asciilifeform: much of what the chumpers 'buying' houses in usa are paying for could be had for considerably smaller cost - e.g. physical security, caste isolation, etc.
asciilifeform: as if the money is actually their own, and not simply put in their hands for a few minutes to salivate over.
asciilifeform: the most frustrating part is the folly of the engineers, who salivate after the '$300k sv job'
asciilifeform: they might perhaps be better off 'vertically integrating' the housing bit
asciilifeform: because they, for some odd reason, demand a ridiculous geographic concentration of engineers
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they way i understood it, the sv folks aren't actually paying engineers in particular. they're paying the real estate industry to (inefficiently) house them.
asciilifeform: he's essentially a more physically-fit version of the palo alto programmer
asciilifeform: not sure in what sense a fellow who gets to not only do work which he doesn't necessarily feel like doing, but also get sent off as cannon fodder - can be thought of as 'rich'
asciilifeform: in the sense that if you have to live in a particular place, or worse, become a certain kind of person, to earn it, you are in fact very poor
asciilifeform: one man's 300k is not the same as another's☟︎
asciilifeform: 'I wouldn't be willing to develop in javascript for $300k' << this goes back to the original point i was trying to make, when i mentioned hunting for flat (i generally don't discuss crap like this without a good reason) -
asciilifeform: decimation: the parsimonious hypothesis is much simpler - some people get access to what drips from the money printer pipeline by having the right friends
asciilifeform: i've yet to see a living case of this that wasn't in the 'pay 250 to live in range of the 300' territory.
asciilifeform: (or, it is made - evenings/weekends.)
asciilifeform: kanzure: the way i understand it, this is not how markets actually work. if i'm the only one who knows how to build xxx, i don't get to collect $maxint for building an xxx. simply, xxx doesn't get made.
asciilifeform: i don't dispute that there live unique specialists who are paid $xxx k for something that could be described as 'engineering.' but most of them are on some kind of physical leash, however long.
asciilifeform: with the latter defined by 'doing anything that you would not do if you didn't have to'
asciilifeform: i've often had 'interesting' conversations with people to whom i suggested calculating their wage 'per hour of actual work'
asciilifeform: but i dare say that you (and mp?) may be alone in this weight class, among us
asciilifeform: kanzure: if you're the kind of hero who can demand 300k without ever having to physically meet a client, attend a whatever board, deliver physical samples in person, etc - more power to you
asciilifeform: engineers, typically, sit in 'gravity wells' - because so long as you are bound to some geographic location, even a very large one, the folks with the shears come out☟︎
asciilifeform: except in the wonderful case described earlier, where a chumper pays $250k to live near 300k job
asciilifeform: 300k is, afaik, always a case of 'wrote'
asciilifeform: 300k vice president of widgets inc. is not a member of the same profession as his engineer.
asciilifeform: kanzure: the poll (even if we assume that every answer was truthful and representative of something) isn't particularly useful, because it lumps in things which are quite unlike.
asciilifeform: engineer who has to pay $100k to live within range of his $150k employer, cannot be described even as 'well to do'☟︎
asciilifeform: incidentally, we are close to a useful definition of 'rich' - fellow is 'rich' if he can tell the man with the shears to go to hell, and make it stick.
asciilifeform: 100k won't buy you a garret to starve in, there.
asciilifeform: high talent individuals go to silicon valley << world-renowned chumpatron. leaving aside the question of whether the folks there 'work' (in the sense of producing anything valuable) - they get sheared very properly, for much of what they make - at least the ones who wouldn't care to commute 4 hrs/day☟︎
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: the answer lies in the sewer.
asciilifeform: 'you grew up in our glorious motherland? still want to leave, bastard? fine - pony up $1mil, to cover the cost of building you'
