[Loudergood]

This is why I'm very pro remote work for the broader economy.

It's much easier for remote workers who want to live in rural areas to patronize these local bars, stores, etc, when they're not already commuting to places with a much larger collection of services.

[blargey]

The problem with remote workers is that they will only move to a town after there’s a healthy crop of local businesses competing for patronage on quality.

So they can’t become the motive for such businesses to start in a town. It’s a crop of local workers flocking to location-specific, non-remote job opportunities that creates that attractive opportunity for service businesses to follow.

[medvezhenok]

To be fair, rich people could theoretically jump start the process by paying people to open businesses in a town. It just takes startup costs. And if the flywheel gets going, you could see a new "popular" town spring up.

But it's a risk.