People in those towns have family connections going back centuries in some cases. They wouldn't even take a buyout, because they know everyone and it would be like losing family. If you haven't exper it, it doesn't seem like a valuable thing to worry about losing, but it is the world they know, and we shouldn't be surprised if many of them fight to keep it, potentially in a literal fashion. I don't know what the answer is, but buyouts and financed moves will be seen as authoritarian, while ending subsidies and just letting places fail might be seen as a faceless market force, even if itbis worse for those involved
> People in those towns have family connections going back centuries in some cases.
You are correct, in some cases they go back 2-4 centuries. From when their ancestors settled in the colonies there. Settlers. Colony. 2-4 centuries, short term by European standards. It is hypocritical to expect it to be eternal now. There was no guarantee that it would last past when they milked out all the non-renewable resources. As noted, the US tends to be fairly institutionally indifferent to e.g. a Dust Bowl.
I hope that they better than that this time, I really do. But not at the expense of keeping coal mines and coal-mining-towns with no other viable way open. It never was a good job anyway (see "black lung").
