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Comment by cgoecknerwald | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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