I think you are mistaking me wanting rural life to be different with wanting it to be worse. I maybe worded things in a confusing way. I'm not advocating for rural areas not to have electricity again that was an old timey example. I just think it should be different. Simpler. Like think solarpunk. back gardens. clothes on a line. a few animals. etc. The issue now is that rural areas are forced to basically strive for the same ways of making a living as city dwellers because everything is so expensive. You can't live a simple life and relax if a tiny shack is 150k usd and you have a yearly tax on the place you live, and you need a car to drive to the massive big box store that charges the same prices for food as youd see in the city. And then the pervasiveness of tech is a huge issue.

Like yeah you'd have less of the convenience services, and you should, like doordash, uber, etc. But it should also be much cheaper to just live a simple life out there.

I'd also push back on the past having been worse in rural areas. Like the time periods we are talking about where rural areas rarely had electricity were the same ones where cities had shit in the streets and smog like crazy. I'd rather make do without power personally.