It isn't binary, either good or bad. Maybe it attracts the best people (and I note you had to say "perhaps" since you are just speculating), but it definitely raises the costs of doing business quite substantially, which means less ability to hire, expand, or exist at all. That's not speculation, that's the entire purpose of regulation like this; the government directs you to spend money in this manner or go out of business, no third option.

You must also consider that the California system as a whole, which includes its regulatation system, has become unaffordable and California faces the task of either tearing some of it down or raising taxes to make up for it, and one way or another you must account that negative to that system, too. It's easy to "politic" away the problem of unaffordability for quite a while, just as we have done, until suddenly it produces a result far worse than if we had done the putatively-inferior-but-actually-affordable thing in the first place. Unaffordability is not a political matter, it's an objective one that can't be argued away. And I emphasize the "has become" because that is now past tense, it has happened.

The author is sticking to the facts of the cost of doing business, rather than speculating about IMHO rather nebulous possibilities of "retaining the best people". I think a rather good case could be made that whatever positive effects such regulation has, it passed the point of diminishing returns a long time ago. I don't live in California, and I do not feel a pressing need to move there so my boss stops beating me. (Yes, that is rhetorical, but the basic point stands. At some point regulations just add cost and not much benefit.)

I'm not saying the opposite is true (hence the "perhaps"), I'm saying that the author seems physically incapable of entertaining that option.

In fact neither you nor he are right, and there is little connection either way.

SV is where it is because (a) it got established here back in the late 50s, and (b) once established, hubs persist by default. And historically those factors were not what caused SV to be established here. Rather it was things like the universities, the climate and scenery, and the adventurous atmosphere of the Bay Area, which was already a magnet for optimists.

At most one could claim that SV and California's policies have some of the same causes: that the optimists the Bay Area attracted also favored leftish legislation, at least a few decades ago.

On the last point, it seems to descriptively still be true, based on the outcomes of recent elections? SF itself is obviously quite to the left, but even within SV, Democrats almost always win, and pro-spending ballot initiatives usually pass with healthy margins, even when they involve tax hikes-- e.g. the 1% surcharge on >$1m incomes from 2004, or the recent high-speed rail bonds. HSR in particular strikes me as in line with a Bay-Area techie/leftish/optimist spirit, in favor of large, tech-flavored public works projects.

There are some "business conservatives" in the region, but somehow I don't associate them with tech or SV, Meg Whitman notwithstanding. When I think Bay-Area conservatives, I think east-bay hills and suburbs, or north bay, commuting in to the financial district, not Mountain View. But maybe that's not accurate?