For people interested in Middle America and brain drain from small rural areas, this is probably the best article out there:
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/...iddle-america-and-the-problem-of-meritocracy/
Selection effects rule everything around us, and a cult of liberty just means self-selection has an outsized sway.
I don't know the answer, but you gotta imagine that media (Hollywood, Netflix, novels), which is ~propaganda for cities by people in cities, makes the situation worse.
Probably there's something pathological about only wanting to be around people who are just like you, just as smart and talented, etc. One, b/c the cumulative effects of this are terrible and underly inequality; two, because on an individual level, you probably give up a lot—the potential to be the smartest person in your town, to help run big infrastructure projects or sit on city council, to have a real positive effect on your local community—for... what? To be another mediocre XYZ in a sea of XYZs? That is, status is a local phenomenon. "Belonging" in the sense of similarity is more shallow than belonging in the sense of interdependence, being loadbearing with a community. In the terror of not "belonging" with your own kind, you forfeit the possibility of being a unique, much-needed jigsaw piece in a local puzzle.
This isn't just small-town stuff tho of course. Haiti has the same problems as Middle America in this regard. Competence flies off, leaves the rest to figure it out themselves.