6 ms·

I don't want to sound like an extremist but this is what happens when everything in life is mercantilised. Money becomes king.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
It's really housing and then money only as a prerequisite to that. To start a family you need somewhere to live. When housing costs are insane you need crazy money to afford it, so everything becomes about money.
- kungito 6y ago
  It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to do that.
  - samr71 6y ago
    I'm sure most of the people working in Tech in the Bay Area could go get a job at some firm in Cincinnati, with substantially lower COL. Of course, they would have a substantially lower salary as well, probably low enough to make the Bay Area the better option economically, even including the high COL. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't lower the COL of the Bay Area! Make Silicon Valley as dense as Tokyo, and I assure you rents will fall.
    - sjwalter 6y ago
      See, you're looking purely in terms of financial economics. But, just as there are other forms of wealth than financial wealth, there are other forms of economics, like social economics. Your decision to take the XX% improved pay in the higher COL area surely will improve your balance sheet over a decade. But what will your peers look like after that decade? Will they be a bunch of 40yo millionaire single people all secretly worried that they took a bad tradeoff? Will the dating pool be full of careerist greedy types? Or family-focused types? I've lived all over the US, and can't recommend enough making actual sacrifices for family. As in, yes, less 401k contribution this year, but I get a house proper for raising children and a stay-at-home wife that is extremely happily homeschooling our brood. So funny, too: Building intergenerational capital for your family is now easier in low CoL areas, because the sacrifices imposed upon children raised in high COL areas are arguably much more damaging than them having smaller college funds. (specifically: dual-income requirement means less parental time, plus high COL areas have spent the past decade making their schools less competitive in order to eradicate, for one example, the horrid specter of white supremacy from the math classroom, where it has loomed large for generations, apparently, which makes the "but the schools" argument basically irrelevant). Can't recommend enough: Move to the country, homeschool your kids, spend as much time as possible with them. Finally, basically the very most common deathbed confession is guilt regarding prioritizing work over family. Do you actually care about regret-minimization? Or do you really truly care about buying baubles and ensuring your children are just as entranced with the rat race as you and all your peers are? If the latter, stay in SF!
      - samr71 6y ago
        This is a fantastic point I don't think I've ever seen brought up before. I'll need to think on this.
    - kaitai 6y ago
      I've done the math with my Midwestern salary and I still come out ahead in the Midwest on average. Yes, you're looking at it all economically, disregarding culture, quality of life, access to nature, family, etc, but even economically, good schools are cheaper here, cultural events are cheaper here, college is cheaper here, day care is cheaper here. That's why a lot of people do move away from the Bay when they've got kids to raise.
    - souprock 6y ago
      Your own personal COL adjustment is what matters. If you are happy living in a rented room and you like to order your food in bulk over the internet, the high-cost city will be a better deal. The 10x higher cost of housing isn't much for your rented room, the 2x cost of most things is avoided, and the 2x increase in salary can go toward ordering more stuff on the internet. If you want some room to spread out, that 10x higher cost of housing will destroy your finances. The 2x higher salary doesn't come close to making up the difference. I know a San Francisco native who left. On an ordinary developer salary, he bought 11 acres of land. He has sheep, because he likes sheep, I guess. He can even shoot an AR-15 in his yard. Just how much would it cost to get that in his native San Francisco? What salary would be needed? Do normal developers get that salary? (for calculation purposes, you can skip the lobbying effort) Scaling down a bit, I'm also a Bay Area native who left. (at age 9 though) My house is 3109 square feet on 0.39 acres, just 0.9 miles from the ocean. How much would that run? My food costs are high already, due to a huge family, recently about $48,000 per year. That would double. What kind of salary would I need to get this? Is it normal for a developer?
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to do that. It's not a problem limited to "expensive areas" though it is dramatically worse there as a result of zoning restrictions on top of everything. It's a problem caused by near-zero interest rates inflating housing prices everywhere.
  - ovi256 6y ago
    When living in an expensive area, one doesn't have to wonder if it's a desirable area. It's obvious it is, look how expensive it is. We copy what others want, a lot, unconsciously.
monoideism 6y ago
It's partly that, but it's partly what the GP comment says: the prevalent idea that true equality of the sexes is for women to become exact copies of men. Since women and men are not exact copies, this causes problems.
- throwaway6734 6y ago
  Imo it's because there's less social resistance for women to take on the roles of men. Until men that take on the former roles of women are viewed equivalently in the dating market, it's going to be a much harder slog
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - JPKab 6y ago
    Women across all income demographics desire men who make as much or more than them. It's a fundamental preference that OKCupid identified a long time ago. As a man, I don't fault this. The risk to a man of reproducing with a woman who isn't great at making money isn't as high, at a fundamental level, as it is for women. A man isn't incapacitated in any way by the act of reproducing. Nor is he prevented or blocked out of reproducing with others, at an evolutionary level. A woman is at great risk for mating with a man who isn't a good provider. If he abandons her, she's stuck. This was the reality for our ancestors, and those preferences are baked into our genes. The opportunity cost of mating with a loser was horrific for women. In case anyone thinks that preference is cultural, it's not. It exists across every culture on the planet, not unlike the biological attraction men have to women who display physical features that are indicative of high fertility. Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or morality.
    - jxramos 6y ago
      > Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or morality. I still try to meditate on the evolutionary advances for sexual vs asexual reproduction to begin with. There's got to be a huge advantage of the separation of the sexes that is hard to fathom just because it's everywhere. Is it a springboard of genetic diversity that optimizes in ways we can't imagine otherwise? The 'compared to what' is always something I wanted to contemplate. Like why did organisms split into near copies of each other with male and female? Why had one developed that carried the womb and the other not? Was it just simple reproductive concurrency? The separation being the better evolutionary choice is so mysterious to me.
tomcam 6y ago
Big capitalist here. I agree completely. The reason I'm a millionaire instead of a billionaire is that my first priority was always to have a stable family and marriage. I noticed all the billionaires seemed to go through a few wives before settling down. Didn't like what that did to the children, or what I imagined it might have done. This kept me out of SV (and in much more, at the time, stable and family oriented Microsoft country).
- sky_rw 6y ago
  If becoming a billionaire or not was simply a matter of choice for you I’m surprised you couldn’t figure out a way to do it without running through wives.
  - tomcam 6y ago
    Sarcasm noted. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not that smart. But I figured out I could do if I worked hard enough and smart enough to get the fuck out of the neighborhood/family I lived in and never get abused or beaten again. I managed that much. I’ve done in-depth studies of successful people since I was a young kid, and the richest ones simply didn’t seem to have time for family. You could probably crack that nut. I can’t. I have a house and a farm and a family close to me, however flawed. I’ll take it.
- madengr 6y ago
  Hell, I’d be a trillionaire but drinking beer is my first priority, so I’m only a thousandaire. As soon as I get off the couch the $$ will roll in.
- Dracophoenix 6y ago
  Have you considered that going through wives might have more to do with how divorcing HNW individuals is a perverse incentive created by the legal system rather than a fault of the individuals in question? In your marriage, how do you hedge against that?
- astrange 6y ago
  Elon has six kids, so can you.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

It's really housing and then money only as a prerequisite to that. To start a family you need somewhere to live. When housing costs are insane you need crazy money to afford it, so everything becomes about money.

kungito 6y ago
It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to do that.
- samr71 6y ago
  I'm sure most of the people working in Tech in the Bay Area could go get a job at some firm in Cincinnati, with substantially lower COL. Of course, they would have a substantially lower salary as well, probably low enough to make the Bay Area the better option economically, even including the high COL. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't lower the COL of the Bay Area! Make Silicon Valley as dense as Tokyo, and I assure you rents will fall.
  - sjwalter 6y ago
    See, you're looking purely in terms of financial economics. But, just as there are other forms of wealth than financial wealth, there are other forms of economics, like social economics. Your decision to take the XX% improved pay in the higher COL area surely will improve your balance sheet over a decade. But what will your peers look like after that decade? Will they be a bunch of 40yo millionaire single people all secretly worried that they took a bad tradeoff? Will the dating pool be full of careerist greedy types? Or family-focused types? I've lived all over the US, and can't recommend enough making actual sacrifices for family. As in, yes, less 401k contribution this year, but I get a house proper for raising children and a stay-at-home wife that is extremely happily homeschooling our brood. So funny, too: Building intergenerational capital for your family is now easier in low CoL areas, because the sacrifices imposed upon children raised in high COL areas are arguably much more damaging than them having smaller college funds. (specifically: dual-income requirement means less parental time, plus high COL areas have spent the past decade making their schools less competitive in order to eradicate, for one example, the horrid specter of white supremacy from the math classroom, where it has loomed large for generations, apparently, which makes the "but the schools" argument basically irrelevant). Can't recommend enough: Move to the country, homeschool your kids, spend as much time as possible with them. Finally, basically the very most common deathbed confession is guilt regarding prioritizing work over family. Do you actually care about regret-minimization? Or do you really truly care about buying baubles and ensuring your children are just as entranced with the rat race as you and all your peers are? If the latter, stay in SF!
    - samr71 6y ago
      This is a fantastic point I don't think I've ever seen brought up before. I'll need to think on this.
  - kaitai 6y ago
    I've done the math with my Midwestern salary and I still come out ahead in the Midwest on average. Yes, you're looking at it all economically, disregarding culture, quality of life, access to nature, family, etc, but even economically, good schools are cheaper here, cultural events are cheaper here, college is cheaper here, day care is cheaper here. That's why a lot of people do move away from the Bay when they've got kids to raise.
  - souprock 6y ago
    Your own personal COL adjustment is what matters. If you are happy living in a rented room and you like to order your food in bulk over the internet, the high-cost city will be a better deal. The 10x higher cost of housing isn't much for your rented room, the 2x cost of most things is avoided, and the 2x increase in salary can go toward ordering more stuff on the internet. If you want some room to spread out, that 10x higher cost of housing will destroy your finances. The 2x higher salary doesn't come close to making up the difference. I know a San Francisco native who left. On an ordinary developer salary, he bought 11 acres of land. He has sheep, because he likes sheep, I guess. He can even shoot an AR-15 in his yard. Just how much would it cost to get that in his native San Francisco? What salary would be needed? Do normal developers get that salary? (for calculation purposes, you can skip the lobbying effort) Scaling down a bit, I'm also a Bay Area native who left. (at age 9 though) My house is 3109 square feet on 0.39 acres, just 0.9 miles from the ocean. How much would that run? My food costs are high already, due to a huge family, recently about $48,000 per year. That would double. What kind of salary would I need to get this? Is it normal for a developer?
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > It's ridiculous how often people repeat this because they want to live in expensive areas. You don't really have to do that. It's not a problem limited to "expensive areas" though it is dramatically worse there as a result of zoning restrictions on top of everything. It's a problem caused by near-zero interest rates inflating housing prices everywhere.
- ovi256 6y ago
  When living in an expensive area, one doesn't have to wonder if it's a desirable area. It's obvious it is, look how expensive it is. We copy what others want, a lot, unconsciously.

monoideism 6y ago

It's partly that, but it's partly what the GP comment says: the prevalent idea that true equality of the sexes is for women to become exact copies of men. Since women and men are not exact copies, this causes problems.

throwaway6734 6y ago
Imo it's because there's less social resistance for women to take on the roles of men. Until men that take on the former roles of women are viewed equivalently in the dating market, it's going to be a much harder slog
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- JPKab 6y ago
  Women across all income demographics desire men who make as much or more than them. It's a fundamental preference that OKCupid identified a long time ago. As a man, I don't fault this. The risk to a man of reproducing with a woman who isn't great at making money isn't as high, at a fundamental level, as it is for women. A man isn't incapacitated in any way by the act of reproducing. Nor is he prevented or blocked out of reproducing with others, at an evolutionary level. A woman is at great risk for mating with a man who isn't a good provider. If he abandons her, she's stuck. This was the reality for our ancestors, and those preferences are baked into our genes. The opportunity cost of mating with a loser was horrific for women. In case anyone thinks that preference is cultural, it's not. It exists across every culture on the planet, not unlike the biological attraction men have to women who display physical features that are indicative of high fertility. Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or morality.
  - jxramos 6y ago
    > Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or morality. I still try to meditate on the evolutionary advances for sexual vs asexual reproduction to begin with. There's got to be a huge advantage of the separation of the sexes that is hard to fathom just because it's everywhere. Is it a springboard of genetic diversity that optimizes in ways we can't imagine otherwise? The 'compared to what' is always something I wanted to contemplate. Like why did organisms split into near copies of each other with male and female? Why had one developed that carried the womb and the other not? Was it just simple reproductive concurrency? The separation being the better evolutionary choice is so mysterious to me.

tomcam 6y ago

Big capitalist here. I agree completely. The reason I'm a millionaire instead of a billionaire is that my first priority was always to have a stable family and marriage. I noticed all the billionaires seemed to go through a few wives before settling down. Didn't like what that did to the children, or what I imagined it might have done. This kept me out of SV (and in much more, at the time, stable and family oriented Microsoft country).

sky_rw 6y ago
If becoming a billionaire or not was simply a matter of choice for you I’m surprised you couldn’t figure out a way to do it without running through wives.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Sarcasm noted. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not that smart. But I figured out I could do if I worked hard enough and smart enough to get the fuck out of the neighborhood/family I lived in and never get abused or beaten again. I managed that much. I’ve done in-depth studies of successful people since I was a young kid, and the richest ones simply didn’t seem to have time for family. You could probably crack that nut. I can’t. I have a house and a farm and a family close to me, however flawed. I’ll take it.
madengr 6y ago
Hell, I’d be a trillionaire but drinking beer is my first priority, so I’m only a thousandaire. As soon as I get off the couch the $$ will roll in.
Dracophoenix 6y ago
Have you considered that going through wives might have more to do with how divorcing HNW individuals is a perverse incentive created by the legal system rather than a fault of the individuals in question? In your marriage, how do you hedge against that?
astrange 6y ago
Elon has six kids, so can you.