Let People Move to Jobs

I'd argue that the average person lives in order to work. It is ingrained in our minds from an early age, and why we have not gone down to a 15 hour week that was first proposed as the path ahead by Keynes in 1930.

In the FIRE community you would find that the majority of people are working in order to live.

Most people with consumer debt are trapped in this too.

The whole idea of remote working to arbitrage cost of living falls apart if you are in any way social.

I think that a lot of people banging on about remote work just haven't tried it for an extended period. It works for some, and for those - great.

To me, it's just another step down the 'technification' of everything in which people don't speak to the people around them (because they've been 'removed' from their lives) but spend all of their time in front of screens.

I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere and earn 10x what the average local does. I want the people around me to be roughly on my level and share my interests. That's something that's easy to do in a city.

That's how businesses end up centering in hubs anyway. Who wants to be a startup founder living in the country alone? I'm sure this person exists, but they're the exception not the rule.

I mean, right now, you can look at a place like London and see hyperlocal clustering of wealth, one street will be the 'nice street' and the next one rough. People really care about this.

If you earned a London salary in my hometown you'd be ostracising yourself completely from those around you by virtue of just having none of the same concerns. Yeah, you own the home outright, you can buy a brand new car every 6 months, the price tags in the supermarket may as well be blank, etc. Oh yeah, and you have working hours whenever you want, booking a holiday is telling your boss "I won't be in Friday, guv". Wait until your neighbour tells you again how they're struggling to pay the bills or they've just been sanctioned by the benefits office.

I don't see how that benefits anyone.

I think the Communist Manifesto was written precisely because not all boats were being lifted.

> ...it's expected quality of life that makes people move to NYC for work and makes dilapidated areas unattractive.

I can't speak to Britain, but in the U.S. there are more people that do not live in SF or NYC than do. Other than people with niche interests (musical theater, startups, finance), most Americans, even young adults, aren't sitting around wondering how they can swing a big move to New York City.

It's much more normal to move to a regional big city, but in those cases the jobs are likely outside the city center as downtown. It's worth noting that NY and California would be stagnating if it weren't for immigration. Immigrants seem to be the ones who see places like SF and NYC as their big chance for a new quality of life.

Technology doesn't seem to be (in terms of what people can cheaply get hold of) there yet though? Amd as soon as it does get there, you'd arbitrage to third world guys not Western guys who want to live in Thaliand.

We're in a situation where we have offshore (Indian) tech hires and it's hard to coordinate on technical matters, even in a company where we have unlimited access to fancy VC rooms. When we flew them over for a bit everything was far easier. My boss thinks expensive digital whiteboards would make a big difference, but actually more than the money there's a political/social cost to buying big, visible things to sit in public sight in an office.

So why would you hire a Western guy for 3x the price and pay the exact same communication cost? Western and sitting in the same building or 3rd world country no other option seems to make sense.