The town in which I grew up was 30 minutes from the nearest Wal-Mart by car, and 15 minutes from the nearest real grocery store by car. Hell, "town" was three m

The town in which I grew up was 30 minutes from the nearest Wal-Mart by car, and 15 minutes from the nearest real grocery store by car. Hell, "town" was three minutes by car from my house and we lived "close" compared to several of my friends. We had no police department. We had a volunteer only fire department and first responder unit. We partnered with a town 5 miles away for our school district. We were 13 miles from the nearest 4 lane highway. Most of our county roads were gravel. We had few problems with safety, food access, or economic access to plentiful jobs. Living in a tiny, remote, rural town presents one with a ton of low level, low overhead, low skill, and valuable entrepreneurial opportunities. Property and office space are cheap. Housing, which would go for well into the $300k range in cities within commuting distance of an hour or less, costs between $50,000 and $200,000 (for a pretty luxurious place). Agriculture, inevitably the bedrock of most rural communities, provides needs for mechanics, scrap management, custom application, fuel, carpentry, veterinary medicine, real estate, law, education, commodities trading, banking, environmental protection, equipment dealerships, various parts suppliers, hairdressers, food and entertainment, communications, rental property management, accounting, coaching, and pretty much every other economical human endeavor. The opportunity is that most of these needs are met by people in the community - people who you know well and trust - and are insulated from competition by distance and the small market size. Many people were self-employed; as doctors, vets, concrete masons, farmers, restaurateurs, gas station franchise owners, specialty parts wholesalers, junkyard operators, etc. Sure, there was only one store where you could get plumbing supplies, but that family lived very comfortably in that niche, and had for two generations. You either chose to stay and start your own business that could meet a need in the local community, usually some specialized unskilled construction or mechanical labor, or got a degree and commuted to the nearby cities. Food was procured once a week from the far away grocery stores; but other than commuters and the weekly grocery errand, you often didn't need to leave the vicinity of the town for weeks or even months at a time. In cities, even with suburban life, not needing to leave your community for extended days at a time is exceedingly rare, even for suburbs with approximately the same population as my old small town. I drive thirty minutes across town to my clients' offices, for example. New Yorkers take the subway across burroughs to get to their jobs. The authors overstate the problems people in small towns face.