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California, Love It and Leave It

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Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#11

Post by myrandomcomment »

My wife and a I have Austin on the list of places to exit to after the kids finish high school in 2022. 6th street is amazing if you like live music (which we do). Santa Fe, NM is also on the list. The fact that I live in what is the worlds 5th larger economy with a power grid that looks like a 3rd world nation is a huge part of the reason to leave. $2m home where I need to spend another $100k to sort for the fact that PG&E mismanaged everything for the last 20 years, yet I have a $400 a month power bill... all LED lights, all low power everything..

State should just take control and setup CA wide power company who is managed to provide power to everyone all the time and focused on moving all line underground to prevent the fires.. but Newsom is more focused on seeing if he can power the state on the amount of human excrement now found on the streets of SF due to the housing issue for the homeless. We have such a rich state, but the common worker is just screwed by the house laws that keep us from building affordable housing. We that are the lucky valley elite drink our $5 coffees and fail to realize that the person serving us drives 3 hours a day to get to work because they cannot afford to live anywhere near by. I count myself very lucky for the success I have had but I sickened by the cost.

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#12

Post by rmk »

One thing that jumps out is that the whole Palantir triumvirate has decided to bail out of CA at the same time. I've seen this type of thing happen very often: company makes it big, there's a huge pot of money, founder has made plans about a year in advance and has already established domicile in a tax-free or low-tax jurisdiction, such as FL (very popular because of the lifestyle that is possible there) and TX. In this case, Joe Lonsdale is in TX, whereas his cofounders are also out of SV, with one in New Hampshire (Alex Karp) and another in LA (Peter Thiel, who also has citizenship in NZ). I wonder if the other founders of this company have also bailed.

Even if most of what's written in the article is true, I feel that the motivations of this set are pretty clear: save tax money on what is clearly a huge payday.

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#13

Post by Lammy »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #11

My wife and a I have Austin on the list of places to exit to after the kids finish high school in 2022. 6th street is amazing if you like live music (which we do). Santa Fe, NM is also on the list. The fact that I live in what is the worlds 5th larger economy with a power grid that looks like a 3rd world nation is a huge part of the reason to leave. $2m home where I need to spend another $100k to sort for the fact th…

> provide power to everyone all the time

I just wish it could be from a less environmentally-destructive source than natural gas. Sonoma County was actually going to be the site of the first commercially-viable nuclear generating station in the entire USA, at PG&E's Atomic Park on Bodega Head, but that never happened for now probably obvious environmental reasons.

But now I have to pay an average of $0.262/kWh for natural-gas-driven PG&E electricity, and the Sierra Club who stopped Bodega Head have taken funding from the gas companies[0], so I'm left rather unsure what to think and what to advocate for :/

https://science.time.com/2012/02/02/exclusive-how-the-sierra...

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#14

Post by rmk »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #11

My wife and a I have Austin on the list of places to exit to after the kids finish high school in 2022. 6th street is amazing if you like live music (which we do). Santa Fe, NM is also on the list. The fact that I live in what is the worlds 5th larger economy with a power grid that looks like a 3rd world nation is a huge part of the reason to leave. $2m home where I need to spend another $100k to sort for the fact th…

If CA couldn't manage a high-speed rail line between two major urban centres, what makes you think they can move electrical lines underground?

The last major project the state undertook was the Hetch-Hetchy aqueduct, and that project was done in Jerry Brown's father's time. Pat Brown was governor of CA in the 60's.

Let that sink in.

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#15

Post by throwawaysea »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #7
swang720 wrote: post #6

"Politics in the state is in many ways closed off to different ideas. We grew weary of California’s intolerant far left, which would rather demonize opponents than discuss honest differences of opinion." I disagree with much in this article, but I do agree with this specific point. I've had many conversations in San Francisco that have turned me off from discussing politics. It's very difficult for some to accept tha…

> Just because one doesn't agree with another to the extent they do doesn't mean there isn't a middle ground. I found this culture sneaking into Silicon Valley companies, too. I recently left a SV company for one in the NE and the difference is astounding. I’m much happier and there is much less corporate activism.

I am not sure it is a culture “sneaking” anywhere as much as openly and aggressively taking over. This is very true at least in Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix. The intolerant far-left employees openly discuss personal politics on employee mailing lists and forums, unprofessionally spending paid company time on activism, strategizing on how they can control the company and use it to further their political agendas. They achieve their political ends by pressuring executives, pressuring HR, altering the company’s products, pushing policies (both internal and external) that support their views, etc. It is very hard to escape - you see it in mandatory “equity training”, in work conferences that invite far left speakers, and even in trivial things like where to get food for a team lunch (a vocal employee might demand that no money be spent on businesses whose owners don’t pass their purity test). Given how vocal and ruthless activist employees can be (due to the psychological safety of echo chambers), there is no room for any other view whatsoever. It is exhausting, unprofessional, and a big reason why claims of bias from big tech companies are real, not imagined.

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#16

Post by myrandomcomment »

rmk wrote: post #14
myrandomcomment wrote: post #11

My wife and a I have Austin on the list of places to exit to after the kids finish high school in 2022. 6th street is amazing if you like live music (which we do). Santa Fe, NM is also on the list. The fact that I live in what is the worlds 5th larger economy with a power grid that looks like a 3rd world nation is a huge part of the reason to leave. $2m home where I need to spend another $100k to sort for the fact th…

If CA couldn't manage a high-speed rail line between two major urban centres, what makes you think they can move electrical lines underground? The last major project the state undertook was the Hetch-Hetchy aqueduct, and that project was done in Jerry Brown's father's time. Pat Brown was governor of CA in the 60's. Let that sink in.

We put a man on the moon. At the hight of WW2 we built a liberty ship everyday. We have to have the will to do what is required. Not sure we have that anymore. In general Americans have lost the will to do the hard task that take time. We have lost faith in the power of our science and engineering. We want everything in 30 seconds sound bites. The lack of long term planning for the future of our children will be our down fall. Contrast our handling of Covid vs the Chinese, South Korean or NZ.

Bread and circus, the fall of Rome.

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#18

Post by mesozoic »

Lammy wrote: post #2

> Bad policy has made the state unlivable, so I moved my family and my venture-capital firm to Texas. If I may read between the lines of this very particularly-chosen wording, it sounds like this Palantir co-founder will probably still be here constantly for work or what have you. Some move, huh?

Suppose he's just spending time where he can take advantage of the labor force to make him rich(er).

Re: California, Love It and Leave It

#19

Post by rotexo »

blkknightarms wrote: post #5

I just left CA after 42 years. Austin, apart from panhandling and corporate retail dominating commercial real estate, is awesome. Free tattoos line around the block for Friday the 13th on 6th st. was hilarious. People are much nicer and more social. Groceries are cheaper (HEB rocks). Traffic sorta sucks but it's nothing like LA or Bay Area commute. The weather is baller as long as it's not summer, in which case, vaca…

Nah man it isn’t life unless it’s summer in Austin. Back in my youth I would still bike everywhere, I would just plan my bike route to hit every public pool possible, like the main character in John Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer.’ And then I would eat some amazing Tex mex on a patio and then hit the springs for a night swim. Of course, nobody is doing that kind of thing these days anyways. I miss Austin. I miss my youth.
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