Elon Musk moves to Texas • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#661

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #656

Darmody wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to reply with a comment I made an hour ago. "The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective. If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right."

I mean, the Third Way Democrats whole shtick is embracing right wing policies and injecting them into the democratic party. They gained power as a faction in the democratic party around 1992 with the argument that after Reagan changed politics in the US and after losing the presidency for three elections, they argued that the democratic party needed to shift heavily to the right to chase what Americans were looking f…

> I mean, the Third Way Democrats whole shtick is embracing right wing policies and injecting them into the democratic party. They gained power as a faction in the democratic party around 1992

They gained power before that (their main original organization, the DLC, was a powerful force in Democratic politics well before its former head became the Democratic nominee in 1992), but they were definitely the unquestionably dominant faction from that point forward, though that has gotten weaker over the past decade or so.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#662

Post by thallavajhula » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

Why is this a big deal? He's moving closer to his main focus.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#663

Post by ddoolin » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

deeviant wrote: post #610

manigandham wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime and gang activity is increasing, especially in prisons where every yard is now active. Local street gangs sets have multiplied with the influx of people (many homeless), drugs, welfare and larger organized crime operations. Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime in areas like SF and LA. CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, f…

This description of California reads like a description that somebody that has never been in California but watches fox news would give.

Agreed. There's a lot of boogeymen in there.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#664

Post by hed » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #388

busterarm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, framed differently, California is looking for deep pockets to bail out their failing budget rather than adjust their policy to match what they can afford. The same has been happening in New Jersey with its insane taxes that don't really go to pay for services anymore and have diverted from transportation & infrastructure projects for decades now to bail out their severely underfunded pension funds...where the pen…

California has been running budget surpluses for many years. And will run a surplus again this year, despite the pandemic

No, it will not: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/895377375/california-has-lost...

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#665

Post by lock-free » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #481

lock-free wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Texas here, but You might have to adjust your statistics regionally for income. Middle class in California is upper middle class everywhere else, even adjusting for salary reduction. Leaving California put us in the 90th percentile for family income in our new region even accounting for change in salary, vs 75th back in the South Bay. That opens up a lot more opportunity for leisure and better schools - we don't…

Sounds like Texas, except you got a basement (and snow)! I really wish more homes in Texas had basements, but they add a lot of unnecessary costs to the building that aren't required for code reasons. Plus, then you can spend that money above ground increasing your living area. Unfortunately, most people don't factor in the extra expense of cooling more above ground space, whereas a basement would hold the temperatur…

> Unfortunately, most people don't factor in the extra expense of cooling more above ground space, whereas a basement would hold the temperature better.

I would recommend anyone building a new home have their basement on a separate HVAC zone, or else the heat rises in the winter and space heaters aren't a great solution.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#666

Post by justapassenger » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #634

justapassenger wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SV political hostility towards technology companies and employees is frustrating. I wish the government was more aligned with helping these companies grow Did you check how well those companies actually grew, dominated markets and made their employees millionaires? Sure, not everything is perfect and aligned to their liking, but calling a place that still actively creating biggest tech companies in the world a host…

It’s a mixed bag - a lot of stuff is really great (non-competes are illegal, at will employment, etc.) The political rhetoric of the area is hostile to technology companies and employees though. A lot of blame is put on the tech industry for whatever problem is being discussed. For example employees and tech companies are blamed for high housing costs because new jobs lead to more people living here (rather than blam…

As I said, not everything is perfect, but let’s keep things in a perspective. It’s still the place that’s generating multiple billion dollars companies year, and turns lots of people into millionaires.

It’s hard to find anywhere else in the world, where sum of all things is so friendly towards tech. Of course, a lot of that isn’t because of government (or even, despite their actions) but complaining how horrible it’s for tech companies in SV is so detached from reality like billionaires complaining that they need to pay extra few % in taxes.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#667

Post by manigandham » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

ddoolin wrote: post #647

manigandham wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime and gang activity is increasing, especially in prisons where every yard is now active. Local street gangs sets have multiplied with the influx of people (many homeless), drugs, welfare and larger organized crime operations. Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime in areas like SF and LA. CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, f…

Illegal immigration should not be seen a failing of the state but as the abject failure of the federal government's immigration policies. Texas has, proportional to total population, more illegal immigrants than California and indeed any other state (at least by estimates). And guess what? They are getting free healthcare there and everywhere else too! If California's sanctuary policies are what's preventing the feds…

Does your point only work if you do "proportional to total population"? Why does that matter? Texas has El Paso which has major criminal drug and border activity. What does Texas have to do with California anyway?

Why is your only defense picking single skewed metrics and comparing it to separate places? Are you going to compare CA as a whole against TX or would that reveal your bias?

You still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years so I'm going to end this here.

EDIT for your newly added last line: I thought about this and figured that HN readers would understand that "weather isn't great either" was in addition to the other issues and even specifically wrote "main cause" in the hopes that nobody would conflate the issues but here we are. But yes fires are mostly due to poor planning and infrastructure. Wildfires are the most preventable disaster but California has gotten to the point where insurance companies are proactively cancelling policies because of the fire damage.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#668

Post by i_cannot_hack » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #599

ddoolin wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime in almost every category has gone down over the last decade. You have to be crazy to think gang activity has gotten worse over the same time period. Immigration is not the domain of the state. I'd argue that given the number of people here, the traffic could be a lot worse. I've personally seen worse gridlock on worse infrastructure in other states with less people. Even if you account for the days that fires a…

> Crime in almost every category has gone down over the last decade. This isn't true at all. Since prop 47, property crime has exploded across the state. Even violent crime rates are significantly higher in LA than they were in 2010.[2][3] In particular gang-on-gang violence may be moving the homicide rate lower, but predator-on-prey violence has shot up. Rapes have more than doubled in the past decade. > From Seattl…

> Rapes have more than doubled in the past decade.

Do you have any source that states that this increase is actually due to more crimes taking place, rather than more victims reporting rapes due to shifting attitudes and/or less fear of societal rebuke? It could very well have been under-reported in the past due to stigma and other reasons.

These kind of societal factors can often affect the number of reported rapes more than the actual crime rate does. And we absolutely know that the attitude toward sexual violence and misconduct has changed a lot in the last decade. So it is reasonable to believe that this had had some effect on the increase of reported sexual violence, especially since most other violent crime has had sharp declines.

Summary of the provided source for people scrolling past:

Since 2010, homicide had a 21% decrease, robbery a 14% decrease, aggravated assault a 25% increase, and rape a 94% increase.

The contrast is even more sharp when looking 20 years back:

Since 2000, homicide had a 52% decrease, robbery a 35% decrease, aggravated assault a 47% decrease, and rape a 41% increase.

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#669

Post by manigandham » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

deeviant wrote: post #610

manigandham wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime and gang activity is increasing, especially in prisons where every yard is now active. Local street gangs sets have multiplied with the influx of people (many homeless), drugs, welfare and larger organized crime operations. Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime in areas like SF and LA. CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, f…

This description of California reads like a description that somebody that has never been in California but watches fox news would give.

Do you live here? What area?

I've been a California resident for over 20 years. Feel free to come down to LA and I'll walk you through the actual streets from downtown to Inglewood. We can even visit a few prisons where I can introduce you to people on both sides of the law, visit the various homeless areas, and talk to the gang task force and DEA agents. Maybe we can also go down to the border and see how things are.

Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective and have little experience with the reality on the ground?

Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas

#670

Post by rendang » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #607

rendang wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A belief that morality improves over time as you describe, aka whiggism/meliorism, is itself a kind of religious tenet of a particular set of worldviews (often called left, progressive etc). So I don't think one can say that rejecting that tenet places one outside of the Overton window of acceptability, while at the same time claiming tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints.

Interesting. How do you reconcile the fact that slavery was once widespread and morally acceptable by the majority of society, and defended by the church, with your position that morality does not improve over time? How about the fact that interracial marriage was once considered sin, and that women allowed to own property or vote was also morally acceptable? Would you prefer a return to the morality of the 1800s, si…

I don't believe, correct me otherwise, that there are any major religions whose main stream/expression universally taught that interracial marriage was a sin. Certainly some Protestants in 1800s USA did, but Christians in 200, 500, 1300 etc did not.

Atlantic chattel slavery could be argued to be crueler than ancient/traditional forms of slavery and hence a temporal decline in moral goodness from the middle ages to late 1800s. It may also be noted that in a low-tech society, feudalist and traditional slave economies may have had some advantages over e.g. a laissez faire wage worker economy. (In a famine perhaps? A question for historians). The cruelty of nature itself on human lives in a low tech society interacts with moral judgments about economic systems etc. in ways that complicate these questions - I would say be careful not to credit to improved virtue what is really the due of technological innovation.

A counterexample of moral improvement could be respect and care for elders and parents, broadly speaking. The point being only that the march of progress is not always consistent nor can it be counted on to be so.