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by biocomputation 3078 days ago
This isn't about age, and I'm not sure why you're even framing it that way.

The crowding, costs, and congestion in Seattle have increased very significantly with Amazon. There have been very ugly social side effects as well.

Amazon's employees, most of whom are out-of-towners, don't need to live in Seattle as much as the people whom they're displacing. Basically, a lot of the Amazon transplants could work remotely or find jobs in other cities.

This was all entirely avoidable.

1 comments

The reasons this sort of thing happens are the reasons humans organize themselves into cities at all. Turning off the growth spigot while maintaining everything else in working order isn't a lever that policymakers have.

What they do have are ways of dealing with population growth that lead to drastically less displacement.

Sure, no out-of-towner needs to live in Seattle specifically. New entrants to the workforce do need to live in a city with job growth in their industries, and all of those (for software development) are having this conversation. Could change if remote work becomes more available.