[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.