Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

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The politics of Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Virginia & Washington have all noticeably undergone this effect over the past forty years.

Heck, that effect was the entire reason for Bloody Kansas, with pro- and anti-slavery people moving into the territory in order to influence its politics. It's why the Free State Project exists. It's why some politicians want to decrease immigration, and others want to increase it.

I'm curious why you think it doesn't exist. It's hardly an extraordinary claim, and makes perfect sense: people from a place have the habits of mind common to that place; when they move elsewhere, they retain those habits of mind for some time. Even if they were outliers at home, they are more likely to be like their former neighbours than a random subset of their new ones (ever noticed how much you have in common with a fellow countryman you meet whilst travelling abroad? It's the same effect).

And when there is a tremendous influx of people from one particular place into another particular place, then one will be more likely to find people from the former place in the latter — that's just math.

Maybe you find this good, but I don't: we should try to figure out what makes a state the sort of place people move from rather than the sort of place people move to, and replicate that.

(in California's case, I think it's the sort of place people move to because they must and from because they can)

1. Politics have changed, people have moved. You fail to draw a causal link. I'm not disputing that people don't take their attitudes with them as they move, but your post implies that people flee politics they don't like, but then vote for the same politics in their destination. Politics would have changed with or without migration. Political views and cultural attitudes are not static. etc.

2. You're right that politics change with migration, and that people have and do move with the explicit intent of influencing politics.

3. This comment would imply that people are happiest in places where they previously lived and hence would not move. It certainly doesn't support the assertion that they're fleeing the results of their own preferred policies.

4. Sure.

5. I agree with your first statement, but then the parenthetical statement gives up the game. You've concluded that people are forced/heavily incentivized to move to California and are lucky to be able to flee, which I have not found to be the case at all.

That first item has a causal link in Virginia; the "People's Republic of Northern Virginia" is made possible by DC people fleeing Maryland, then staying liberal, once again voting for the policies that made them flee. The locals are still what they always were -- for what that's worth.

Lets say a migrant population does in fact have some "dangerous idea" that the locals don't want.

How big does that migrant population need to be before they have a sizable enough voting majority? Do the couple thousand people who moved from SF to Oregon or Seattle really really have the voting numbers to sway politics that much?

It's the idea that's contagious, not the people. Disenfranchising transplants does not stop the idea. If you want to stop the idea, you need to offer something better (or prove why the idea is dangerous).

> Do the couple thousand people who moved from SF to Oregon or Seattle really really have the voting numbers to sway politics that much?

It depends on how close the numbers were beforehand, right?

> Disenfranchising transplants does not stop the idea.

If they retain the franchise in their former states, then they're not disenfranchised.

I'm frankly astounded that so many people have reacted so negatively to this idea. TO me, it seems like common sense: the mere fact of moving somewhere doesn't make one a local. We require immigrants to our country to learn about American history & civics: why not immigrants to our states?

Your idea makes no sense, it assigns blame to 2% of the population for turning the preexisting 49% into a majority.

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