I actually found it a really sad article to read. I feel like living in a major city, earning software development $$$'s, it can be real easy to disconnect from the producer side of the economy. Increasingly large companies are creating an environment that's conducive to their profits and survival at the expense of smaller producers who care more about the process and quality of what they produce.

These increased food and fuel costs are largely not transient.

The town itself might very well not be viable anymore. I’ve seen this happen in my own neck of the woods. It’s sad, but the death of small towns like this is just a reality of the economic policy we’ve chosen to pursue here.

So you're just locked into a slowly decaying town by social norms and guilt? Sounds like the well intentioned by arguably antagonistic group of adults in a coming of age young adult movie. The decline of rural towns has been a long term thing.

Just the same thing as people say on HN for other things. Your business model is not my problem.