This isn't about urban vs rural. Thinking SV is such a joke it must be run by clowns is one of the (few, but these kinds of people have more in common than you'd think) things that inner city types and people from the panhandle of any state that has a panhandle have in common.
Silicon Valley has a single major drawback, cost of living, which is downstream of land use and transportation policy that’s virtually identical throughout the country. Basically every large and growing metropolitan area in the nation sees the same relative price trends. Famous low cost alt-SV Austin has seen its Case-Schiller index move within 15% of San Jose. To argue that its governance is especially backwards or selfish and, thus, deserving of failure is to indict the entire nation.
