> Lots of people are leaving the cities.

And most of them aren't moving to Flyover, Nowhere. They are moving 8 miles down Main Street, to another part of their metro area.

> definition of a failed state

You have a very strange definition of a failed state. Are there rival warlords conscripting people into their liberation armies at gunpoint? Is drinking the tap water going to kill you? Does SF have to make do with 8 to 18 hours of electricity a day? Is there no food at the grocery? Are the schools and universities open? Are there multiple acts of terrorism a week, caused by plain-clothes insurgents? Has unemployment hit 30%? Have employers stopped paying people? Are pensioners lining up on Market Street every day, to try to sell strangers their fur coats and toasters and jewelry, so they can afford to feed themselves next week? Has life expectancy dropped by a decade or so?

>Are there multiple acts of terrorism a week, caused by plain-clothes insurgents?

Gang shootings every day?

>Are pensioners lining up on Market Street every day, to try to sell strangers their fur coats and toasters and jewelry

No the pensioners couldn't afford to live there and moved out. You have immigrant people selling [stolen] toasters and shampoo on the street.

>Has life expectancy dropped by a decade or so?

Life expectancy is significantly shorter for a large segment of the population via overdose, because lawlessness pervades.

> Are the schools and universities open?

Yes I believe SF has reopened schools again, finally.

You have masses of people living on the street in tents. And rampant open air drug use and sale. Lawlessness. I suggest you re-evaluate what you are willing to tolerate.

SF has some crappy stuff, but putting up rural America as an example of how things are good is quite a take. Religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and outright Nazism are taking over a huge portion of rural America. A huge portion of rural America supported a coup.

Usually when people talk about leaving cities, it's because of the cost of living in many cities.

Plus, are people leaving cities? Click on Population Change at https://mtgis-portal.geo.census.gov/arcgis/apps/MapSeries/in... and zoom a bit. Rural America is emptying out. It's one of the reasons that services like hospitals are becoming harder to support. The counties containing Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina have grown by 25% and 21% while rural northeastern North Carolina is seeing double-digit declines. In Georgia, the Atlanta and Savannah metro areas are growing and there's a lot of decline in rural areas.

You might not like cities, but it's rural areas that people are leaving and it's rural areas that are failing.

> Rural America is emptying out.

Rural America, in the sense that the OP meant it - "It is just a lot of physical work and being in the sun" - effectively no longer exists. "Rural America" is largely a term used by people who live in cities for people who don't live in cities, but the latter are by and large not "rural" by historical standards.

If you fly over the midwest, what you will see in terms of land use is a large amount of farmland broken up by enormous neighborhood networks and mid-size cities. People who live here are largely not working on farms. They are commuting to office jobs, service work, or gig economy positions. They don't walk anywhere, so they're not "in the sun"; even getting to the grocery store or a friend who lives nearby is practically untenable without a car. They certainly aren't living off the land. "Rural" America is basically the leftovers of farmland, and in many locations it's actively being partitioned into subdivisions.

I lived more than half my life to this point in a "rural" area, but for me this meant ~5 unfarmable acres. Virtually everyone else I knew lived in a neighborhood (isolated from other neighborhoods by miles of driving). This lifestyle isn't the idyllic thing it's made out to be.

> Religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and outright Nazism

I don't think I'd point to rural areas specifically as the source of this problem. Instead, I'd point to the "Orange-County-ification" of the US. The heat centers for the problems you're talking about are relatively wealthy subdivisions full of people who can afford F150s that they don't need and keep small arsenals in their basements. Think people like the McCloskeys in suburban St. Louis: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53481537

As for racism - part of the truth of the "crime problem" in cities is the fact that huge segments of their populations are effectively a permanent underclass living in poverty or near-poverty.

You are correct there are very few people living on small farms. Most people in rural areas live in small towns, are very poor, and yes transportation is an issue. Many should and do move to cities to find more opportunity.

Why is your land unfarmable? Is it dry land?

> Religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and outright Nazism are taking over a huge portion of rural America.

This is a massive mischaracterization. Do you have first-hand experience with these people? I specifically have an issue with your phrasing: "taking over". It may be more common, relatively, to find this sort of thing in rural areas, but that does not mean it's taking over.

"SF is a failed state"

Surely such an unstable and violent state must make it hard to run any kind of business. There's definitely no way any giant tech organizations would ever put offices there, much less headquarters.

Pretty sure giant tech organizations can entirely work from home, as witnessed by the past several years.

Your argument is a non-sequitur.

And many large retail firms have closed down and left. I can produce citations if needed.

We're literally in a thread about rural America being unable to keep basic necessities like hospitals open, but if someone poops on the sidewalk it's a failed state? Very cool, reasonable definition.

If you have masses of people living in tents on the street and open air drug markets.. people shooting drugs in the street. That is lawlessness.

Even many third world locales don't have those issues.

So yes it is a reasonable definition.