Comment by cs137 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs137 | Hacker News Reader

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That's true, but when people complain about their cities getting worse because of transplants, they're usually talking about something different: the newcomers "killed the vibe." This is based on a 1960s-era presupposition that people move due to lifestyle considerations (as opposed to out of economic need, as has been the case since then) and that the newcomers are coming for the "wrong" reasons (people found out that California doesn't get snow!!)

They might be related, though. The ruling class has deliberately destroyed local communities and forced people to become an on-demand proletariat that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are". If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. It's not necessarily pathological that Americans move so much; what is pathological is that they have to do so, just to survive.

>If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else.

That is complete BS. Certainly it is among the tech people I know. Furthermore, even those tech offices that are in the orbit of certain cities often aren't in those cities and are located in, not cheap, but pretty reasonably priced areas outside.

Agree with your sentiment. To add to it: I was just in Longmont, a town 45 minutes north of Denver, where Seagate, Western Digital, and San Disk all had major presence. Definitely not a big city.

Tech has enabled us to live anywhere and do our jobs.

I think there's this thread of people who live (and want to live) in very high CoL cities feeling the need to justify it to themselves and others on the grounds that they have no choice if they want to have a successful career.

Part of the problem is that you only get one real crack at the career game. As you get older, your options diminish and the negative social inferences that come with age (even though they have no basis) tend to mount, so you don't have a lot of chances.

Bosses definitely pick their successors based on the "one of us" metric, much more than actual merit or job performance, and this usually means one has to live in the same expensive neighborhoods and send one's kids to the same expensive schools as theirs. Is it possible to succeed, without playing that game? Yes, of course. However, it's unlikely, and so I wouldn't bet my life on it.

I guess I've never seen any of that but maybe I just don't travel in those circles.

> that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are".

This is often stated on HN and Reddit, but simply not true. At no time in US history has there been less internal migration. It's actually one of the major problems we have with inequality - people are demonstratively not moving to where the economic opportunity is compared to generations past.

> > that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are".

> This is often stated on HN and Reddit, but simply not true. At no time in US history has there been less internal migration.

That's a pretty big claim. Do you have any data to support that? This [0] seems to tell a different story.

[0]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/net-domestic-...

I'll have to dig up some stats, but it's been a consistent pattern in my reading on the subject over the past 20 years.

I'm not talking about 2019 to 2020/21 pandemic migration that your article covers. Those years will obviously be an outlier. I'm talking about long-term demographic trends over the past 100+ years.

Edit: A very quick google before a series of calls today: https://www.brookings.edu/research/despite-the-pandemic-narr...

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.3.173

It's more difficult to find stats going back 150 years quickly, but the visualized data I've seen on that is pretty striking.

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