to get groceries... or things are delivered by truck. What does it matter if you do some big shopping runs at weekly or even monthly intervals that keep you supplied? I have an aunt that uses a specialty butcher that has deals with local cattle ranches. She gets the best beef you could imagine. She also gets fresh eggs, fresh produce, and locally made cheese.

I'm sorry... but you can't compete with that food in the city unless you're paying an arm and a leg. Most people that live in the city eat cheap food. In the country cheap food can also be GREAT food. Another of my relatives lives near an apple orchard. They can get all the apples they want for basically nothing.

As to it being cheaper for the very poor... only because they're subsidized. You take away the rent control, the EBT cards, and other crap and they could not afford to live in the city. And without that, many of the economic systems that rely on their labor would collapse... and that would mean much of what keeps the modern city viable would fall apart. Those same people would probably be a lot happier in small towns where they could at least feel like they are a part of a community rather then just a number in a machine.

As to crime being lower in cities... you must be joking:
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?t...

I'm sorry, but that is 180 degrees off correct. Rural communities have the lowest crime anywhere. Suburban areas have slightly more crime and the cities have the most crime. Typically the crime rate goes up with population. Think about it... more victims and more anonymity. If someone starts doing that in a small town... very quickly everyone will simply know who you are and what you do. It doesn't work. The sort of criminal you get in small towns tends to be drifters... traveling criminals. But they're not very common.

As to why one would prefer to live in the rural area... well... you're entitled to your own opinions... but not your own facts. Your information is wrong. By all means, have any opinion about ACTUAL facts but you don't get to just make things up.

How is it good that you as a social creature are completely alienated from everyone else?

You're calling this natural but its not.

You are more social in a small town. You actually know people and they actually know you.

As to distant farms... go to your grosery store and tell me where the fruit in the produce section came from. Bet its farther then 500 miles. If you're in the north east it could be well over two thousand miles. So that's just a silly statement.

As to live music at night, you can get that anywhere. Go to a rural Italian farming village. They have music every night. Its THEIR music made by THEIR people for THEIR people. You act like music didn't exist before this absurd population crush. The ancient city of Athens 2000 years ago had only about 140 thousand people. Of that only about 40 thousand were both male and not slaves. Want to bet they had music, art, plays, etc?

You don't need a big population for any of that. You just need culture.

A modern example would be Santa Fe New Mexico. They have a population of about 70 thousand... and a full Opera company, plays, music festivals, many art galleries, a big artist community, etc etc etc.

As to cities being easier on the environment, you're only saying that as an alternative to an endless suburban sprawl. I would agree that packing people in would be better then an endless Los Angeles with single story houses going on for hundreds of miles.

However that is not what I am talking about. I am instead talking about small scattered towns with lots of empty space between. You can't tell me the small town is hurting the environment more then the mega cities. That's just silly. The concentrated waste that comes out of those cities takes massive facilities to make anything less then horrifically toxic.

As to cities subsidizing the rest of the country, that is a product of our political system not a need of rural communities. Rural communities send their representatives to washington to ask for lower taxes and less regulation. If/when they cannot get that, the representatives ask for what they CAN get instead. Over the years the rural communities have gotten these compromises instead of what they actually wanted which was to be left alone.

Logistically, there is no reason they couldn't provide most of these services themselves. If anything, the cities have made efforts to stop small towns from setting up their own ISPs. We get articles about it on slashdot all the time. read one of them.

As to racists, idiots, etc... those are found everywhere. Literally. Everywhere. You can get concentrations of them in some towns and maybe a town might be run by such people. But that's just a roll of the dice. You get similar things in big cities. I will grant the big cities tend to have very bland consistent ineffectual politicians that don't especially represent or inspire anyone. Yes, they're rarely racists but they're also much more often corrupt products of machine politics. That is, they're not racists because what they really are is opportunists in it for the money.

As to ignorance, I've lived in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. I question whether you've ever stepped outside of your bubble. And that being the likely case, I question your right to call anyone else ignorant on the issue. Your arguments were mostly stereotypes perpetuated by television that drones buy into because they don't know any better.

In the US, professional football is actually sustained by television... not stadium attendance. What is more, you have many teams in small cities or even towns that do quite well.

The Green Bay Packers for example are based in Green Bay Wisconsin... which has a population of about 100,000.

So there you go... football team... at 100,000... now explain why you need to have 15 million people in the same place?

As to bands and other entertainment venues, you can't be telling me you live in the city to go to music concerts and football games.

For one thing, you could commute for that sort of thing. Consider the motorcycle conventions. People ride them from hundreds if not thousands of miles away just to all show up in the same place and have a convention. They could do it anywhere. One of the bigger ones "Sturgis" happens in Sturgis south Dakota every year and draws about half a MILLION people every year. Guess what the population of Sturgis is normally? About six thousand.

So I call bunk on your whole notion. It makes no sense. I know a lot of people that live in New York and they never go to plays, theater, shows, concerts, or anything. They just live there. And what portion of that city's population do you think actually does any of that stuff? A small fraction of the population does a lot of it. That and tourists. But most of the people that actually live there? Not so much.