> I once proposed to someone that the best way to prevent whales being killed was to kill them all. It's surely true, they can't be hunted if they're never even born. But his response was "you have no morals". Actually conservationism is an activity without morals.
Okay...
But I'm pretty sure a conservationists goal is not to make species go extinct.
There is a long run goal which is the survival of as many species and habitats as possible. Being nice animals is not diametrically opposed with being a conversationist, nor would a conversationist actually argue for killing all whales unless it had greater benefits for ocean ecosystems as a whole. You're ignoring the long-term consequences and only focusing on the actions themselves in calculating moral utility.
Same housing problems in Copenhagen. I'm a student who just lives back in my home country and flies over to Copenhagen for exams because I couldn't find housing. If I want to get something, I have to be there so I can hunt down people in person. There's really no sort of easy way to just get an apartment room, and I've found that willing to pay more doesn't really help (though maybe if you're willing to rent out something for 3-4k USD a month + drop 12,000 on a deposit you might have better luck).
Where are you from? And are you studying something that you can get SU from? There are special student housing (called "Kollegium" rooms) in Denmark, where only students are allowed to live. And the rent is considerably lower than normal rental apartments.
It's been a while since I've studied, so my information might be outdated, but feel free to send me an email if I can help in any way. I live in Copenhagen.
I'm from the US. I've signed up for kollegiums and I'm waiting on the list. It's taking a while as all the first year students have priority first, but that's wearing off soon. Hopefully that'll come through soon, but it's going to pose another challenge as I'll be going on exchange in half a year.
> 5) Where can you derive meaning and satisfaction from a job in quantitative finance? How do you reconcile the opportunity cost to society from not working on directly socially beneficial applications in fields like medicine and artificial intelligence?
If this is a strong concern of yours you should probably go with one of the other two options. There's opportunities to make money in many industries. You might not end up with as high as a net worth as you would've if you went into quantitative finance, but that's not an absolute rule and you'll more likely burn out if you don't find satisfaction in your job. This isn't a dig towards anyone that is in the finance industry and enjoys their job, but it's common for people to end up quitting from dissatisfaction/work conditions.
Besides that, a robotics startup sounds pretty exciting.
> When you're "making 90k" in the valley you have the quality of life worth 30k in a midwestern city.
Not true at all, yet this is constantly repeated like it's fact.
Look up indifference curves and consumption bundles. You're ignoring microeconomics. For anyone that doesn't assign excessively high utility towards housing size, 90k in the valley is a much better quality of life than 30k in a midwestern city.
This is where cost of living calculators fail as well. You can't compare the same basket of goods everywhere you go. People will adjust their basket of goods depending on relative prices; it doesn't mean that their utility has dropped. It's income effect vs substitution effect.
Edit: The number above has been changed to 60k~. I'd say this is probably a more reasonable argument. As for the suburban argument, I don't really know the numbers and I can't argue there. As a person in my 20s who grew up in San Jose, the suburbs are like a bad dream that continuously haunts me.
If you want your comparison to be equally valid wherever you make it, you have to use the same basket of goods everywhere you go. Otherwise, I can't tell whether you are comparing apples to oranges or pears to grapefruit.
When I look at the numbers for that basket of goods that I currently consume, and price it out for San Francisco, I find that it is completely unattainable for anything less than 3 times what I currently pay, and could be difficult to reliably source for less than a multiple of 4. That's the fact.
It does not matter that I would in reality have to substitute down to inferior goods. It would still be objectively worse than what I have now. The value of my willingness to substitute counterbalances the savings I make by substituting. If I move back to the cheaper area, I won't keep the SV basket; I will substitute right back to the best goods that I can afford.
I agree that there's a big transparency benefit to using the same basket everywhere, but I don't think that actually gives the most realistic answer.
Imagine that every day, for every meal, you eat spaghetti carbonara. You'd be almost as happy eating linguine with pesto, but you happen to have a slight preference for spaghetti carbonara. Now you move somewhere else where, for whatever reason, spaghetti is 100x the price and every other ingredient is only 2x the price. Are you suddenly 100x poorer? No, much nearer 2x, because you'll just switch from spaghetti to linguine. You'll be slightly worse off than 2x because, darn it, you preferred spaghetti, but only slightly.
Moving to San Francisco from (say) Minnesota is a bit like that. Housing is a bajillion times more expensive, so you'll have to make do with a lot less of it, but unless housing is the only thing you care about that doesn't mean you're a bajillion times worse off. You do need some housing, and many other things are also more expensive, so there's no argument that you're worse off in SF for any given level of income. But not by the factor the price of housing would suggest.
(A couple of other remarks about this sort of comparison. 1. The richer you are, the less these things matter -- if you're putting a substantial fraction of your income into investments, those don't change in price at all just because you move to San Francisco. 2. Relatedly, if you are able to buy a house rather than renting, you're not as much worse off as the eyewatering price of the house would suggest -- because later on you can move out of San Francisco, sell that house, and get the money back again.)
Realism takes a back seat to practicality here. A CoL calculator takes two cities and a dollar amount as inputs. A QoL calculator would need a lengthy list of preferences with reasonably accurate price estimates, and a complex network of likely substitutions. That seems like an academic project for a graduate student in economics, whereas CoL calculators are just a simple HTML form with a tiny bit of script and a database of scale factors for each city.
Thus, you can't really tell me how much I'd have to earn to be equally happy in SV as I am elsewhere, but you can easily tell me how much I'd need to maintain equal consumption there.
You can get some of your money back when reselling the house, possibly even within six months of listing it. I would not blithely make assumptions about any market when a bubble appears to be growing nearby.
I obviously felt my comment was already too long and wouldn't on balance benefit from a cautious parenthesis to the effect that you might actually get a lot more money back than you put in, or a lot less, depending on exactly what the housing market does, and that it also depends a lot on how much of the house you own (the limiting case of a 100% mortgage is, at least to begin with, almost indistinguishable from renting), but that to first order, assuming a reasonable amount of equity and no catastrophic shocks to the housing market, what you get out is at least a fair fraction of what you put in ... but as two people have commented on that omission, perhaps I was mistaken.
(As it happens, I indeed didn't own a house in the US 5-6 years ago, but I'm well aware of what happened.)
Yes, but using the same basket of goods is fundamentally flawed because people shift their consumption choices dependent on relative prices. People do not pick the same consumption bundles wherever they go. Your substitution to an inferior good (actually, just less consumption of a normal good, housing space) is compensated with a larger consumption of 'other goods', which have also rose in price but not nearly to the extent your salary went up (tripled, in his previous example). Again, income effect vs substitution effect.
> Not true at all, yet this is constantly repeated like it's fact.
That's because it is true...
I moved from the Midwest to the peninsula 3 years ago (for my wife's work). I made roughly those numbers there and here and the standard of living was roughly the same, maybe even dropped a little. Living in Silicon Valley is easily 2-3X more expensive than living in a place like Indianapolis or Columbus, OH.
You honestly don't feel these pressures as much until you're older and have a family. At least, the differences between the regions are much more apparent with a family. For example, we need a certain amount of living space, and there are a set of fixed expenses. We lived in about the same size homes here and there, and just the cost for that alone more than tripled.
Housing might very well be 2-3x (or more) expensive, but not all goods have gone up 2-3x more. This allows for an adjustment of your consumption bundle; your housing is not going to be as large, but you might have access to a greater amount of other goods. Of course, you can choose to easily make it 2-3x more expensive if you desire. Family makes this difficult because your personal indifference curve places higher utility towards space, but the parent was discussing intern salaries, who generally don't have to support families.
You have the same access to goods almost anywhere in the US. The basic problem is that certain basic needs (energy, housing, child care) cost 2-3X more in the Bay Area than the Midwest. The only things that isn't the case for are food and transportation, which are slightly more expensive, but not as nearly as much. Transportation may be slightly cheaper out here, but not by a significant margin.
Your idea of a consumption bundle is appealing, but not very practical... you are assuming that there are things that can be adjusted, but for many, that just isn't the case. If you don't have a family, you might be able to get away with living in a smaller place. But if you do have one, for any given standard of living, there is a certain minimum size that you need. And the increase in costs in housing severely limit the flexibility that you might have in other areas.
I was mainly replying to your assertion that it isn't 2-3X more expensive to live in the Bay Area than the Midwest. I'm sorry to tell you that it is.
The idea of a consumption bundle is a microeconomic theory that has a lot of evidence behind it and is generally accepted in the community. It's not really my idea.
There is no certain minimum size that you need; you simply place a lot of utility of living space as opposed to other goods up to a certain point, at which diminishing returns kick in. The amount of utility you place clearly increases as you have more family members to take care of. In the case of an intern, this is generally not an issue.
There are also other purchases besides food and transportation that do not increase; the cost of travel and vacationing, for instance. Technology generally remains the same cost throughout the US. Clothing, I'd imagine, doesn't increase too much.
> I was mainly replying to your assertion that it isn't 2-3X more expensive to live in the Bay Area than the Midwest. I'm sorry to tell you that it is.
It can be. It depends on the utility you place on sq ft as opposed to all other goods. However, it is not an axiom that one needs 3x the money to live in the Bay in order to remain at the same indifference curve level as they previously did in the Midwest.
Exactly. When I lived in the suburbs I had a 3 bedroom condo, and my wife and I owned two cars. I moved to the city and we now have a 1 bedroom apartment and no cars. Total cost of living is roughly the same. My happiness in my living arrangements is about the same. A cost of living calculator would make it look like we are getting absolutely hosed.
Our take home $ into bank accounts tells an entirely different story. The raise more than made up for any increased cost of living.
It kind of makes sense too, if it didn't make sense, people wouldn't be doing it, there wouldn't be so much demand, and prices would fall.
You can always adjust your consumption bundle. If I'm living in a high rent city, I'm more likely to find a friend to share an apartment with or settle for something not that great. This is a drop in utility (though I'd argue living with a friend is a positive for myself), but I also have a lot more money to use on other things, which increases my utility. Spending most of your money on rent when you're pulling something like 5,000 after tax a month is a choice, not a given, and is reflective on how much utility you perceive a better apartment to give you. In reality, we're probably terrible at accurately estimating utility of a good, but I personally have lived in a variety of places, and I was most happiest living in my tiny dorm room, so I personally don't care much about having a big place.
Your average friend is likely to want a close to market price for that room. Relying on friends is not a way to plan an economy. A lot of people won't have friends willing to let them stay.
That's not what I was saying at all, but alright. If you're interested in the topic, look up utility curves, income effect, and substitution effect in a microeconomics textbook. It'll probably have a much better explanation than I can communicate through text (unless I start making graphs, which would be a bit time consuming).
Here's a copy paste of my explanation on reddit though (where this topic also constantly comes up):
Living in the Bay Area results in a higher wage, which increases consumption (income effect), but at the same time the price of housing is much higher as well (to a greater degree than the increase in income). You substitute sq ft with other goods. If you place relatively heavy utility on housing by sq ft in comparison to all other goods, then I guess it's a bad idea to come out here, because you're going to be on a lower indifference curve. Otherwise (and I think most people fall under 'otherwise', which is why they come out here ) its not that bad of an idea, and you'll probably end up on a higher indifference curve.
> Your living area is probably No.1 contributor to quality of life.
That might be true for you. Everyone has different indifference curves determined by the utility they place on different goods.
As for sq. feet minimums, at lower levels of sq ft. you will place higher utility on marginal sq. feet, sure, and diminishing returns will probably not have kicked in.
If you're comparing cities to cities (e.g. Chicago vs. SF, Minneapolis vs. Seattle) then I'd say that it's closer to 65k than 30k to get an equivalent lifestyle to $90k on the West Coast. There are (contrary to coastal stereotype) great places to live in the Midwest, and they are cheaper than SF, but they aren't super-cheap either. The 2500 SF houses for $300k aren't in downtown Chicago. They're in suburbs where most 25-year-olds would be pretty bored because walking or biking to work is very rare and you can't go out without a designated driver (i.e. cab service and public transportation aren't options).
If you're comparing suburbs (Silicon Valley) to suburbs, the discrepancy is much greater and I'd say that $90k/CA ~= $40k/Midwest. That's because Silicon Valley has so much less in the way of urban amenity, but still charges an urban premium that you wouldn't see 20 miles out of Minneapolis. When you adjust for commute, suburban California ("the Valley") looks even worse.
Why? Hypothetically, would I not have a better impact if I used the same time to take up extra work and instead donated that money? I would imagine the price per hour to hire labor for, say, a food drive could easily be funded multiple times through the price per hour to hire a software developer. Would I not make even more an impact if I chose to donate to an organization that operates in low-income countries? And why would locally matter? Are people in need not people in need regardless of where they're located?
What has our immense military budget exactly achieved? It hasn't defeated ISIS, brought peace to Syria, stopped Putin's aggressive expansionism, or ended North Korea's nuclear testings. Maybe Western Europe isn't interested in the bargain to begin with. From what is the US defending itself against with excessive military spending when we already have nuclear weapons that function as an effective deterrent? It doesn't seem like our military budget is preventing worldwide crises and nuclear development in rogue countries.
Borders between states are hardly the same as borders between countries, and Portugal is not representative of Europe. Europe is a region with multiple cultures, languages, countries, and governments.
Well that's the point that he/she is trying to make isn't it? States in the US are more like to countries within the EU. That's in part why I think a lot of people from the US refer to 'Europe' as a cohesive entity, because in many ways it is. Different states and different countries are at different levels of progress.
States in the US =/= Countries within the EU. Europe is really not a cohesive entity. Different languages, different history (stretching back a thousand+ years), completely different value systems, cultures, etc.
Trying to insinuate that the degree of differentiation between states is the same as between Europe countries is utter absurdity. Clearly, trying to track healthcare across different governments with different languages and different cultures is much harder than trying to track healthcare across different states with the same language, the same national government, and a very similar culture.
Culture and that other stuff you mention are important, but so is size and distance. In the same way that someone who moved from Austria to Scotland would be tolerant of differences in official services, so is someone who moves from Seattle to Orlando.
I've always heard London to be unfriendly, but when I visited and asked multiple people for directions they were pretty damn accommodating. Maybe I just got lucky, but in the city I previously lived in (Copenhagen) you felt like you were intruding on somebody's day whenever you interrupted them in public.
I will always help with directions if I can, as I think most people in London would. When I used to lock my bicycle outside I'd get asked about twice a month — someone locking a bicycle is probably local.
What I don't want is irrelevant conversation. I've spent the day at work, the train home is a chance for a break and a rest.
I feel like many Americans (assuming you're American) have a knee jerk response when they're told that money cannot buy them happiness. They get defensive as our society constantly reinforces us with the idea that money does in fact purchase happiness. This is a great message to keep us productive and increase GDP, but is it really true? You've presented that journal article as evidence, but looking past the catchy title, it still does not show that money = happiness. It says that money, when used to purchase experiences or help other people, brings about happiness. If anything, this seems to imply that experiences and helping others brings about happiness, and money is a means in which we can help others or experience things. However, excess wealth is hardly a pre-requisite for experiences nor helping others. Certainly, there exists a baseline; if you're struggling to get food, you probably can't focus on helping others, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding to quit your job, emigrate to a foreign developing country, and start working at a non-profit (sans debt obligations, of course, which tends to be the result of a horrible education system and/or rampant consumerism). I remember meeting an Australian engineer in Montreal who worked for a year and then took two or three off to go travel around the world. He especially liked to snowboard. Yes, productivity and wealth were necessary for him, but it was a means to an end; so that he could purchase experiences that made him happy. I feel like many people in our world would look at him and say "but what about your career progression? Dear god man, don't you have any ambition? You'll never become CTO like that!" I feel like our society has gotten sucked into a rat race, where it treats productivity and the accumulation of wealth as the end itself rather than the means to happiness. Nothing better signifies this than our obsession with GDP.
I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.
Okay... But I'm pretty sure a conservationists goal is not to make species go extinct.
There is a long run goal which is the survival of as many species and habitats as possible. Being nice animals is not diametrically opposed with being a conversationist, nor would a conversationist actually argue for killing all whales unless it had greater benefits for ocean ecosystems as a whole. You're ignoring the long-term consequences and only focusing on the actions themselves in calculating moral utility.