Rural Abundance is Possible

“Abundance” Is Not the Answer, attempts to level a critique toward Abundance of being elitist, which we’ve heard before. While starting with by acknowledging the strengths of Abundance, this seems as cover to drop a critique suggesting that Abundance is an attack on rural areas, and is aligned only with urban elites.

That’s a mischaracterization, I’ll explain. But first, let’s examine the messenger here. Christopher F. Jones, is the author of The Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Came to Believe a Dangerous Delusion. You could call this book as in the degrowth camp; it doesn’t try to associate itself with the term, but it’s close enough to readily be mistaken for one. I think this is the real critique that Christopher has. The review does touch on this, so it’s not entirely dishonest, but it’s structured to focus on this rural aspect. A problem here is that Christopher’s set of ideals will not connect with a rural audience.

While Jones frames 'Abundance' as an urban-centric project based on its examples, this overlooks how its core principles of unlocking growth and innovation are directly applicable to rural challenges.

I think the topic of growth is a good focal point to understand how the rural perspective connects here. It can be complex to communicate how a rural perspective fits with an urban one. But ultimately, they have to fit. Some attempts to ignore the need for them fit result in explanations that I ultimately feel are dishonest. Take the degrowth argument. In theory, you could argue some aspects of it to rural audiences. You’d present an argument that a lack of growth ensures stability; a preservation of the current way of life against disruptive change, sometimes romanticized as a simple 'return to nature.'

The failure of that thinking is that if all 300 million Americans tried to be farmers, we’d all have very small farms. It’s logically impossible when you think it through. You can celebrate American farmers and care for their concerns without ignoring that diversity is needed. Both urban and rural are needed, and neither should sneer at the other.

Unfortunately there is a bit of sneering going on. I could list a few other reasons for this, but let’s stick to one here, which is the presumption that the other is an attack on the other way of living. This presumption isn’t without any merit, but it is often exaggerated. A growing city will put pressure on surrounding farms. But most farms are not near a growing city. In addition, the urban development that Abundance focuses on unblocking offers an alternative to suburban development that would otherwise put pressure on more land.

What type of growth is that? Suburban growth. When you look at the actual points of interference, suburban growth is that one that puts the pressure on the most rural areas. Urban growth, reduces the demand for suburban growth, and thus reduces pressures on rural areas. One of the great ironies of many debates about urban growth is the presumption that enabling urban growth diminishes the choices of rural residents, when it’s the opposite.

Abundance does not advocate allowing urban construction to abandon rural areas. It advocates it to meet the already existing demand for urban housing. You meet the demand for urban housing by supplying urban housing. The land needs of that housing are proportionally small. Rural populations shouldn’t be afraid of urban populations growing, they should be afraid of rural populations growing, because we’ve already occupied all the land.

In that sense, the anti-growth argument could make superficial sense to rural populations. But this perspective often underestimates the pro-growth sentiment within many rural communities, which have frequently embraced economic development and new technologies.

One might make an argument that the strength of anti-immigrant views in America today are partially the fault of cities failing to absorb immigrant populations to the degree they have at other points in US history. Immigration views involve more than where people move, but in recent years rural area population growth is almost entirely due to international migration. Historically, large cities served as the primary engines for integrating new immigrants, offering established social networks and diverse job markets. But when the cost of entry to these cities—namely, housing—becomes prohibitively high, immigrants are forced to seek opportunities elsewhere. Increasingly, this means moving to smaller, rural towns where their arrival can represent a more sudden demographic shift.

Like land use, if you look, you can find other examples where successful cities prevent pressures on rural communities, and failing ones create it. In other cases, examples of Abundance aligned policies such as in healthcare and education, are already equally supportive of rural areas.

Abundance hasn’t yet connected with rural populations, but it hasn’t been rejected either. The people saying it can’t connect with rural populations are not rural, and are not typically well liked by these populations, which makes the critique a bit hollow. Without a doubt, the interface has to be different. Advocating for more urban housing and advocating more rural housing are not the same.

There’s many aspects of Abundance that should directly support rural areas. Wind and solar are already bringing stable incomes to rural areas. We mentioned the interplay of land demand and meeting housing demand. Rural populations don’t want to be left out of electricity and communication networks. They may be skeptical of some inventions, like robotics, but they aren’t the only ones, and generally if they're given a chance to make their own decisions, they adopt these things. Most of all, unblocking factory construction, both directly, and via unblocking needed infrastructure will matter to those places that already have populations but desire more job opportunities.

Are there more ideas that are missing today? I’m guessing yes, and I suspect the best people to contribute those ideas are rural populations. What they don’t need is degrowth authors telling them this idea, it isn’t for them. They are absolutely welcome.