I left Austin so I’d like to share a counter perspective. I still think it’s one of the best big cities in the country but that’s the problem, it’s a big city now. Austin went from 500k people to well over a million now during my time there. It’s impossible for a place not to change with that many people moving. Everything the author likes used to be even nicer before. Used to be more casual, more affordable, better music scene, less traffic, etc. I also don’t believe it’s a great place to raise kids anymore: epidemic of homelessness, more crime, crowded streets, too hot for extended outdoor play during the summer, etc. I used to meet a lot more people with “normal” jobs in Austin, e.g. mailman, teachers, nurses, etc. but over time they couldn’t afford to live close by and everyone I met had tech/finance/startup jobs. The establishments definitely got gentrified and cater to no-kid professionals now. Parks are now full of beautifully sculpted people playing frisbee where it used to be tie-dye wearing teenie boppeers or big Mexican families grilling. Ultimately, Austin grew to be a mono-culture of socioeconomic status in my opinion. No hate, Austin is a great city but just grew up into something that didn’t suit me anymore. It’s a weird thing when the place you live changes so quickly around you that you don’t feel you belong there anymore.
> Everything the author likes used to be even nicer before.
Such a universal sentiment, everywhere. I've never heard anyone who lived anywhere for more than a few years say "it's become so much better". I would suspect age effects rather than actually reality. Or maybe everything just does get worse over time, in which case the same thing is happening in Austin as is happening everywhere else.
Perhaps incorrectly, I’ve compared Cincinnati’s recent uptick in population and general reputation to Austin’s, and I’m hoping it’s handled much better.
I’ve lived in the area all my life, and it’s essentially birthright for folks born around here to think Cincinnati is just okay at best and you only stick around because you couldn’t make it elsewhere.
In my early 30s now, I love Cincinnati, with no plans on leaving, and no desire to live anywhere else in the US (at least not without a significant change in CoL or income).
That said, so many folks seem to be thinking similarly and are moving here, and I really hope all the things I love about this place either stay the same or continue to get better. I don’t know how similar we are now to Austin in 2007/8, but hopefully we’re set up better to absorb the influx without changing much about (the good parts of) our identity.
I don't really agree with that. I have family in both Nashville and Raleigh. By both their estimations and mine, both cities have gotten quite a bit better over the last ~20 years.
Downtown Raleigh has definitely changed for the better even if, like a lot of similar cities, the gentrified core with its craft cocktails and trendy restaurants is fairly small.
I'd also say NYC--for all the complaints about Disneyfication. As a visitor, I'd much rather have today's 42nd Street, Lower East Side, Chelsea, etc. than I would the 1980s version. People have certainly been priced out but, then, it's not like Manhattan was cheap even in the 80s.
My biggest reason is the ratio of quality of service and product (such as food) to price went way down. I imagine more and more resources are going towards rent and taxes than to the quality of what people are buying.
Next reason would probably be general cleanliness and drastic increase in homeless.
That's true, but when people complain about their cities getting worse because of transplants, they're usually talking about something different: the newcomers "killed the vibe." This is based on a 1960s-era presupposition that people move due to lifestyle considerations (as opposed to out of economic need, as has been the case since then) and that the newcomers are coming for the "wrong" reasons (people found out that California doesn't get snow!!)
They might be related, though. The ruling class has deliberately destroyed local communities and forced people to become an on-demand proletariat that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are". If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else. It's not necessarily pathological that Americans move so much; what is pathological is that they have to do so, just to survive.
>If you want to have a career in tech, for example, you pretty much to live in one of 5 or 6 highly expensive cities, because you won't be taken seriously if you live anywhere else.
That is complete BS. Certainly it is among the tech people I know. Furthermore, even those tech offices that are in the orbit of certain cities often aren't in those cities and are located in, not cheap, but pretty reasonably priced areas outside.
Agree with your sentiment. To add to it: I was just in Longmont, a town 45 minutes north of Denver, where Seagate, Western Digital, and San Disk all had major presence. Definitely not a big city.
Tech has enabled us to live anywhere and do our jobs.
I think there's this thread of people who live (and want to live) in very high CoL cities feeling the need to justify it to themselves and others on the grounds that they have no choice if they want to have a successful career.
Part of the problem is that you only get one real crack at the career game. As you get older, your options diminish and the negative social inferences that come with age (even though they have no basis) tend to mount, so you don't have a lot of chances.
Bosses definitely pick their successors based on the "one of us" metric, much more than actual merit or job performance, and this usually means one has to live in the same expensive neighborhoods and send one's kids to the same expensive schools as theirs. Is it possible to succeed, without playing that game? Yes, of course. However, it's unlikely, and so I wouldn't bet my life on it.
> that will move (often at personal expense!) "where the jobs are".
This is often stated on HN and Reddit, but simply not true. At no time in US history has there been less internal migration. It's actually one of the major problems we have with inequality - people are demonstratively not moving to where the economic opportunity is compared to generations past.
I'll have to dig up some stats, but it's been a consistent pattern in my reading on the subject over the past 20 years.
I'm not talking about 2019 to 2020/21 pandemic migration that your article covers. Those years will obviously be an outlier. I'm talking about long-term demographic trends over the past 100+ years.
Why do you think your opinion (and yes, “worse” is objectively an opinion) is reality and everything else is not? Maybe you get flagged/banned for making sweeping statements and shutting out discussion by denying the existence of any other viewpoint.
It has objectively gotten worse. Wages compared to cost of living have stagnated or declined, average height has declined, average age until marriage has increased to nearly 28 (which is usually what happens before things disintegrate) average IQ has declined, suicide and "deaths of disrepair" are way up, homelessness is way up. I can go on all day, things are bad and getting worse and have been since the late 60s/early 70s.
EDIT: And here come the down votes when I bring in facts the progressives don't like.
>I think we are seeing a global trend of mankind rediscovering urban life.
In the US at least, pre-pandemic the trend was primarily an uptick in the number of young college-educated professionals specifically wanting to live in (certain) cities. By comparison, when I finished grad school in the mid-80s, and took a job at a computer company in suburban Boston like quite a few classmates, pretty much no one elected to live in the city.
> Parks are now full of beautifully sculpted people playing frisbee where it used to be tie-dye wearing teenie boppeers or big Mexican families grilling.
There are plenty of neighborhood parks with people grilling and having birthday parties on the weekend? I think this might be a case of your choices creating your experiences, because if you go to Fiesta Gardens or the smaller neighborhood parks it's a much more family-oriented scene. (Zilker is mostly beautiful young people, but some of us are doing our part to inject an older and less sculpted element.)
It's true that Austin skews really young, and the later waves of migration have skewed much higher socio-economically. On the bright side, these new rich arrivals are tending to be much more friendly to policies that will allow less-rich people to live in Austin, such as density and affordable housing. Say what you want about the old chill progressive Austin hippies, but those folks helped create the affordability crisis by being and in most cases remaining to this day staunchly opposed to new multifamily housing. And say what you want about the rich young arrivals, but they're helping turn Austin around in that regard.
I feel you. I drove my old pickup truck to the Domain last year to pick up some Christmas gifts, wearing jeans and a button-down flannel shirt, and I felt completely out of place. So much ostentatious wealth here now.
With all due respect: you drove up to the an area that was mostly built up from nothing in the past 2 decades, is being developed as a “second downtown” and you feel sad to be out of place?
Have you been downtown of any major american city?
The way the Domain was explained to me is that there's a mobile cosmopolitan upper class that likes to float around the planet without ever feeling a sense of uncomfortable unfamiliarity. Austin attracted their attention partly by being "cool" and more importantly by having a Formula 1 track. The Domain was created to make money by helping those people feel at home.
The one person I've met who lived in the Domain was a rich tech guy from another continent who "moved" to Austin but never actually spent much time here. He rented an apartment in the Domain that was mostly vacant because he was always in other countries, acquired a girlfriend in Austin, was rarely here, and eventually stopped coming to Austin altogether. He treated Austin basically the same way I treat a restaurant. He came once, got really excited about his experience, came a few times more and then felt less excited, and then never came back because there was always another city somewhere else that he was a little bit more jazzed about. He was so wealthy that this level of interest in a city involved him renting an apartment for a couple of years and considering purchasing a condo. I wouldn't be surprised if he did purchase a condo, and it's been sitting empty for years because he likes having it and the cost of maintaining it pales next to the effort of finding somebody to manage it as a rental property for him.
That's what the Domain is, a world built for those people.
Anyone buying a car should look at TCO. The average new car price of any type is ~$40,000 in the US, so you're better off long-term with an EV based on fuel costs alone. Add in the really low maintenance needed for an EV and you're even further ahead.
A good petrol car can be bought used for $15-20k. Comparing the price of a new one to an EV is a false equivalency because you can't buy used EVs for anywhere near that.
TCO only favors EVs if you drive enough to offset fuel, oil changes, and maintenance. All bets are off if you replace the battery.
> A good petrol car can be bought used for $15-20k. Comparing the price of a new one to an EV is a false equivalency because you can't buy used EVs for anywhere near that.
The presence of low-range EVs—many of which need battery or tire replacements—doesn't really change the point. A similarly priced Honda Fit from the same model year is a better value due to its low maintenance costs, fuel economy, and infinite range.
> Anyone buying a car should look at TCO. The average new car price of any type is ~$40,000 in the US, so you're better off long-term with an EV based on fuel costs alone. Add in the really low maintenance needed for an EV and you're even further ahead.
If TCO matters, buy a cheap used car for ~$5K and nothing can beat the TCO.
Uh oh. I loved and lived in Austin from 2012 to 2015, and have recently been considering moving back. I think I’ve even played disc golf at Zilker Park while wearing tie die, though hardly as a teenie-bopper.
Over what period did the changes you reference happen? Am I longing for a City that no longer exists as I remember it?
Street View + Zillow show that a large two bedroom house I once rented for $1600/month in the heart of 78704 was demolished a few years ago. In its stead is a nice-looking but characterless house that just sold for $4 million. Fortunately, cost of living is not a significant concern at this point in my life, but I don’t want to move to 100 degree days, 100+ days a year, just to find that the city I left is no longer there.
Strongly agree with all of your arguments. Watched the city transform radically between ~2007 and ~2014, and not really for the better. Most notably, the city and surrounding suburbs did not prepare for nor manage the tech-driven population boom whatsoever.
Same, lived there in the early 2000's, and coming back recently it's almost unrecognizable. The music scene is largely gone, tech bros everywhere, the traffic is even worse than it was before, housing is ridiculous. The "Keep Austin Weird" charm, which used to be real, is now a faded memory that's packaged up to sell at the airport gift shop.
They did it to themselves. It’s one of the leading reasons I left the region after grad school for the ancestral planes of my parents: Suburban Illinois, heh.
Austin is in danger of following California's path.
The reason Silicon Valley sucks is that Wall Street started sending its failures into tech to boss nerds around, and they drove out the real people, the ones who actually cared about technology and steering its role in society to the good. Now, tech is full of FAANG bros who don't mind open-plan offices and daily interviews for their own job, because they're all going to be CEOs in three years (in their minds).
The Paradox of Tolerance is how Burning Man got infested by networking billionaires. California's death is the Paradox of Tolerance in action, and Austin is in the same danger.
I had to stop after reading the food is good. The here is almost uniformly mediocre, on a good day. I've never had such consistently terrible Mexican food (apparently that's how you define the "Tex" part of "TexMex"). An the weather, much of the year is unbearable. I like hot but 40-60% humidity and a lot of 100F+ days means you're not outside unless you're in a body of water in the shade.
Then again, I'm older. I have a kid. I don't day drink and I don't want to go tubing down the river. Austin is a drunk town, even if the author isn't. It's neat and quirky and the night life is often like New Orleans during Mardi Gras. I can see the appeal for someone in their 20s and 30s but I'm out.
Oh and Cedar Fever! Holy crap. I didn't know I had allergies at all until I got to Texas. What an eye opening experience. If I leave the house before I've given my double dose of allergy meds time to kick in, it's unrecoverable. And on Windy days, just forget it. I've had a bloody nose for two months now and that's "under control."
I agree that the weather is terrible, and as a person who likes birding and exploring outdoors it really sucks to live here for that, Cedar Fever is miserable.
My main disagreement is that there's great Mexican food to be found if you skip the TexMex places and stick to interior Mexican places and small family-run taquerias.
> I agree that the weather is terrible, and as a person who likes birding and exploring outdoors it really sucks to live here for that
I was struck how the author kept describing +100° as a "warm city". Is that part of that old Texas oversizing trope? "We call drop dead on the sidewalk heat 'warm'".
There seem to exist plenty of people who honestly enjoy the direct sun and find 85 degree heat pleasant.
Csa (koppen) is apparently held by many to be the ideal human climate (yet cities in that climate regularly clip 105)
I always wonder if it might come down to ancestry. Perhaps northern and southern family trees subtly adapted to their climate, diverging on their ideal climate in the process.
I have to agree. Food in Austin is really mediocre, and it pains me every time someone happily announces they found the "best" restaurant in town. Went to Seattle a few months ago and it is just so much better.
Same with the weather. Too hot and humid most of the year, and recently we have been having really cold winters.
But the thing that gets me is what to _do_ here. Whatever half good thing you want to go, is already crowded or sucks or both, and there are not many in town anyway. Children really don't have many options here either. Hell, I grew up in a smaller town, and we had a science museum and an aquarium there.
I guess that Austin is just a college town trying to be a tech hub, which fits somehow if you are in your late 20s and early 30s. For the rest of us, it's just another city with plenty of jobs.
>> I've never had such consistently terrible Mexican food
This is not an informed take AT ALL. Where have you encountered better Mexican food in the US than at Fonda San Miguel? There is a long list of great Mexican places in Austin with Fonda at the top. IF you have never been, Sunday brunch is the place to start.
There is a longer list of garbage tex-mex joints, that is true, but they are easy to avoid.
>> An[d] the weather, much of the year is unbearable.
This is 1000% correct, or if anything an understatement.
Ive lived in Austin and San Francisco. Austin has amazing Mexican food if you know where to get it (Chuys etc. I forget the names because its been so lokg but I can look it up).
Tex-Mex is imo Americanised mexican food which doesn’t suck lol. Again, good restaurants will serve you excellent food.
Austin definitely has the best Breakfast tacos, and just tacos in general. SF has terrible tacos (burritos are different).
Every time someone mentions City X has terrible food without mentioning what restaurants they tried, Im immediately suspicious.
I lived in Austin and dined at dozens of highly rated/reco'ed restaurants from food trucks to high end. My conclusion is that Austin does not have great food (though I do agree with your conclusion on breakfast tacos). This is not a uniform conclusion of course–Uchi and Barley Swine are in fact legit.
Most great food in Austin is found at taco trucks, because taco trucks can make food in all kinds of interesting ways that don't scale, which makes them unique.
The food-truck movement was born out of post-2008 when no restaurateur could get a loan, so they hustled to get enough money for a food-truck. It did create an explosion of unique dishes and some of the best in Austin, most noticeably Torchys.
> Uchi and Barley swine are not even close to the best Austin has to offer
I don't claim they are. I mention them, because, in my experience, those are emblematic of the restaurants that top the recommendation lists year after year and are actually good.
Personally, I find Fukumoto, Ebisu, and Komé, pretty good overall, and my personal favourite is Bon, actually in Bee Cave. I don't think any of them would be considered "fine cuisine", but that I also like.
Agreed the food was legitimately not-good at most places. There are some good ones ( Clarks Oyster Bar, Habesha Ethiopian, Evangelines ) , but mostly it was bland and the home cooking is downright disastrous.
The night life in Austin is precisely nothing like New Orleans on the slowest day there, let alone during Mardi Gras.
The food is pretty decent if you avoid the suburban strip malls. I can think of several world class restaurants within walking distance of me.
It’s definitely not Houston in terms of the range of options, but then again has a quarter of the population, so that is to be expected.
And as someone who grew up in dreary London weather, the heat just doesn’t bother me at all. Definitely have to stock up on the Zyrtec though, but this is the first year having even here for many.
Agree on the weather. I've been to Austin a number of times. A number of years back, I had back to back events during the summer and spent the weekend rather than going home. I enjoyed myself well enough but remember it was very much an exercise in managing activities so that I wasn't too active in the heat of the day. Remember going to some nearby caves, and to hill country, and then watching the bats in the evening.
Also lived in New Orleans for a few years and recall summer days were mostly spent going from AC to AC.
What Mexican places here disappointed you? ATX Cocina? Fonda San Miguel? Guero's? La Condesa? I think those are all great and have quite different takes.
>I've never had such consistently terrible Mexican food
This is so ignorant, and drives me crazy every time I hear it. TexMex isn't Mexican food... let me repeat that: the Mexican food you're thinking of, was never the food in Texas. Texas has always been a region. TexMex is an authentic regional cuisine and is the product of 200 years of blending cultures.
Unlike California and Arizona, Texas was never cleared if it's Hispanic population through war, the Spanish American War. If you go to, say San Francisco, most of the Hispanic residents immigrated in the last 80 years or so. Three and a half generations back. That isn't the case in Texas. In Texas, many if not most of the Tejano population has been here since the days of Santa Anna. The food in Texas was last upended in the late 1800s when a gigantic influx of German/Czech Immigrants brought polka, sausages, brisket, and kolaches... sound familiar to Austin?
TexMex has always been in Texas. Flour instead of corn was due to crop growing conditions and availability. It's just through a quirk of history (again, the Spanish American War leads to everyone thinking native Tejanos are Mexican immigrants) that everyone comes to think that it's wrong. We even had a name for the food you are talking about when i was growing up, "Interior Mexican food." It's a completely different cuisine.
As time goes by, food changes... that's normal. TexMex in Austin has changed a lot since i was growing up in central Texas, just like BBQ has changed a lot, but it can be traced back to the Germans and Tejanos exchanging chili con carne for sausages, and pan dulce for kolache.
If you don't like it, that's fine, but don't compare it to retro-modern fare made by more contemporary Mexican-American immigrants, based on the various regions in Mexico during the mid-to-late-1900s.
Your post is so much more authentic then the authors.
It used to be you moved to Austin and got acclimated to the area, you learned how other people lived here. Then people started moving in so fast, they didn't take the time to learn 'the ways of the people', and then turned around and started teaching new people their version of Austin, and after a while, it got to be unrecognizable.
I spent my 20s and 30s in Austin and loved every minute of it. I would not trade it. I left this year after getting nearly double what I paid for my property. It was an amazing ride, but it's something else now, I hope the spirit stays alive.
I like David's writings and I say this not as a criticism, but this article has been written by every newcomer to Austin since Texians and Mexicans first arrived to the chagrin of some very onery Comanche.
Having moved to Austin in 1994 (when rent was only $250) to start my studies at UT, I discovered the town of Linklater's Slacker. I could bore you with tales of once-was Austin, like when SXSW wristbands were $35; every former Austinite has similar stories relative to the period of time in which they lived there.
Underlying all these stories that seemingly describe some mythical land of milk and honey is one common thread: opportunity. Austin allows you to be anyone you want to be and affords you the opportunity to do whatever makes your heart full. Austin allowed me to serendipitously become a very successful software engineer and I will never be able to answer the question whether it was me or my environment that played the larger role in making me who I am today.
I no longer live in Austin proper, rather the Texas Hill Country, just to the west. I am quite sure that from my vantage point, I can still see new Austinites like David experiencing the same wonderment I did almost thirty years ago.
> Is the Austin of today still anything like that?
No, but some things are the same. Austin still has this very friendly and curious vibe that encourages inquisitive exploration. The environment is still the same (the lakes, the greenbelts, the creeks and rivers) but they are more overrun with people now.
Some of the old Austin still exists but these places are slowly being replaced by condos, typically. For example, I just read that Dirty Martin's hamburgers is going to close.
The trick to finding Austin is not going to places like Uchi and Barley Swine and whatever dolled-up glam joint opens next week. No offense, but those places can fuck right off and you'll never find the real Austin there.
You have to go to places like Pollo Regio, or maybe talk to the waitress at the last Magnolia Cafe who's worked there for 25 years. Go to the G&S Lounge, try to have a conversation with Jimmy and not get kicked out. If he likes you then you're OK. Go to the Cloak Room bar across from the Texas capitol and ask the grizzled bartender to tell you wild stories about what goes on across the street.
Pre-internet Austin was cheap and an intellectually stimulating zoo, nestled within an extraordinarily beautiful natural environment. The low cost of living allowed the Slacker culture to thrive. That doesn't exist anymore, rent is too high which means everyone has to hustle constantly, but the friendly, curious vibe still exists.
Austin was never "like that". It was a movie. Austin is a lot of things, but we still have bohemians and misfits, but they are outnumbered by tech entrepeneurs and crypto-bros. We still have conspiracy theorists but it turns out they are assholes.
The characters in that movie were marginalized so if you come here expecting them to be the mainstream you didn't get the movie.
That was a part of Austin, and if you went to the right places you saw concentrations of that. I'm sure you still can. But it didn't represent Austin as a whole. The movie represented a particular experience. Does that experience still exist? Probably its different than it was then, but there are still lots of free-thinking bohemian misfits in Austin, even though most of us who were here in the 90s grew up and probably don't resemble that anymore. But if you come to austin and go to The Domain expecting it to be a crowd from the move Slackers and then complain that Austin isn't what it used to be then you are not getting it.
> But if you come to austin and go to The Domain expecting it to be a crowd from the move Slackers and then complain that Austin isn't what it used to be then you are not getting it.
Yeah but no one in their right mind would do that. That's verging on a straw man argument.
Looking forward to the follow-up piece 10 years from now when the allergy shots no longer work, the nearest point of interest is an 8+ hour drive away, and that feeling of dread hits on April 1 as the thermometer his 90f and stays there until November.
I can tell you how it will go. "All these people have irrevocably destroyed [my] Austin. Costs are up, too many people, what I liked about it isn't the way it is anymore."
People have been saying that since I left Austin 5 years ago after living there for 15 years (as a San Antonio native).
"Don't Dallas my Austin" (and its sibling from the 80's "Don't build and they wont come") is the kind of mentality that put Austin exactly where it is wrt affordability and infrastructure
10 years sounds about right. Been that way for decades too. I remember people in the early 90's complaining how Austin had changed since the 70's. It's the one constant to that town.
Sitting in Houston right now, I know that you're claim of "nearest point of interest is 8 hours away" is so fking wrong. Houston is like 2 hours away from Austin and is a metropolis.
Chill. Yes, I'm being snarky. But I did spend quite a bit of time there for work at one point--albeit quite a while ago. And it's sort of a sprawling mess for the most part. If I lived in Austin, I'd probably go to Houston now and then for cultural activities but, no, by and large Houston is not a city I'd go out of my way to visit. Sorry.
Whew! Austinites love being told about Austin! Local comics and podcasters didn't exist until Joe Rogan showed up!
Anyway, Austin has been growing for all of living memory. That's what's special about Austin. There are high paying tech jobs and interesting people. There are interesting things to do. There are bizarre street layouts that no one would have ever designed, as far as we can tell someone paved a bunch of cow paths.
You can find any kind of food you like in Austin. It may not be the absolute best, but I can eat from each continent every week if I want to. I can take a trip around the Pacific Rim.
Austin is STILL under construction, and as long as the tech jobs are here, Austin will ALWAYS be under construction.
> You can find any kind of food you like in Austin. It may not be the absolute best, but I can eat from each continent every week if I want to. I can take a trip around the Pacific Rim.
This has stopped being a "pro" to me. Its pretty much ubiquitous for any major metropolitan area in the US at this point. Everyone seems to assume its a rare feature of their city, and maybe it once was, but at this point I think the list of top-50 cities in the US for which this wasn't the case would be shorter than the list of those where it was.
Considered Austin when I decided to leave Seattle. Ultimately decided on Raleigh instead. the biggest detractor to Austin for me is that you have to drive everywhere. Unless you are significantly wealthier than I am you will be living in a suburban development where you will have to drive to anything. Here in Raleigh I can (and do) ride my bike or easily walk to bars, coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores.
I guess downtownish Raleigh is cheaper than Austin. But pretty much everyone I know who works in Raleigh lives in Cary or suburban Raleigh someplace. Raleigh does have a pretty nice downtown but the nice downtown is pretty small. (Which is a pretty common pattern with medium-size cities--often old mill towns--which have somewhat gentrified downtowns in the Northeast as well.)
Yeah, thats a fair point, I probably should have been more specific, I'm actually in Apex. The comparable part of Austin I looked at was Cedar Park/Round Rock.
I used to take a lot of trips to Apex because Data General had a plant there (and a software development facility in RTP). They may still be Dell facilities by way of EMC. But this was decades ago and they were always in and out trips so I can't say I'm really familiar with the immediate area. These days it's always downtown Raleigh I'm going to and staying in.
Raleigh is surprisingly good. Greenville, SC and Durham, NC are both excellent, too.
Been a hot minute since I lived in Durham, but I highly recommend checking out “Reality Ministry’s” talent show. It packs the largest arena in Durham every year (or did pre-COVID, anyway). Also, if Rose’s Meats and Sweets is still a thing, it’s a must visit.
Not to get into the specifics in this particular article but there's a broader point here. Good cities to live in overlap with but aren't necessarily the same list as the best cities to visit. There are a lot of tourist attractions in destination cities like museums that aren't necessarily of a lot of interest to residents on a day to day basis. You may not be into world-class opera at $200+ a ticket. (And all the tourists may actually be a negative.) Whereas there are a lot of medium to large cities without much in the way of reasons to make a special trip there that still offer reasonable urban amenities for people who want them.
This is why I sincerely believe that you can’t really judge a city without living there. Some cities are geared towards tourists, others towards residents and it shows.
In the US at least, probably medium-sized cities for the most part. Raleigh (and really the whole Triangle) has been mentioned in this thread. I know some co-workers in Columbus (think they all went to Ohio State). Both coastal Portlands. (Portland OR probably comes closest to a destination but I probably wouldn't travel there just to visit the city.) Portsmouth NH.
Probably college "towns" generally. (Some are obviously pretty small but others like Ithaca NY are substantial.)
> Rogan’s presence is also turning Austin into a podcasting hub, with hosts like Tim Ferriss, Lex Fridman, Aubrey Marcus, Sam Parr, Chris Williamson, Ryan Holiday, and Andrew Huberman.
Tim and Ryan were here long before Joe.
Regardless, I've been in Austin for 31 years and if it weren't for split custody with my kids I would have bounced out the second my divorce happened. It's hot, it lacks culture, the food, as has been mentioned, is mediocre, and the political climate is precarious and only getting worse.
If you're considering it, do yourself a favor and don't.
(I lived in Austin for 7 years and permanently moved away a few months ago)
I predict Austin will never approach Silicon Valley's success.
Austin's tech scene is 80:20 Product Manager:Engineer, whereas SV was quite the opposite. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of engineers about, but the culture of the new arrivals feels very much defined by the PM/MBA type.
Why does this matter? Because SV was built by engineers–idiosyncratic, independent thinking engineers. Of course, they were supercharged by VC, but ultimately, the engineers defined the culture.
The iconoclastic engineer is unlikely to move somewhere on the basis of a "Top 10 Cities" list.
> Why does this matter? Because SV was built by engineers–idiosyncratic, independent thinking engineers.
Interesting point, agreed. I moved to SV in the 90s and PMs wasn't a thing (perhaps they existed, but never heard of or met one). It was all engineering-driven, which made it what it was.
PMs have been arrving and colonizing (so to speak) SV though, so it's not the engineering center it used to be. Still here, but engineering-centric companies are getting hard to find.
Counter-perspective as someone who moved from LA to Austin earlier this year and also worked in Austin back in the late 2000s.
Good things:
- To me, the city is about right-sized. It feels like an actual city, but isn't a sprawling mess like LA, Miami, NYC, etc.
- Despite what other people in this thread are saying, the city is very walkable/bikeable if you actually live in the city and not in Pflugerville or something.
- As a growing city attracting companies and new residents from all over, there are tons of opportunities and new people to meet.
- Austin has a good amount of attractions and just general things to do / things happening.
Bad things:
- The weather sucks. I think we got about 3 weeks of spring this year before a record-hot May and now it's in the hundreds for the rest of summer.
- The food is really not great (aside from BBQ). I've made a point of trying a bunch of different restaurants and food trucks with different food types and they've mostly been very unremarkable for very not-cheap food.
- As someone who enjoys hiking, central Texas is pretty awful for outdoor activities. Sure there are various lakes, but "hill country" is kind of a joke and most of the nearby land is privately owned.
- The city has been making an effort (which I appreciate and think they are doing a hell of a lot better than west coast cities) to fix its homeless problem, but it's still fairly bad.
- The music scene is nowhere near what it was like ~15 years ago. You're now far more likely to see a cool band in a random bar in Nashville than you are here in Austin, where it seems I have to kind of go out of my way to find live music.
- It's probably a result of having moved to a yuppie area dominated by transplants from other cities, but the people in my neighborhood are just not friendly. At least half don't even say "hi" back to me if I greet them in passing.
Point is, Austin is a mixed bag just like every American city these days. Be wary of people who gush about it (or anywhere else) without recognizing the downsides.
> Despite what other people in this thread are saying, the city is very walkable/bikeable if you actually live in the city and not in Pflugerville or something.
I guess you mean if you live in downtown and surroundings. Even in many centric neighbourhoods, sidewalks quit on you at a whim, and downtown is absolutely not reachable from most suburbs.
> Austin has a good amount of attractions and just general things to do / things happening.
Curious about this. I have always considered Austin as a city where you have to be young-ish, to find interesting things to do.
Having lived in Austin for decades now, I believe that, unfortunately, articles like this one have turned Austin into the equivalent of a meme stock.
From basically the early 90s to somewhere 2015ish or so, by far Austin's biggest draw was its affordability. Austin had a lot of desirable amenities: a rising industry in tech, the largest university in the state and an educated population to boot, geography that invites lots of things to do outside with its several lakes and Hill Country.
However, and I say this as somebody who has loved Austin enough to live here the majority of my life, Austin has always underperformed major cities in nearly every category. Our cultural institutions (theater, music, dance, museums, etc.) are all second-rate compared to major coastal cities. We just got our first major sports team with an MLS team. Our infrastructure, especially around transportation, is notoriously bad. The one thing I really agreed with in the article relates to our architecture - it really does generally suck, especially compared to places like SF or NY or Boston or Chicago.
But, since it was so much more affordable than these other cities, on balance it was worth it, and then some. Now, though, that affordability is pretty much gone (dinky suburban houses easily top a million bucks), and with the influx of folks like Musk and Joe Rogan you just feel like the hype around this town has far outstripped its reality. So you have folks writing missives like this about the elusive "soul" of Austin, where I have a feeling they're trying to convince themselves it's as "cool" as their dreams.
Also, there are some glaring inaccuracies in this article:
> A friend tells me that downtown Austin doesn’t have any building restrictions, which means there’s going to be an explosion of high-rise growth
That's BS, as Austin famously has "Capitol View Corridors" that greatly restrict height on tons of downtown lots.
Google and Tesla and the "laptop class" can keep Austin, lost cause at this point. San Antonio always had the better breakfast tacos anyway. And Houston always had the better cultural spots.
Like Montreal in Quebec, Austin is in Texas and the larger polity “wins” out when setting the political tone. Both have extreme weather, and are great spots for young folks particularly when single. You have to be comfortable with the stats/provincial politics, though, to remain there.
This article very much reads like every other article I used to read about Austin from people who just moved there 5 minutes ago and think they have it already figured out but actually don’t.
Austin's great, but cost of living has far outpaced the value of the city.
The average home in a central area is about $7k/month now. Though housing inventory is skyrocketing, so will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years. Almost certainly will see big declines without rapid disinflation/soft landing
The draw for being an accessible family oriented place has evaporated for non wealthy folk.
Austin is too small to warrant LA/NYC level pricing. If you're young and dating, you'll hit every decent restaurant within a few months. There are some cuisines without a single good restaurant in the metro area.
And your only options for weekend trips outside of Austin proper area, are Dallas, Houston, San Antonio. Much less diversity in short trips compared to the coasts.
>> The grindset is frowned upon. Some of the coffee shops don’t allow computers on Sundays, and people will scoff at you for skipping weekend social events to work. Austin entrepreneurs also care more about profit than growth.
This is the first time I’ve seen the word “grindset” and I cannot think of a word that work more easily summarize the kind of people I absolutely despise. It’s just an excuse for being ineffective and making it up in volume.
It's funny how our perception of "this is how this place is" is really just based on our preferences, which change over time. You will probably find any amount of "culture war fighting" or "those who prefer sports to drinking" depending on what you look for, regardless of the location.
Find the good and avoid the bad, whatever those words mean to you. Or whatever, move if you want, but you're still taking YOU with you wherever you end up. I don't have much to say about Austin, I visited in the 2010s a few times and liked it.
This article is just weird at best (no pun intended) but like many other industries that benefit from agglomeration this can very well be true.
1) Chefs rarely do any cooking. At best they are conductors. And restaurants are famously highly unprofitable businesses. So you need a combination of a large number of workers, willing to work for cheap (relative to cost of living for the area) and are still highly skilled.
2) Ingredients matter. NYC food used to be crap. It’s the farm to table movement that took advantage of the many local farms within the true state area that revolutionized food in NYC. And SF is in California.
3) Tastes matter. It’s hard for a place which identifies with a certain food to build a great overall cuisine. So New Orleans is great for Cajun/sea food, but it’s hard to see other cuisines flourishing as much (most places in the US tend to have a couple of international cuisines that do wel due to clusters of immigrants, but I’m talking about building a general food culture). That may be one reason why food in SF tends to be better than food in LA, which identifies very much with “healthy” eating even though LA has pretty much every advantage over SF to be a food city.
4) Competition matters. It takes time to build a competitive food scene that can weed out bad restaurants, or even restaurants that haven’t adapted to the modern world. NYC is an extreme, potentially going a little too far, example of this.
So yeah, there are many reasons why great chefs can become not so great chefs after moving somewhere else, at least in a restaurant setting. The top chefs will probably be fine since they will get the cream of the crop and fly in ingredients and workers. But it’s the middle to top-middle layer where these factors show up the most.
Article seems kind of naive, many cities are like this pre-gentrification. Austin won't be any different. Probably worse because of what surrounds you in every direction for 1,000 miles.
The problem is Austin is becoming very hostile cost of living wise to regular people (read: non 200k+ tech workers). That in turn has an effect on lifeguards and EMS.
Finally the city is good, but the city is extremely overhyped. It's very similar to Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas but for some reason gets 5x the praise. Let's be honest why: it has the most progressives and also satisfies tech workers desires to appear diverse but mostly be around other white yuppies.
Austin isn't unique, you just finally found some friends you like
i feel like some newbie techie writes this exact same article about any city just before it hits bottom. i was reading these words about SF and Seattle not too long ago
Austin, however, has a particularly nasty problem. just wait til the legislature passes a law about something you care about
I think there's some truth to Austin being the Portland (OR) of the South but I didn't find it quite as eclectic. It is a small island of blue in a sea of red (which of course has been gerrymandered to hell) but a Texas blue voter isn't a Coastal Democrat. It's really a Southern Democrat.
You see hints of this in the author's post with the talk about the "culture wars". When I've seen that kind of language before what it generally means is social conservatism with a thin veneer of liberal aesthetics (side note: liberalism is aesthetics so that kind of fits anyway). Think Bill Maher. Think people who actually believe there's a "far left" in America ("far left" is code for "trans rights").
When reading that I couldn't help but think of the saying "privilege is invisible to those who have it", which I agree with. A way to interpret that here is that the author is largely surrounded by people like him so that basis is normalized and I suspect it's not as diverse (and certainly not as progressive) as one might otherwise take away from reading this.
Food? I mean the BBQ is excellent. Superb in fact. It's not New York however.
I imagine living in Austin is pretty great if you can live on or near a lake. Around Lake Austin however that is super expensive. Other than that, there's a lot of high cost high rises downtown and a little more south of the river and a little around UT but really it's just another set of Texas suburbs of SFHs. It is incredibly car dependent. Compare this to Portland where in many places you can live without a car just fine (admittedly, my knowledge of Portland is pre-pandemic so I'm unsure how downtown and surrounds have changed; I hear a lot).
Summers are brutally hot. I've been there when it's hitting 100F in late October.
All in all, there were thing sI liked but it just didn't vibe with me.
I live in Portland now, centrally near NW 23rd, while I used to live in Austin from 2007-2015 (and still visit often). I agree with all your points. Portland is far more walkable as I walk to everything here, including grocery and furniture stores, not just cafes and restaurants and convenience stores. It also has much better variety of cultural attractions, architecture, and I prefer the climate and nature of this area.
I have lived my whole weird life's story in Austin. People who move here then openly complain or constantly compare Austin to some other place are better than anyone you'll see at Capital City. 10/10 will laugh again.
NYC and Boston have better jazz. NYC / Chicago / SF have better symphony orchestras.
It used to be an 8/10 or a 9/10 when I moved here, but professional musicians have been priced out. Now it's people with day gigs, music students at UT, and people who bought while it was more affordable and locked in their cost of living.
The Author is using some motivated reasoning to justify some prior hypothesis.
The paragraph about people not talking about National politics/culture wars is especially BS. I was in Austin in 2016, there were watch parties in bars for presidential debates and everyone I met at bars were talking about whether they would vote for Clinton (this was before the Trump takeover of the GOP, so his campaign was considered a joke gone too far by most people).
Likewise the part about the City not being beautiful… what the fuck? The sunsets were absolutely legendary and I would love hanging out around Zilker park watching them.
> Likewise the part about the City not being beautiful… what the fuck? The sunsets were absolutely legendary and I would love hanging out around Zilker park watching them.
I mean, I live in Austin, and I don't see anything special about sitting on a large lawn and watching the sun go down. It's like the bats under the bridge thing, it gets old very fast, but given that Austin really doesn't have many other significant staples, here we are.
Austin really isn't beautiful. I don't think it tries to be, though.
I've lived in Dallas and Houston, and originally came from NYC. Haven't lived in Austin but have spent a lot of time there. Personally, I think Houston is the best big city in Texas. It has everything: diversity (in race, politics, and religions), amazing food, good-enough public transportation (in downtown), huge *and affordable* suburban sprawl (for families that want houses), and a great road system (though Dallas is better in this department). It doesn't look as glitzy, and the tech scene isn't as large as it is in Austin (oil-gas rules the roost here).
Individual responses:
> You don’t have old-money tycoons in Austin like you do in Houston and Dallas, where most of the Texas oil billionaires live.
There are fewer of them there, but this is wrong. Texas has oil-gas old money _everywhere_.
> Partially because of that, a diversity of opinions is welcome (although I know some people have left because they were frustrated with the lack of racial diversity).
If Austin has a lack of racial diversity (which they do [1]), then are opinions really as diverse or well-informed as you think they are?
Generally, when I'm in the center of a town and most of the people I see are white, I immediately think "How did it get that way?" When I've looked it up, the answer is aggressive racism that ended (at least overtly) one or two generations ago.
Austin gives me those vibes every time I go there, especially when I go to any nice places in the city. (I'm a Black Latino who lives in Houston and goes to Austin several times per year.) It's similar to how I felt when I was in Portland (the Austin of the PNW, IMO), but not as bad as how I feel when I'm in New Orleans or any major city in the Bible Belt.
> Here’s a pet theory too. Economically, the Austin airport also support a local food scene because the vast majority of passengers are starting or ending their travels in Austin.
AUS has a good food scene because it's a small(er) airport in a hip town, similar to PDX (again, Austin of the PNW). LGA is going that direction too. It's difficult to have lots of good food at big superhubs because of their size and transfer traffic (not to say that they don't; DFW, CLT, and DTW have some amazing restaurants, for example)
> The lack of direct flights has kept many frequent travelers away. Rumor has it that Delta Airlines is considering a hub here though.
That would be smart on DAL's part, as AAL owns DFW, UAL owns IAH, and SWA owns the minor airports in both cities. DAL did have DFW as a hub for many years but closed it down in 2006; wonder if that will have an effect on their decision.
The article doesn't mention the climate impact, but there's a cost to people moving from a big walkable coastal city with decent public transport and dense housing (e.g. NYC, Boston, Philadelphia) to a city where you're driving everywhere and the AC's on for six months out of the year.
I understand the author's politics are basically "that stuff is for wussy liberals" but it should concern us all.
There's a lot of political stuff that this guy glosses over because it doesn't affect him as a white male Christian. The "traditional gender roles" thing, for one. With our governor and the 5th Circuit eager to send anything and everything regressive up to our 6-3 SCOTUS, my lesbian neighbors are worried about things as basic as their marriage. The University of Austin he cites approvingly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Austin) is a right-wing project set up explicitly to be "anti-woke". And the heartbeat bill he cites as something that people can just disagree about has no exception for rape or incest, something that 75+ percent of people in Texas support. The government has moved to the right of the median Texan, and with the gerrymandered districts and no ballot initiative, it is not really democratically accountable to the voters.
And Texas is 45th in percentage of public land, definitely not a 7/10. With the growth in the Austin area, the hikes and water features that are nearby are always crowded, and you have to reserve campsites months out at state parks. If this dude went hunting, he more than likely paid to hunt on somebody else's land, something I never had to do when I lived in NC or VA.
Texas is anti-human, unless you happen to wealthy, white, male or the first two and a woman who agrees that "her place" is in the home. My wife is always on edge here. It's violent and people are becoming more cruel as the politics more and more support our worst inclinations.
How absurd. How is Texas anti-human for non-whites? For the poor? For women?
The only thing that could be argued is "anti women" would be the abortion bill. But a lot of people don't view that as a woman's rights issue. The "my body my choice" argument is about the same as if a single father advocated to kill his infant and claimed "my life my choice". The 9 months of pregnancy are by no means more of an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care.
For the poor? See https://itep.org/whopays/ -- we have the second most inequitable tax system in the nation, where the poor pay the highest effective rate. We also have no expanded Medicaid, so the rate of uninsured is twice the national average. The State of Texas blocked Austin's sick leave ordinance (https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/05/texas-supreme-court-...). All this affects women and minorities disproportionately -- we're above the national average for maternal mortality, and non-white women are at disproportionate risk above that.
Losing black people doesn't mean Austin is "anti black". SF also lost minorities when the tech scene blew up.
Texas doesn't even have state income tax.
The state isn't and shouldn't be responsible for ensuring everyone has medical insurance. That's an individual responsability.
Blocking the sick leave ordinance just put us in line with the majority of the country. Not exactly a radical move.
Edit:
Also citations not from a .org would be great. I don't need a write up to wade through. Your data should be able to speak for itself if it's legitimate.
Oh man... The wall of text we'd need to discuss this.
Anti abortion laws impact one segment (and the sub segments within, obviously) of society: women. Before you start talking about men's rights and whatnot, please consider not doing that. Nothing grows inside you. Anyway, these laws ONLY IMPACT WOMEN. The US has a ridiculously high Maternal Mortality rate for a "developed" nation and it's worse for non-whites:
For many, abortion is the safe option but making it illegal means it's harder for the poor (which are disproportionately non-white) means they will either have to have back room abortions (remember that talking point in the 80s?) or have babies, which will increase the mortality rate for non-whites even further.
Know what we love? Forcing women to have babies. Know what we don't love? Their kids. Our social support structure in this state is abysmal. So now we're forcing people to have kids that we won't help them with, driving further into poverty, so we can talk about how minorities are The Problem.
But wait! These kids are US citizens, surely they can grow up and vote for change! Not so. We are big fans of gerrymandering. It's a Texas art form and the lines are constantly shifting in obvious ways that basically make voting more of a spectacle than a real thing. We draw lines through minority neighborhoods to split their votes with surrounding neighborhoods that are rich white folks.
And this is all just stuff I can type out on my phone because it's such a common discussion point that I don't have research it any more. We could for hours about laws that are on the books already and those that have been added recently and those that are coming up but if you read this far, I'm already surprised. Texas is tailor made for white republican men and those that that orbit them. Our state laws are giant piles of hypocritical BS. We use one argument to support a thing and the opposite to support another and they're bought and paid for by gun and Christian lobbying.
We're not forcing anyone to have kids. 99% of would be abortions are preventable by just practicing safe sex. Yes I know there's the 1%, but let's talk about the overwhelming majority here.
If you can't afford children, be a responsible adult and don't have them.
I wasn't talking about men's rights, but a humans right to life. How do you justify a mother opting to kill her unborn child while still condemning the killing of a born child? Again, 9 months of gestation is absolutely not more an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care. To believe that its okay to kill a fetus 3 months into pregnancy but not okay to kill a newborn is pure mental gymnastics. In most abortions the aborted fetus would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being had you not prevented it. That's murder. You're taking away a humans opportunity for life.
Texas law has no exceptions for rape or incest. In these circumstances, you are literally forcing someone to have a child after they've been violated. Abbott's argument is "Rape is a crime. And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."
What have they been doing up to this point? Texas outpaces the nation in rape and has been trending upward.
Know what else is illegal? Gun possession by violent criminals. Didn't Abbott also claim that if we made it harder for 18 year old white boys to get AR-15s then only the criminals would have guns? Why not apply the same logic in two places? (I own guns, I like shooting, I'm just no a fan of being full of shit and I believe in common sense fun laws, like most gun owners.)
I know that last bit was a different topic but it illustrates some of the absolute mess that exists in TX politics. They can't even avoid using contradictory arguments in public statements. This is a bad state run by bad people who will say and do absolutely anything to defend the status quo, even if it means saying two opposing things in almost the same breath.
So you focused on a fraction of a percent of abortion cases rather than the overwhelming majority that happen because the mother and/or father couldn't be bothered to have safe sex. I explicitly said in my comment lets talk about the majority. Marijuana causes some fraction of a percent of the population to go into a temporary psychosis, that doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Why do you single out 18 year old white boys specifically? Was there a law that restricted 18 year old white men from purchasing guns that got shot down? If so, good. That's sexist and racist.
Ah. So because it's on a small portion (cite your sources) that we harm irreparably, then it's ok. Cool beans. What was I thinking. Harming the most vulnerable to protect the majority is stupid math. You're also make an assertion about the majority without providing any data, so it's not fact but feeling.
Re: the white boy problem
Because as a an adult white male, I am allowed to call out my own. The perpetrators of most school shootings have been young, white, men. My wife isn't allowed to say it because she'll be shouted down by "not all men" and minorities can't say it because we'll call them racist and point out the one or two times a minority did it. Not enough white men are pointing at the common denominator (aside from "gun") and it's our responsibility to do so.
Black men are also responsible for the majority of firearm murders ala gang violence, the total number of which make the number killed in school shootings look miniscule by comparison, but I don't see you calling them out. I bet you'll say it's a systemic issue. No chance the white school shooters are dealing with any systemic issues themselves? Perhaps people like you who seem to have an unreasonable disdain for young white men?
Just because you've internalized self-hatred and white-guilt doesn't give your the right to project that on the rest of the population.
I'm just happy to know you're concerned for their safety. We should do something about that too. Know what might work? Gun control.
Know what might really help? Ending cycles of poverty. Know a way we could do that? By not forcing them into poverty. Birth control is not free (it was but you killed Planned Parenthood, remember that?). So maybe everyone should stop having sex. That's realistic, right? Oh wait...
So you're concerned about gang violence, which is generally an issue for the most impoverished, who likely don't have healthcare and may not have the money for other birth control devices and you've forced the most well know women's health organization out of business, who used to provide these things for free and you want to force them to have babies, knowing they don't have money, creating more poverty and more desperation and higher likelihoods of violence and then... Shit. Did it come right back around?
Math is hard. Let's go shopping.
ps- I don't have internalized guilt. I haven't massacred one single school. I'm just not blind to the fact that almost all the people who have look like me and I'm smart enough to know that the only people who anyone will listen to (not everyone but most) are the ones who look like me because the only response you can muster is that I just feel guilty, which is ridiculous, I feel angry and sad.
I can't find a "WIC doesn't cover birth control article" but I can't one that says it does. I can also find the FAQ from PP that says they'll give you free birth control but if you're in a red state, they won't exist.
Not only is there work in this area, it's a not a leap at all. A minor application of critical thinking and logic makes cause and effect pretty simple. This has always been about forcing personal feelings onto others. We make a giant show of being anti-choice and then talk down to the poor and point out the issues in poverty stricken areas to make ourselves feel better, ignoring the clear evidence that this is a self fulfilling issue.
This was fun but I'm going to go back to getting the hell out of here, literally. I have packing to do.
Sure, but some things don’t warrant all that many words. Bless your heart: I hope you have many life experiences that help you enrich your perspective and add nuance to your worldview.
It's incredible that when you disagree with someone, your assumption is that they lack life experience and have a naive worldview. Because surely if they were wiser, they'd agree with you, right?
If you truly have a good response to the things I mentioned, I'd like to hear them. Your current behaviour truly is incredibly condescending.
>99% of would be abortions are preventable by just practicing safe sex.
Non-substantial and uncited statistic. 99% of pregnancy is prevented by safe sex.
>Yes I know there's the 1%, but let's talk about the overwhelming majority here.
Unsubstantiated ratio. Assumption that safe-sex is universally possible. It’s a privilege that not all get to enjoy, and abortion is the edge-case of human behavior that addresses those situations.
>If you can't afford children, be a responsible adult and don't have them.
Assumption of full reproductive autonomy.
>Again, 9 months of gestation is absolutely not more an invasion of autonomy than the following 18 years of care.
Moral hazard.
>In most abortions the aborted fetus would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being had you not prevented it. That's murder. You're taking away a humans opportunity for life.
In law we call this “but-for” analysis. Essentially, “but for” someone aborting a fetus, the fetus “would have developed into a healthy, functioning human being.”
Everything else up to this point was fine but the last point is where the “bless your heart” materialized in my soul. Would that we could guarantee the health and functioning of humans, simply by not aborting them.
They say “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” but in your case it’s “If you want to make God laugh, tell him his plans.”
Okay my exact percentages are probably wrong, the point being the vast majority of abortions could be prevented by safe sex.
Safe sex is absolutely universally possible. Free condoms are given out all over the place, and in places where they aren't it's probably better to practice abstinence until you're ready than kill unborn children so you can get a quick nut.
In cases except rape, which are a small minority of abortions, there is reproductive autonomy.
Elaborate on "moral hazard".
I explicitly said most. Not all. Most. Most abortions, like most births, would have resulted in a healthy adult human. You're responding to a misreading of what I said.
My dudebro, you are the living answer to your own questions.
You couldn’t pay me or my wife enough money to move back to Austin, let alone anywhere else in Texas, and we called it home for longer than anywhere else we’ve been since. Enjoy the hellhole.
On top of restricting women’s healthcare, there is also the lack of parental and sick leave laws, and extended disability leave for women who give birth. Probably a lack of adequate breastfeeding laws too. And of course, non existent min hourly and salaried wage laws.
I would never subject my wife/daughter to that kind of society, as long as I have the means not to.
My wife is also a physician. The level of care provided to low-income patients is barely existent compared to a state like Massachusetts, both some of the places she has practiced. Have you seen the state of Medicaid in Texas?
Go expose yourself to it and you’ll see how Texas is anti-poor.
Thank you for this. It really infuriates me when white guys (and I am a cishet white guy, but I have empathy for those who aren't) treat issues like gay marriage and abortion access like "culture war" nice-to-haves, as if for any controversy the center must be the right place and both sides must have a point. It ain't so.
Some people in our society really want to turn women into passive baby-making machines, just as some people in our society want back the legal right to own people, just as some people think capital's leverage over labor is morally legitimate. Human rights and civil rights are non-negotiable and we must give our adversaries no quarter.
I looked at the advisory board and trustees for the University of Austin, and it's a mix of left- and right-wing, but mostly centrists. Among the right-wing members, they seem to be the think tank type.
Furthermore, even if it were set up to be "anti-woke," why is that a problem? Most of the woke stuff in higher ed has little basis in reality or is conceptually incoherent. It's signaling for social capital because nearly everyone is straight, white, etc.
Yes great city and used to be very livable . But despite everything I cannot justify paying that recent increased cost of living to still be governed by Texas laws of no abortion, guns, capital punishment and pretty much every wacky right wing law possible. Great city to visit though.
So you feel strongly enough about these issues that you don't want to live somewhere where there's more work to do, and where your vote could make a difference in the coming decades. Just "get this gross stuff away from me."
I lived in Texas for nearly 20 years, most of that time in Austin, and by all measures the politics has gotten more evil, not less.
My “vote could make a difference” while stripping myself and more importantly my wife of rights we get to enjoy in every other state we’ve lived in. And while there are a dozen other unrelated reasons you couldn’t pay us enough to live in Austin again, it’s nobody’s duty to live their lives as an oppressed martyr to be a fraction of a number for your cause.
You are not going to executed, shot, denied an abortion, or otherwise turned into a martyr. I know that with high confidence because you're here, and because you're lightly talking about what major city you'd like to live in.
The politics are important because of the people whose lives and bodies they impact, not because of our distaste for them. We live above the real consequences of the policies you named (outside of the very unlikely chance that we catch a random bullet.)
I have been a block captain with the Democratic Party in Austin for almost as long as I've lived here, and a voter deputy registrar since 2018. It hasn't made a bit of difference, and that's intentional. Anything good you do at the local level, the state government preempts. And the state legislature is so gerrymandered that even if you flipped the governor and lieutenant governor, you still couldn't roll back any of the awfulness that's already been passed. And there is no ballot initiative -- all the amendments on the ballot have to be proposed and approved by that gerrymandered legislature. That's why Oklahoma, Missouri, and Utah have medical marijuana and expanded Medicaid, and we don't.
Illinois had to instate a moratorium because of their track record of convicting innocence people to death. A conservative estimate is 50 innocent people have been executed in the US in modern times, and over 200 on death row are also innocent. Also, consider the harsh sentences of mandatory minimums for petty drug crimes where there's now an elderly warehousing problem where harmless people lost their lives but are too frail to care for themselves. Furthermore, America has the highest incarceration rate in the world overrepresented by mostly brown and poor people. Rich white people use drugs at similar rates but don't go to jail for it.
Speaking as a non-American, to the rest of the world those are indeed wacky right-wing laws. You have to have been brought up in a political monoculture not to see that.
No, Texas bans abortions from 6 weeks onwards (except when the mother's life is in danger). That's decidedly not more liberal than the majority of the world.
