Ask HN: Is Everyone Moving to Miami?

I moved from Miami from NYC a few months back. I did not move for tech, was pretty disappointed with the way NYC is begin run and how they handled COVID.

I love it here, as someone who has not spent a lot of time in Florida before, weather is great (a bit hot now), great food (lots of great NYC restaurants have second locations here), lots of things to do, you can speak Spanish all day.

Best of all, not everyone thinks the same. People have better things to do then argue about politics all day here. I have not seen a Biden or Trump flag and I have been here 4 months.

Floridas hot summers are a counter part to the norths cold winters. If it is too hot, you go into an AC building or car, just like if it is too cold you go into a heated building or car.

There are a LOT of people who live in Florida for 6 winter months plus a day to be able to say they are Florida residents, and enjoy the nice winter. By memorial day they are all gone.

I don't live on the West Coast, I've only visited. But we did have an F3 tornado touch down within 6 miles of my house earlier this week. Rendered about 30 homes unlivable, and completely obliterated one, although thankfully no deaths. Pretty rare for the area, last one of any significant size was in the 1970s. I agree hurricanes they've gotten stupid good at predicting where they'll be.

Tornadoes don't have that luxury. I did prepare a bit ahead of time since I saw a lot of dark red on the radar, but so often the worst of it skirts around us and we never had tornados since I moved here so I wasn't super concerned. Passed out and woke up to tornado sirens and if it was 6 miles further south could have woken up to a tree crashing into my living room or my house being smashed to a pulp.

Part of the reason climate messaging comes across as poor is because it's hard to predict the future with total precision. The predictions are most likely relatively correct in aggregate but any single prediction will undoubtably be wrong, including the degree in which it will get bad (are we going to heat up by 2 degrees, 4 degrees, 8 degrees by 2100?) and the precise timeline (is it going to happen by 2100? 2050? some even say 2030).

So if things don't play out exactly the way it's predicted, people use that as an excuse to claim that it's not a concern and go back to doing the easy thing of whatever the hell they want and letting corporations do as much bad shit to the environment as they want.

Another issue is things like wildfires and earthquakes and hurricanes have other causes besides climate change, and there's been freak weather throughout history, so is it just a freak weather incident like in history or did climate change contribute? Climate change messaging just claims that the overall frequency and intensity of incidents will increase, not that it caused any given one. So that's easy for people to handwave away also for years and decades also, as 'well maybe we're just going through something that was going to naturally occur anyway, like an Ice Age'.

I agree that most people don't spend too much time thinking about existential risks (nor should they necessarily, that's one way to not live much of a life at all). My concern isn't for my personal life, I'm much more likely to die from health or old age before this gets really bad. I'm more concerned about not wanting to contribute to a mass extinction event any more than I already am, and try to get better while still living a full and productive life.

I'm not on the inside but thought I'd share my take.

I think the overall sentiment is that some people are realizing there are alternatives that .eet their criteria. One of the major criteria is probably around getting a job with a top tier tech company and being in an environment/area that promotes the cross pollination of ideas and skills. It might be that the forced remote work has made some people realize they can do that this sort of stuff online, at least to the degree that they find it acceptable. I would also say that the tech culture has expanded to other cities (or at least it exists to some degree) where there wasn't any in the past.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some ideological or lifestyle differences driving people to other states. Probably some of the same stuff that has prompted some companies to move. Stuff like lower taxes, less regulation (more freedom), lower cost of living (more land or things to buy), less drought to deal with (depends on state), etc. I know I don't have any interest in living in California. I think a lot of that has to do with me liking a more rural life. Yes, I know California has some nice rural areas. California's policies and legislation is basically dominated by the big cities though (not a bad thing, but not my cup of tea).

That’s exactly the picture of SF I have in my head. Confirmed by regular visits in the last 10 years.