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Comment by quercus | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why so many people wishing to live in rural locations pick places with brutally cold winters, rather than the tropics. If you want to live off the land you'll have a much harder time of it in cold places.

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I think the issue is that everyone already lives in the warm places. You have what -- Southern California (high taxes, very populated), Florida (it ain't cheap and gets wiped off the map by hurricanes every few decades), Hawaii (expensive), the deep South and Texas (not that warm in the winter really), the desert southwest (it is very nice in the winter, but it's 110 every day in the summer).

There just aren't a lot of places in the US that have nice winters. Those that do are already overflowing with people. Part of the reason that the bay area is so expensive is because the weather is so nice. People are on to your little scam of avoiding winter ;)

Hawaii is not very expensive unless you want to live in a country club neighborhood and survive on imported products.

You left off Puerto Rico.

I know many Americans who have moved to Central/South American countries without much trouble. Costa Rica is so popular they're worried about gentrification. Ecuador is up and coming for expats.

These are people who are living remotely. It's probably better than they pick a place where the land is less productive, since they intend to live off their coding skills. They can leave the productive land to the people who need it.

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