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Comment by humbleMouse | Hacker News Reader

I admire your desire to solve problems, but you can’t just write off macroeconomic trends. Debt cycles are a real thing and they do happen. Deleveraging is a real phenomenon. All the money printing the fed did is unprecedented in history and has real effects. Who is going to stay in silicon valley when people are not throwing around funding? Not everybody has 250k to spend on a domain name.

On top of these macroeconomic facts — why would you want to live in a big suburban sprawl with bad traffic? Sounds pretty crappy to me.

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The over-printing of money by the Fed is a real problem and the bailout in 2008 I don't think was a good idea, but I'm not the best to comment on that particular subject. The point I'm attempting to make is if you are a person that wants to solve problems for people, general macroeconomic trends shouldn't hurt you to the point where you aren't working on that problem.

The biggest value in Silicon Valley outside of access to capital is something I didn't mention in the article. It is the network of people who are very capable that you can get to know who know a lot about the specific fields you are entering (e.g. mobile, hardware, VR, semi-conductors etc)

There are pluses and minuses to being here, but there will always be capital available to those that are solving real problems. Some of the best companies were started in downturns (e.g. Facebook 2007 I believe?)

Thanks for the comment, thoughts?

I am also of the school of economic thought that there are always opportunities in the market. I think it is a compelling argument that there may be even more opportunities in a "down" market.

I am sure the network of people in silicon valley is great. However, I think most people are just out there trying to get a nice 120k job and chill. When vc capital drys up, all of these people are going to leave. The fact remains - many people are up to their eyeballs in debt and they cannot afford to sit around potentially not having a real job. There may be holdouts like yourself who stick around and have money to pay the rent with - but all of the transient 120k people are going to leave.

The gist of what I am saying is that I think you overestimate the cash reserves of the average person. When the jobs leave, the people leave. Simple as that! It doesn't matter if they want to solve problems. They have bills to pay.

I like what you are saying. Generally, people have less money than what you would think they have. The people who have the $120k job and want to chill are incentivized to consider leaving if the jobs aren't there. This is not a calm area of the world so if you want to work and chill out there are much better places to be no matter the stage of the cycle. They aren't the sorts of people that start companies or join the earliest stage ones that I was attempting to appeal to.

You are right though that sometimes economics dictates the situation and people have to leave due to not being frugal enough during the good times. You should always be prepared for a rainy day.

If one entrepreneur or early stage employee reads the article who is on the fence and it convinces them to stick it out, then it was an article worth writing.

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