Eduardo Porter, writing at the New York Times about the economic challenges facing rural America:

This is the inescapable reality of agglomeration, one of the most powerful forces shaping the American economy over the last three decades. Innovative companies choose to locate where other successful, innovative companies are. That’s where they can find lots of highly skilled workers. The more densely packed these pools of talent are, the more workers can learn from each other and the more productive they become. This dynamic feeds on itself, drawing more high-tech firms and highly skilled workers to where they already are.

Fine, but let’s also talk about how it benefits companies to locate themselves where there are a lot of people because it works in their favor to have employees and candidates competing against one another for jobs.

I find this piece to be disappointingly one-sided. Nowhere does Porter stop to think whether it is good for people to live in huge metro agglomerations, nor does he seem to consider that there could be other options for improving the lives of rural residents than through business.