Since we moved here 4 more friends have joined us out here in the country. The only thing we really lack is true high speed fat bandwidth. But that an be worked around as well.
The other problem is that if you're a young professional, you may very well be single. Moving to a small city or town means you will not get a date, unless you want to date some overweight, uneducated woman who has 4 kids and talks about Jesus and guns all the time. If you're on this site, that probably isn't the right demographic for you. You'd have better luck moving to a foreign country; rural and urban America are that different these days.
I think if I wanted to pick a comment as the canonical example what is wrong with people on HN this would be the one.
I think the last statistic I found was something like 140 single men in the 20s-30s age bracket for every 100 single women.
...which is why I'd prefer rural America over urban America any day.
:)
2) I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can live buy a home in the heart of the city for sub $300k.
3) I will not comment on the dating part. To each their own.
4) I understand it will be difficult, but you can consider it a mega startup. You launch it and recruit others who believe in it.
2) Scottsdale is an extremely conservative city with a downright hellish climate. Not everyone wants to live someplace where it's 120F every day in the summer, and never goes below 100F at night.
3) So you wouldn't have a problem with people with entirely different political views from you moving into your city, and then demanding and voting for totally different policies than you're used to? If you advocate for people to move to where you are because the cost of housing is cheaper, then you have absolutely no right to complain when they change the political climate there.