The incompatibilities between the personality traits of lawyers and rural people

One of my uncles is a large, scary man. When he was younger, he regularly attended mixed martial arts events. On most occasions, he was approached by promoters and asked if he had ever considered becoming a fighter. As a young man seeking fortune, he instead set his eyes on what he was told was an extremely lucrative activity: a season of crab fishing.

This type of fishing can be a grueling endeavor. The crews who sign up for it usually expect to work long (regularly over 12 hours) days in freezing weather. With little privacy or connection to the world outside the boat, the weeks (sometimes months) they spend in the boat can really do a number on their mental health. My uncle thought himself perfectly equipped for this job. Alas, it was not the case. Before long, the loneliness and taxing nature of the job got to him. About 2 weeks in, he suffered from a panic attack. Forsaking his dreams of riches, he demanded to be done with the whole thing well before the fishing season ended. He got stuck with the bill for the helicopter lift off the boat.

The key thing my uncle failed to consider was his own personality. Despite his intimidating appearance, he is actually a very warm person who thrives on social interaction. He was not well suited for the life of an Alaskan crab fisherman. He now makes a comfortable living as a pest control technician here in sunny California. If you asked him, he would tell you that there is no amount of money that could have compelled him to stay in that boat for another second.

Several American legal scholars have brought up the issue of the lack of lawyers in rural areas. A common prescription to this issue is financial incentives for lawyers who commit to working in these areas for some time. Whenever such an idea comes up, I always think of my uncle, barely holding onto his sanity in a tiny boat on the Bering Sea.

The personality profile of lawyers has been the subject of some research. The research suffers from a lack of uniformity as to how personality is measured, a problem which permeates the field of psychometrics. The Big Five personality trait model divides personality into five factors (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) each measured along a continuum.

No single scientific paper collects data and analyzes trends on all five of the Big Five personality traits of American lawyers. Such papers exist for legal professionals in Germany and Israel. The cultural consensus on the Big Five personality traits of lawyers seems to be that lawyers are higher than the average person in openness (creativity and willingness to entertain new ideas) and conscientiousness (diligence and thoroughness). On the other hand, it seems that most people think that lawyers are significantly lower than the average person on agreeableness (willingness to kindly cooperate with others). The research on extraversion and neuroticism (proneness to depression and irritability), indicates that lawyers are lower in extraversion and higher in neuroticism than the average person.

With some idea of the type of person who becomes a lawyer, we turn our eyes to rural populations. A study compares Big Five traits among urban, suburban and rural populations. The study establishes that rural people tend to be higher than their urban counterparts in extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They are also lower than urbanites in conscientiousness and openness. As described here, lawyers and rural populations are almost mirror images in terms of personality. The only trait which they share is their higher than average neuroticism, which probably does not make for a winning combination.

The cited study qualifies each of these disparities as nonsignificant when one controls for socio-demographic characteristics. This means that rural people do not display the above characteristics because they live in rural areas. Rather, they display them because they are much more likely to be poor, old and less formally educated (“POL”) than urban people, and the aforementioned set of personality traits is highly correlated with a person being POL.

One might suspect that this personality contrast applies to rural populations when compared with any high-income or highly specialized professions, but the evidence suggests otherwise. In Personality and Medical Specialty Choice: A Literature Review and Integration, family care physicians are characterized as high in agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism, and only average or low in openness. At first glance, physicians appear to share far more personality traits with rural populations than lawyers, differing primarily in conscientiousness.

It has been proposed that the legal system might benefit from offering lawyers debt relief if they serve in a rural communities for a certain number of years, much like existing programs for physicians. While I cannot see how such a policy could be harmful, it could definitely face the personality profile of lawyers as compared with that of physicians and rural populations as a major hurdle.

This raises the question of what to do about it. Government-mandated personality changes are still unfeasible, and while money can do fearsome things to a person, it is not clear that it is adequate to overcome absolutely anything. It certainly could not keep my uncle in a lonely boat in Alaskan waters.

One idea is for law schools to admit classes with more varied personality profiles, including people more amenable to rural life. There is some evidence that law schools select for and exacerbate the personality traits characteristic of lawyers. However, rejecting applicants on the grounds of being “too diligent” or “too willing to engage with new ideas” would understandably raise other concerns.

Burning down the house: California’s fire insurance crisis

California residents have become accustomed to historically large wildfires occurring at an astonishing pace, with eight of the ten largest fires ever recorded in California occurring in the last 10 years. The increasing frequency and destructiveness of wildfires has strained fire insurance systems to a near breaking point, and rural communities are often the most impacted by both wildfires and rising insurance costs.

Fire danger sign on scorched ground outside Klamath. Image source: National Interagency Fire Center

A primer on California’s FAIR Plan

California’s FAIR Plan, commonly referred to as the “insurer of last resort,” was created by the California Legislature in 1968 to act as a temporary safety net for homeowners who were unable to find home insurance from regular providers. Unlike a typical home insurance plan, the FAIR Plan only covers fire damage to structures, not household goods or personal liability. Contrary to public perception, the FAIR Plan is not a state funded insurer. The FAIR Plan is instead a state managed insurance pool comprised of all private insurers licensed to conduct business in California.

When FAIR Plan premiums fail to cover their exposure, the California Insurance Commissioner may levy assessments of up to a total of $1 billion per year (gross, not per insurer) against private insurers based on the market share of these insurers. Ostensibly, private insurers are not permitted to pass the costs of these assessments along to their ratepayers without approval from the Insurance Commissioner.

Trends in FAIR Plan usage

FAIR Plan usage has grown significantly in recent years. In 2009, only 7% of California ZIP codes had FAIR Plan policies that accounted for more than 10% of policies in that ZIP code. By 2022, this was true of 22% of California ZIP codes. FAIR Plan usage tends to be much higher in rural areas, as demonstrated by the below map, published by Avery Bick and Nam Nguyen in this post.



To select a few extreme examples from this map, one ZIP code located in Placer County where the largest community, Foresthill, has a population of 1692, has a FAIR Plan rate of 69.625%. Another ZIP code in Orange county has a FAIR Plan rate of 79.67%, and their largest community, Silverado, has a population of only 932.

While the FAIR Plan was not intended to insure such a large proportion of California’s residents, the reason why that trend is unfolding is quite clear: private insurers are fleeing the state as fast as they can. State Farm (still the largest insurer in California) and Allstate stopped writing new homeowner fire policies in 2022. A series of other large insurers left the state in the following years, with Nationwide, Farmers, Travelers, Tokio, and American National all ceasing to write new policies from 2023-2025.

As FAIR Plan usage has expanded, premiums for FAIR Plan policies have also increased significantly, with some consumers seeing rate increases (rarely) as high as 300% in a single year. While the average FAIR Plan policy costs around $3,200 per year, it is common for policies to cost more than $10,000 per year in high fire risk areas.

Why has rural California been hit so hard by the insurance crisis?

The reason that this crisis has hit rural California particularly hard is relatively intuitive. As phrased by Prof. Minnich of UC Riverside, “People want to live with nature, but they don’t recognize that nature is explosively flammable.”

Housing in wildland urban interface (WUI) areas is much more prone to fire damage. Defined commonly as an area where urban development mingles with undeveloped wildland vegetation, WUI overlaps significantly with areas typically considered rural, but it may also include development on the outskirts of urban centers.

Residential development in WUI is the fastest growing land use type in the United States, with the number of houses in WUI increasing by 46% from 1990 to 2020. California has seen the greatest increase of houses in WUI, with one third of California households in WUI as of 2020. Note the striking resemblance that the below map of change in WUI in California, published by Prof. Miriam Greenberg in this article, bears to the above map of FAIR Plan coverage rates.



The increasing number of houses in high fire risk areas coupled with more frequent and destructive fires have proved a hurdle that insurers are often unable to clear without substantial premium increases.

The future of the FAIR Plan

Increased reliance on the FAIR Plan, along with massive exposure from the Palisades and Eaton fires has led Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to levy the first assessment against FAIR Plan member companies since 1994. The assessment is for the full $1 billion allowed. 

Additionally, Commissioner Lara mandated the use of wildfire catastrophe models in FAIR Plan's most recent rate increase application. The rate increase currently proposed would average a 35.8% increase, with about half of policyholders seeing an increase between 40% and 50%.

In addition to these efforts by the Department of Insurance, a variety of legislative measures have been passed or proposed to address California's insurance crisis. One of the most notable among these is Assemblymember Lisa Calderon's (D, 56th District) AB 1680, which seeks to overhaul the FAIR Plan in a number of ways, perhaps most significantly by extending FAIR Plan coverage to water damage, personal injury liability, and other coverages typical of standard home insurance policies. 

Conclusions

These and other measures taken by California in response to the Palisades and Eaton fire make clear that policymakers know action is needed, but there is little doubt that they are inadequate. While efforts to mitigate the costs to FAIR Plan policyholders are important, California's insurance crisis is inherent in our homebuilding choices and lack of adequate wildfire hardening. As previous blog posts have noted, wildfire prevention efforts in rural areas of California are severely underfunded. Without serious efforts to mitigate wildfire risk, California is unlikely to halt the exodus of private insurers. 

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 a convenience; 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 like a straightforward concept that would benefit both rural and urban consumers by preventing a manufacturer's monopoly in 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:

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 Professor Pruitt's 2014 book chapter 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 I'd asked the wrong question.

The zero-sum framing

Pruitt's chapter, “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 to get the money allocated?

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 distributes 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 chapter 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 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 invested 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 invest in rural communities. It simply chooses to fund violence. 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 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. This is a gesture toward rural needs accompanied by a policy that actively 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 emerged through state  initiatives 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 they 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.  The money for this program has come from a grant from the Nebraska Affordable Housing Trust,

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 proved 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), $108,375 for a family of four.

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. The community there still faces long-standing infrastructure concerns, like sufficient housing for residents, even after the recent designation of New River Gorge as a National Park. 

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 operate the county jail. In rural places where courts may be 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. 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. Pishko traces the office to 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” observed, 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 his 2021 law review article titled Jails, Sheriffs, and Carceral Policymaking, UCLA Law Professor Aaron Littman argues that sheriffs play a central role in driving jail growth. He shows how electoral and fiscal incentives at the county level create pressures that favor jail growth. Since the late 1980s, capacity has grown faster than the jail population itself. Because sheriffs are the officials who initiate and justify new jail construction, this expansion suggests they are actively pushing growth, rather than just responding to crowding. 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 typically run for office every four years, often in off-cycle elections that depress turnout and insulate incumbents (some jurisdictions it is two years). 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, more than 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 under a 'do not drink' order for over 10 years because of 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." The California Department of Public Health has told San Lucas residents that because nitrate is not absorbed through the skin, babies can be bathed in contaminated water. But most residents choose to use bottled water for bathing, or at least rinsing, young children because of skin irritation they experience.

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 being a family of five or six, having to allocate 15 gallons among your family for drinking, cooking, and sometimes even bathing. To supplement the small amount of water given to them, residents drive to King City (10 miles away) to buy bottled water. Still the must pay a flat rate water bill for unsafe water. 

Allotment of water jugs. Credit: Ray Chavez

California has attempted to address this problem through the creation of the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience Program (SAFER). Established in 2019, SAFER allocates $130 million each year to provide a funding source for operation and maintenance costs, consolidation projects, replacement water, and funding for administrators. Since in creation, 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 solve their water 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, or drilling 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: drill a new well. But drilling a new well comes with its own uncertainties. 

As Paul Hamann previously discussed on this blog, many rural landowners of private domestic wells are facing the problem of 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 drilled 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 agricultural land, it seems like a tall task to find a location to drill a new well safe from nitrate contamination. 

Whatever path San Lucas takes, there is no doubt that many communities need clean drinking water. Indeed, they needed it ten years ago. While the State Water Board may tout that 98% of California's have clean drinking water, we must not neglect the other 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 the city. 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 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 who had always comprised the bulk of China's populace. The city was where any enterprising person could get rich, the gateway to the unimaginable international world. A hukou (a little more about that in this prior post and the Economist) in the city was the most desirable to be able to get the exclusive social services reserved for the residents of the city.

And yet, core to the Maoist goal of uplifting the “pure” agrarian proletariat was the belief that the city cultivated undesirable pro-bourgeois sentiments, and thus, from the 1950s to the 1970s, urban youths were all sent to countryside (a collection of photos detailing the Back to the Countryside Movement collected by the University of Dartmouth here). The thinking was that the hard work of rural life would leave them firm believers of social equality, while also fostering the toughness that only farming and ranching builds (Read more here).

Until the Back to the Countryside movement ended in the 1980s, the idea to stay in the rural communes was unthinkable, the whole experience a memory 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, a growing counterculture has emerged, two generations after the boom. Rising costs in the city make finding a job, buying an apartment and starting a family prohibitively expensive for graduates of even the most elite universities. Rising youth unemployment (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 in the context of urban opportunities, the struggle and competition itself can be overwhelming even for those who grew up with it.

Growing numbers of Chinese youths seek to escape to the rural, rather than continue in the race of urban life. This trend continues even with the now easier process for the obtaining of a hukou, and the friendlier sentiments inviting these new exurban residents to new cities. 

The Economist points out that:

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 as America's did in the 1980s, and the glow of the urban lights burns more than it inspires, with it will come the nostalgia for what is gone. When the struggles of rural poverty are removed, only the admittedly beautiful view remains.

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