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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

convinced themselves that stuff only happens in the valley and if they hadn't seen it they wouldn't have believed it was possible outside (and some did not, oh the excuses)....

Isn't this bigotry?

I remember watching all of these shows on PBS as a kid, where one of the major themes was how people would judge other people by class or other surface signals, and how this could obscure the truth or leave good people unappreciated on their merits. Did people learn the lesson? I guess some people did, and some people didn't.

Here's my experience coming to the Bay Area, looking up from the bottom: There's more bigotry here. People judge you more quickly and more absolutely on a more shallow basis here than anywhere else I've lived. (With the exception of the Norwood neighborhood in Cincinnati.)

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Oh, it certainly is bigotry, and it isn't even isolated to the bay area. When I moved to Wyoming, there were a lot of people in Colorado that thought I was literally dropping off the face of the planet, and that I would be unemployable the rest of my life. Sure, the density of tech jobs here is ludicrously low, and I can't job hop like I could in the bay area, but quality of life is important as well, and I don't like living in any size city. There is no way I could afford 40 acres of rural property anywhere within a reasonable commute of the bay area.

How does one reasonably have a need for 40 acres of property? I could see a few acres as being the max needed for reasonable privacy. Are you doing something commercial with the acreage?

I think I did a calculation a few years ago that there is only an acre or two of land on Earth for every single person. When you factor in the acreage that is currently liveable and is actually purchasable, you get a number close to 1/16th acre I imagine.

I have a friend who was in tech for many years and purchased a 25 acre property. Half of it is a small homestead with animals and crops, the other half is to be used as a protected woodlands. It's not tight but I could reasonably see wanting something more like 40 or 50 acres.

Having that amount of land allows one to have a ton of different hobbies and activities available that are really not possible in an urban environment. Want to go shoot guns or fireworks? No problem. Want a huge dirt trail with jumps for an ATV or dirt bike? Go ahead! Having that amount of land can also be great if you have a large family with many children as it acts as a safe-place for outdoor play. Although I didn't grow up on that much land, I grew up in a remote area with a ton of forests and being able to freely play tag or go hiking in the woods with my friends were some of greatest times in my entire life. Bow living in the city for work, I dream of the day that I can retire onto a property with a large acreage, I get the rationality.

I've got a house on about 8 acres. I can still hear my neighbors ocassionally (power tools and vacuum cleaners mostly), and their headlights shine into my house when they're coming down their driveway. If I had 5x the area, I'd have a lot more buffer. Bigger would be a lot more grounds work though, so I doubt I'd move somewhere bigger.

I don't think universalism necessarily applies to lot sizes. Different people are willing/able to take different trade-offs. In exchange for a large lot, in a tranquil environment, I get few job opportunities without a long commute, poor telecoms coverage, a 30-45 minute drive to big box stores, limited diversity, people complaing about all the new residents moving from where I moved, etc. I don't think most people would make these choices, which is fine -- if more people chose to live here, maybe I'd want to live somewhere else.

The idea of calculating the amount of acreage per person doesn't really make sense to me due to our ability to construct buildings. Manhattan has less than 15,000 acres but a whole lot more people than that live there.

As another poster mentioned, it's about the trade-offs. Cities have a lot of advantages that, for most, make it the ideal place to live.

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