Ask HN: Is Everyone Moving to Miami? Recently my whole twitter feed is filled with ppl announcing moving to Miami from SF. As an outsider I only knew about Silicon Valley and followed eminent ppl from tech and VC. What's going on? Is this a "mass migration"? Something ideological? A movement? Is this about Joe Rogan moving to Austin and Tesla leaving California? How will this effect tech and innovation in US and the world? |
If you didn't know, the stone around Miami is extremely porous limestone from compressed coral reefs and water from the ocean creeps in, including into their drinking water reservoirs[1], and the city already spends hundreds of millions of dollars[2] on various projects to try to fight against the inevitable.
EDIT: Since I wrote this, by chance I encountered news that an apartment building partially collapsed in Miami-Dade county this morning[3]. At least one death and still 51 people unaccounted for, unfortunately. There's probably going to be more of this over the coming years.
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-floods-sea-level-rise-...
[2]https://time.com/4932565/hurricane-irma-miami-beach/
[3]https://www.dw.com/en/florida-apartment-building-in-miami-ar...
To be fair, you could make a similar argument for San Francisco, a city positioned on a fault line that many consider "overdue for the big one."
Over the next 30 years, your risk of dying from a natural disaster in SF might even be greater than in Miami. At least climate change is (mostly) a slow burn. Even with hurricanes, you can see them coming a few days in advance and evacuate. But an earthquake is a sudden and rapid catastrophe that can (will) occur on some unpredictable day in the future. That said, I do agree that erosion seems like a more plausible sudden risk for a coastal city like Miami, especially if it caused yesterday's building collapse.
Climate change messaging, in general, does a poor job of presenting long-term risks and differentiating between them. People aren't concerned about a gradual rise sea levels, temperatures, or even natural disasters – as long as they're confident we can prepare for or predict the catastrophes. But I expect we react differently to a perceived increase in risk of unpredictable and sudden disasters. If the risk of my building collapsing is going to double every year, that's more frightening to me than the possibility of a few more hurricanes.
Fact is, most people just don't care about existential risks. The people who do tend to be neurotic and unpleasant (see: the past 15 months).
Not really related to your main point, but I believe this is a common misconception about earthquakes. S.F. may be likely to have an 8.0 earthquake once every 300 years (I made these numbers up), but just because it's been 400 years since the last one doesn't mean a big one is more likely now. It's more like any given year has a 1/300 chance no matter how long it's been since the last one.
Tornadoes don't have that luxury. I did prepare a bit ahead of time since I saw a lot of dark red on the radar, but so often the worst of it skirts around us and we never had tornados since I moved here so I wasn't super concerned. Passed out and woke up to tornado sirens and if it was 6 miles further south could have woken up to a tree crashing into my living room or my house being smashed to a pulp.
Part of the reason climate messaging comes across as poor is because it's hard to predict the future with total precision. The predictions are most likely relatively correct in aggregate but any single prediction will undoubtably be wrong, including the degree in which it will get bad (are we going to heat up by 2 degrees, 4 degrees, 8 degrees by 2100?) and the precise timeline (is it going to happen by 2100? 2050? some even say 2030).
So if things don't play out exactly the way it's predicted, people use that as an excuse to claim that it's not a concern and go back to doing the easy thing of whatever the hell they want and letting corporations do as much bad shit to the environment as they want.
Another issue is things like wildfires and earthquakes and hurricanes have other causes besides climate change, and there's been freak weather throughout history, so is it just a freak weather incident like in history or did climate change contribute? Climate change messaging just claims that the overall frequency and intensity of incidents will increase, not that it caused any given one. So that's easy for people to handwave away also for years and decades also, as 'well maybe we're just going through something that was going to naturally occur anyway, like an Ice Age'.
I agree that most people don't spend too much time thinking about existential risks (nor should they necessarily, that's one way to not live much of a life at all). My concern isn't for my personal life, I'm much more likely to die from health or old age before this gets really bad. I'm more concerned about not wanting to contribute to a mass extinction event any more than I already am, and try to get better while still living a full and productive life.
A lot of people are here short term. Yes some bought property but it’s certainly not everyone.
Miami feels really well run in comparison to San Francisco. Walking around, I see human feces, needles, dead bodies through overdose. It’s a very clean city, lots of places to buy or rent, very health conscious and there’s a lot of sun!
My major gripe is that it’s kind of hard to walk and find food at the scale of inner Richmond or in Brooklyn. I actually have yet to meet any software engineers like me in the city which kind of sucks. I don’t have anything in common with the e-commerce and crypto people in the city.
I’m not in love with it. But it does the job for me right now given that the city does feel like the better place to be given COVID restrictions. Ultimately I’d love to be in the west coast again due to how much I went backpacking.
wtf? that's not the kind of picture i wish to imagine while talking of SF
Ask yourself: Are they going there for work or early retirement?
> What's going on? Is this a "mass migration"? Something ideological? A movement?
None of the above. Miami is not, and will never be, the new technological haven many people preach it to be.
I think the overall sentiment is that some people are realizing there are alternatives that .eet their criteria. One of the major criteria is probably around getting a job with a top tier tech company and being in an environment/area that promotes the cross pollination of ideas and skills. It might be that the forced remote work has made some people realize they can do that this sort of stuff online, at least to the degree that they find it acceptable. I would also say that the tech culture has expanded to other cities (or at least it exists to some degree) where there wasn't any in the past.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are some ideological or lifestyle differences driving people to other states. Probably some of the same stuff that has prompted some companies to move. Stuff like lower taxes, less regulation (more freedom), lower cost of living (more land or things to buy), less drought to deal with (depends on state), etc. I know I don't have any interest in living in California. I think a lot of that has to do with me liking a more rural life. Yes, I know California has some nice rural areas. California's policies and legislation is basically dominated by the big cities though (not a bad thing, but not my cup of tea).
If I had to pick a warm weather retirement destination, Hawaii would be #1 on my list. Second would probably be SoCal somewhere. I guess both are more expensive than Florida.
You really just have four super hot months to struggle through but you’ve got pools and beaches everywhere so not a huge deal.
It’s possible that Miami might have a growing tech scene, but the idea that everyone is picking up and moving to one specific city just isn’t true.
The job market feels extremely disappointing for the size of the state, economically and population wise.
Miami in general feels like a city way past it’s cultural prime. Sure one or two companies may be talking about going out there, but every time I try to do some searching, I’d be better off going to some other state. Within the south, Raleigh is probably a much better options and I’d even go back to Atlanta before Miami.
I wish that's a joke lmao
I love it here, as someone who has not spent a lot of time in Florida before, weather is great (a bit hot now), great food (lots of great NYC restaurants have second locations here), lots of things to do, you can speak Spanish all day.
Best of all, not everyone thinks the same. People have better things to do then argue about politics all day here. I have not seen a Biden or Trump flag and I have been here 4 months.
There are a LOT of people who live in Florida for 6 winter months plus a day to be able to say they are Florida residents, and enjoy the nice winter. By memorial day they are all gone.