There were a lot of internet grocery stores that sold nonperishables in the days before Instacart. It was useful for people in rural locations that weren’t very mobile... and still is for the people who don’t live where fresh grocery delivery is available.
It might be better for society to help the orderly shutdown and consolidation of those areas towards communities dense enough to have a functional local economy.
This would integrate well with new New Deal style programs where people are helped to migrate to jobs that enrich society and those working; and possibly recapture the former community areas as nature reserves or other non-housing lands.
Many people naturally do this. The "I can't wait to grow up and get out of here" trope is universal to basically every small town in America.
Many people with the means to do so also like to leave the city to move to small town America. There's really nothing wrong with either of these life experiences. People's needs are varied, both by person, and by the stage of their life. Living in an economic hotspot is more important to some people than it is to others.
Yet those small towns continue to exist, until some very poor last remnants eventually stop having children and the town dies off in a literal sense.
A market based solution isn't going to repair a fault like a place doesn't want to economically exist on the map. That's a spot for market regulation to exist and limit suffering.
Serious question: do you have any friends or family who choose to live in rural areas?
There are a lot of people who enjoy the peace and quiet, wide open spaces, and tight community that is unique to life outside of urban areas. Some people like the lack of noise, air, and light pollution more than they like instacart.
There are people on this forum who live in rural areas and participate in the economy quite well, and have a higher standard of living than 98% of the world.
it would also be better for society if everyone was grown in a vat and fed a nutrient brine like ants.
Might not be fair to the ants tho. Also given that most of the viruses are spread via city center, centralizing everything like that might not be a viable long term solution for the survival of the human species.
What you have to consider is that there are risk/reward trade offs that are involved in creating economic centers, and most of our history the city has been the place where more people died than were born.
Better not to force it so the norms around this will evolve naturally as people select into the Schelling point naturally.
I for one welcome our new borg hivemind overlords promulgated on back of the concepts of a breakaway society.
That'll last all of about 5 minutes, until some granny goes on the local TV news talking about how she's been forced out of the home she's lived in for the last 70 years.
