[wpietri]

Off the top of my head, a few reasons: After 60 years of growth we're hitting practical limits in terms of finding space for people. The technology we have created has made distance less important. And between outsourcing, tech oligopolies, and "blitzscaling" (where VCs burn money to destroy competition), it has lately become harder to jump ship and start a company.

Plus we're really talking about processes on different scales. Individuals moving elsewhere doesn't say much about the pace of creating companies to pursue novel innovations.

I'll also note that CA not having non-competes makes it easy for people to leave and start companies elsewhere. The real question is whether those new companies will create dynamic local scenes of their own, in the same way the Fairchildren did here. If they don't, and if Silicon Valley keeps being a hub of innovation, that's a great sign that banning noncompetes still matters.

[tekknik]

To be clear, I’m not arguing against CA’s ban on non-competes. But the problem of rent prices isn’t due to SF running out of space, it’s due to increased regulation around permits [1]. And this directly affects the rate of innovation unless there is enough room to house the people needed for the innovation in the first place. Further, and this part is unclear on your position, the foundations of teleconferencing we’re made outside of SF, and used by SF companies to create things like zoom. To say SF invented teleconferencing is a stretch. And lastly starting a company isn’t hard. Invest time into another project, and eventually you’ll create a business from it. VCs shouldn’t be step 1. New scenes have also popped up elsewhere, Hyderabad, Austin TX, Tel Aviv so Im not sure where that part is coming from.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage