Isn't it about time we realised that people live somewhere amongst social capital they have built up throughout their lives.
And therefore business capital should move where the people are - to avoid damaging that social capital. Not the other way around.
Ultimately people work to live. Those who live to work are a tiny minority.
With modern technology there is little excuse. Fewer and fewer enterprises require physical concentration to operate.
The North of England and cites like Pittsburgh and Detroit are cases in point.
Nowadays, we're in a bizarre reality where a 200% productivity gain among the average worker nationwide means a 1500% productivity gain in the top 10% of counties, coupled with a 55% productivity loss in the bottom 90% of counties. (Numbers generated randomly for illustrative purposes).
One would expect that productivity-boosting technology such as computers, robots, cell phones, and various forms of automation would increase productivity for nearly every person on every square inch of this planet. That is no longer the case, and it is something I plan to study in depth at a later date.
Also be interesting to know his much is due yu concentration of professions and how much to local network effects.
I think this hasn't been true for centuries. Moving rural to the cities has been documented since the 1700's very clearly by economists.
Obviously painting with broad strokes, but FAANG companies would have to fundamentally rethink the kind of person they'd like to hire if they want to move out of affluent Urban cores.
And yet Apple seemed to have figured out this type of problem quite nicely during the 80's and 90's when they moved their manufacturing from places like Carleton TX, Elk Grove CA and Fountain CO to places like Singapore and Ireland.
It's the same reason any company prefers to hire local when they can. Much easier to entice someone to drive somewhere else in town in the morning than to entice someone to uproot their life and move 1000 miles.
I can only imagine what someone with greater responsibilities, less time and no mentoring would go through. Not saying it can't be done, clearly it has. But just because a few talented/lucky/insane people can start from nothing and strike it big doesn't make it accessible to the average coal miner. If it did our salaries would be a low lower.
If you want to have startup you have to hang out with rich people so they invest in it or they buy your services. You don't want to have your company 10 hours or more away from customers.
It can argued that it does not matter as much for Google, but if you are a product owner of a "FizzBuzz maker", you need social capital with high ranking people in organization so they don't cut your budget. In the end it works the same, that you have to play golf with the right people so they trust you and don't cut your funding.
Of course, it is not enough just to hang out with right people. Don't get me wrong, because hanging out with people will validate all skills so if person doesn't deliver no one is going to hang out with such person.
There was an article on HN not long ago with a line "Talent is distributed equally. Opportunity is not.", because social capital in big cities is much more valuable than in country side. In terms of money, in terms of no one is going to talk to you, in big city you can find new friends easier.
Someone to help with the kids, relax with, help you fix your car, have a cheap evening or weekend of hanging out with. When you move it can take years to build all that up again. You might be able to do without it all, but you either have to pay to replace it or go without.
The main reason it's expensive is because supply restrictions have pushed housing far above the cost of construction. We could fix this by allowing more construction, which is what I'm arguing for in the post.
It's often the case, but SF, NYC, London are very popular outliers, so why can't other regions be?
It's not social capital, it's expected quality of life that makes people move to NYC for work and makes dilapidated areas unattractive.
I can't speak to Britain, but in the U.S. there are more people that do not live in SF or NYC than do. Other than people with niche interests (musical theater, startups, finance), most Americans, even young adults, aren't sitting around wondering how they can swing a big move to New York City.
It's much more normal to move to a regional big city, but in those cases the jobs are likely outside the city center as downtown. It's worth noting that NY and California would be stagnating if it weren't for immigration. Immigrants seem to be the ones who see places like SF and NYC as their big chance for a new quality of life.
True, but they're still a small minority of jobs; and those people will need/want services provided by workers of professions that do require physical presence, who will have an incentive to move away to big cities. So the only way to sustain that is to have a group of extremely highly paid remote workers, who can pay a premium to keep those other service workers in the area. Meanwhile, everyone who doesn't have a customer service job nor a remote one will move away, so you're left with a bifurcated pool of workers. Doesn't really sound like a great community to me.
The alternative is for remote workers to live mostly isolated from non-remote workers, but I can't see that spreading beyond a few exceptions.
EDIT: Now that I think of it, we already have those bifurcated communities, in the form of areas to where people with money move after retiring (which also frees them from the physical part of the job). I guess they're reasonably popular.
This is situational. There are also people who for whatever reason (usually work for parents) have moved around throughout their early years, thus they have little social capital to fall back on once they reach adulthood. In their case, moving to where the opportunity is makes a lot of sense because that's what they grew up with.
I do agree with you, though, that a lot of jobs are location-bound that needn't necessarily be, although there is a management overhead in incorporating remote workers. I hope as time goes by more managers will learn how to work with remote staff and that opportunity will become more widely available.
In the FIRE community you would find that the majority of people are working in order to live.
Most people with consumer debt are trapped in this too.
We're in a situation where we have offshore (Indian) tech hires and it's hard to coordinate on technical matters, even in a company where we have unlimited access to fancy VC rooms. When we flew them over for a bit everything was far easier. My boss thinks expensive digital whiteboards would make a big difference, but actually more than the money there's a political/social cost to buying big, visible things to sit in public sight in an office.
So why would you hire a Western guy for 3x the price and pay the exact same communication cost? Western and sitting in the same building or 3rd world country no other option seems to make sense.
I hope more and more companies move to remote working, but it's still a hard concept