80% of the federal workforce is based outside of the DC/Maryland/Virginia area.

The ones who are around the capital are the ones doing policy or back-office work that’d be the equivalent of a corporate HQ, and they have benefits from being concentrated in a region where there’s a lot of other Federal back office work because they can recruit from a talent pool of people who are experienced in the particular requirements of Federal work. It’s the same sort of agglomeration effects that drives finance to concentrate in NYC or the film industry to concentrate in LA.

Taking the USDA as an example, it doesn’t literally operates farm. The vast majority of what it’s doing is functionally insurance and financial services. The stuff that needs direct interaction with farms like inspections or scientific research are done out of field offices.

If America has an equivalent of The Capitol from Hunger Games where a bunch of absurdly wealthy and out of touch elites pull the strings on how the rest of the country lives for their own benefit, I’d submit Wall Street or Silicon Valley before I posit DC.