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Comment by ddoran | Hacker News Reader

> I typically only live in NYC for 3-10 days at a time

That's not living somewhere. That's visiting.

Oh yeah? I'm alive during those 3-10 days. And I'm there.

If that's not living, then where do I live? I don't have a long-term lease or anything similar. Do I not deserve the same quality of life and opportunities as people who happened to have been born in the East Village?

Semantics. I respectfully disagree. Being alive, and living at a place are two completely different things. By your definition, I've lived in 12 countries this year. I haven't.

It's not semantics. It's a simple question: if someone doesn't have a current lease in a particular place, where do they live? Particularly for the purposes of enjoying the privileges that everyone in this thread is claiming they deserve by dint of living in NYC (ie, artificially controlled rent prices such that the rest of us can't utilize the economic opportunities in the city).

  It's a simple question

Google "Tax Residence" and you'll discover, while the question may be simple, the answer isn't :)

Where do you pay your tax to then? That's a reasonable enough definition of where you live.

In New York State. I pay the exorbitant taxes which pay for, among other things, protecting the water from the huge city down the road that I'm apparently "damaging" by living there a few weeks out of the year.

Sounds like you need to get a better tax accountant. If you only spend a few weeks a year in New York, then you shouldn't be paying much tax there at all.

...as I have stated above, I am from New York, just not in New York City. I typically spend several months out of the year there, not weeks.

You do not, as a visitor, deserve the same opportunities as people who live in a place permanently, IMO. What would governance and city planning look like, if that were the case? How do you build a community if you have to give equal consideration to people who want to spend their lives contributing to that community and to people who prefer to just visit every now and then?

> Do I not deserve the same quality of life and opportunities as people who happened to have been born in the East Village?

No, no more than I deserve a passport from every country I have ever traveled to.

Most US states consider you a resident if you stay more than 90 days. That's when you'd be expected to change your driver's license, car registration, etc.

You seem to be conflating the ideas of birthright and residency. I don't think anybody is arguing you shouldn't be allowed to become an NYC resident if you want to; what they're saying is that visiting doesn't make you a resident.

"Residency" in a state is a dumb concept to begin with. Why expect a technology startup to form itself in a such a way as to presume that it's meaningful? Isn't the whole point of a (good) technology startup to pose some meaningful critique to society?

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