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Comment by JeremyNT | Hacker News Reader

> You should live where the government aligns with your phase of life and personal goals and be free to choose a new government later. Also, democracies can shift over time but generally it is easier to move somewhere new than to feel entitled to change a municpal culture simply because you got older.

I feel like people need to understand this.

I'm currently living in Nashville, TN, which you may as well have been referring to in the second half of your comment (not mentioned: the focus exclusively on tourism while ignoring needs of actual residents). I did not appreciate how different values could lead to such wildly different outcomes in quality of life.

The situation with the government at both the state and city levels is absolutely dire here (for different reasons) and there's really no hope in changing anything.

"Vote with your feet" is the smart approach.

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There is an unacknowledged knock-on effect though. I doubt anyone completely assimilates to the new locale, with the result becoming a mix of values. This may not suit so well with local residents (see opinions from ID and TX regarding new CA residents who “voted with their feet”)

Nashville has been experiencing rapid population growth. How do reconcile that with your claim that the governmental situation is dire?

Let's just say that many of these people do not value the things that I find important and vice versa.

Many are here because of the lack of income tax, the country music industry, and the extremely culturally conservative government. They either do not care about the poor public transit/services/infrastructure/schools/etc or they do not care enough to outweigh the benefits.

A common refrain I hear when talking to people is that they wanted to move somewhere that wasn't so "woke."

Nashville also, until recently, had a low COL compared to similarly sized non-Southern metros.

Personally I am here for work, and realistically many others would do the same. Nashville has more employment opportunities than the deep south and is a logical place for such people to end up.

> Many are here because of the lack of income tax, the country music industry, and the extremely culturally conservative government.

> A common refrain I hear when talking to people is that they wanted to move somewhere that wasn't so "woke."

What’s wrong with people sorting into places that are culturally compatible? After all plenty of people move to Paris for the culture.

> They either do not care about the poor public transit/services/infrastructure/schools/etc or they do not care enough to outweigh the benefits.

Aside from schools, most people either don’t use those things or it doesn’t make a difference. Oftentimes it’s an upgrade from the utterly dysfunctional alternative where they came from. (The efficiency of my traditionally red county’s limited public services was a nice change of pace from DC.)

> What’s wrong with people sorting into places that are culturally compatible? After all plenty of people move to Paris for the culture.

This was literally the gp's thesis, that it's easier to just leave than to try and improve things (for whatever your value of improve is).

I agree it's the logical thing to do, but when definitions of what services a government should provide vary greatly and people sort where they live based on them, it's going to lead to strange results.

The fact that you refer to "the country music industry" and not just "the music industry" makes me wonder how much of Nashville you've really experienced. I know tons of people who work in the music industry here and not one of them has anything to do with country music. Music in general has a huge pull here, whether it's for young singer-songwriters, indie bands, audio engineers, people who work in live events, videographers, etc. Most of these people tend to be extremely liberal. Nashville has plenty of problems and is severely lacking in infrastructure compared to my hometown, a large east coast city, but there are a lot of positives here that have nothing to do with cultural conservatism or country music.

I've experienced it plenty, thanks.

The article is about government, which is a shit show here by almost any definition. The city has a massive council that is at war with the state, to the extent that the state just passed a law to cap the council size out of sheer spite. They're handing over billions to buy a stadium for a rich sports franchise. They handed out tax credits to Amazon for jobs in an office building that they're never going to fill.

There are reasons people would want to live here despite this, my list isn't exhaustive. But I can't see any world in which "good governance" appears anywhere on the list, unless you measure it only by how low your taxes are and how lax regulation is (I'm aware some do).

Maybe the extremely pro business, pro developer, pro tourism Nashville considers itself to be a success, but I can't get on board. There has to be a metric other than growth when making decisions, and I'll personally never willingly live in another city that is so blindly focused on it.

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