You don't need to be on the West Coast to have a tech job.

The problem is, for an intellectual, it's important to live in an environment rich with mental talent. Bay Area is the intellectual capital of the world, and while Einstein could maintain his patent clerkship and have famous physicists visit him in Bern (http://norvig.com/performance-review.html) for the lesser minds in another era settling on another place is a loss.

Lol. Damn, the 0 interest rate era/tech bubble really made you guys cocky didnt it

I grew up surrounded by literally rocket scientists and some of the top minds in biochemistry and mechanical engineering as neighbors. Incredibly intellectual people. I did not grow up in California.

Its not like the Bay Area is the only place with smart people.

Say what?

Switzerland (or possibly Slovenia) has the highest STEM PhDs per capita.

There are many counties and cities in the US with higher PhD rates than any of the Bay Area counties. Most have major R1 unis, but not all.

SV is the VC capital of the world. I'll give you that. But, that's not even remotely the same as being the intellectual capital.

(And that’s not a knock on NM. I being it up as an example of an area that isn’t rarely bright up in these conversational circles)

I'd assume the intellectual capital makes the most intellectual property

There aren't many places where very smart people from all over the world move. New York is one, London used to be one, Bay Area is one. There are a lot of smart people in the bay area.

My eyes rolled straight into the back of my head.

I agree that an 'intellectual' (as a social class construct) might require similar socially oriented individuals to feel like they're among equals. I have no respect for such 'intellectuals'. I have a great deal of respect for people who are curious about the world around them and love to make new and wonderful things and think novel ideas.

I find that those two groups rarely overlap.

Yeah, mine too. It's hard for me to take these kinds of arguments seriously in 2023. I'm willing to concede that geographic proximity was necessary for collaborative intellectual work, but the internet has changed that milieu. I also don't think it was true pre-internet, as Einstein himself showed.

Linus Torvalds didn't need to be in the Bay Area of California when he created the Linux kernel, yet it didn't happen without a massive amount of collaboration enabled by the internet. Solzhenitsyn, after he emigrated to the USA after getting deported by the Soviet Union, continued his intellectual work and writing in Cavendish, Vermont which was and is extremely isolated. And that was pre-internet!

In a more lightweight form - what would you, as somebody interested in the matter, consider good criteria for "being the intellectual capital of the world" and what place would fit them?

I'd say such a place would need to be geared toward minimizing anything that could hinder intellectual capacity. The SF Bay Area (as I learned firsthand) is not such a place; the constant stress of financial insecurity does not bode well for intellectual pursuits. I don't know if any such place really exists, for pretty much the same reason - certainly not here in the US.

In short, it'd need to be someplace where people could engage in intellectual pursuits for their own sake, and where the results of those pursuits are freely available to everyone - no censorship, no profit motives, no IP restrictions, nothing except the free creation and exchange of knowledge.

I firmly believe that any city which institutes a land value tax and uses it to fund a citizens' dividend / universal basic income is much more likely to become an intellectual capital than a city which does not. Land speculation is the major contributor to socioeconomic inequality and consequently the major obstacle preventing cities from being truly amenable to intellectual pursuits (rather than the current status quo of financial pursuits). Directly addressing it - by requiring landowners to internalize the opportunity costs they otherwise externalize onto the rest of society - is IMO the most crucial step toward allowing people to engage in intellectual pursuits without fear of failure and without being bound by concerns like profitability.

Culturally, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston strike me as good candidates once they address the above; the first of those three to implement LVT+UBI is the one I'd bet on becoming the "intellectual capital of the world". I'm personally hoping Reno evolves into such a candidate, but that's one hell of a long shot :)

What I learned very quickly is that it's rather difficult to stay intellectually engaged when even a six-figure salary is paycheck-to-paycheck living in a studio apartment.

I moved back to Reno shortly before COVID, and since doing so I've found myself to be much more productive. The "intellectual capital of the world" can shove it.

The wages in SV price in the cost of living to a certain extent. I’m assuming if the remote work pattern continues, we can’t be expected to make coastal salaries while living in rural Wyoming any more that we would expect a FAANG company to pay an overseas employee SV salaries.

But even if I wasn't in a field that requires time spent hands-on with the physical hardware, a lot of companies (my former employer in the Bay Area amongst them) insist on in-person work for most positions, even if the position doesn't really require it. And so it goes, people making $60K in Wichita or wherever glibly say "I can get a house for $180K, you make 5 times what I make, complaining about million dollar homes is just a rich person lacking perspective". Even if you do the math and show that holy cow, homes are expensive in tech hubs, even considering the median income, all people see is how high the median income, and assume that there's no real problem.

There are markets other than California and Wyoming though. I'm sure you're aware, but its always good to compare compensation versus living expenses. Almost every time I've been given a chance to move it meant I'd be trading my lifestyle in a negative direction (from my perspective) and smaller savings in the end even if the salary was over 2x my current. Everyone has their own priorities in life though, I hope you find a way to achieve yours.

Good luck in life friend.

I'm still frustrated by the high price of housing, because I fundamentally agree with the thesis of the article: housing, especially single-family housing, should not be expected to appreciate faster than inflation. To that end, so long as my house's worth when the mortgage is paid off (on a 30-year mortgage) is about double when I first bought it, I'll be happy.

I don't share the article's glum outlook. I think if enough people can be convinced that houses aren't, and shouldn't be, viewed as money-makers but just, you know, houses, this problem can be solved. I understand that's a pretty radical and utopia position to take though.

I think part of the problem is the presumed loss aversion of moving from a $300k salary to, say, a $175k one that is remote but allows for a better standard of living (particularly for families).

This is a phenomenon that is prevalent in other industries, without that remote work luxury. Oil and gas workers get paid handsomely but often have to live near the worksite. Even then, rent is astronomical without all the luxuries that SV offers.