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Please don't. There is a history of liberal voters moving to more moderate places for the low cost of living and high quality of life. Over time those voters el

by tharne 6y ago

Please don't. There is a history of liberal voters moving to more moderate places for the low cost of living and high quality of life. Over time those voters elect politicians that enact policies that make the new place a lot like the old place they left: high taxes, high cost of living, higher crime. Believe it or not, there was a time when California was a purple state, and it had a low(er) cost of living and very high quality of life. This was a long time ago, but still. If you do decide to move somewhere, please try and be respectful of the folks who already live there and have made it a desirable place to live in the first place. And while you're at it, ask yourself why you want to make a place you're moving to more like a place that you left because you didn't want to live there anymore.

pkaye 6y ago
Some of those people are just moving back to where they grew up. They used to part of those communities but the job opportunities were in the big cities.
qntty 6y ago
Of course the irony of this suggestion is that the real "people who already live there", i.e. Native Americans, tend to lean liberal. Perhaps people whose family have only been there a few generations should respect them.
freehunter 6y ago
>Over time those voters elect politicians that enact policies that make the new place a lot like the old place they left So the problem is citizens legally voting for people/policies they want to see in their local jurisdiction? That sounds exactly like how democracy is supposed to work. There's no law saying things have to stay exactly how they were, and there's no law saying seniority makes your vote count more than anyone else's.
- qw3rty01 6y ago
  > And while you're at it, ask yourself why you want to make a place you're moving to more like a place that you left because you didn't want to live there anymore. The point is not voting for politicians that make the place as undesirable as the place you left.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    That point is the flimsiest straw man I've seen in a long time. Just because someone left NYC doesn't mean they hate 100% of everything about NYC, and anyone who moves to a rural area hoping to turn it into NYC... well obviously no one would do that because that's just ridiculous because it can't actually happen. Absolute FUD. 100% straw man.
- tharne 6y ago
  There is no law against moving, but there is something unethical or at least obnoxious about leaving a place because it has a poor quality of life and high cost of living and then turning around and advocating for policies that make the place you moved to as bad as the place you left. Just because you have the right to do something, doesn't make it a good idea. It just means no one can legally stop you.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    I strongly doubt that. If I moved to Eldora, Iowa and voted for the most progressive, liberal, all-blue policies, up and down the ticket... it's still not going to turn Eldora into San Fransisco. There's not going to suddenly be a drug problem where there wasn't before. There's not going to be massive traffic problems blocking my commute. There's not going to be people commuting hours to work because they couldn't afford a million-dollar house in town. Even if you doubled the voting population with people specifically chosen so you could enact the most SF-like policies, you still only have... 5,000 people in the entire town. There's just not enough people to encounter those kinds of problems. Cities with poor quality of life and high cost of living are that way because their laws and policies aren't effectively managing the high population. If you move to a low population area, the problems you encounter are wildly different (and yes small towns still have big problems to solve). And if you move to a city that has a large enough population that SF's poor city planning actually matters, you're going to have to move a lot of people to overwhelm the status quo. And if a small number of new people dramatically changes the feel of a city, well that sounds like you had 51% of the people who wanted it one way overriding the 49% who absolutely hate the city they live in. This fear feels like a socially conservative "I don't want them folk coming here and changing things". If new people move in and things start changing, they were always going to change and a lot of people have been waiting for that change for a long time. Embrace it.
majormajor 6y ago
Anytime I see statements like these - "for the low cost of living and high quality of life" coupled with "a desirable place to live in the first place" - I have to wonder about the economic thinking from the person saying it. What do you think is a better metric of "desirable place to live" than cost of living? People are willing to pay 2, 3, 4 times as much to live in coastal California? Seems like it's still VERY desirable... So in fact, what people moving are doing is completely rational: they want to bring the things they like because they still desired to live there, other people just had more money... (this part does expose one of the cruelties: people with even more money than the people CURRENTLY in CA can price them out to TX or wherever, where they can then price the current folks there out, etc! But I don't see how you can then possibly view the solution as more free market policies and such...) It's the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" of city politics discussions... somehow people who otherwise praise economic trends that cause appreciating property values suddenly hate it when it gets too expensive for them!
lizknope 6y ago
The situation is more complicated that just what color the state is. Most cities are blue and rural areas are red. I live in a red / purple state but all the cities are blue. The current estimate from the 2010 census is that we have grown 10% and added around 1 million people. Some of the rural counties are shrinking. The vast majority of growth is in the cities that were already blue and are just becoming more blue. I live one state away but if you look at Virginia it did not change from red to blue because people moved into the rural areas and voted opposite of the rural voters. People moved into Arlington, Richmond, and Virginia Beach and made these already blue areas larger and more blue. After a few years it tipped the balance in the state.

by tharne 6y ago

pkaye 6y ago

Some of those people are just moving back to where they grew up. They used to part of those communities but the job opportunities were in the big cities.

qntty 6y ago

Of course the irony of this suggestion is that the real "people who already live there", i.e. Native Americans, tend to lean liberal. Perhaps people whose family have only been there a few generations should respect them.

freehunter 6y ago

>Over time those voters elect politicians that enact policies that make the new place a lot like the old place they left So the problem is citizens legally voting for people/policies they want to see in their local jurisdiction? That sounds exactly like how democracy is supposed to work. There's no law saying things have to stay exactly how they were, and there's no law saying seniority makes your vote count more than anyone else's.

qw3rty01 6y ago
> And while you're at it, ask yourself why you want to make a place you're moving to more like a place that you left because you didn't want to live there anymore. The point is not voting for politicians that make the place as undesirable as the place you left.
- freehunter 6y ago
  That point is the flimsiest straw man I've seen in a long time. Just because someone left NYC doesn't mean they hate 100% of everything about NYC, and anyone who moves to a rural area hoping to turn it into NYC... well obviously no one would do that because that's just ridiculous because it can't actually happen. Absolute FUD. 100% straw man.
tharne 6y ago
There is no law against moving, but there is something unethical or at least obnoxious about leaving a place because it has a poor quality of life and high cost of living and then turning around and advocating for policies that make the place you moved to as bad as the place you left. Just because you have the right to do something, doesn't make it a good idea. It just means no one can legally stop you.
- freehunter 6y ago
  I strongly doubt that. If I moved to Eldora, Iowa and voted for the most progressive, liberal, all-blue policies, up and down the ticket... it's still not going to turn Eldora into San Fransisco. There's not going to suddenly be a drug problem where there wasn't before. There's not going to be massive traffic problems blocking my commute. There's not going to be people commuting hours to work because they couldn't afford a million-dollar house in town. Even if you doubled the voting population with people specifically chosen so you could enact the most SF-like policies, you still only have... 5,000 people in the entire town. There's just not enough people to encounter those kinds of problems. Cities with poor quality of life and high cost of living are that way because their laws and policies aren't effectively managing the high population. If you move to a low population area, the problems you encounter are wildly different (and yes small towns still have big problems to solve). And if you move to a city that has a large enough population that SF's poor city planning actually matters, you're going to have to move a lot of people to overwhelm the status quo. And if a small number of new people dramatically changes the feel of a city, well that sounds like you had 51% of the people who wanted it one way overriding the 49% who absolutely hate the city they live in. This fear feels like a socially conservative "I don't want them folk coming here and changing things". If new people move in and things start changing, they were always going to change and a lot of people have been waiting for that change for a long time. Embrace it.

majormajor 6y ago

Anytime I see statements like these - "for the low cost of living and high quality of life" coupled with "a desirable place to live in the first place" - I have to wonder about the economic thinking from the person saying it. What do you think is a better metric of "desirable place to live" than cost of living? People are willing to pay 2, 3, 4 times as much to live in coastal California? Seems like it's still VERY desirable... So in fact, what people moving are doing is completely rational: they want to bring the things they like because they still desired to live there, other people just had more money... (this part does expose one of the cruelties: people with even more money than the people CURRENTLY in CA can price them out to TX or wherever, where they can then price the current folks there out, etc! But I don't see how you can then possibly view the solution as more free market policies and such...) It's the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" of city politics discussions... somehow people who otherwise praise economic trends that cause appreciating property values suddenly hate it when it gets too expensive for them!

lizknope 6y ago

The situation is more complicated that just what color the state is. Most cities are blue and rural areas are red. I live in a red / purple state but all the cities are blue. The current estimate from the 2010 census is that we have grown 10% and added around 1 million people. Some of the rural counties are shrinking. The vast majority of growth is in the cities that were already blue and are just becoming more blue. I live one state away but if you look at Virginia it did not change from red to blue because people moved into the rural areas and voted opposite of the rural voters. People moved into Arlington, Richmond, and Virginia Beach and made these already blue areas larger and more blue. After a few years it tipped the balance in the state.