joey-bob

A large portion of this problem was addressed by the Integral Fast Reactor concept developed in the late 1980s.

I suppose you are correct. Similar to the original comment, who was shocked coming from a European perspective to US, I was a bit shocked coming from an East Coast perspective, and have made too broad a generalization. What areas would you suggest I visit in the future?

I lived in San Diego, and would visit friends in LA somewhat frequently. My interpretation is based off of my experiences in the northern slice of the area, San Bernardino to Venice Beach. Also I had to drive through LA to go anywhere, which might have colored my experience a bit.

The only place where I've lived that didn't have yards, parks within walking distance, and could be considered overcrowded was in California. I briefly visited Dallas once, and I could see that as being similar.

Where do you live in the US? It sounds like California, specifically the concrete desert of LA.

Do you exist before birth, in some other pool of souls?

I can't read Greek or Latin so I don't have access to the primary sources, but it is my understanding that nationalism was a prevalent part of political life in antiquity, particularly from the death of Alexander through to the end of the Roman empire, and reemerged in Europe around the same time as absolutism. In many ways, the United States, and to a larger extent the West, has significantly more in common with the late roman republic than it does with any point in it's own modern history.

I suppose I forgot to state my original point. Let's hold all else equal, and look at the labor pool divided into two categories, urbanism and ruralism. Suburbs lie on the ruralism side for this comparison. The labor pool is of course not evenly divided in terms of preference, say maybe 3/4 of protential Google employees prefer urbanism. If a given employee prefers urbanism, and lives in one of the cities mentioned above (NYC, Yay Area, Boston), their resulting employee satisfaction (what the company cares about in this scenario) is improved. However, if a given employee prefers ruralism, their resulting employee satisfaction is worsened. Vice versa for a more suburban, smaller city.

Of course there is some cost to not collocating employees. Google has decided new offices are worth this cost, and thus Google can decide to allocate building/location resources based on employee preference alone (let's assume the other factors are somehwat insignificant, which could be valid taking into account the high proportion of labor cost).

If every additional dollar spent on a given location buys the same amount of office space and equipment in both the urban and suburban areas, then it would make sense to divide the budget for offices according to the proportions of the labor pool preferences. Now of course, a dollar in SF buys a lot less office space than a dollar in Lexington, so that should be a accounted for in budgeting decisions, as well as overhead costs involved in opening a new location.

If we look at Google's actions under this framework, it doesn't make much sense for Google to devote as much of their office budget to highly urban areas as they do, unless the proportion of current and potential employees that prefer ruralism is very low. I would find that difficult to believe. Of course there are other factors to consider, but the trend is what I mean to highlight.

That being said, the true proportion would have to be discovered, and company culture may not allow people to express their true desires. This would apply to many tech giants.

In my experience, your fundamental assumption about what "techies" want is at least partially flawed. Not that no one in tech wants bike Lanes, public transit, and authentic South Indian cuisine. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people who work at FAANG consider these things important in their life. But there is still a large portion that truly don't care for all that. They live in the bay because if they can find an illegal $800/mo Airbnb they will make a lot of money, if they lose their job there is another close by, and that is where their close friends are. If there were an equal paying, less congested alternative to these tech hives, they would take it. This is, of course, generated from anecdotal evidence. Fundamentally, some people like true urbanism, and others just don't.

Things sound very difficult out west. Rent can be had for under $500 in many southeastern cities. That being said, most of the newish industrial jobs are out in rural areas. Although Doreen Michele seems to be referencing online jobs, so I may be missing the context.