I vote to make the place you currently are less shitty.
Discussion
Ironically the people who leave *because* it’s shitty and they are being treated better elsewhere might be the catalyst for the locals making it less shitty, lest they lose more people.
And the people staying even though it’s shitty in the hopes they can make it better might be perpetuating the shittiness by tolerating it.
I also think it’s important to connect with a place and put down roots. I think it’s dumb to keep moving just to shave off a little on the marginal tax rate. But you have to retain the nuclear option if the local authorities are intent on running it into the ground.
We left LA in 2016 where we had a ton of roots, and I have zero regrets about leaving that shit hole. (No offense to anyone who still lives there!)
The people who leave are just making more room for the rest of us.
Hopefully more room and a message that there will be nothing but room if they don’t change course.
The people who leave were never really here.
sometimes it’s the place that is no longer there, and the people are just coming around to that reality
Nah. People who want to leave always make excuses why "now is a good time to leave".
Ignoring the fact that times have been hard there, before, and people left then, too.
People have been running away from every region of Europe, since it was settled.
But not everyone left. We call the people who didn't leave, or who have since arrived and made their homeland here, "Europeans".
But the people who have “since arrived” also left someplace behind.
Some excuses are good ones.
Everyone has come from someplace else, or their ancestors did.
The question is, are you really someplace, now?
Right, so if you choose to stay in your current place in order to improve things, you are only in that place because you (or your ancestors) choose to bail on someplace else.
There is nothing final or fundamental about the place you are in presently. If you have roots, it will take more ill treatment for you to leave, but you are only even there at all because you or someone else already left somewhere else!
So the question isn’t stay or leave, it’s stay or leave under what conditions.
And ironically sometimes the conditions of the original place only improve when they realize they’re driving people out.
The question is whether it is worth it to care about the opinions of people who feel no strong attachment for the place they are at. They are transients.
I will focus my energy on the people who will be here, tomorrow. Everyone else is just passing through, regardless of where they are from.
Those people are like shareholders in a large publicly traded company that want money now but won’t own shares 50 years from now and know it. They don’t mind gutting R and D for money now. Why would they? The consequences of that will be someone else’s problem, they’ll have moved on or will then. Or they’ll support spending money on the wrong things because it will boost profits in the short term. Or because “its the right thing to do” for social justice.
But take the analogy all the way through — you obviously sell your stock if the company is long-term mismanaged. You have no obligation to go bankrupt.
You don’t but why should the people with a long term generational share in the company trust you or think you should have a say because you bought shares last month.
Especially if they aren’t allowed a say in who gets to by shares or told they have to let you buy shares.
The analogy breaks down because companies are public, whereas countries only permit full citizenship by permission (or least that used to be the case).
In the former, if I bought yesterday, I have the same rights as you. In the latter, it used to take time (before unchecked immigration) to establish the full rights of citizenship like voting.
So typically transient digital nomads do not have the same rights as residents and especially citizens, nor should they.
But if your company (or country) goes totally to shit (and I don’t just mean has a minor recession), you’d be very foolish IMO to go down with the ship out of loyalty to what it used to be.
There’s a difference between living somewhere, legally or not, and being part of the community. Just moving in doesn’t give you that. My area is going through large scale migration right now. Citizens moving in from 1,000s of miles away. All legal. My family has been in this county for 300 years. Well. It will be 300 years in 2045. I don’t figure to be the one to leave. Even if people are ruining it. I figure that all dries up as the current financial system becomes less and less able to build 1,000 homes at a go and sell them later instead of a few people moving in and building houses as they move. I’ll say it though, when people move into an area and start wanting to raise taxes to pay for more schools and teachers I start to get onboard with not having the vote until you’ve lived in a community for 10-15 years.
He isn't wrong that if everyone around you is fucking it, it is time to leave.
Why live behind enemy lines.
If you are behind enemy lines, you aren't going to get the value out of that chunk of dirt you otherwise would.
I get the whole generational attachment bit, but is it the area or the people & history that you are really attached to? I think you'll find if the population changes & the old landmarks you are used to are destroyed, that attachment will wane significantly.
Yes, they're just reaping profits, on their way out.
And everyone who wants to stay here needs to be very aware of their attitude. They often sound very generous and "open-minded" because they feel like they're spending other people's money and writing rules they won't have to follow.
I don’t think you should care about their opinions, either. But I was a transient here until I wasn’t.
But if the EU passes retarded laws that destroy my quality of life, I will surely leave for somewhere that won’t.
And I’m someone who craves firm roots. You just don’t want them in soil that’s become infested. And unfortunately, there is a lot of infestation going around.
The thing is: What do you expect when you leave? I thought about it for a long time. The thought that the grass is greener elsewhere? Or that you can tolerate everything better because it's not your "own" country? I look at the countries advertised and ask myself: would I feel more comfortable there, or comfortable at all?
I would rather shape my environment. I have moved a lot in my adult life. You take yourself and your problems with you and then there's also the fact that you feel like a stranger.
So let them go, but we create our home at home.
All a matter of what the conditions are. Reason so many people immigrated to America in the 20th century was opportunity. Have to be willing to fold a losing hand.