Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.
That’ll just lead to people on the opposite side of the spectrum (politically and in terms of being more urban) asking why their tax dollars are going towards a bunch of rednecks living in the middle of nowhere and destroying the earth with their heavily car-dependent lifestyles. _They should move to the city if they want a fire department! Otherwise, pay for it yourself or quit yer bitchin!_
> Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.
Perhaps the reason is because the people they “should” be voting for, according to you, are tied to a lot of social policies that these rural folks find deeply disagreeable. In a similar vein, if the 2024 Republican president campaigned on true free healthcare and massive taxes for the rich, you wouldn’t chide Democrat voters for not voting for that candidate on account of his social policies, now would you?
But all that being said, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat that said they wanted free health care and also bring back segregation and laws against miscegenation. The first affects me and everyone in my family and the second would affect my son and my soon to be daughter in law.
Democrats are not saying they want universal healthcare only for blue areas.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
They can’t afford $5000 a year for software. I work in consulting, that is less than half of what my company bills me out for a week as a staff consultant.
Suburbs of Austin is not what people call rural America
There’s also small towns or clusters of homes in the middle of nowhere where most of the residents disagree from the communities surrounding them. They don’t necessarily have enough votes to make a dent, but they also exist.
Assuming people’s politics or worth based on where they live leads to unpleasant outcomes.
On the other hand, if you involuntarily live at low densities because of gatekeepers in the city who have prevented housing from being built for the last dozen decades or so, then we should fix that so that anyone who wants to live in a city with excellent and cheap fire protection can do so.
Importantly, neither of these have anything to do with capitalism or private equity.
My issue is not that rural America is poor. My issue is that there vote for politicians whose explicit goal is not to help them. But that’s okay as long as the politicians “fight the woke”.
Re: farmers - are farms themselves a big farm risk? I can imagine farm workers living in nearby towns requiring fire service, but not the farms themselves or farm owners. I can see the case for public funding of fire service for such towns, but density still matters - if 1000 farm workers each live on their own acre (~42,000 sqft), it's going to cost more to provide fire service than they live on a 1,000 sqft lot, or in a 1,000 sqft apartment in a 4 storey building. Most of North American land use will require them to live much less densely than they might have otherwise, driving up the cost of infra & fire service.
These places use volunteers because fire is rare, but they still need some kind of fire service just in case. They often get their expensive equipment from grants, it’s the labor that’s provided by the community.
