Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

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>Because of this, more people will decide to live in Texas instead of California, where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses which draw power from coal plants.

I think the parts of Texas and California with tech jobs are... not substitutable for a large part of the tech workforce on political/social grounds.

I do agree that higher density and public transit would help make California better by my standards more than requiring rooftop solar... but at least in the higher density parts of California where I am? I don't think requiring rooftop solar will make much difference. If you have a large multi story complex, adding rooftop solar won't do a lot, but it also isn't going to add significantly to the cost of the building, just 'cause there isn't much roof compared to the rest of the building.

In the high density parts of California that I want to live in, single family homes are already the domain of the rich. Personally, that's okay with me; I don't need a single family home, and I think we should be focusing on building more condos in the high density parts of the state, and as I said, requiring the roofs to be covered with solar isn't going to significantly change the cost of building those higher density buildings.

Austin is comically liberal which is great because Ted Cruz has to drive past a bunch of communists from uta legally flashing their freedom boobies at him whenever he visits the capital building.

It's also a pretty intense flashpoint though, when those same communists exercise their Texas mandated long gun open carry rights, while wearing hammer and sickle armbands and shit.

I dunno man. You won't be hard pressed to find fellow liberals in Austin, but you're still in Texas. Ford f150s will still aggressively run your bicycle off the road, your Bernie stickers will still get you vandalized if there happens to be some sort of Republican event at the capital. It's constant idealogical warfare between the young people and the rest of the state, and not even all the young people because uta is the biggest university so all sorts end up there, including people that probably would have found more like minded colleagues at a&m.

It can be exhausting, speaking from experience.

See, that's what I like about Silicon Valley. There are a lot of crazy conservative folk here, a bunch of the people I hung around as a younger person were right-libertarian almost to the point of being anarcho-capitalist, and I still know a fair number of those types, though they aren't as common once you start working for big companies rather than startups... but they got along just fine with the socialists in the same office. And they both were okay with the immigrants who, I imagine, came away with the idea that Americans, while a little nutso if you talk about politics, are generally decent people.

But that's the thing, and what made silicon valley so much more attractive than my (rural california) hometown... nobody tries to run anyone off the road. Sure, sure, we disagree and puff and stuff, but people leave their guns at home, and the taboo against vehicular manslaughter is maintained, even if the victim is on a bicycle. We socialize in groups that cross ethnic and political boundaries.

But then, I'm one of those people for whom Texas is not a substitutable place for Silicon Valley. (New York might be. Texas is not.) I'm completely aware that there are people who prefer Texas in the same way I prefer Silicon Valley. (I'm also aware that I haven't spent a lot of time in Texas, and I'm mostly comparing rural California to Silicon Valley... but rural California has a lot of the problems Texas is perceived to have, re: big trucks aggressively running bicycles off the road and other acts of everyday terror )

I suggest you look at the recent election results so see how "diverse" the bay is politically.

Not everyone votes.

In any case, the bay area being a liberal hub isn't exactly a strike against it, considering most cities are liberal hubs, and the existence of conservative hubs means that one can't necessarily judge a place for having a cultural zeitgeist.

The bay area doesn't compare to "most cities" though. There is little tolerance for anyone who seriously expresses support for non-dem candidates.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/12/mapping-how-americas-...

Wait, what was the point of linking that article? I read it but it just furthered my point - a ton of metro areas lean liberal.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "little tolerance," are you saying people are being run over by cars for being conservatives? Are houses being spray painted? Are wedding cakes not being baked for Republican couples?

>Wait, what was the point of linking that article?

The bay area is the most liberal area. Comparing to other cities that happened to have liberal majorities is pointless. It's like calling a community with 3% minorities just as diverse as a community with 45% minorities.

>are you saying people are being run over by cars

If you think it requires violence to be intolerant, you need to expand your views.

>Are houses being spray painted?

Cars with Trump stickers vandalized, yes.

>Are wedding cakes not being baked for Republican couples?

I'm not sure. It would be a little hard to tell since political parties rarely show up on the cake request forms.

This is a very old debate (I mean, the 'If we are intolerant of intolerance, is does that make us intolerant ourselves?' thing) - and I'm not saying I have the answers, (and my perception is that at least before Trump, Republicans were totally acceptable) but it's really not very relevant to my point.

My point is just that Texas and California are not exactly substitutable goods, as it were. just like how there are people who would be much happier in Texas than California for non-monitary reasons, there are people who would be much happier in California than in Texas for non-monetary reasons.

My argument is just that saying that lining up Texas with California as competitors for talent is... probably not as correct as, say, lining up California and NYC.

You're assumption that Republicans represent intolerance already reveals your partisanship. It's comical that you can't even see the insanity of that equivalence.

>My argument is just that saying that lining up Texas with California as competitors for talent is... probably not as correct as

More preconceived notion crap. I suggest you lookup the city that most bay area residents moved to last year.

That is great fucking writing.

> I think the parts of Texas and California with tech jobs are... not substitutable for a large part of the tech workforce on political/social grounds.

For some part of the workforce. 15% of software developers in the US work in California. For comparison, CA has 12% of the US population.

Many folks that work in CA are from out of state and do it for career/financial reasons, not for political/social reasons. And they'd be fine with living in a suburb of Austin if it were materially more appealing than some suburb of San Francisco.

[1] https://dqydj.com/number-of-developers-in-america-and-per-st...

>Many folks that work in CA are from out of state and do it for career/financial reasons, not for political/social reasons.

The fact that most folks in CA are from out of state doesn't imply that they would be just as happy in Texas. Something like 40% of our STEM workforce is from outside the country. Do you think an immigrant would be treated as well in Texas as in California? (maybe this is my prejudice showing, but everything I've seen and heard is that they would not.) add to that the developers who aren't heterosexual (or who are but who don't look it) or who aren't white, and I think you have a lot of people who... probably have good reason to stay on this side of the mason-dixon line.

(I feel the need to add a disclaimer; I've not spent a huge amount of time in Texas, and perhaps it isn't so bad, but... this perception is common, and it does mean some people won't take jobs in Texas, just like the perception that California is a nanny state where you will get fired for not being politically correct will keep many Texans out of California.)

> Do you think an immigrant would be treated as well in Texas as in California?

Yes. I would expect an immigrant living in one of Texas' cities to be treated just as well as an immigrant living in one of California's cities and same for the rural areas.

I hardly think immigrants avoid Texas. In fact, just the opposite.

16% of Texas residents are immigrants. Non-hispanic whites are a minority in the state.

Yes, they would be just fine. “Southern hospitality” really is a thing here, and our cities are much more diverse than what one might think if you haven’t visited. On my street where I live in my very affordable single-family home, we have virtually every major ethnicity represented, and everything from blue collar workers to doctors and software engineers.

Texas is different politically than California, but it is just as good a place to live for anyone coming to the Melting Pot. And in the end, both states face many of the same problems, the major cities are very similar, and the rural areas are also very similar.

Disclaimer: I live in Texas, and have lived in many other less cowboyish states, as well as living several places internationally.

Don't baselessly stereotype an entire state. Having lived in both the bay, LA, Austin, and Dallas, I can tell you that there is no issue for immigrants or homosexuals in either of those locations.

The only difference is the sense of superiority in California echoed in your comment indicating that California is the only place with enlightened people.

>Many folks that work in CA are from out of state and do it for career/financial reasons, not for political/social reasons. And they'd be fine with living in a suburb of Austin if it were materially more appealing than some suburb of San Francisco.

If I could be paid what I make in San Francisco in almost any other metropolitan city in the US I would move. The weather that people rave about sucks and the politics are rage inducing.

What I was trying to say is that most people have pretty strong preferences for the bay are or for texas. And you can induce some to switch using higher wages/lower CoL... but those preferences remain pretty strong, and for some are almost absolute. For me, I think I'd need to make about 2x the money to live in Texas; and I'm sure there's a lot of people who feel that way about coming to California. (to be clear, I'm not saying either one is better in general, just that many people, perhaps most have strong preferences one way or the other, preferences it would take significant money to overcome.)

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