Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities. You can decide you don't care about any of that, but understand that type of that decision will ripple through to future generations, e.g. your grandkids will be less educated.
The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out, and a generation or two after they do they want to go back. Will the cycle repeat itself?
>Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities
But it won't "all else equal", there are so many variables at play here that it's meaningless to talk about a hypothetical "all else equal" scenario. Also there have been so many successful people who were born and raised in what you'd call "less competitive" areas.
>The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out, and a generation or two after they do they want to go back.
What's ironic about people going to places chasing things they desire? Big cities and small towns offer different things, and those things value differently to different people. The people who are leaving small towns chasing after opportunities and the people who want to move back to small towns from big cities are obviously at different stages in their lives and value different things.
> Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities
That’s absolute horse shit.
And whilst I don’t have any evidence to sprout, I think that those from more diverse and unusual backgrounds are better adapted for modern life. Growing up in a ‘competitive’ city is a licence for blandness (opinions mine)
Agreed, being from a city is a replacement for a personality for some. If you've ever met someone from NYC you know it because they tell you about it within 2 minutes of meeting them.
There are pros and cons to growing up in a smaller metro. While having access to top tier culture and internships are great, there’s also a grueling competition to stand out.
In SV, the pressure on kids and parents seems extreme even at the median. While there are less opportunities and resources overall in a small metro, it’s all available to an ambitious child.
In the end, at least some small town kids are out-sprinting the “competitive city” kids and taking their loot back home. Otherwise we wouldn’t have all these articles about it.
Maybe true of typical residents of said locations, on average.
But tech transplants by and large should not be considered typical residents.
What you say definitely does have elements of truth to it, but I’d wager the effects of parenting and income are, on average, much larger than your direct setting when it comes to succeeding beyond the median of their peer group.
The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out
Doesn't seem like you know much about small towns. I grew up in one. The educated people are there because they want to be. That's sort of by definition, and follows from the fact that they're educated -- they have been somewhere else (you don't get "educated" in a small town, not in the way you mean), and they chose to go there.
The ones who want to leave are the uneducated ones, who would love to have an opportunity to get "educated" in that sense.
Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities
Not everyone wants to be part of this rat race you're talking about, nor do they want their children to be. Having ended up at FAANG (despite my small town upbringing), I talk with a lot of young people (interns, new hires) who are products of this rat race. By and large my impression is that:
1. They haven't lived much. They haven't done many things. They've been too busy in their competitive classes in competitive schools trying to get into competitive schools.
2. They don't seem very happy. They tend to be high strung. Nervous seeming. Scared of failure.
that decision will ripple through to future generations, e.g. your grandkids will be less educated.
How would you even know this? How do you know parental education status isn't the real factor?
You and I share some similar observations but come away with very different interpretations.
"The educated people are there because they want to be" the parents, sure, but their children are there because the parents chose for them.
"1. [children from big cities] haven't lived much. They haven't done many things." Are you seriously suggesting that there are more things to do in Boise than Manhattan?
"2. They don't seem very happy." That certainly described everyone I knew who wasn't a cultist in Salt Lake City.
In my experience, the ones who want to leave are the smart kids who find their surroundings culturally stifling and intellectually decrepit.
Are you seriously suggesting that there are more things to do in Boise than Manhattan?
It's not about how many things there are to do. It's about what life experiences you've had.
I'm not talking museums here. I'm talking working tough jobs, dealing with addiction or death (in family or acquaintances, having a job, living on your own, etc etc. The kids I'm talking about have had very sheltered lives.
That certainly described everyone I knew who wasn't a cultist in Salt Lake City.
We may have different definitions of "small town". Salt Lake City is unique in many ways and not representative of rural or rust belt small towns.
All small towns are not created equal, imagining they are is going to lead you to invalid conclusions.
Desirable towns popular with outdoor recreation enthusiasts are generally not suffering any sort of widespread brain drain issue (if anything, they have the opposite issue - too many highly educated people, not enough of the people to do the jobs lower on the ladder).
They have about nothing in common with some rural town in the Great Plains that's been slowly depopulating for a century.
Shared family environment (which by definition includes where your parents choose to live) has near zero impact on long term adult outcomes. This has been confirmed again and again by countless twin studies.
Do you mean twin studies where the twins are separated at birth and raised by different parents? This is a rare thing for parents to do so I think you are exaggerating when you say there are "countless" twin studies saying family environments don't matter? I would be surprised if there were more than a few such studies?
And yet, we know anecdotally that certain places produce far more than their share of "talented" people, so I don't think those twin studies are complete or conclusive.
That's just the genetic heritability of intelligence and other personality factors. High IQ, high achieving people are disproportionately attracted to certain job markets. Those people tend to have high IQ kids. Those high IQ kids tend to grow up and become high achieving adults. The outcomes would largely be the same whether those same kids grew up in Palo Alto or Peoria. Don't confuse correlation for causation.
Similarly, I'd be virtually certain that children who grew up with a Tesla as their family car are much more likely to attend elite universities. That doesn't mean that Elon Musk has solved the problem of getting your kids into Harvard. It's just that Teslas are expensive, and therefore rich, high-achieving families are more likely to own them.
You're not addressing the thing I was talking about.
Take for instance the bevy of amazing mathematicians produced by early 20th century Budapest. That wasn't just genetics, it was the culture of the city and the teachers those people had. Likewise you could look at the rise of soccer greatness in Rio; that wasn't genetic, it was due to features of life in Rio and a culture of passion for soccer.
IQ is less important and more malleable than you think. It should be called nutrition and nurturing quotient instead.
Or maybe people can take responsibility for their kids rather than forget them with an underpaid, under-motivated teachers. You can cram 12 years of public school bullshit in 4-6 years, and have 6-8 years to teach them useful things like programming and construction.
As a kid who graduated with a class of 28 students in rural small town America, I’d say we had a disproportionately high number of kids go to the Ivies, Stanford, or the Academies. I never once felt handicapped. Resumes look pretty good when you letter in every sport, star in every play, and run student government. And today I’m raising my children in small town America.
The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out, and a generation or two after they do they want to go back. Will the cycle repeat itself?