4 ms·

Perhaps we should stop concentrating so many opportunities in areas with exhausted resources that are needed to host an economic sector.

asah 2y ago
Logic is backwards: most (not all!) high power candidates live in expensive dense cities to take advantage of easy access to other people, both for culture (e.g. art and live performances) and work (e.g. meetings, networking events, 1x1s, etc. Put another way, there aren't enough qualified candidates outside expensive cities and therefore the salaries typically tend to go up to cover those costs of living.
randomdata 2y ago
Buyers are free to choose to buy from the company in Poducksville instead, but I suspect that, in the typical case, they'll never learn about said company because it takes strong network effects to get things off the ground.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  Every ecosystem - economic, ecological, or otherwise - has a carrying capacity. The SV/NorCal area is reaching that capacity. There are only so many dollars customers are willing to pay to get a quality product, service, or charitable act before the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and those dollars are what funds the compensation packages of both profits and non-profits. There is no infinite well of value (no matter what capitalism says), which means that there is a ceiling on things like salary and the things (namely residential real estate) that said salary can buy. If you pay a person $300k to do a job because that's what the local job market dictates in SV, are you really getting the surplus value to cover that salary? Can you keep charging customers that amount? Will you do increasingly alienating things that causes negative externalities (read: regulation) to be passed that impact your business model's ability to pay that much? You could very well be better off to hire someone at the $150k rate in a place like Kansas City or Minneapolis. Those aren't "Poducksville" but that's the competition the valley will begin to see.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Sure, just ask the investors to move out of SF, Berkely, Stanford et al. to go south for the winter, and the trillion dollar tech barons to move HQ to the midwest. Do all that and it may start to dissolve a bit.

asah 2y ago

Logic is backwards: most (not all!) high power candidates live in expensive dense cities to take advantage of easy access to other people, both for culture (e.g. art and live performances) and work (e.g. meetings, networking events, 1x1s, etc. Put another way, there aren't enough qualified candidates outside expensive cities and therefore the salaries typically tend to go up to cover those costs of living.

randomdata 2y ago

Buyers are free to choose to buy from the company in Poducksville instead, but I suspect that, in the typical case, they'll never learn about said company because it takes strong network effects to get things off the ground.

lenerdenator 2y ago
Every ecosystem - economic, ecological, or otherwise - has a carrying capacity. The SV/NorCal area is reaching that capacity. There are only so many dollars customers are willing to pay to get a quality product, service, or charitable act before the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and those dollars are what funds the compensation packages of both profits and non-profits. There is no infinite well of value (no matter what capitalism says), which means that there is a ceiling on things like salary and the things (namely residential real estate) that said salary can buy. If you pay a person $300k to do a job because that's what the local job market dictates in SV, are you really getting the surplus value to cover that salary? Can you keep charging customers that amount? Will you do increasingly alienating things that causes negative externalities (read: regulation) to be passed that impact your business model's ability to pay that much? You could very well be better off to hire someone at the $150k rate in a place like Kansas City or Minneapolis. Those aren't "Poducksville" but that's the competition the valley will begin to see.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Sure, just ask the investors to move out of SF, Berkely, Stanford et al. to go south for the winter, and the trillion dollar tech barons to move HQ to the midwest. Do all that and it may start to dissolve a bit.