Is Wal-Mart good or bad for rural communities?
Well, it’s both. Okay, there may be nothing culturally unique about the clerks in the accounting department at City Hall or the radiologist at the local hospital who could be replaced through tele-medicine. But they are important people in a rural community, who bring more to the place than what they earn on the job. They are the volunteers at the school (or school board members), the stalwarts of the county political party or the people who know and carry on the history of the place. Broadband could have the same effect as school consolidation, displacing local activities and professions and replacing them with centralized services miles away. On a similar note, the widespread school consolidation movement of the 1960s and 70s provided rural communities with improved facilities and modern learning environments. At the same time, however, consolidation displaced teachers, administrators, and staff members, while massively increasing the length of some students’ commuting times. Further
