A lot of SV companies keep moving or talking about moving to Texas but is Texas really that billionaire friendly? Reuters says it is "perceived by some.." but is it?
California has, sadly, gotten increasingly punitive on business activity beyond the remit of what one would consider "standard". Such as legally mandating the sexual, ethnic, and gender composition of boards (e.g. SB 826 and AB 979), conditioning permits on companies committing to community benefit agreements that go beyond the direct impacts of the business (e.g. funding art non-profits), increased regulatory scrutiny on companies following activities outside of California that the government disagrees with, and other such things.
Individually, they're manageable burdens, but cumulatively it can get to a point where a business struggles to effectively operate as a market entity nationwide. Particularly for companies that are controversial.
Incorporating somewhere can get you political favor, which in turn can get you tax incentives. If you’re planning to move your Hq (which is a multi year long effort), it definitely helps if you have the first two steps lined up.
And in Texas if you disagree with the governor he'll send police to your business and threaten to imprison you.
I'd rather have burdensome regulation than a gun in my face.
They could also sue the local and state government to try to force them to enforce the laws on the books.
There’s several hundred years of legal history of state and federal governments being taken to court and made to stop or undo actions deemed to violate the law.
"The government" isn't a single unified entity. Texas has a long history of playing bullshit games saying "We can do this" and the feds saying "no you can't" and the courts have to solve it.
Texas insists that they have a legal right to secede. Any honest constitutional lawyer, and several founding fathers have addressed that point directly. There is no legal methodology within the context of the US system for any state anywhere to secede.
Usually "legal" means "following the laws", not "someone high up told me it was cool".
In exchange for being the world leader in spaceflight.
There aren't like, vast stretches of unprotected coastline they can pick from. It's ALL either protected or densely populated. If you want ANY spaceflight, you have to give somewhere, and this is essentially the only place in the continental US that works. If you say "not good enough" for Boca Chica, you're saying "no rockets can be developed in the continental US". Just be honest.
[1] Edit: day
From [0], "The coast here loses a football field of land every 90 minutes." An American football field is about 111% of an acre[1] which means, unless there's been a radical spike since 2021, you're off by ~19.2 acres or ~17.3 football fields an hour (if my calculation hasn't gone wrong.)
[0] https://earth.org/data_visualization/louisiana-shrinking-coa...
[1] https://huffsports.com/football/how-many-football-fields-in-...
I don't think this changes my thesis.
Invalid logic, pleas try again.
I really don't see or hear much of any SV companies actually talking about moving their HQ or (critically) workforce to Texas. Certainly it has happened, but this narrative that everyone is leaving California is alarmist nonsense.
Meta is incorporated in DE -- how many employees do you think it has in DE?