I drove around New Mexico four years ago and there are a number of ghost towns between Las Cruces and Roswell, these are towns that have nothing but boarded up buildings and no people. A waiter in a restaurant explained to me that once the population drops below a certain level the grocery stores disappear then the schools and finally the post offices and police where people are expected to drive to the next town for any of the above. At the point people just migrate to a city even if they don't sell their houses (which seems wrong to me like who would just abandon a house?) but I didn't actually stop in the towns, i just drove through. A handful of remote techies aren't going to bring these ghost towns back but they might prevent others from collapsing.