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Comment by catillac | Hacker News Reader

This is good. I love Texas in general and have many close ties, but the hypocritical directions they’re taking are too much. We love Austin as well and as a startup actively looking to open its third office, Austin is a really attractive target. Although I don’t make the official decisions on such things, I cannot see any way I would do anything but strongly advocate against opening our next office in Austin because of all Texas’s nonsense. Denver seems like a good alternative.

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This is bad because this is exactly the point of the law. Make Texas less friendly to blue voters and get them to leave.

This makes no sense. The law is to appease red voters. This is like saying some CA gun safety law is designed to push out red voters. Of course some might see these kinds of laws as getting rid of the “wrong” kind of people. But in general this isn’t how political science works.

You really think you can’t accomplish multiple things with a piece of legislation? That’s exactly how political science works, you craft something to benefit yourself in the most ways possible.

Hypocrisy isn't a criticism I've seen leveled at it. I thought the problem was autonomy over one's own body, like wearing masks.

Hypocrisy in view of all the other legislation issued and ideals held by the legislators.

And yet you need more sane voters to vote in a better governor and state reps. It seems like the opposite approach would be strategically better: get more educated people to move into the state and you'll have more educated voters which would lead to positive change.

It's tricky. Could Salesforce donate to organizations that are patching where Texas is failing (such that Bumble and Match's CEO are doing [1]) instead of offering relos out of Texas? Absolutely. Does that make it any better for those who are subjugated by extremist Texas legislative policy? It lessens the pain but the pain is still there, but to your point, the policies won't change until a critical mass of voters vote in less extremist politicians. This will happen at some point [2] [3] [4] as conservative voters age out and younger voters and immigrants (regardless of origin) become eligible to vote, but there is arguably a lot of value in accelerating the progress towards reducing the suffering of the disenfranchised. Money is speech, right?

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1033980404/texas-abortion-ban...

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/11/texas-democrats-repu...

[3] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/08/12/north-te...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/15/texas-republ...

It makes no difference when jerrymandering is in full swing.

Gerrymandering still requires significant popular support. In a two party system it can drop things to at minimum 25% vs 50% support in theory, but in practice it’s hard to maintain below 40%.

Don't worry, that's where voting suppression tactics under the guises of "security and fraud prevention" come in.

This is how apartheid systems perpetuate while still ostensibly offering supposed universal suffrage

Jerrymandering has significant popular support, it’s just that it’s one-sided. In a two-party system, it’s incredibly easy to maintain that support. Just look at voter suppression, it’s as one-sided as possible, yet gaining a lot of ground in a lot of states.

That’s just defeatist nonsense. Texas has turned ridiculously blue in under a decade. Almost feels like your defeatism has an agenda.

Blue? There is nothing blue about Texas’s recent policy. Austin and Houston got bluer, everywhere else got redder.

I wouldn’t call a 3.5% win, in Texas of all places, a tendency towards trending blue. You seem to be ignoring where most of the population in Texas is based.

Your perspective makes total sense. Don’t mind the downvotes.

Why wouldn't you just mobilize the California National Guard and occupy Texas?

If recent news is any indication, I think we've learned the hard way that you can't export democracy by force

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