Wouldn't a progressive, Bernie-style [limited] redistribution be better to achieve such a goal? Appropriate corporate tax funded social spending sound like a more efficient way to help everyone than forcing a factory owner in California to move his factory to some random rural area.

I don't run a factory, but I am a full-time co-founder of a startup. There is no way I'd move our NYC-based operation to some rural area, there is little to no specialized technical community outside the major cities. For example, would I be able to attend weekly Machine Learning meetups in West Virginia? Would I be able to have lunch regularly with VCs in Ohio? I've been overseas doing a parallel medical trial, in a big city, and still it is very difficult to operate here. The depth of community just doesn't exist.

I realize a tech startup isn't a perfect example, but I imagine some of the same concerns would be applicable to factory owners. It is simply not realistic to assume that employers (who already don't have trouble finding talent) should move to where workers are, rather than the opposite.

Factories and employers used to put factories in rural areas because of the cheap labor. Globalism has exploited the fact that many other countries don't have the labor laws or quality of life America does, and made it so rural America isn't an economically viable location to put jobs. I'd agree that a Bernie-style form of redistribution would be ideal, but in my opinion, it's important to be politically expedient. America's political system is rigged to the point where even if a redistribution program was passed, it would be removed within a decade. Given the fact that wealth and GDP has never been higher and that corporations are having no problem finding profits, we need to find a way to make rural America an economically feasible location to put jobs again, which means ending or slowing globalization.

Would it solve problems if we had an equivalent to meetup for online meetups such as the above? If we suggest all can be done online, why aren't our meetups online? Certainly, time zones are an issue, and some meetup functions can be duplicated by a mailing list or forum, but why haven't we figured this one out? (The time zone could be solved by having multiple meetups and people go to the ones which are better for their time, for example.) And a speaker is something is probably easier than the average user group - someone just joins from their house...

> Would I be able to have lunch regularly with VCs in Ohio?

Yes. There is a fantastic, burgeoning startup community in Ohio. One that seems to be getting traction is Root, an really innovative insurance company (I'm not affiliated with Root).

Have you visited Ohio? There are cities there. My company is working with a startup in Akron that's doing some neat stuff. You can bet it's not strip-mining the social graph.

Funny story -- Yes! I did visit Ohio, to see a VC actually. I was able to get a single VC meeting for the whole trip. Perhaps there are other VCs, but I found just one willing to take a meeting. The odds in NYC were higher. The odds in SF are even higher. I find it difficult to believe there VCs are as accessible in Ohio as they are in NYC/SF.