I'm up in Fairbanks, yeah. I seem to be an anomaly everywhere I get my head into. This state is nuts but I love it. If you want to see mosquitoes try the North Slope, they can suck young caribou dry. I'd help you host an event in Fairbanks haha, I'm part of the university community here and Alaska realllllly needs some updates to how it structures its economy.
Like we're out 70% of the state budget (that's what we get for being an oil economy) and our university and schools have had major cuts. I want to help infrastructure here bad. They're taking ideas at the senate from anyone they're so desperate. I bet blockchain tech could save a lot of this state honestly, there's huge sentiment here to decentralize economics and be more sustainable.
The bad drunks you saw are because of decades of backwards social systems that produced these people (like anywhere else I guess). Alaska has huge poverty and health problems, man. Huge. You wouldn't know it with all the pretty scenery haha, not to be too negative. Everything else here is pretty flawless, lol.
I actually noticed the poverty and government dependence- sadly much of it that I witnessed came from the native american population. Just an observation though I do not want to blame any specific group of people. Anyway you are experiencing A LOT of sunlight today up where you are! I would love to visit Fairbanks and put on an event. I am an outside the box thinker so I bet I could come up with something that could generate some revenue for all involved and help contribute a little to solving AK's econ issues. I will get back to you with an idea or two soon.
Totally dude! Would love to hear them! And yeah, with all the sun it stays 85 degrees for like 14 hours >.<
Fairbanks is a desert. Just past the hills here is endless taiga, then tundra not much farther.
With regards to the state of the native population here, let's put it this way: Alaska had the first major civil rights movement in the US. Discrimination here was and still is on another level from other minority populations, which generates the government dependence in a lot of ways. I know there's competing ideas about that by politicians but you'd be shocked at what has happened to a lot of communities here due to racist government arbitration last century and the one prior, and then what these communities did to themselves after all that trauma. A very good comparison is what happened in Canada with the Department of Indian Affairs in the late 19th thru mid 20th century, and the massive loss of land rights that happened simultaneously. They never recovered, basically, and might still never with the current state of affairs. I'm close with a number of people involved with this so I'm not just talking out my ass, promise.