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Comment by hnthrow90348765 | Hacker News Reader

Why TF does everyone want to be in Texas heat or not be able to go outside?

One aspect that intrigues me is it's well positioned to take advantage of solar power. I think solar capacity is growing faster than any state and it's behind only California now?

I live in Chicago and just got finished with a 10F degree week, and I was sitting there feeling bad about how much natural gas my house was burning to stay warm. There are plenty of weeks here, where I have to raise the temperature in the house 60F degrees, whereas the worst in Texas is probably only a difference of a few dozen, tops. On top of which, cooling like that is vastly more efficient than warming. Heat pumps are getting to be useable at these low temperatures, and somewhat more efficient than just burning the fuel, but not nearly as efficient at cooling from, say, 100 to 80.

But the biggest difference is that when climate control needs are the highest here, we have the least sun: in the winter, at night. Whereas in Texas when the climate needs are the highest (in the summer, in the daytime), they have the most sun. There's something sort of pleasing about that to me.

> Texas heat

In other words, as someone who's a solar power optimist, dealing with Chicago cold, I feel like that's not such a drawback.

Of course, somewhere sunny and comfortable like California might be best, but who can afford that.

In the cold, you can always put on more layers.... in the heat, you're basically sol

Maybe because it doesn't take 20 years to get a permit to build a treehouse. [0]

[0]: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/austin-ten-times-housin...

They don't. They're currently incorporated in Delaware, but HQ is (and will remain, so far) in California.

> The paperwork change would not relocate its corporate headquarters. A Meta spokesperson said that it does not plan on shifting its corporate headquarters out of Menlo Park, California, but declined to comment on reincorporation when contacted by Reuters.

Engineers don’t seem to be taking the bait, and people are very reluctant to move away from basically the most perfect weather in the entire world almost year round.

When industries move away, taxes do as well. When the taxes go down, services and property values go down. Engineers may not want to give up perfect weather, but they still want to be employed, have their properties not depreciate and want good schools.

Eh, when somebody quits Meta in Texas and gets hit with a Non-Compete they're move real fast back to CA.

Eh, people will still move to California to start a business. When it gets threatened enough, it'll cave and play ball with other states to get back into the game. Having an insane upper hand with the climate based desirability will help them to get back on track, in my opinion. Now, I don't live in CA, and wouldn't want to move for some other reasons, but I genuinely don't think there is a better climate than SF, LA, SD metro areas. Maybe Cape Town, but then again, different problems.

Various pundits have been really pushing this "People are leaving California in droves!" narrative, desperately hoping that it one day becomes true. They need it to be true in order to repudiate all the various political Californisms that they disagree with. The reality is that California's population declined less than 1% in one year out of the last 125 and stood approximately steady in one year. It increased the remaining 123 years.

Yet, tax revenues are dropping everywhere. At a state level and at local levels.

You’re really underestimating how much people value the ability of just going outside at any point of the year without and physical annoyances. It’s hard to live anywhere else once you experience the life in that climate, and people won’t move out easy. Ok, I’m definitely overstating, and very biased, but still.

Industries aren't really moving though. The state a company is incorporated is generally orthogonal to where that company puts their HQ or hires most of their workers.

There are a lot of people in Texas and the biggest cities are quite close together. In fact, you can start in Dallas, drive down to Waco, drive down to Austin, drive down to San Antonio, and you've only driven four hours to do so. If ever there was untapped access to a huge workforce, it's in Texas.

Even better, Houston actually has the lowest homelessness rate of any major US city[0] and access to water. People are really sleeping on Houston's future right now.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/1dpg4he/did_you_kn...

No state income tax.

Very business friendly, especially for the Good Ol' Boys club.

> No state income tax.

Property taxes are quite high in TX though. Even a conservative government has to fund itself somehow.

Yes, but a billionaire has a very small percentage of their net worth in personal real estate.

Why TF does everyone want to be in Texas heat or not be able to go outside?

Northwest Texas is almost southeast Colorado. Try to think beyond the stereotypes.

Cheap housing and permissive regulations

It's very libertarian. No taxes, few regulations. Some people die here and there from the lack of safety, but that's a sacrifice the government is willing to make.

This is a massive oversimplification. The taxes and regulations are simply handled at a lower level of government. If you've ever lived in a large Texas metro, you would know it's not the wild west it gets portrayed as. Lots of places that give off serious California NIMBY vibes and that are relatively expensive. The difference is that taxation and government services are typically handled via property tax and delivered locally instead of at the state level.

California and Texas have a lot more in common than people who've only lived in one or the other think. Texas just happens to be growing very quickly and is in some ways more geopolitically important at the moment (energy and exports and semiconductors and finance), which (besides less business regulation) is a big reason for the outflow from Cali and other states to Texas.

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