2 ms·

Why start from scratch? Just send 100,000 nerds and hipsters to Detroit or Buffalo with some VC funding and see what happens.

brett40324 10y ago
I agree with this approach. Whos gonna pay for 100,000 outlandish salaries? If they all only earned 10 usd an hour....You do the math.
- niels_olson 10y ago
  I think you're missing the point. No one dreams of paying developers $10/hr to live in Detroit. The salaries are high legitimately. But the quality of life per $ in SF is questionable. I have a friend who manages 500 engineers and can afford a 3rd story walk up loft next to an elevated freeway.
  - brett40324 10y ago
    Nope. I got the point just fine.
  - Finnucane 10y ago
    In San Francisco, your friend likely manages a sweatshop. The engineers on the floor are the high-tech equivalent of the immigrant women working the rows of sewing machines in a Chinatown clothing factory. The manager is the guy who sits in the little room on the side watching the floor to make sure no one takes too long of a pee break. Today's high-tech sweatshops are clean and have toys in them, but the essential economic relations are the same.
massysett 10y ago
Detroit has the advantage of being in the middle of an enormous well-developed network of streets and highways. I see no need to start from scratch when we already have underutilized infrastructure.
niels_olson 10y ago
This does actually seem like the cheapest option.
- Finnucane 10y ago
  Right now Realtor.com lists the median price per sq. ft in SF as $818, Buffalo is $72, and Detroit is $22. So you could cut your housing cost by 90 percent just by moving to a different city. These folks say they don't want to build a 'liberterian techno-utopia', but it's not clear what else they're offering if they are uninterested in investing in actual cities where people actually live.
kodis 10y ago
I don't know about Detroit, but Buffalo is in the midst of an amazing if long overdue recovery from its status as a dying old blue collar rust belt town. It wasn't the nerds and hipsters that pulled this off though, it was a few large wealthy real estate developers who saw a town with potential which due to collapsed real estate prices could be developed at a bargain.

brett40324 10y ago

I agree with this approach. Whos gonna pay for 100,000 outlandish salaries? If they all only earned 10 usd an hour....You do the math.

niels_olson 10y ago
I think you're missing the point. No one dreams of paying developers $10/hr to live in Detroit. The salaries are high legitimately. But the quality of life per $ in SF is questionable. I have a friend who manages 500 engineers and can afford a 3rd story walk up loft next to an elevated freeway.
- brett40324 10y ago
  Nope. I got the point just fine.
- Finnucane 10y ago
  In San Francisco, your friend likely manages a sweatshop. The engineers on the floor are the high-tech equivalent of the immigrant women working the rows of sewing machines in a Chinatown clothing factory. The manager is the guy who sits in the little room on the side watching the floor to make sure no one takes too long of a pee break. Today's high-tech sweatshops are clean and have toys in them, but the essential economic relations are the same.

massysett 10y ago

Detroit has the advantage of being in the middle of an enormous well-developed network of streets and highways. I see no need to start from scratch when we already have underutilized infrastructure.

niels_olson 10y ago

This does actually seem like the cheapest option.

Finnucane 10y ago
Right now Realtor.com lists the median price per sq. ft in SF as $818, Buffalo is $72, and Detroit is $22. So you could cut your housing cost by 90 percent just by moving to a different city. These folks say they don't want to build a 'liberterian techno-utopia', but it's not clear what else they're offering if they are uninterested in investing in actual cities where people actually live.

kodis 10y ago

I don't know about Detroit, but Buffalo is in the midst of an amazing if long overdue recovery from its status as a dying old blue collar rust belt town. It wasn't the nerds and hipsters that pulled this off though, it was a few large wealthy real estate developers who saw a town with potential which due to collapsed real estate prices could be developed at a bargain.