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I absolutely agree with your call-out. If a company has to have a "good culture" to attract talent, then so does a county, city, or state. Since I no longer have to live in a state that fights against my rights, I may very well choose to live (and therefore work) in other states for the rest of my life.

However, I do wonder if we are over-conflating "rural" with "conservative." Certainly, they are correlated, but I can imagine it's a lot different to live a rural life in California versus Mississippi.

I think you would probably be surprised how similar rural area culture can be on opposite sides of the country.

But there is one key difference: in a rural area in a blue state, you at least have the protection of state law. If you get discriminated against for being gay, you can sue. You don't have to jump through hoops for birth control or abortion. You don't need an ID to vote.

Yeah, sure, your neighbors might be hostile to you, but having the state government behind your back helps immensely.

Sure, but at least you won't find statues of traitorous, racist war criminals lording over you when you go to file paperwork at your local county seat, or Confederate flags proudly displayed at your local state parks.

There's something different about it when it's government sanctioned.

I agree. And its not like im here to bash conservatives, its just looking at all these super tech companies like google and apple, its hard to imagine Tim Cook seriously considering locating his business in a state where his ER surgeon could refuse service to him because he is gay. most of our effort to get into the fast lane of "silicon valley" has been a thinly-veiled attempt at doing something, anything, to reduce crime, Fentanyl overdose, and systemic unemployment thats plagued our region since 2008.

The people who are pushing silicon valley just want the money. They dont understand that its more than money and training.

You're just going overboard with spurious trash talk of other states. No ER surgeon is turning down ANY patient ANYWHERE in the U.S.

In one case, a 39-year old teacher allegedly died after not getting appropriate medical care due to her sexual orientation.9 According to a lawsuit filed by her brother, the teacher’s medical condition was not taken seriously by the EMTs who responded to her 911 call after they “‘became immediately aware’” she was a lesbian. She was abandoned for over an hour after being admitted to the hospital – in violation of protocol – and while unattended, she fell into a coma.10 She died several days later.1

https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/lgbt_refusals_fa...

That's a great narrative for a lawsuit, but I'm skeptical it's true. It's possible they were negligent (it happens to straight people too wouldn't you know it!), but it's also equally possible they were making every effort and they're still getting sued because our system has enormous financial rewards available to those who win successful lawsuits, even if they are disproportionate in many cases.

At any rate, no, there is not some systemic bias against any class of people in our medical system. ERs take care of anyone, medical insurance or not. Our medical professionals are highly trained, EMTs, paramedics, firefighters, nurses and doctors are by and large good at what they do. The existence of exceptions does not discount the rule.

so your second paragraph is justified by the completely baseless speculation in the first? if you actually had read the pdf I linked you would have seen the multitude of other examples of medical discrimination against queer people in it. im queer and have experienced medical discrimination. my queer friends have experienced medical discrimination, in washington state, not even a conservative state. intersex babies still routinely have non-consensual genital reassignment surgery performed, sometimes without their parent's knowledge.

yes, cishet people experience medical malpractice as well. but individual bad experiences is not the same as systemic discrimination. systematic discrimination against queer and intersex people goes on every day in our medical system, as much as people like to pretend it doesn't.

Yes it's absolutely spurious.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/07/health-car...

It never happens.

https://abc7ny.com/health/michigan-lesbian-couple-says-pedia...

Nope. Not Ever.

https://www.self.com/story/denial-of-health-care

This literally took me less than two minutes to find. I'd imagine longer than it took to intentionally bury one's head in the sand.

The big differences between rural California and Rural Mississippi from my experience:

1. Rural California has way fewer black people. 2. Rural California is more geographically wealth-segregated. (The probability that a larger acreage and higher-owner-income rural property is adjacent to trailers is greater in Mississippi than California.)

In rural Mississippi people pretend their black neighbors don't exist unless they need "help." In rural California people just don't have black neighbors.

In general rural California is probably much more like Mississippi than you'd think.

Except for all the laws protecting freedoms that nimbius posted and social welfare like parental leave, and access to the UC education system.

> 1. Rural California has way fewer black people.

But it has a large Latino population in an equivalent economic position.

The big difference is that urban California outvotes rural California, something that isn’t true in Mississippi.

Without really needing to know, I'm guessing either Indiana (my home state) or North Carolina (lived there three years). I say that only because we'd never go back to NC because of differences in opinion and politics, and never, ever go back to IN because it appears to have gone even more (ahem) divergent from my opinions since we moved out twenty years ago. The things I heard come out of the mouths of clients when I had a consultancy in IN would send a native West Coaster to the fainting couch.

So, yeah, I used to live there and I'll never go back, let alone attract anyone who tans a little too well.

Most hoosiers are good people. Indianapolis is blue. We don't have these draconian rules.

Twenty years ago, right before we moved out, Marion County (i. e., Indianapolis) prosecutor Stephen Goldsmith decide multiple black young men in a car was probable cause for a stop. It stands out in my mind because I remember thinking, “boy, am I glad to be getting the hell out of here.” Perhaps my information is a bit outdated, but it was within the lifetime of most reading this.

I lived in that state for 35 years. You’ll be hard-pressed to convince me that Elwood (as one example) welcomes their new dark-skinned neighbors (should they dare move there) with open arms in less than a generation since I last did business there. Which is one of many reasons I have no desire to bring my high-tech skills back home.

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

People in rural and conservative communities aren't bad people. And IME people in urban and liberal communities aren't even any less racist. The biggest difference is that those with power in urban and liberal communities (i.e. middle-class and whites) are more likely to acquiesce when confronted with claims of prejudice or inequality.

This propensity to acquiesce is considered radical by conservative communities, who view themselves as being principled.

I have lived in three states: Washington, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I have no idea what state you are in to have all of these restrictions. The only thing I can think of is you are conflating many laws from many states across a large time period.

Birth control? An annual (3 years in Washington) cancer screening and check up for your birth control prescription. Possibly covered by insurance but not REQUIRED. Which is different from OUTLAWED. Not that it matters, my wife's birth control costs $85 every three months and we can pay for it with our HSA. That's hardly emptying anyone's bank account especially when you compare it to the ACA which requires every citizen spend >$100/mo on insurance that does mostly nothing!

Bathroom laws? Oh yeah? Which one! There are none currently in existence. There were certainly more than a few that were considered but only one passed and it was repealed!

LGBTQ restrictions on adoption? Adoption by same-sex couples is legal in all 50 states!

LGBTQ workplace protections? There are certainly protections at the federal level. But yes, you're right. Places like North Carolina do not have any laws on the books which expressly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. But ask yourself, what is the practical effect on LGBTQ people? I would argue there is no effect. You might as well be in California. I have worked at many companies with many LGBTQ people and all of them were safer in their employment than I was! No company wants the backlash that comes from being perceived as anti-LGBTQ. Society has adequately regulated the protection of LGBTQ people where governments have not.

As for the apparent racism of rural areas. Having grown up with a great many black friends I've:

* Never met a black person who could not get a driver's license.

* Never been exposed to a dress code that prohibited black people.

---

Look I have my own gripes about rural living (the South specifically). But I won't lie or live in some bizarre universe where the South is hell on earth.

The skills are probably still worth teaching. Many professions could really benefit from some Swiss army computer skills (and it's not always obvious which pairings are good). Biology, for example, really could use some solid database skills. I have seen million-line barely manageable Excel documents that were born to be an SQL database. Makes me cry.

Need an abortion? book a flight, we require a trans-vaginal ultrasound and a waiting period.

There's a coalition in my state that believes all life is sacred and abortion should be illegal even in cases of incest and rape. God's will and so forth...

It's a shame how much abortion gets pushed as a wedge issue. It's great at riling people up and getting them to cluster into their particular camps, but at that point people who would otherwise be able to agree on other issues and actually make progress decide to just not talk to each other.

abortion and gun control.

We can limit the amount of abortion that occurs, without banning abortion (sex education, birth control, health insurance, family planning, adoption center funding, etc).

And we can limit the negative impacts of gun ownership on society, without gun bans (NICB, mental health funding, red flag laws, standardized licensing, increased funding for already existing laws, significantly increased police accountability, etc) .

But no one wants to talk about these things. Instead, we keep talking about them as wedge issues. Ban Abortion / Abortion is a right. Ban X,Y,Z Guns / Gun Ownership is a right.

If you want a jolly good time, find someone who is adamant on one of those issues, have them give an explanation for a while, then see how far you can get in the other issue before they realize they're using all the same arguments but from the opposite viewpoint.

I’m sorry, but the left has not only talked about all these things, but they’ve actually pushed legislation for this.

The idea that the US left does not even want to talk about sex Ed, birth control, health insurance...mental health funding, funding research on the effects of guns, licensing, etc... is so out of whack from reality.

You are basically taking what every one on the US left (almost no one in any sort of governmental power on the US left has proposed a gun ban) is pushing for and complaining that no one wants to talk about it.

It’s remarkable how entrenched the idea that the only problem is that both sides are equally wrong is in the US.

  almost no one in any sort of governmental power on the US left has proposed a gun ban

Senator Feinstein (D-CA) advocated for a total gun ban right on "60 Minutes".

Sigh. For the skeptical downvoters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj4AcjyuV38

That's for assault weaponry.

What state is this? How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites? Apologies if these questions are naive, I'm not particularly familiar with midwest politics.

I'm pretty sure the comment didn't say that.

To be clear, I was responding to this:

> Are you a blue-collar minority? Unless you know exactly when and where to go to get a license, then voting is practically impossible.

How else can you interpret this? Blue-collar minorities are less capable of knowing where/when to get a license than blue-collar whites? Or perhaps the "minority" bit is a red-herring altogether and the salient criterion is "blue-collar"?

Or groups of people live in certain geographic areas and are not served by public transit or near government offices like a DMV. That can have the effect of making it generally harder one one group despite equal competence.

This would be interesting and I’m curious about the extent to which this happens, but this hypothesis doesn’t support the claim that “absent information about getting an ID, it is nearly impossible for blue-collar minorities (but not their white counterparts) to vote”. Also, if you lack access to public transit, I would expect you’re more likely to have an ID, not less so.

Literally there are states where they closed voting locations and DMV locations in predominantly minority areas. They created a requirement for a license and then claimed it would only impact 16 year olds and they would "drive to people's houses" at the same time that they claimed they were "out of money". Nevermind that the whole state has an issue with not enough polling stations.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2015/10/01/alabama-drivers-licen...

https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/georgia-county-abandons-pl...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/30/midterm-elect...

> Blue-collar minorities are less capable of knowing where/when to get a license than blue-collar whites?

But your comment wasn't suggesting this. You were suggesting that the law was explicitly discriminatory to require minorities alone to need ID and whites could vote without ID.

I think you misread my comment. I was very careful not to suggest that "the law was explicitly discriminatory". I'm merely asking how they accomplish the alleged discrimination.

No. The discriminatory nature of laws like this work on statistics. While something like a drivers license with a street address isn’t discrimanatory per se, when you look at the groups that are adversely effected and how those groups correlate with voting preferences, a pattern emerges.

For instance, the lack of a street address in North Dakota pretty much only effects those living on an Indian reservation https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/native-americans-north-dakot...

Say you need a state issue I’d, but then limit access to those ids in specific areas, as Alabama did in 2015. http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/01/as_it_turns_out_...

In Texas, researchers ran an an analysis of where these laws have the most impact and found that the largest contributing factor to predicting disenfranchisement was race. https://www.wired.com/story/voter-id-law-algorithm/

I don't know about the specific state the commenter is referring to, but this article from a couple years ago discusses some of the laws passed that (intentionally or unintentionally) make it more difficult for certain demographics to get an ID: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...

I'm also pretty sure no state managed to successfully pass and keep a "bathroom law", especially after the enormous outrage against North Carolina.

> How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites?

By only asking minorities to prove they are carrying ID. "The law" is what gets enforced, not what it says on the books.

Edit to add: as people are getting all up in arms about rural areas, they should recall that this tactic was broadly applied by the New York City police department too.

>"The law" is what gets enforced, not what it says on the books.

>Edit to add: as people are getting all up in arms about rural areas, they should recall that this tactic was broadly applied by the New York City police department too.

"Organized Democracy" by Melanin 9: `youtube-dl -f mp4 'QPls-Gi_4Ig'` speaks to this very much.

You say that well. I associate this idea with Richard Florida, who has written about the Creative Class and the Tolerance Index:

"The map above shows how metros across the U.S. score on the Tolerance Index, as updated for The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited. The chart below shows the top 20 metros. Developed by my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Kevin Stolarick, it ranks U.S. metros according to three key variables—the share of immigrants or foreign-born residents, the Gay Index (the concentration of gays and lesbians), and the Integration Index, which tracks the level of segregation between ethnic and racial groups."

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/07/geography-tolerance/2...

It sounds like they're committed to the values that are important to them, regardless of the huge disadvantages. What's the way to change this?

That's true of most people. Emotions universally trump facts.

The last time it came to that, the US had a civil war.

I am not advocating it in this case, but ultimately you can only have so divergent ideas about life and rights before it comes down to who has the biggest (or the most) effective guns.

Even for those of us who are male, white, and straight, your state sounds unpleasant. Convincing someone like me to move there is going to be very expensive.

Jesus. What state is that? waiting periods for birth control? No blacks? WTF, is this 1920?

Non-costal people are bad and should be collectively punished.

It's like the 'non-racist capitalists will out compete racist capitalists due to the discriminated group being "cheaper"' principle applied to the entire government.