When a broken tractor becomes a legal issue, the right to repair is critical

For farmers, the ability to repair equipment quickly is more than just convenient; it's essential for making a living. Yet, as farm equipment has become more technologically advanced, the legal and contractual rules governing the right to repair ("RTR") have changed, restricting when, how, and by whom repairs can be done. What was once a mechanical issue has increasingly become a legal matter. 

Photo Credit (2026): John Deere Utility Tractor

RTR is the principle that owners should be able to repair products they lawfully purchase or choose who repairs them, without being forced to use the manufacturer's authorized services. This seems straightforward; a concept that would benefit both rural and urban consumers by preventing a manufacturer's monopoly on the repair market. However, in a 2022 paper on RTR legislation, researcher and Assistant Professor Luyi Yang cautioned that: 

[RTR] legislation can potentially lead to a lose-lose-lose outcome that compromises manufacturer profit, reduces consumer surplus, and increases the environmental impact despite repair being made easier and more affordable. 

Yang's argument complicates the idea that expanding repair rights automatically helps consumers. For rural communities, this raises the question: even if broader RTR legislation changes markets, who is paying the price for limited RTR access right now, and who benefits from it?

These market dynamics are not overlooked by the federal government. In its 2021 report, Nixing the Fix, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") addressed concerns about RTR in the auto industry. While acknowledging the manufacturers' justifications, the FTC noted that many restrictions lacked empirical support. The report concluded:

Although manufacturers have offered numerous explanations for their repair restrictions, the majority are not supported by the record...[R]epair restrictions have made it difficult for consumers to exercise [the RTR].

The FTC's stance indicates a willingness to view RTR access through the lens of fair competition, rather than through contractual obligations or restraints. 

While much of the early debate over RTR focused on consumer electronics and automobiles, similar conflicts have occurred in rural America. A 2023 blog post explains that farm equipment owners have long resisted companies like John Deere, seeking the ability to repair their own machines instead of relying solely on manufacturer-controlled repair networks. 

This conflict mirrors rural legal battles over water access, as discussed in a 2026 blog post, where formal legal rights exist on paper but are limited in practice by geography and concentrated market power. In both contexts, laws interact with rural conditions in ways that can weaken rural economies. 

Steelhead Creek - Sacramento, CA (2024)

In 2025, the FTC sued John Deere over its repair practices. Plaintiffs alleged that the company's RTR restrictions created unfair barriers to competition by limiting access to diagnostic software and tools. FTC Chair Lina Khan stated that:

Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income... The FTC's action... seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice. 

Here, the law is seen not just as a neutral enforcer of contracts, but as a way to shift bargaining power between manufacturers and farmers. For the latest update on the FTC's suit against John Deere, click HERE.

Farm Action, a farmer-led advocacy group, expressed views similar to Khan, stating that manufacturers have taken away farmers' meaningful repair autonomy by withholding diagnostic software, stating:

By withholding the software to diagnose and repair, manufacturers force farmers to go to the nearest authorized dealership, which might be hundreds of miles away. 

Efforts to improve RTR access through state legislation have produced uneven results. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 33 states and Puerto Rico considered RTR legislation during the 2023 legislative session. As of today, Colorado is the only state to have enacted legislation extending RTR protections to agricultural equipment, setting an example for other states considering similar measures. 

The legal frameworks governing RTR access have obvious impacts on rural livelihoods. As the RTR movement advances, the ongoing question is whether legal systems will recognize RTR access as essential to rural economic independence or continue to frame it as an optional feature within privately controlled equipment markets. 

Who’s fighting whom? Rural-urban resource competition as misdirection

When I first read this article on the rural lawscape, my gut reaction was defensive. I learned that rural areas have fewer courts, longer police response times, and less access to legal services than urban areas. The obvious solution would be to invest more money in these areas so that they have real access to justice. But then came my instinctive urban response: who is going to fund this? The taxes from urban spaces? Why should cities subsidize rural services?

I sat with that reaction for a while. It felt spiteful, and after some time, I realized it was the wrong question.

The zero-sum framing

That article, “The Rural Lawscape: Space Tames Law Tames Space,” talks about the “mutual constitutivity” of law and rural space. Rural areas have less law because their material characteristics (low population density, distance, sparse built environment) make legal infrastructure expensive to maintain. That sparse legal presence then shapes rural culture, fostering self-reliance and skepticism toward the state.

Photo Credit: Jay Walljasper (2019)

The policy implication seems obvious: if rural residents want more legal infrastructure, they need more funding. And state funding is finite, and largely comes from the taxes of wage-earners in the city. So rural gains mean urban losses, right?

This framing positions rural and urban communities as competitors. It shows up in fights over federal appropriations, in resentment about which communities receive disaster relief, and in arguments about whether “real America” deserves more than coastal cities.

Prior posts on this blog have explored related dynamics. One post on California redistricting quoted a rural rice and walnut farmer: “People in the cities don’t have a clue what it takes to survive out here. I don’t think people that were born and raised in the cities can represent us to the same extent.” This frames the issue as the big-city bureaucrats thinking they know better than the rural folk with their actual lived experiences.

Another post on the Secure Rural Schools Act documented how a rural school superintendent made fourteen trips to Washington over three years to secure funding that Congress acknowledged had bipartisan support but still allowed to lapse. The funding was described as “budget dust” relative to federal spending. If rural needs are so uncontroversial and so cheap, why did it take three years and fourteen flights?

The actual budget

To help me put all this in perspective, I considered the scale of American federal spending. The FY2025 defense budget request was $849.8 billion. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had access to $28.7 billion in 2025. Customs and Border Protection’s budget was more than $19 billion for that year.

Meanwhile, the Legal Services Corporation asked for only $1.797 billion in 2025, while facing the threat of a proposed 46% budget cut. The LSC provides federal funding for civil legal aid to low-income Americans in both rural and urban areas.

Photo Credit: Mina Corpuz (2026)

The access-to-justice gap that the rural lawscape article documents is not expensive to address relative to other federal priorities. The entire LSC budget is less than 0.2% of defense spending. Meaningful investment in rural legal infrastructure, or urban legal infrastructure, would cost a rounding error on military appropriations.

This pattern holds across federal spending. In FY2023, 62% of the federal discretionary budget went to militarized programs: war, weapons, law enforcement, incarceration, detention, and deportation. Less than $2 out of every $5 in federal discretionary spending went to education, housing, childcare, disaster relief, environmental protection, or scientific research. Since 2001, the federal government has added $2 to the discretionary budget for militarism for every $1 added to invest in communities.

Meanwhile, wealth inequality has reached historic levels. In 1963, the wealthiest families had 36 times the wealth of families in the middle. By 2022, they had 71 times the wealth. The incomes of rural men have stagnated for 50 years, while the top 1% saw their incomes increase by 229% between 1979 and 2019. Rural and urban working people have both lost ground to the same forces.

The federal government has the money to fund rural communities. It simply chooses to fund violence in place of investment. The scarcity that pits rural against urban is not a fact of nature. It is a policy choice.

The shared problem

Both rural and urban poor face access-to-justice gaps. Rural residents drive hours to reach a courthouse. Urban residents wait months for overburdened public defenders. The material conditions differ, but the underlying problem is the same: inadequate funding for legal infrastructure serving ordinary people. There is some federal recognition of the specific problems that rural Americans face. The Violence Against Women Act identifies domestic violence in rural areas as a focus for discretionary spending. The Crime Control Act sets aside funds specifically for rural drug enforcement.

But legislative recognition of rural disadvantage does not guarantee meaningful investment. A post on the rural health fund on this blog noted that the $50 billion rural health fund in the recent reconciliation bill came alongside $137 billion in projected Medicaid cuts to rural areas over ten years. The gesture toward rural needs accompanied a policy that undermines them.

The political function of the divide

When rural and urban residents see each other as competitors for limited resources, they do not build coalitions around shared interests in healthcare, legal access, housing, or economic security. The “why should my taxes go there” instinct, which I initially felt, plays into a framework where ordinary people fight over crumbs, instead of coming together to improve their material conditions.

Photo Credit: Jacob Migdall (2015)

A post challenging the Ezra Klein Show’s framing of rural-urban tension pointed out that rural voters alone lack the numbers to determine national elections. Blaming a “rural coalition” for federal policy obscures the urban voters who supported the same candidates and the structural factors that shape resource allocation. The framing is, as the post puts it, “inflammatory and therefore unhelpful. Of course, it is also inaccurate.”

Rural-urban resentment prevents coalition-building. When a rancher in Modoc County and an unhoused person in Sacramento see each other as competitors rather than people with shared interests in functional public services, neither builds power.

What is the baseline?

I believe everyone in the United States should have access to a viable, just legal system regardless of where they live. That belief does not require me to think rural and urban interests are identical. It requires me to think they are not fundamentally opposed.

The money exists. The obstacle is political priority. Rural-urban competition is a distraction from the actual allocation choices being made.

If you build it, they will come: Rural relocation incentive programs prove popular

In an effort to combat rural depopulation, small communities across the United States are thinking of inventive ways to encourage relocation. Programs have popped up across the country offering financial incentives to new residents, ranging from down payment assistance to cash stipends. These packages can include anything from free internet service and recreation passes to lunch with the mayor. 

An earlier post on this blog discussed how rural communities are attracting California’s remote workers to Indiana incentive programs. This post discusses two programs that have popped up in the last few years since that post that are seeking to draw folks from all backgrounds to find their new rural homes. Both programs offer bigger financial incentives than previous programs and specifically reward homeownership. 

An infrastructure project in Hickman, NE, an hour northwest of Pawnee City.

One program in Pawnee City, Nebraska, a town of about 900 residents, 90 minutes southeast of Lincoln, attracted considerable media attention last year. As part of their Vision 2030 plan, the city is offering $50,000 in down payment assistance to new home buyers. One video on the program from business news service Morning Brew garnered over one million views.  

Over the next five years, the city plans to build 25 houses, multiple apartment buildings, and new community amenities. These projects are set for infill lots already owned by the city, which has helped to reduce costs.  The first two houses will be sold for $325,000, significantly higher than the average home price of $116,768 in Pawnee City. 

But the buzz has proven to be more than just media hype. The Chamber of Commerce reported receiving 115 applications for the two homes in the first two weeks. To qualify, applicants must make no more than 120% of the Area Median Income (AMI). 

Aaron Sawyer, Pawnee City's Economic Development Director, explained to Morning Brew what kind of applicants they are looking for:

The ideal people for these homes that we're building here in Pawnee City would be people that work from home. They can get a lot more bang for their buck to come to a small town like this, in a safe environment, and their same job, and just have a much better lifestyle.

Pawnee City isn't the only place trying to attract the growing number of remote workers to rural areas. Ascend WV is one of the largest relocation programs, covering several rural communities across West Virginia. A partnership between Brad D. Smith, former CEO of Intuit, Governor Patrick Morrissey, the West Virginia Department of Tourism, and the University of West Virginia, this program provides incentives for remote workers to move to the Mountain State for at least two years. 

Maverick's Bar, located in Morgantown, WV, an Ascend WV community.

Ascend WV is offering $12,000 cash payments for relocation, paid out in monthly installments over two years. If participants choose to buy a home at any point in their two years, the remaining money can be paid out as a lump sum for a downpayment or other home-buying expenses. The program also offers free outdoor recreation and gear rentals, access to coworking spaces, professional development through West Virginia University, and exclusive social events.

The program seeks to grow West Virginia's economy while helping remote workers find a community to call home and get involved in. West Virginia recorded the ninth-worst job growth of any state coming out of the pandemic, and post-COVID corporate investment has been concentrated in wealthier-than-average counties. This program could drive spending and tax revenue to more remote locations, like New River Gorge. 

Ascend WV complements First Ascent, a program to support recent graduates of West Virginia University and avoid brain-drain.WVU Today reported that as of September 5, 2025, 

[B]oth programs have drawn nearly 65,000 applicants, relocated upwards of 950 new residents, and kept 60 graduates in West Virginia, boasting above a 96% retention rate. Notably, 38% of participants also are West Virginia homeowners.

It remains too early to tell if these relocation programs are enough to meaningfully combat rural depopulation over the long term. However, these programs have proven incredibly popular and created significant online chatter. Attracting remote workers could pay off considerably, as they are able to increase the tax base and drive up consumer spending, without taking much-needed jobs away from residents. 

The gain isn't solely with the rural community, however. Young people with remote jobs report feeling less happy and engaged in their communities. These programs, especially those that offer social engagement and recreation opportunities, can help people find their place in the world. As twin crises of affordability and loneliness impact young Americans, programs like these may offer a chance for rural areas to revitalize community, reverse demographic trends, and shore up tax revenue. 

 

Sheriffs, sovereignty, and rural governance

In much of rural America, the sheriff is not simply a law enforcement officer but a political actor with broad policymaking power. Sheriffs, like district attorneys, are elected officials who run for office on local platforms. In almost every jurisdiction, sheriffs run the county jail. In rural places where courts are distant and state capacity is limited, the sheriff operates as the face of local governance. In her recent book The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, Jessica Pishko traces the office of the sheriff from its origins to its contemporary role in American governance. Jessica Pishko’s work makes manifest that their power is a product of American legal history.

 The office originated in Anglo-Saxon England, where sheriffs functioned as local agents of the crown, responsible for tax collection. In the United States, however, that model was reshaped during the early nineteenth century.  In the Jacksonian era, the sheriff became an elected official. This move was framed as a democratic improvement on inherited English institutions. Andrew Jackson and his allies sought to expand popular participation in government by multiplying elected offices, imagining the sheriff as a representative of the yeoman farmer and working-class men rather than an arm of elite authority. That historical choice structures the office today, embedding law enforcement authority within electoral politics and helping explain why sheriffs continue to see themselves not only as enforcers of law, but as truest local interpreters.

Control over the county jail is a central source of the sheriff’s authority. As a 2012 blog post, “Rural politics, patronage and (their links to) prisons” identifies, in rural areas, the jail is often one of the largest sources of revenue collection. This reinforces the sheriff's authority and provides strong incentives to expand jail capacity and keep beds filled, especially in rural counties with limited tax bases and alternative sources of public funding. 

Credit: "Summit County Sheriff Ford Taurus Interceptor" by Seluryar is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The county jail also functions as a central site of policymaking. Tasked with operating county jails, the sheriff makes unilateral decisions about booking, detention, intergovernmental contracts, and immigration enforcement. These decisions take on fiscal significance because the sheriff is not merely enforcing criminal law, but managing an enterprise that directly affects the county’s budget. In this way, jail administration transforms the sheriff into a powerful local political actor whose enforcement choices are inseparable from questions of governance. 

Recognizing sheriffs as political actors helps explain their increased prominence in national politics. Sheriffs run for office every four years, often in off-cycle elections that depress turnout and insulate incumbents. Many sheriffs campaign on political platforms. Association with the Republican Party is a recent and increasingly prominent phenomenon. As Pishko explains, crime and immigration have become central issues in national conservative politics, making sheriffs attractive allies. Within firmly conservative rural counties, the sheriff has embraced its political dimension. 

In interviews and reporting, Pishko documents the rise of the so-called “constitutional sheriff” movement. The movement argues that sheriffs have a special duty to uphold the original Constitution, positioning the sheriff as a bulwark against distant state and federal authority. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought these dynamics to a head. When governors issued mask mandates and business-closure orders, local enforcement frequently fell to sheriffs. Many sheriffs, especially those in rural areas, were reluctant to enforce the orders. Sheriffs deployed the rhetoric of the “constitutional sheriff,” to justify refusing to enforce these orders. Sheriffs framed themselves as originalist interpreters of the Constitution tasked with protecting private property, gun rights, and religious freedom from elite liberal technocrats. The movement drew energy from longstanding rural anti-government traditions, including militia movements and the sovereign-citizen ideology.

The rise of the constitutional sheriff is a symptom of hollowed out state capacity in rural America. Sheriffs may seem local and accountable, but they wield extraordinary power with minimal oversight. In rural America, the sheriff's office is not simply enforcing the law, it is often deciding what the law will be.

Right to water: Not for California's rural residents?

In 2012, California passed AB 685, becoming the first state to recognize the human right to water. Despite this, as of 2024, over 900,000 California residents get water from water systems that fail to provide them with safe, clean drinking water. 

In 2024, the California State Water Resources Control Board published data showing that 379 of the 457 failing water systems were small water systems with 3,000 or less service connections (often translating to households), mostly located in California's rural agricultural regions in the Central Coast or San Joaquin Valley. Most of these systems rely on groundwater, which may be contaminated with arsenic, nitrate, or 1,2,3-TCP (trichloropropane).

This map shows all of the failing water systems in California that serve a population of less than 5,000. Credit: SAFER Dashboard

San Lucas is a small unincorporated rural community in the Salinas Valley with a population of 324. San Lucas has been on a 'do not drink' order for over 10 years from elevated levels of nitrate in their water supply. The community's wells are located on nearby farmland, where nitrate from crop fertilizer leeches into the groundwater that the well ultimately pulls from. Nitrate consumption has been linked to cancers and pregnancy complications, including "blue baby syndrome."

San Lucas residents are incredibly burdened by the lack of access to clean drinking water. The State provides households with 15 gallons of water per week, but for most families these 15 gallons do not meet their household's needs. Imagine if you are a family of five or six, having to allocate 15 gallons between your family for drinking, cooking, and sometimes even bathing.  

Allotment of water jugs. Credit: Ray Chavez

Residents in San Lucas have complained of skin irritation even from bathing in the water and often choose to bath young children in bottled water, or rinse with bottled water, despite the California Department of Public Health saying that babies can be bathed in nitrate contaminated water. Most residents drive to King City (10 miles away) to buy bottled water to supplement the allocated bottled water, and still have to pay their water bill for unsafe water. 

Access to safe drinking water is an ongoing problem. The Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience Program (SAFER) was established in 2019, allocating $130 million each year, to provide a funding source for operation and maintenance costs, consolidation projects, replacement water, and funding for administrators. Since 2019, SAFER has provided $700 million in grants for small, disadvantaged communities in California. While SAFER was originally set to end in 2030, in 2025 the California legislature extended the yearly allocation of funds to 2045.

San Lucas has spent years trying to figure out the solution to their problem. The community has received a little over half a million dollars in technical assistance funding from the SAFER program. This money has funded a study of solutions, with alternatives including an 8 mile pipeline to King City, two different well-head treatment systems, and building a new well. 

In June of 2025, the San Lucas County Water District (the small company providing water to San Lucas) voted to pursue alternative four, build a new well. But building a new well comes with its own uncertainties. 

As Paul Hamann has previously discussed on the blog, rural landowners of private domestic wells are facing the ongoing problem wells drying up due to over-pumping. Private domestic wells provide water to between 1.5 and 2.5 million California residents, but are not regulated by the state. If you own a private domestic well, you are responsible for testing for contaminants to ensure that it is safe to drink. 

While any new well built by San Lucas would still be a part of a water system regulated by the state, they undoubtedly will face the same uncertainties of ensuring that their well does not run dry. Seemingly even more pressing, how can San Lucas ensure that their new well does not face the same fate as the current wells? Surrounded by agriculture, it seems like a tall task to find a location to drill a new well safe from nitrate contamination. 

Whatever path ends up being taken, there is no doubt that these communities, especially San Lucas, need clean drinking water, and they needed it ten years ago. While the State Water Board may tout that 98% of California's have clean drinking water, we cannot choose to neglect 2% because of their location in rural areas. 

The changing Chinese attitude towards the rural

I was born in Shanghai at the turn of the century in Zhongshan Park, rooted in the heart of Shanghai. In the 1930s, my grandfather watched as the roots of the first international port in China shot off into a burgeoning international hub. Following WW2, my father watched factories churn out concrete and asphalt onto the packed dirt and cobblestone streets of the city as the rapid industrialization of China choked out any surviving remnants of Imperial China.

 

    Old Shanghai Circa 1960s

By the time I was born, modern Shanghai had been presented to the world, a true “global” city by the metrics of international research impact and the size of its economy, China’s New York and London wrapped into one neon package. In the twenty years since, it has only grown, the bright skylines on both sides of the Huangpu River, Puxi and Pudong, divided in appearance only by the living memory and history of Pudong’s more humble origins.

View landing into Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Oct 2025

  The Bund, Shanghai, Oct 2025

In the day of my father, the city was the desired end goal, the only location where the rapidly industrializing China could be experienced by the formerly agrarian subsistence farmers that had always comprised the bulk of China. The city was where any enterprising person could get rich, the gateway to the unimaginable international world. A hukou (a little more about that from Professor Pruitt and the Economist) in the city was the most desirable to be able to get the exclusive social services only allowed for the residents of the city.

And yet, core to the Maoist uplifting of the “pure” agrarian proletariat was the belief that the city cultivated pro-bourgeois sentiments, and from the 1950s to the 1970s, the urban youths were all sent to countryside (a collection of photos detailing the Back to the Countryside Movement collected by Dartmouth here) in the belief that the hard living of rural life would leave them firm believers of social equality, as well as build the toughness that only farming and ranching builds (A little more on that from Professor Pruitt).

At the time, the idea to stay in the communes was unthinkable, the whole experience an experience in the same type of biting poverty that they had lived through during the revolution. In many respects, the rural people were the same people as the impoverished peasantry that had long suffered. In some parts of China today, any reference to the mountains still carries the old reference to the impoverished villages that remain in those areas (a la hillbillies). The food of such areas remains directly translated as “dirt food” or peasant food.

Today, however, there is a growing counterculture, two generations after the boom. Rising costs in the city make finding a job, buying an apartment, starting a family prohibitively expensive for graduates of even the most elite universities. Rising youth employment (near 20%)  reveals the worst job market China has ever seen (A slight improvement in this new 2026 quarter by South China Morning Post). Even given the opportunities of the urban environment, the struggle and competition itself can be overwhelming even for those that grew up with it.

Growing numbers of Chinese youths seek to escape to the rural, rather than continue in the struggle of urban life. This trend continues even with the loosening restrictions among the obtaining of a hukou, and the courting of these new exurban residents to new cities.

As The Economist points out:

It had taken just two generations for a Chinese family to pass from pre-industrial agrarianism to post-material urban malaise

In this the Chinese and the Americans are now more similar than different. As China’s growth slows down as America's did in the 1980s, and the glow of the urban lights stings more than it inspires, with it will come the nostalgia for what is gone. When the struggles of poverty are removed, only the admittedly beautiful view remains.

  My Mom's hometown, now a highway, circa 2010s

Rural tourism: a double-edged sword

Summer Hike 2025 - Kīholo Bay, Big Island, HI 

Where tourists vacation, money often flows: lodging bookings increase, more jobs are created, and the beauties of rural communities are discovered. The reality, however, is that the people and places making money aren't always the ones paying the price for over-tourism. Within this context, people like environmentalist Hanan Kouli are part of a movement supporting rural tourism. 

Kouli explained the significance of tourism to rural economies in places like Hawaii, and the need for a more sustainable approach, stating:

...[M]any residents rely on [tourism]...The problem isn't tourism, it's too much tourism without enough care. 

As someone from a rural island community, it's encouraging that tourists and locals alike recognize the harms of mass tourism, even though it can also be a double-edged sword. Without increased community control, rural tourism can reproduce the same harms as mass tourism - displacement and cultural commodification - albeit with better branding than mass tourism. 

What is rural tourism? 

Rural tourism occurs in non-urban areas and is considered a sustainable alternative to mass tourism. A 2015 blog post put it even more simply, defining rural tourism as: 

...[T]he country experience [with] opportunities for visitors to directly experience agricultural and/or natural environments. 

I felt the appeal of that "country experience" while staying on a farm in New Zealand. Even then, it was clear that rural areas were still recovering from COVID-19's impact on the tourism industry. Indeed, especially after COVID-19, one benefit of rural tourism is attracting more tourists like me, who seek rural destinations to avoid large crowds and experience a different way of life.

Farm Stay 2024 - New Zealand

What are the benefits of rural tourism?

At its best, rural tourism can broaden the local economy by keeping income streams rooted in rural communities instead of flowing from (or towards) urban centers. The promise is simple: jobs and demand for local businesses in rural areas. According to a 2023 article from the journal for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, rural tourism:

...[Promotes] rural community development and...could counteract the negative impacts of urbanization.

Hawaii offers an illustration of how that can play out. Tourism is the state's largest economic driver, but the benefits are most visible when tourism dollars circulate through rural communities, rather than resorts. This is particularly true in rural areas that offer  "authentic" island experiences, like the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC), Hawaii's top-paid tourist attraction. 

Mariott Resort 2024 - Ko'olina, Oahu

However one views it culturally, PCC channels visitor spending into the rural community where it operates - supporting jobs, and for many workers, substantial college scholarships. 

Sadie's Inn 2025 - Utulei, American Samoa

Similar dynamics show up in my home country of American Samoa. Tourism helps offset the country's financial reliance on its tuna processing plant - Starkist - which makes up about one-third of its workforce. Rural attractions like the National Park and Ofu Beach draw tourists whose spending supports lodging, food service, and cultural education.

My criticisms of rural tourism

My gripe with rural tourism is rooted in concern about what happens to "authenticity" once it becomes the selling point. What was once authentic is often changed to meet consumer expectations rather than community needs. That was the dynamic Professor Lisa Pruitt described as "faux rural" in her 2013 blog post. 

Sapphire Princess 2023 - Pago Pago, American Samoa

The trade-off of living in a highly marketable rural "paradise" is that it can make you feel like you're always on display. When tourists arrive expecting a specific version of island life, the pressure to look the part increases. A 2023 study on the Socio-Cultural Effects of Rural Tourism observed that 

...[T]he development of tourism in rural communities has the potential to produce unwanted socio-cultural consequences.

I felt that dynamic early. As a child, I remember giving staged performances for tourists. Those dances weren't fake, but over time, the performance mindset skewed my perception of "authenticity."  

So, what now?

I can't deny the economic benefit that rural tourism has brought to rural communities, mine included. I still see it as a bridge between the "urban-rural" divide discussed in Professor Pruitt's 2024 blog post. The goal isn't to eliminate tourism; it's to shape it on community terms. 

What does this look like? Perhaps restrictions on short-term rentals, visitor caps, or local hiring requirements. In any case, increased community control is essential to stop rural tourism from reproducing the same harms as mass tourism.