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Comment by mikrl | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, moving is related to aspiration. If I stayed where I grew up I’d honestly likely be an opioid statistic and definitely not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still keep in touch with a few people from youth who didn’t ruin their lives, and I’m the standout success story despite being the socially awkward and poor one.

Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I’d never dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find my person and the tech job I love.

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I am glad you were able to have such a positive impact on the trajectory of your life by moving. But you shouldn't generalize your experiences with your home town with everyone else's. Sometimes moving is necessary for growth, but it could also be completely orthogonal. It depends on the place and also the person.

I grew up 30 minutes from a respected state college, about 15 miles, and about an hour away from both Philly and NYC, almost exactly 50 miles to each. The ongoing joke in my high school is at least 50% of each graduating classes ended up at the same state college. I'm not sure the real statistic, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

10 miles sounds far enough away from parents to be able to feel independent but also not far away enough to feel any kind of culture shock. Not everyone will have this privilege, but I just want to share another perspective.

Not ever feeling any kind of culture shock is itself limiting.

This is a privileged opinion, no? Not everyone has the resources or means to leave the place they live.

Not everyone has the resources or means to stay where they are. The Great Recession flung people far and wide.

I am not disagreeing with you though, just two sides of the issue re resources.

Ok so that's another way poverty harms them. Is it less "privileged" to pretend that is not the case and someone who has no ability to leave their hometown has no disadvantage?

There is a lot of value in learning about different cultures by physically travelling, but I think there are other options now. I believe the hyper-globalization of society due to technology allows many more people to experience other cultures without needing to travel. It's up to individuals to take advantage of it and lean into certain discomforts.

I don't believe it's possible to integrate with modern society successfully without having to go through some kind of culture shock. It's not limited to culture defined by regions, older generations feel culture shock constantly when trying to stay integrated or understand the culture of new generations. But things like YouTube have allowed me to experience culture in a way that wasn't possible 20+ years ago.

I have been loving the relatively recent trend of older people, parents and grandparents making cooking videos. I recently found De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina, a channel where Doña Ángela, a 72 year old grandma teaches Mexican recipes. The channel has 4.2 million subscribers and the first video was uploaded in August 2019 and hit 2M subscribers by December 2019. Very simple production value, except the wood fire cooking which is probably out of necessity as she lives on a ranch. A similar channel with more production value, but still very homey is Cowboy Kent Rollins, 2.32M subs, who is verified on YouTube and has built a brand and a merch shop related to outdoor cooking. I grew up in the suburbs in the tristate area, but love making myself traditional style Mexican and TexMex food, homemade refried beans is a favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/@DemiRanchoaTuCocina

Best Authentic Refried Bean Recipe - Cowboy Kent Rollins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC5mR5s70bE

I don't think YouTube videos or even a two-week trip are substitutes for living somewhere different. Too many small things you can't notice at that level of engagement.

Moving somewhere new is similarly challenging, in my opinion, to becoming assimilated into a very passionate and niche online or in person community. I am not trying to argue that one can be a substitute for the other. I believe both situations can meaningfully challenge someone to grow and change the trajectory of their life. I don't believe moving somewhere physically is the only way to experience the culture there.

Doing one will help you prepare to get the most out of the other. Living somewhere and doing immersive language learning would help you understand and enjoy media and food specific to that region. And watching shows and making dishes would help you connect with people from there and feel less like a tourist if you were to visit. It's depends on the individual whether the big things or the small things will push them to grow the most.

>In my experience, moving is related to aspiration.

And where you grew up. I grew up somewhere that aspirants move to. So I never left because why would I bother? As the US becomes more urbanized, people are going to have less of a reason to move to places with more opportunity because they're already in places that have opportunity.

Growing up where the aspirants move to is such an odd place to be in certain social circles. Simultaneous jealousy and judgement.

But yeah. As an LA native, I don’t have much reason to leave. But it’s not like I’m some kind of sheltered, naive farmboy.

> But yeah. As an LA native, I don’t have much reason to leave.

Are houses cheap in LA? Aren’t a bunch of people leaving California for cheaper property inland?

Yeah and a bunch more showing up. I think on a netwhole it will balance out.

If you’re a multigenerational Native and have some form of lockin that offsets the crazy housing price pressures, leaving becomes suboptimal. It’s not exactly fair but it would be foolish not to take what advantages you can get.

In my experience, moving is related to aspiration.

Highly dependent on where you grew up.

My parents grew up in a farming town in Scotland. Moving out was the best way to solid careers.

I grew up in DC. I stayed because when I finished college, there were ample jobs here and that hasn't changed. Sometimes I wish I had moved, but at the same time, when I look elsewhere, the grass isn't any greener.

Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made where you're from better.

Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals.

Maybe everyone left behind wouldn't have to work at a big box store or just die to reduce the societal burden.

Edit: Not blaming, just food for thought.

A little fantastical to imagine well-meaning people with zero experience of work are going to fix places that nobody else managed to but hope springs eternal, I guess.

All else equal I would love to live by all my family and friends, but the fact is that my skills are not as useful there as they are where I live now, so I wouldn't be able to provide as much value to the world if I still lived there.

Trying to jump-start a modern economy in a place that isn't currently participating in one is difficult, like attempting a breakaway in bike racing. It's a worthy public project, but a risky private one.

I grew up in a small city in Poland.

If my parents have not moved to the US. I would've not had good access to a computer as we were relatively poor on the global scale. The stars aligned and I attended a university in the US, where I met influential people who later offered me a job.

I am now in a place where my income allows me to think about paying back.

I am definitely sure I would not have the common sense, the business sense, understanding of self, and the capitol to do anything of value if I have stayed.

I'm wondering how a glut of uneducated young adults all trying to start businesses is going to help anything.

Imagine if the Saudis grew wheat in the desert! Oh wait they tried that and even with all the capital in the world it wasn't competitive, because it turns out the desert is a horrible environment for growing wheat.

The less fortunate places of today weren't built for no reason, back when they were new there was money to be made to support them. Then economics shifted and there's less money that can be made in that location, so people/businesses move away. Expecting capable people to intentionally stunt their achievements to try and do the equivalent of growing wheat in the desert is just mythologizing places that once served an important economic purpose but no longer do. This notion that you'll never need to adapt to changing circumstances, that there's some sort of societal guarantee of growing old in the same community you grew up in, is incredibly entitled and fundamentally anti-American.

What we need is federally funded moving expenses for lower income earners, that way no one's stuck in a modern-day ghost town.

> stayed and made where you're from better.

In my experience this is a recipe for burnout, depression, social ostracization, and the like. Some places are not fixable, many are actively hostile to the idea of change.

A lot of these places were abandoned for a reason, not just because people felt like it one day.

I'm not sure you realize how hopeless large swaths of the country are. There's simply no coming back in many cases. They just need to slowly die out over a few generations and be given back to nature.

> Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made where you're from better.

> Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals.

If I had stayed in my hometown I wouldn't have had the resources to even think about doing those things. The town is in the poor half of a county in a poor state. The best most can hope for out there are part time jobs at grocery stores and fast food restaurants, both paying almost nothing.

I probably could've gotten hired on as a county public school tech which pays decently for the area, but it still would've taken decades to bootstrap the kind of resources required to start a business, because I'd be starting out with almost nothing.

It depends where you're from. IMO it is generally good and positive for families to stay in the same area for generations, since it allows for stronger ties among the community, leading to generally less fragile lives. But you're right that those same ties can hold you down in the right (wrong) circumstances.

...which I guess is just a long-winded way of saying that you should stay near home if it's good, and stay away if it's bad (for whatever values of good and bad).

I feel like those strong ties are more likely to be fetters than supports but who am I to tell other people what they're feeling, I suppose.

I used to feel this way but have since realized that it is a WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, democratic) perspective. For the majority of human history, we needed our birth community in a very direct way simply to eat, keep ourselves housed, find a mate, etc. Many of those needs can now be taken care of by the market but IMO it pays to be careful about committing completely to such a course.

Sure, I don't imagine I can somehow totally divorce my own thinking from the culture I live in or my education. That doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong (the germ theory of disease is also WEIRD, or was at one point). I think it is telling that most people in the modern world who continue to live this way do not have the resources to do otherwise.

But most people actually live in the big metros. If you grew up in LA, Chicago, Atlanta, ... area, why would you really need to move? Unless you have a highly specific skillset, most people can have a fine career locally. High mobility can be a sign of weak local job markets, this is the dominant view. You can also take an optimistic view; low mobility is a sign of sustained local wealth accumulation and strong local job markets.

70% of americans live in urban centers where this isn't really true.

Most Americans live in what the US Census categorizes as urban. Which is a very broad definition of basically communities somewhat in the orbit of an urban area.

One of the more baffling anecdotes I’ve read in a while. The response to a very general comment about where most people end up is “opioid statistics” and then just the usual bravado. The response to such a malappropriate reply is so obvious (for most of 60% of young adults this opioid thing is not what they are signing themselves up for, so where is the relevance?) that it feels tedious to state it as a question.

I’ll take baffling as a compliment.

The opioid thing is relevant because lots of people I grew up with in my home city fucked up their lives, and I’d have done the same had I stayed because social networks, living in poverty, decay and hopelessness etc.

Leaving broke me out of that and gave me access to better social capital which was (perhaps an exaggeration) a difference between life and death.

YMMV but if you’ve grown up in a decaying urban area, you know what I’m talking about.

So moving was more related to the starting location being bad. If you already grew up in a good area then you’d want to stay.

I consider myself lucky that my parents looked around and chose a place with many positive attributes, and they were able to make a living there. I haven't felt a big need to move from here, though I lived away during college.

Of course if I had a bad relationship with my family, or had wildly different interests/beliefs I would likely want to move away.

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