Rural America doesn't have "enormous wealth". (To be fair, it doesn't have a "housing shortage" problem, either!)

> I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap

The question is how to do this while working in your preferred sector. It's not just the tech industry that seems tied to the sort of agglomeration economies you only get in big urbanized areas; large parts of the service sector are like this, too.