Maybe all your friends are in agriculture. Obviously I don't know. But most of the productive and dynamic sectors of the US economy (including tech and finance)

Maybe all your friends are in agriculture. Obviously I don't know. But most of the productive and dynamic sectors of the US economy (including tech and finance) could not exist without the network effects provided by our big, and big spending, cities. The people that make a living directly or indirectly in those sectors are benefiting from the investments made by New York and California. If they choose to live in rural Montana or the Cayman Islands while benefiting from the network effects provided by NYC and the Bay Area, that's freeloading. If all the world were the rural Montana or the Cayman Islands it would be a very poor world indeed.