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One aspect of geographical arbitrage that I rarely see discussed is what it's like to live in a community as someone with a high-paid job that's very different

One aspect of geographical arbitrage that I rarely see discussed is what it's like to live in a community as someone with a high-paid job that's very different from your neighbors. From that perspective, I like this take on it - if I'm going to be able to easily my afford my home, I'd like it if the same was true for my neighbors, even though most of them have more local, less tech-oriented careers.

matt-attack 5y ago
What you’ve written could be read as: I have money and would prefer to live around other people with money.
derefr 5y ago
There are also cities where the majority of the people there at any given moment aren’t actually employed by the local economy of the place: the estate communities of the northeast US, where everyone is the owner of some corporation who moved there to get away from people; tourist towns where the tourists outnumber the locals, with roughly all the locals employed in hospitality. And there are cities where most everyone you’ll run into is employed by the local community, but doesn’t live there: agricultural towns where most people there at any given moment are temporary workers bussed in; “global” cities like Dubai which have roughly no local population, where most of the population at any time are there on temporary business visas; mining/oil-and-gas boom towns (though this last one tends to change, with the workers often settling into the area.) It’d be interesting to see cities measured on what proportion of the people who you’d have as neighbours, are actually “attached” to the local economy. How much the city exists as an autonomous, self-sustaining entity; vs. being some state government or corporation’s loss leader for some project.
- magneticnorth 5y ago
  These are all really good points. I've mostly only lived places where I was "attached to the local economy" as you put it; I wish I had a better sense of what it's like to live someplace where you're not as locally enmeshed, and how that differs when your neighbors are or aren't in a similar situation.

matt-attack 5y ago

What you’ve written could be read as: I have money and would prefer to live around other people with money.

derefr 5y ago

There are also cities where the majority of the people there at any given moment aren’t actually employed by the local economy of the place: the estate communities of the northeast US, where everyone is the owner of some corporation who moved there to get away from people; tourist towns where the tourists outnumber the locals, with roughly all the locals employed in hospitality. And there are cities where most everyone you’ll run into is employed by the local community, but doesn’t live there: agricultural towns where most people there at any given moment are temporary workers bussed in; “global” cities like Dubai which have roughly no local population, where most of the population at any time are there on temporary business visas; mining/oil-and-gas boom towns (though this last one tends to change, with the workers often settling into the area.) It’d be interesting to see cities measured on what proportion of the people who you’d have as neighbours, are actually “attached” to the local economy. How much the city exists as an autonomous, self-sustaining entity; vs. being some state government or corporation’s loss leader for some project.

magneticnorth 5y ago
These are all really good points. I've mostly only lived places where I was "attached to the local economy" as you put it; I wish I had a better sense of what it's like to live someplace where you're not as locally enmeshed, and how that differs when your neighbors are or aren't in a similar situation.