271–280 of 391 posts
I believe Apple still take 90% of the profit.
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I've heard this pitch for Chicago many times, and it seems reasonable if you are in the one of the industries, Tyler mentions, that are more diffuse. The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? No, that's NYC. Is it healthcare? Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland or Rochester. Energy? Houston. Technology? SF. Entertainment? LA or NYC. Politics? DC. What exactly is Ch…
> The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? ... This is a weird expectation. Why does a city have to be "the best" at something? Seattle isn't the best place for software but I'd still choose it over SF any day. Chicago has plenty of industry.
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I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs. For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes o…
> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour. Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting o…
In other words, people want access to socially-dominant individuals. It's probably some sort of backwards instinct that doesn't serve us very well these days, given that for each of the top 100 people in anything, there are a million people who want that "access", and obviously only an infinitestimal fraction of them are going to get it—and living closer to those top 100 people (or even going to events they hold) won't really increase their chances of doing so, any more than living in the capitol city of a monarchy means you'll get to meet the monarch.
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I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs. For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes o…
> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour. Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting o…
I remember reading a conservative/neocon author who tore into this relativizing of culture, insisting on the old definition that "culture" didn't just mean "whatever junk's growing in a petri dish", but I can't remember who it was -- Barzun, Goldman ("Spengler"), or Dalrymple.
The point's valid regardless. "Culture" means "culture", not just "whatever the local savages are doing" -- and it's particularly silly to use cultural relativism to defend Republicans.
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Exactly right. Young people today would rather be poor in a "trendy" city, than rich in a not so trendy one. It has almost become a badge of honor of how much you can rough it to stay afloat in X trendy city. I am guessing it was not like this for previous generations, and I think it leads to too much homogeneity of culture. I think we should start to encouraging people to go to a uncool city and help build it up and…
> I think we should start to encouraging people to go to a uncool city and help build it up and make it cool. While this is a laudable project and it works in some places, many rural citys are very conservative and against anything new the youth might be interested in.
So why haven't I moved? Frankly I'm scared that I can't cut it elsewhere. My job is secure and pays very well for the area (as a single person I make about 160% of the median family income). I could move and work remotely for the same amount which would result in a drastic decrease in quality of life, or try to get another job that I'm probably not qualified for. I've been trying to figure it out for the better part of a decade now.
This article crystalizes a point that was vague in my mind: "megacities have a problem making it affordable to raise large or even medium-size families. How many of us could live in San Francisco, London or New York City and bring up three children in a decent neighborhood with good schools? Only the already well-to-do can manage such a feat.". As a mid-30s person with a new baby, I don't see how the numbers work for…
I'm not sure if Ottawa is a "decent place", but Kanata has lots of jobs and affordable housing (in walking distance).
Still want to move to the US, though.
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I don't mean to have this come across as snarky, at all, but really the reference for this is the whole of human history. Wealth is basically self-concentrating. Our political systems tend to end up with a few capital (and often Capitol) cities where the spoils from the plundering, both metaphorical and literal, end up. The original article does present some interesting and relevant examples of countervailing forces…
> Wealth is basically self-concentrating. Our political systems tend to end up with a few capital (and often Capitol) cities where the spoils from the plundering, both metaphorical and literal, end up. Plundering, seriously? Isn't HN supposed to be a community of entrepreneurs?
I've said it many times: this is one area where NYC is so much better off than, say, the Bay Area. In NYC you have an ultra-wealthy enclave around Central Park and pretty much the rest of Manhattan really requires winning an affordable housing lottery, being an incumbent or being in the top 10%. That might seem like a problem but it's not. Or at least not a huge one. Why? Because there are affordable options within r…
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>Especially for information technology, I don't understand the rationale why it has to be concentrated at certain places. As long as there is a good net connection, it could be anywhere in the world. Let's concentrate on the US for a moment. Why can't a successful startup not be in Dallas, Amarillo, Miami or Des Moines? Because the real commodity being sold with the apartments and offices isn't net access or even lan…
That's a very interesting and original way of looking at it. It would also explain clustering in other areas (finance in NYC, Oil and gas in Houston etc). Do you have any links or references exploring that idea in greater detail?
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Every large city has some schools. Why is it that Austin is a tech hub (UT) but Houston is not (U of H, Rice)? One theory: it is not the school, but the kinds of jobs people get after. Austinites went to work for Dell, and Houstonians went to work for Exxon.
Houston is, for some definition of "tech". It's just more focused on petroleum and ocean engineering, which don't get a lot of play I'm these circles.