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Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

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Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#311

Post by fnordpiglet »

tracker1 wrote: post #256
fnordpiglet wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries are equivalent to prisons in your example? I agree, they act that way now. But what about states in the United States? They were explicitly formed as a set of states - nations - that cooperate under a federation. Free migration wasn’t always the case in the original states but was required in the constitution. What about the EU? People can move about freely today when in the past they weren’t able to. Or ar…

It's possible for any adjacent nation/country/region to join the US or EU... so it's perfectly possible for free travel, if you agree to the rules of the higher federation. You can only impact jurisdictions you have jurisdictional control over.

I for one welcome our one world order overlords!

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#312

Post by rayiner »

indigochill wrote: post #216
lolinder wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. However, in the context of a true nation state, the exact same words can mean something very different. When we in the United States try to claim that immigration would hurt our sovereignty as a people,…

There are a couple interesting assumptions here: 1. There's such a thing as a true nation 2. That how long a person's family has lived in a region should entitle them to keep others out The first one is bound to wander into circuitous philosophical debate, but I'm curious what the rationale is for the second.

If you believe that people and cultures are different (which almost everyone outside America believes) then it follows that a region reflects the people who developed it. Countries are, of course, not just land, but they are built of infrastructure, governments, institutions, culture, customs, rules, norms, and values. If Iowa is polite, flat, and egalitarian it’s because Iowans made it that way. By contrast India or China are the way the Indians and Chinese made those places. It stands to reason that if Iowans like Iowa, they might be resistant to immigration from people who are different who will change the place.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#313

Post by JeremyNT »

nradov wrote: post #295
JeremyNT wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should live where the government aligns with your phase of life and personal goals and be free to choose a new government later. Also, democracies can shift over time but generally it is easier to move somewhere new than to feel entitled to change a municpal culture simply because you got older. I feel like people need to understand this. I'm currently living in Nashville, TN, which you may as well have been re…

Nashville has been experiencing rapid population growth. How do reconcile that with your claim that the governmental situation is dire?

Let's just say that many of these people do not value the things that I find important and vice versa.

Many are here because of the lack of income tax, the country music industry, and the extremely culturally conservative government. They either do not care about the poor public transit/services/infrastructure/schools/etc or they do not care enough to outweigh the benefits.

A common refrain I hear when talking to people is that they wanted to move somewhere that wasn't so "woke."

Nashville also, until recently, had a low COL compared to similarly sized non-Southern metros.

Personally I am here for work, and realistically many others would do the same. Nashville has more employment opportunities than the deep south and is a logical place for such people to end up.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#314

Post by nradov »

hintymad wrote: post #189

How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the hig…

The Bay Area is a wonderful place to live if you're wealthy enough to avoid all the bad stuff and able to fly somewhere else whenever you feel like it. The tech company executives who make headquarters location decisions are that wealthy, and they prefer to have short commutes. Location decisions are made on that basis. They don't much care about quality of life (or lack thereof) for regular employees. In most cases they are completely disconnected from the struggles that other Bay Area residents go through with schools and housing; it just doesn't register with them.

My advice to most young people starting their careers is to avoid the Bay Area unless you honestly have the potential to quickly get up near the top of the income distribution. It will continue as a key tech industry hub but for most people there are better options now.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#315

Post by RhysU »

maxsilver wrote: post #238
hermannj314 wrote: post #16

I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase o…

> You should live where the government aligns with your phase of life and personal goals and be free to choose a new government later. It should be noted that while this is good advice, this is a big luxury to have, and not something that is broadly applicable to most people. If you don't have the money, if your career is tied to a specific industry, if you have children from any past-and-now-divorced marriage, or a…

> But municipal government absolutely owe it to their residents and community to support the people they have, not just the people they wish they had.

Within reason, supporting the people you wish you had, instead of the people you have, is called leadership. It is how we progress as a species.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#316

Post by hintymad »

nradov wrote: post #314
hintymad wrote: post #189

How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the hig…

The Bay Area is a wonderful place to live if you're wealthy enough to avoid all the bad stuff and able to fly somewhere else whenever you feel like it. The tech company executives who make headquarters location decisions are that wealthy, and they prefer to have short commutes. Location decisions are made on that basis. They don't much care about quality of life (or lack thereof) for regular employees. In most cases…

> They don't much care about quality of life (or lack thereof) for regular employees.

But many talents do stay in the Bay Area and many startups grew to become giants too. So, I'm not sure it's a one-sided decision by the wealthy. And I'm not sure about now but before 2010, very few people outside of the Bay Area knew how to build distributed systems. Case in point, IBM tried to build an auction system to compete with eBay's, and they couldn't figure out why eBay could support such a large throughput with subsecond latency. And in the first few years since http://highscalability.com launched, most of the shares came from the companies in the Bay Area.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#317

Post by rayiner »

JeremyNT wrote: post #313
nradov wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nashville has been experiencing rapid population growth. How do reconcile that with your claim that the governmental situation is dire?

Let's just say that many of these people do not value the things that I find important and vice versa. Many are here because of the lack of income tax, the country music industry, and the extremely culturally conservative government. They either do not care about the poor public transit/services/infrastructure/schools/etc or they do not care enough to outweigh the benefits. A common refrain I hear when talking to peo…

> Many are here because of the lack of income tax, the country music industry, and the extremely culturally conservative government.

> A common refrain I hear when talking to people is that they wanted to move somewhere that wasn't so "woke."

What’s wrong with people sorting into places that are culturally compatible? After all plenty of people move to Paris for the culture.

> They either do not care about the poor public transit/services/infrastructure/schools/etc or they do not care enough to outweigh the benefits.

Aside from schools, most people either don’t use those things or it doesn’t make a difference. Oftentimes it’s an upgrade from the utterly dysfunctional alternative where they came from. (The efficiency of my traditionally red county’s limited public services was a nice change of pace from DC.)

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#318

Post by rayiner »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #182
playingalong wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have history to help us answer your question. The answer is: yes, people returned to many places after they were totally demolished, suffered from systematic resource drainage and were background of inhumane genocides. TLDR: massive scale war is nothing new. Sadly

But you also have people that do not? My entire parents’ generation immigrated thousands of miles away to various places around the world and never went back (other than as tourists), and it was not even war torn or lacking in resources. They just happened to bet that they could provide a better life for themselves and their children elsewhere.

Yes, and they’re a distinct minority. Polling shows that even if they had the opportunity to go somewhere else, overwhelming majorities of people in Asia and Africa wouldn’t leave their homeland. Even in sub-Saharan Africa just a third of the population would leave if they could: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-mi.... In east and south Asia it’s under 10%.

This is, in my view, one of the reasons america is so culturally weird. It’s generation after generation of the most antisocial families from other countries.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#319

Post by nradov »

hintymad wrote: post #316
nradov wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area is a wonderful place to live if you're wealthy enough to avoid all the bad stuff and able to fly somewhere else whenever you feel like it. The tech company executives who make headquarters location decisions are that wealthy, and they prefer to have short commutes. Location decisions are made on that basis. They don't much care about quality of life (or lack thereof) for regular employees. In most cases…

> They don't much care about quality of life (or lack thereof) for regular employees. But many talents do stay in the Bay Area and many startups grew to become giants too. So, I'm not sure it's a one-sided decision by the wealthy. And I'm not sure about now but before 2010, very few people outside of the Bay Area knew how to build distributed systems. Case in point, IBM tried to build an auction system to compete wit…

There were plenty of people outside the Bay Area who knew how to build distributed systems before 2010. But a lot of that was in secretive industries such as defense and finance so you never heard about it.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#320

Post by rayiner »

legitster wrote: post #98
nhchris wrote: post #15

The article is valid in speaking specifically about US states competing, but otherwise I find the idea of treating governments, and countries, as mere economic platforms, that compete like a business would, disturbing. They are representatives of their nations, and their duty is to their people, to whom they are guardians, of said people and their homelands. They should not be 'competing' for more residents just as f…

How is this not just pure, racist nationalism? Where you live is not a family. If you are born unlucky geographically it seems like you should absolutely have the right to improve your lot.

“Racism” is where southern white people don’t like southern black people despite being from the same place and sharing highly overlapping culture, religion, and values.

When you’re talking about different groups of people from different cultures that’s not “racism.” My parents, who grew up in Bangladesh, an extremely hierarchical and traditional society, couldn’t be more different from my wife’s parents, who are descendent from frontier pioneers. Like they can get along as individuals but neither would want to live in a society built by the other. And that’s exactly what happens when you introduce large scale immigration into a democracy.

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