Hacker News Reader

Comment by tvanantwerp | Hacker News Reader

Correlation != causation. Could be that, because cities become tech hubs, and because cities tend to lean left, that anyone who wants to work in tech will move to a city and be influenced by the left-leaning culture. I've known people who were farther right, went into tech, moved to cities, and are now farther left.

View on HN

Sure, but the effect is the same. A "right-wing Google" won't succeed because left-wing policies are more beneficial to the growth of cities, which are beneficial to the success of organizations like Google.

It is actually sort of surprising to me that cities are tech hubs - you should be able to deliver fantastic products while working remotely and never meeting anyone in person. (And the free software/open source movement is an existence proof of that.) So there must be something else about cities that makes them better at not just the success of tech companies but the success of groups of tech companies.

> left-wing policies are more beneficial to the growth of cities

Left-wing policies like urban exclusionary zoning? Yeah right. Look at how Texas and other Sunbelt states are doing, despite them being in inherently more challenging parts of the country than CA.

Texas cities are doing good in spite of the state's political culture, not because of it. All the cities except maybe DFW are in a constant struggle with the conservative state government.

Or maybe the intellectual capacity required to do well in tech also makes it more likely one would recognize instances of social injustice. It's just pattern matching after all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com