Broadly speaking, very rural living is generally a lifestyle choice. Yes, not everyone can afford to live in big cities, but there are typically small towns in the general vicinity of rural areas that are quite affordable.

Of course, there are exceptions where you truly need the space, like if you're a farmer, but that's not most people in rural areas.

Edit: to be clear, I don't think it's fundamentally wrong or anything for people to choose the rural lifestyle, I just don't think we should be heavily subsidizing it.

The economic benefit of making those people available as consumers, lowering barriers to their engagement in markets, is enormous and certainly pays for itself.

Last year I had a chance to talk to Gregg Coburn, author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem. We agreed that remote work and improved public transportation were the real solutions to many of our housing problems, allowing greater distribution of population back into more rural areas. This is an area where rural broadband investment could make a difference. Likewise, when we talk about American competitiveness in manufacturing et al, that isn't going to happen in our cities, but rather in more rural areas.

People choose to live outside cities, but want access to basic utilities of modern life? Well, fuck 'em.

Conversely, having quality utilities in smaller communities could incentivize the building up of those areas and they would become less rural.

The United States is difficult to invade because of the oceans surrounding it and the many people with guns in the interior that'll take shots at armies.

If you put everyone in a few cities on the coast, the USA becomes easier to invade.