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Let me share my math. Let's just take one perk I get to enjoy right now: I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homi

Let me share my math. Let's just take one perk I get to enjoy right now: I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants. In the U.S. I could replicate this only by purchasing a city block sized campus for myself and then investing in very very good screening of tenants and a private security force. Based on average salaries of police and municipal infrastructure workers, combined with real estate prices in major U.S. metros, even with a bit of optimization, I couldn't get the cost to go below $2,150,023,240 for the first year (including real estate purchases) and about $1b yearly afterwards. I could maybe go lower by building my own city block somewhere outside a major metro, but I think infrastructure costs would eat that up. And that's just one perk I got to enjoy: others, such as living within walking distance to my workplace, would be even harder to replicate. Yet others, like the ability to visit a borthel without having to worry about losing my job or going to jail, are nigh impossible. Sure, there's additional efficiency where one action can help achieve multiple such perks, so let's assume I could replicate the lifestyle I enjoyed for a measlt $1b pa. That's about 8000x the annual income I had when I retired. And US salaries are not even 10x higher than Australian ones, so as far as I can tell, the math is not even close to working out. (Of course, not everybody cares about these specific perks, and for some the U.S. may be a better fit. They're welcome to emigrate: the ones who don't appear to care enough to vote and keep these policies in place every 3 years, so I doubt anybody's getting the short end of the stick. The point is that it's stupid to compare salary numbers, because a lot of the things people want are trivial conveniences here and still unaffordable for even the richest people in other places, and vice versa.)

fooker 2y ago
>I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants. It's great you gave a clear threshold instead of making it vague. Here are some US cities that would satisfy this criteria according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...) : San Diego, San Jose (yeah I'm surprised too..), NYC (also unexpected!), Portland, Seattle.
- saithound 2y ago
  LOL. That's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a much lower homicide rate, because there are large suburbs where people onpy sleep and nothing ever happens. The homicide rate of Downtown San Jose (the closest equivalent area) is a whopping 41/100k. So not a good look there.
titanomachy 2y ago
> achieving a homicide rate below 4/100k would require building a secure compound and hiring live security This is a little silly. There are many US cities that meet that standard. Seattle's rate is 6/100k which sounds reasonably safe to me. I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about. > living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate Why would this be the case? Major cities have both large tech offices and dense housing. My office has many apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes within walking distance. The neighborhood it's located in is quite livable. > visiting a brothel without losing my job is impossible This one is probably true. If regular brothel access is a priority, then the US is probably not a good choice. Nevada might be an exception.
- saithound 2y ago
  > I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about. I do know people who were hit by a car while crossing residential streets. I don't know any people who were hit by a car while crossing a highway. This doesn't mean highways are safer to cross on foot than residential streets. Similarly, the people who are not murder victims in US cities must change their natural behavior in thousands of costly and humiliating ways so as to not become victims, and all that effort still doesn't keep the murder rate lower than the 30-60s that US downtowns have. Do you mind your own business while a teenager walks out of the grocery store without paying? Congratulations, you won't show up in those homicide stats. But it's not merely the stats that were the problem: it's the amount of social disfunction that it indicates and you won't buy your way out of that by any realistic higher salary. Similarly, I don't personally know anybody who died of lung cancer, but would also not be keen to wear a respirator so that I can safely eat in a restaurant where people smoke. > There are many US cities that meet that standard. Oh, I'm sure there are many such _cities_. But that's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a still lower homicide rate, but it's not relevant. I can't find data about the homicide rate of high-density living downtown areas of Seattle, but I doubt it's lower than that of the city itself. > living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate Because then you have to make your city block purchase in the immediate vicinity of your employer's office, which will further increase costs since you won't be able to choose among the cheapest high density city blocks.

fooker 2y ago

>I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants. It's great you gave a clear threshold instead of making it vague. Here are some US cities that would satisfy this criteria according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...) : San Diego, San Jose (yeah I'm surprised too..), NYC (also unexpected!), Portland, Seattle.

saithound 2y ago
LOL. That's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a much lower homicide rate, because there are large suburbs where people onpy sleep and nothing ever happens. The homicide rate of Downtown San Jose (the closest equivalent area) is a whopping 41/100k. So not a good look there.

titanomachy 2y ago

> achieving a homicide rate below 4/100k would require building a secure compound and hiring live security This is a little silly. There are many US cities that meet that standard. Seattle's rate is 6/100k which sounds reasonably safe to me. I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about. > living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate Why would this be the case? Major cities have both large tech offices and dense housing. My office has many apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes within walking distance. The neighborhood it's located in is quite livable. > visiting a brothel without losing my job is impossible This one is probably true. If regular brothel access is a priority, then the US is probably not a good choice. Nevada might be an exception.

saithound 2y ago
> I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about. I do know people who were hit by a car while crossing residential streets. I don't know any people who were hit by a car while crossing a highway. This doesn't mean highways are safer to cross on foot than residential streets. Similarly, the people who are not murder victims in US cities must change their natural behavior in thousands of costly and humiliating ways so as to not become victims, and all that effort still doesn't keep the murder rate lower than the 30-60s that US downtowns have. Do you mind your own business while a teenager walks out of the grocery store without paying? Congratulations, you won't show up in those homicide stats. But it's not merely the stats that were the problem: it's the amount of social disfunction that it indicates and you won't buy your way out of that by any realistic higher salary. Similarly, I don't personally know anybody who died of lung cancer, but would also not be keen to wear a respirator so that I can safely eat in a restaurant where people smoke. > There are many US cities that meet that standard. Oh, I'm sure there are many such _cities_. But that's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a still lower homicide rate, but it's not relevant. I can't find data about the homicide rate of high-density living downtown areas of Seattle, but I doubt it's lower than that of the city itself. > living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate Because then you have to make your city block purchase in the immediate vicinity of your employer's office, which will further increase costs since you won't be able to choose among the cheapest high density city blocks.