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>Those network effects of big cities are not intrinsically tied to oligopolic structures. They're also just bigger and more attractive to a big chunk of the pop

>Those network effects of big cities are not intrinsically tied to oligopolic structures. They're also just bigger and more attractive to a big chunk of the population, yeah? Well, they're certainly more attractive to young people nowadays, but at their core, they really offer a few things: * Lots of skilled workers, all in one place. * Lots of preexisting infrastructure, all in one place. * Low per-capita cost of additional infrastructure. On Hacker News there are occasional articles saying many programming jobs ought to offer remote-work as a fringe benefit. That sounds nice, but for a lot of areas of the country, it just wouldn't work. Hell, I remember living in a suburb of Boston, with commuter-rail access to the center city, which as late as 2003 did not have broadband internet in some parts of town. To this day, there are still rural, exurban, and outer-suburban areas without the network infrastructure to make telecommuting really viable. So while cultural attractions are nice, I think that they compete with extremely expensive housing, affordable transit, affordable network access, and job density as factors in where to live.

eropple 10y ago
That's a fair cop, and I don't disagree as far as that goes. It's one of the reasons I really like your posts. =) I do think, however, that there are social issues driving it, too, that go beyond fairness of competition (at least as is generally understood). When you leach out the less privileged from your communities (be they gay, brown, black, trans, etc.), you're going to incur a competitive disadvantage. Bigger cities, for the most part, are a lot more welcoming, and present significant attractive forces that aren't really purely economic in nature, and by themselves can be a big counterweight to stuff like more expensive housing.
flukus 10y ago
> * Lots of skilled workers, all in one place. A lot of software companies like to piss that advantage away by moving to some "technology hub" on the outskirts of major cities.

eropple 10y ago

That's a fair cop, and I don't disagree as far as that goes. It's one of the reasons I really like your posts. =) I do think, however, that there are social issues driving it, too, that go beyond fairness of competition (at least as is generally understood). When you leach out the less privileged from your communities (be they gay, brown, black, trans, etc.), you're going to incur a competitive disadvantage. Bigger cities, for the most part, are a lot more welcoming, and present significant attractive forces that aren't really purely economic in nature, and by themselves can be a big counterweight to stuff like more expensive housing.

flukus 10y ago

> * Lots of skilled workers, all in one place. A lot of software companies like to piss that advantage away by moving to some "technology hub" on the outskirts of major cities.