The Bay Area is a terrible place to live in many ways. I think if we were selecting for the happiness of existing rationalists, there's no doubt we should be somewhere else.

But if the rationalist project is supposed to be about spreading our ideas and achieving things, it has some obvious advantages. If MIRI is trying to lure some top programmer, it's easier for them to suggest they move to the Bay (and offer them enough money to overcome the house price hurdle) than to suggest they move to Montevideo or Blackpool or even Phoenix. If CEA is trying to get people interested in effective altruism, getting to socialize with Berkeley and Stanford professors is a pretty big plus. And if we're trying to get the marginal person who isn't quite a community member yet but occasionally reads Less Wrong to integrate more, that person is more likely to be in the Bay than anywhere else we could move. I think this is still true despite the coronavirus and fires. Maybe it's becoming less so, but it's hard to imagine any alternative hub that's anywhere near as good by these metrics. *Maybe* Austin.

Separating rationalists interested in quality-of-life from rationalists working for organizations and doing important world-changing work seems potentially net negative.

I think if we were going to move the Berkeley hub, it would have to be to another US hub - most people aren't going to transfer countries, so even if the community as a whole moved, we would need another US hub for Americans who refused to or coudln't emigrate.

I don't think Moraga (or other similar places near the Bay) are worth trying. They're just as expensive as Berkeley, but almost all single-family homes, so it would be harder for poorer people to rent places there. Although there's a BART station, there's not much other transit, and most homes aren't walkable from the BART station, so poorer people without cars would be in trouble. And it really isn't much less expensive than Berkeley, and it's got the same level of fire danger, so we would be splitting the community in two (abandoning the poor people, the people tied to MIRI HQ, etc) while not gaining much more than a scenery upgrade. I think they're a fair alternative option for people who can't stand the squalor and crime of the Bay proper, but mostly in the context of those people moving there and commuting to Berkeley for community events.

If we made a larger-scale move, I think it would be to avoid the high housing costs, fires, blackouts, taxes, and social decay of the Bay. That rules out anywhere else in California - still the same costs, fires, blackouts, and taxes, although some places are marginally less decayed. It also rules out Cascadian cities like Portland and Seattle - only marginally better housing costs, worse fires, and worse social decay (eg violence in Portland). 

If we wanted to stick close enough to California that it was easy to see families/friends/colleagues, there are lots of great cities in or near the Mountain West - Phoenix, Salt Lake, Colorado Springs, Austin. All of those have housing prices well below half that of the Bay (Phoenix's cost-of-housing index is literally 20% of Berkeley's!). Austin is a trendy exciting tech hub, Colorado Springs frequently tops most-liveable lists, Salt Lake City seems unusually well-governed and resilient to potential climate or political crisis, and Phoenix is gratifyingly cheap.

The most successful adjacent past attempt at deliberate-hub-creation like this I know of was the Free State Project, where 20,000 libertarians agreed to create a libertarian hub. They did some analyses, voted on where the hub should be, created an assurance contract where every signatory agreed to move once there were 20,000 signatories, got 20,000 signatories, and moved. They ended up choosing New Hampshire, which means we might want to consider it as well. It's got great housing prices (Manchester is as cheap as Phoenix!), a great economy, beautiful scenery, a vibrant intellectual scene, it's less than an hour's drive to Boston, it's very politically influential (small, swing state, presidential primaries), and (now) has 20,000 libertarians who are interested in moving places and building hubs.

If people are interested in this, I think the first step would be to consult MIRI, CFAR, CEA, etc, and if they say no, decide whether splitting off "the community" from all of them is worth it. If they say yes, or people decide it's worth it to split, then make an organization and take a vote on location. Once you have a location in mind, start an assurance contract where once X people sign, everyone moves to the location (I'm not sure what X would be - maybe 50?)

I think this is a really interesting project, but probably am too tied to my group house to participate myself :(

Additional factor: availability of compatible people who didn't move there for this group. This is important for several reasons, including:

• Inflow of new ideas
• Ease of joining and leaving. If rationalists take over a small town, the only thing there for them is other rationalists. That makes joining and leaving into very binary decisions. It doesn't let people slowly notice incompatibilities and amoeba into another social group.  

I'm not a regular member of this community, OR a resident of the Bay Area, so apply extreme skepticism to my observations and my suggestions. They are submitted with significant humility. 

1. I don't think there's any practical way to relocate a cultural hub on purpose. It might move on its own, over time, but that will be an incremental process. So, to some degree, I think this discussion is moot. Even if a few huge players announced an agreed upon "Second Hub" I don't think many people would/could just pick up and go there. 
2. Nevertheless, various factors (COVID, better online collaboration tools, economic factors that make the Bay Area uniquely difficult) do seem to acting to make relocation an easier sell, so it's reasonable to think about this. 
3. Trying to list all the things that would make an alternate location better is a bad approach. It will be a different list for everyone. Anywhere that would tick off most of the boxes currently ticked off by the Bay Area would probably also have the same flaws as the Bay Area. 
4. That said, I think there is one sort-of easy answer that SORT-OF gets at the root problem. The root problem is not the Bay Area per se. The root problem is that "rationality" as a project, is not a location based activity, and putting all the rationality actors in one place is not an obviously-effective strategy to spreading and evolving rational thought. 
   1. If all the Catholics lived in Rome, I don't think most of the world would care about Catholicism very much. 
   2. Or, if religious analogies are disturbing, we could say "if all the Democrats clustered into two coastal states, they would win a lot of popular votes but lose the Senate over and over." 
5. Concentration can help with sharing/incubating/evolving ideas, but it has enormous downsides if you're actually trying to promulgate a program. And sharing ideas without physical proximity is easier than ever. This suggests that spreading out may be a better strategy.
6. I would advocate you spread out to somewhere close to where you are from. "Go home." Here are my reasons for advocating this: 
   1. The marginal value of one person applying science and reason-based approaches to local problems is likely to be higher in a community where such approaches are rare, compared to huge rationality hubs, where they're pretty common. As an example, leading an effort to institute ranked-choice voting in Charleston West Virginia might create a larger impact than working at a Bay Area startup, even if the startup is working on an interesting topic. There are communities around the country where no one is even TRYING to improve the epistemic quality of local culture and governance. Having even one person is much, much better than having zero.  
   2. Moving to a place where you have local connections may increase your utility. If you have established family in rural Oklahoma, it may be possible to meet and converse with mayors, city councils, school boards, etc. These are the advantages of being an average fish in a small pond, vs a tiny fish in a giant pond. 
   3. Holing up in a hub means that like-minded people can exchange ideas, but it means that people with very different experiences are not being consulted at all. Is it possible that the best ideas for improving zoning laws can be found in Texas, not California? Is it possible the best experts in automation are in Pittsburgh, not Boston? Is it possible there is better economics work being done in St. Louis than London? I'm not claiming this is true, but it's certainly possible. If it sometimes seems like Rationalists only seem interested in the problems, perspectives, and solutions relevant to 20-40 year-old upper middle class technologists living in central California, well, there are reasons that might have happened. I certainly get a parochial, elitist, Bay-centric vibe from this community. I once wrote something critical of the Bay Area in response to a post by Rob Wiblin, who responded, in effect "I don't know why we would cater to people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere." I mean, it's the vast majority of the human race, but ok, Rob. Geographic diversity would bring in new ideas but more importantly, it would bring in new people. Shout-out to the Slate Star Codex regional meetups. That's a great idea, and was a lot of fun even in central Kentucky. 
   4. The quality of life in mid-American cities is undervalued. Maybe this is an experience unique to me, and I'm just biased. But it seems true. I've visited New York and San Francisco and DC many times, and I admit they are superior cities. But dollar for dollar, I think they are VASTLY over-rated. The quality of night-life, local community, schools, housing, transit, parks, ecology, etc. etc. in other cities I've visited and lived in are perhaps 70-80% as good, while costing 50% or less, and avoiding huge logistical hassles. I live in New Orleans, where I can own a three-bedroom house with a separate rented unit that keeps my total housing costs below $1000/month, in a very safe neighborhood near one of the best public schools, while still visiting world-class cultural activities (well, pre-COVID). The ceiling is much lower than New York, no doubt, but how often is the average New Yorker attending the Metropolitan Opera or Broadway shows? I can still visit New York if I want to have apex cultural experiences. And I can afford to do so. 
   5. If you're from a small town that is literally a cultural backwater with nothing to recommend it, consider the nearest college town or midsized city. I lived in Lexington, Kentucky for several years and loved it. 
   6. I suspect that low preference for having kids may be, in some community members, an EFFECT of living in expensive, ultra-competitive, or difficult city, and not a cause. In other words, I wonder if people who say "I don't mind having to commute by train from my 500 sq ft efficiency to my urban-center job while not being able to accrue any housing equity, because I don't really want to start a family anyway," are actually downplaying any urge for family planning because it's logistically impractical. I'm not a die-hard having-kids advocate, but personally I underestimated the positive valence of having a child, so I think it's something to consider.
7. The previous comments all basically assume the reader is American--I'm sorry that I'm only able to write from my experience as a native born US citizen, and I realize that there could be much more substantial costs associated with trying to "go home" to a foreign country, including loss of resident status, political oppression, etc. I still think immigrants should consider mid-America cities as an improved value proposition, but I don't know if it would offer opportunities to increase your effectiveness (especially if it opened you up to bigotry or discrimination), and it's possible the special benefits of having a local expatriate community from your own country would make large coastal hubs irreplaceable. Fair.

Thanks for the chance to offer my opinion. 

We could pick a second hub instead of a new first hub. We don't need consensus or even a plurality. We just need critical mass in a location other than Berkeley. Preferably that new location would cater to a group that's not well-served by Berkeley so we can get more total people into a hub. If we're being careful, we should worry about Berkeley losing its critical mass as a result of the second hub, however, I don't think that's a likely outcome.

There's some loss from splitting people across two hubs rather than getting everyone into one hub. However, I suspect indecision is causing way more long-term loss than the split would. I would recommend first trying to get more people into some hub, then worry about consolidation later.

Sep 2021 update:  We haven't been trying very hard to fill this room, and it's still available.  Please message me if you're interested, even if you just want to visit briefly.  Will try to update this comment if the room becomes permanently filled.

We are two AI safety researchers (combined AF karma: around 200) who have been happily living as roommates for the past ~year in Reno, Nevada.  We have an empty room in our house.  The rent for the room is $400/mo.  Some factors to consider re: whether you want to come live with us in Reno (either as a roommate, or starting your own house):

• Reno is about as close to the Bay Area as you can get without paying state income tax.  It costs about $20 to get a bus ticket down to the Bay.  The bus has power and wifi, so you can work during the ~8 hour drive.  (I'm not sure how good the wifi is, I try & use it as offline work time, but I tend to get distracted by the beautiful scenery.)
• If you have a profoundly gifted child you want to send to school, or want to work with profoundly gifted kids, the nearby Davidson Academy is supposed to be the best place in the US for this.
• Pre-pandemic, we had a nice SSC meetup going with a few people attending.
• Short commute to Burning Man.
• There are more gun people here than in California; almost 40% of households in Washoe County keep firearms in their homes: http://www.city-data.com/top2/co8.html  Unclear if this is good or bad.  Certainly should be easier to get a gun here than in California if you want one.  There's a mix of liberals and conservatives in the area; libertarians seem overrepresented.  There's a confederate flag bumper sticker or two in our rural neighborhood :/
• There is snow and skiing in the winter.  Latitude fairly similar to the Bay Area, so theoretically sunlight fairly similar as well?
• Reno's tagline is "The Biggest Little City in the World", and it lives up to it in my opinion.  At least pre-pandemic, passerby in Reno seemed way nicer than passerby in the Bay Area.
• There have been some wildfires this year and we got advisory evacuations twice.  (We're out in the boondocks; I don't believe anyone in the city got an advisory evacuation.)  Air quality has been better than the Bay Area though.
• Marijuana is legal here.
• Reno is a tourist destination and has various events going on, especially during the summer--we don't really attend them though.

A little about our house:

• We're hoping to add AI safety researchers to the house, potentially squeezing more than 3 people into 3 bedrooms, eventually splitting off into a second house (based on who is forming AI safety collaborations) and growing the Reno community that way.
• We're both fairly driven and independently motivated, "no excuses" types as opposed to the touchy-feely people who do Circling you meet in the Bay Area.
• Cleaning up messes is usually not a priority at the current moment but this is susceptible to change.
• We're not super social, probably more due to being busy with work than introversion.  We communicate using Discord and occasionally go for hikes, do math/machine learning presentations on a whiteboard, play board games, drink and watch a movie, cook food and eat it together.
• We have a dishwasher, laundry machine, dryer.

If you're interested, please send a private message telling us about yourself, especially what you're like as a roommate.

Here are some other considerations. They sort of overlap yours; but some people might find these frames carve things at a more helpful level of abstraction. 
 

Groundedness [LW · GW]: Some people encounter rationality ideas and either go crazy, or do lots of harm to themselves (for example, by working themselves into burnout or depression from a sense of moral guilt). Living locations can be more or less conducive to this. Berkeley seems particularly bad -- it's filled with a pretty trippy aesthetic. It feel unsafe/unwholesome in terms of various problems with homelessness, crime, etc. Oxford is a lot better. It's small, calm, beautiful, safe and with a very stable and historic culture. Though it's still not on the Pareto frontier of groundedness. 

Proximity to power (or greatness on some other dimension): Hubs are real. People go to San Francisco to start startups, LA to become actors, London to work in finance, DC to work in think tanks... and so forth. For me this was an almost overwhelming consideration in wanting to live near San Francisco. Nowhere else has such a remarkable diversity of ambitious intellectuals; people like Jonathan Blow, Bret Victor, Peter Thiel (yes, I know he left eventually), Elon Musk, Michael Nielsen, the YC crowd, random people like the guy who wrote Thinking Physics and many many others... Whenever I did not live here, I'd pay a lot of attention to where interesting people and projects where located. And a ridiculously high number of roads would lead back to SF. 

My sense is that coordination for this is basically impossible, because of competing access needs. I am most optimistic about versions of this that will:

1) Happen even if no one else signs on. [For example, people moving to small towns within commuting distance of SF/Berkeley, where it makes sense for them even if no one else moves to Pinole or Moraga or wherever.]
2) Be readily extensible. [If one person buys in Pinole, other people can later buy other houses in Pinole, and slowly shift the balance. Many rationalist group houses started off as a single apartment in a split house, and slowly took over through organic growth. Building a neighborhood of small houses in upstate Vermont to replace your group house, if it works, probably also means someone else could build a subdivision for their group house next door.]
3) Pick a vision and be willing to deliver on it. [You're not going to find a place that has great weather and cheap property value and proximity to great cities; that's not how efficient markets work. Instead, figure out the few criteria that matter most to you, and do what it takes to achieve those criteria.]

This is basically the only way I see for projects to get out of the planning stage and into the reality stage; there will be Some Children Left Behind, and also some people who decide that, well, they do really like the sun but lumenators will be sufficient to make upstate Vermont workable (or whatever).

Separately, I note that 'chance meetings among extraverts' seem to be a pretty powerful factor in shaping the history of cultures and organizations, and think that there really is a very large benefit to being in a central hub; I think those hubs have to become much worse for it to not be worth it anymore. [The main compelling reason I see for moving away from the hub is in order to have children--suburbs exist for a reason!--but for people still trying to find partners or meaningful work, the hubs remain very important.]

Case for Berlin ( I will add to it):

Language 

You can get by in Berlin without knowing German and I know people who do. Of course there are costs to not being able to speak German but Berlin might be one of the cities outside of countries where English is the official languages where you can get farthest without English.

Walkability (/ bikeability / public transit)

Walkability in Berlin is good. We are Of course for walkability to work for a community it's necessary for the community to live in the same part of the city.

Berkeley has fiber internet, 2-day Amazon delivery, a myriad of quick restaurant and grocery delivery options, and excellent coverage by Lyft, Uber, and bikeshares. I expect many would be reluctant to give up this level of convenience. This is a strike against private islands, remote castles, and developing countries, among others.

2-day Amazon delievery seems really strange to be listed as a benefit.

Amazon currently tells me about how I get free same day delivery for a bunch of items with prime. There's next day delievery to remote castles in Germany with Amazon. 

Berlin has great internet and Uber (and other companies like FreeNow) and bikeshares.

Cost of living

From numbeo: 

• Cost of living index in Berlin is 30.66% lower than in New York.
• Rent in Berlin is, on average, 66.50% lower than in New York.

General infrastructure

We have all the basic infrastructure things. We have parks and forest in the city as well as lakes. 

Occupancy laws

As long as you tell the government who lives in the flat, the government is happy. Having people who are not offiically registered also usually isn't a problem but German citizens have to officially register their home. 

Local political environment / culture

Berlin's culture is very accepting of all sorts of different people and might be the city that's most accepting of people being different. I don't the cultural problems that the Bay Area has of late exist here in a way that I come into contact with them.

I do grant that Berlin is not known for ambition.

There's little chance for meaningful unrest.

Medical care

Berlin has good research hospitals and a lot of different doctors. Germanies medical insurance is easily accessible.

Crime

Berlin has a higher safety index then Berkely. While Berkely is at 37.49, Berlin is at 59.18. Problem violent crimes such as assault and armed robbery is also happens less in Berlin

 Weather

No serious natural disasters or extreme weather.  The worst are storm where it makes sense to stay inside for a few hours. 

We do have winters.

Jobs

We have a local startup scene and both Amazon and Google employ programmers in Berlin.

I think a more attractive option than a group house is something like a pocket neighborhood or baugruppe [LW · GW]; I think a location being favorable to that sort of development is a major point in its favor.

I have been collecting interest in an unchartered community in Niobrara, Wyoming with plans to gain critical mass for a state charter.

It's the smallest county in the state with ~2,000 population; the state has the most national voting power per person; generally the law is about as libertarian as any other and they've made a specific push to be a replacement Switzerland after Zurich cracked down on the banks, with especially friendliness to cryptocurrency.

There are currently 2200 acres for sale for $1MM, or smaller lots for less. I am personally committed to funding $100k if I can get enough interest.

Eventual plan would be to create Deep Springs College for working professionals, and attempt quick trials of new community governance norms of the kind proposed by RadicalxChange and others.

If you're interested, please fill out the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19cK7t4WNzUd1oi0Q1jw0vkqHsUxXqzCvNbuRD5G02LE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Overall I think the rationalist community is concentrated too much in one hub and the secondary and tertiary hubs are weaker than they should be.

The main negatives are
- this creates a bit of single-point-of-failure dynamic; imagine the single hub becomes infected by some particularly dangerous meme, or bad community norms
- the single hub is still embedded in the wider society of the place where it is located, introducing some systematic bias (the epistemic climate of contemporary US seems increasingly scary; Bay rationalists sometimes seems overcompensating for the insanities of the broader society)
- the single hub would be vulnerable to a coordinated attack originating from the environment

There are also advantages of single hub
- in theory in a single hub it is easy to visit people and form connections; in practice it seems this is true in Berkeley, less true in the whole Bay where travel distances are comparable to flight times between European cities

And there is the huge advantage of Bay
- being close to the nexus of power and the most future-shaping place is extremely important (as explained by Scott and others)

Advantages of more hubs are
- in my view, could support more strains of thoughts / more experiments with community / more opportunities where people can lead things 
- less fragility
- more of the total available talent used; some people will just not move to the Bay (will not get visas / can not bear with culture /....)

Instead of thinking "should we find the location X and move The hub" I would suggest thinking about optimal allocation of people in a structure of networked places

- which secondary hubs should grow / grow faster / be founded
- how to create links; people should consider moving temporarily between the hubs (for eg half a year or a year), even in the direction "Bay -> elsewhere" - this is often the best way to form links

What should be avoided
- some "holier-than-thou" dynamic where people who made the sacrifice of moving to the Bay and living there even if they think it terrible place with low quality of life assume that people who did not made the sacrifice are not sufficiently dedicated to the mission or similar; hence the rest of the world can be ignored

 

I thought about this, initially with the prior that people’s sense that elsewhere would be better, but then concluded that the Bay really was pretty good, even accounting for the weather. NYC maybe workable too, but I prefer the Bay. Maybe will explain reasoning later.

My working model of a good location is either in or around Ann Arbor.

Travel is going to be a concern for any location, I think. Why? I think you want visiting scholars, the ability to reach out to other organizations, the ability for folks who have become sort of part of the rationalist diaspora to be able to physically reach out and connect. You may not want to be in the major city, but ready access to an international airport seems like a good filter, as the farther the nearest one is away from you, the steeper the gradient to get anyone to come visit is.

If you run through a list of hub airports and rule out the west coast for fires and much of the south due to hurricanes, you're left with a pretty short list of cities and very few with good nearby colleges that might be cultural fits:

American Airlines:

• New York LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
• New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
• Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
• Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA)
• Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT)
• Miami International Airport (MIA)
• Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
• Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport (DFW)
• Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)
• Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

United:

• Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
• Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)
• Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
• Houston George-Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
• Denver International Airport (DEN)
• San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
• Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

Delta:

• Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)
• New York LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
• New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
• Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW)
• Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)
• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
• Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
• Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
• Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
• Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

I'm ignoring Southwest as they don't have "hubs" per se, and smaller regional airlines.

If you rule out most of the west coast due to ongoing fire troubles, and don't choose to go south, to avoid hurricane country, you're left with mostly DTW, ORD, PHL, BOS, CVG, or IAD. ORD hits some serious unrest and governance issues that give me pause. PHL is also a bit of a hotbed. BOS means you probably wind up an hour and a half plus out in New Hampshire, or dealing with Massachusetts taxes.

DTW seems to be the only one that you get a good college town (Ann Arbor) within a short drive, if you want folks to have a social life and access to a local talent pool, but also don't want to be _in_ the college part of the city over unrest concerns. So with that in mind, my working model of a good location is either in or around Ann Arbor.

It gets you a half hour from an international airport, DTW, which is a hub airport for Delta, meaning travel for visiting scholars and for folks on the fringe of the edge of the community is easy, and stays single airline, covering the US, Europe, and Australia (2 hops, but same airline). 

If you want to be able to isolate away from people in anticipation of either ongoing COVID concerns or another COVID-like problem or unrest, 5 minutes out of Ann Arbor, either east into Superior Township or west, you hit farm country, and can buy lots of space. Go a bit north and you get some nicer lakefront places.

There is a sharp political gradient which gives me pause about flashpoint concerns, however, most of that ire is directed at Lansing, not Ann Arbor. It does mean that you can pretty much pick the politics of your neighbors based on where you plant your flag though.

Downsides:

There isn't any good public transit link to DTW. (Yes, there is a bus or something, but I've never seen anyone make it work.) But Uber still exists for now, and cabs will likely exist after.

There are some anti-mask whack-jobs in the state legislature. On the other hand, alternatives discussed here so far aren't any better on that front. e.g. New Hampshire has no state mask mandate either.

All of the above travel analysis is contingent on airlines still being a going concern, of course, which will probably be a function of how long it takes for things to approximate "normal".

Thoughts on other locations:

Vancouver: Has all the breathing problems of California, and adds Canadian immigration.

Hamilton or Waterloo: Canadian immigration, no easy travel.

Seattle: Still trouble breathing, bit cheaper than the bay, but if you're trying to escape feeling like the world is on fire it doesn't seem to check that box. Also, CHAZ for good or ill.

New Hampshire: Gives access to MIT instead of University of Michigan, which is admittedly a better cultural fit, but is significantly further away. Though, Dartmouth, UNH might fill the gap somewhat. Politically it seems a bit more stable, which I confess may be a strong consideration.

Austin checks a lot of the same boxes, except for the hub airport one, and is arguably a better cultural fit. There was some talk in 2018 of Delta making it a "mini-hub", but who knows where that went. I don't have enough travel experience in/out of Austin to compare.

I moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas three months ago. Some relevant notes...

First, not all the factors in the OP are equally important - visas/citizenship considerations and cost of living were more important considerations than everything else on this list combined. Living in the US is a hard constraint for my girlfriend; moving outside would have been a deal-breaker.

On the cost of living front, the cost-of-living differential between (Bay Area/NYC) and (basically anywhere else) is much bigger than the differential between most other places within the US. We got an apartment with 50% more space at roughly half the rent, and it has more amenities and (IMO) a better location too. I'm an independent researcher at the moment, so my financial runway is a major consideration; my runway went from "I have to think about money within the next year" to "I don't have to think about money within the next year". That's a major qualitative shift, which allows me to explore very different research directions.

Within roughly those constraints, we satisficed: Las Vegas was the closest city to the Bay Area with roughly "normal" (for the US) housing prices. (It was close enough that moving costs were ridiculously low - it was on the order of $300 for everything. Tip: a transit van which would cost $800 to rent from Uhaul for a cross-state move cost me $150 to rent from Hertz.)

I expect I'm not the only one facing roughly-similar incentives, especially with tech people all working remotely. The fact that we basically satisficed on two constraints means that there's enough degrees of freedom here for "location of other rationalists" to actually determine the decision - i.e. if there'd been a rationalist cluster in Pheonix or Salt Lake City or ... then there's a decent chance we'd have ended up there instead.

So I'm trying to figure out what the goal of having a major rationalist hub in the first place would be?

I've seen the comments reference some considerations related to specific organizations, such as Scott's comment [LW(p) · GW(p)] which mentions that "if MIRI is trying to lure some top programmer, it's easier for them to suggest they move to the Bay" - okay, that sounds like a good reason for people associated with MIRI to live there, and if there are organizations that like to collaborate closely with MIRI, for them to be there also. But in that case I'd expect people to be more explicitly discussing the question "which organizations get value out of being co-located, and what would be a good location for those organizations in particular".

Or if the intended spirit of the post is "there are a bunch of people currently living in the Bay who form friendship networks with each other and if we move, we'd like to maintain those networks" - then that would make sense too. But Vaniver's comment [LW(p) · GW(p)] was saying things like

I think NYC was long a 'second hub', and there were a bunch of third-tier hubs, but I think the relationships between the hubs never really worked out to make a happy global community.

So there seem to be some implicit goals that people have in mind for a rationalist hub, but I'm unclear on what goals people are thinking of, whether everyone has the same goals, etc. Could someone elaborate on their thinking?

Follow-on post from mingyuan: Location Discussion Takeaways. [LW · GW]

As much as I hate to say it, I don't think that it makes much sense for the main hub of the rationalist movement to move away from Berkeley and the Bay Area. There are several rationalist adjacent organizations that are firmly planted in Berkely. The ones that are most salient to me are the AI and AI safety orgs. You have OpenAI, MIRI, CHAI, BAIR, etc. Some of these could participate in a coordinated move, but others are effectively locked in place due to their tight connections with larger institutions.

I think that more creative options need to be brainstormed and explored to deal with the situation in Berkley. [LW · GW]

Ok, I've thought a lot about this but I don't have a strong pitch to make yet.

Here are my thoughts:

• Cost of living seems really important in the long run! High cost of living eats up lifestyle slack really quickly, which constrains the sorts of occupations that one can have while being part of the community.
• That said, there is a pretty substantial tradeoff between optimizing a place for the community (essentially relying on your social life being in-community members), and optimizing it for the surroundings. e.g., if you pick a place for low cost-of-living, you might expect nearly all your friends to be people who live in your community. Whereas if you pick a big city, you are probably picking it because you expect a rich social life outside the community.
• As Vaniver wrote, it makes sense to pick places which are well suited to create a pocket neighborhood. Living in the same city as your friends is good, but living 2 doors down from them is way more awesome!
• I know people talk about the weather as being important, but I am not fully sold on that needing to be a constraint. Humans are adaptable and most people should be able to adjust to bad seasonal weather pretty quickly. Seasonal mood disorders are a real thing though, and if we did go to a place with bad weather, I would definitely want to invest as a community into infrastructure that can help with this. I also am not willing to accept bad air quality in exchange for more temperate weather - e.g., when I lived in Senegal, the weather was gorgeous but the air quality was terrible. (That said, in the US there aren't many places with really bad air quality.)

One weird idea I am considering is the monastery life: explicitly try excluding the outside world, optimize the space only for the gated community, and see how it works. It's just an experiment, but if people are interested, let me know. (Inspiration from Neal Stephenson's Anathem :) )

At this point I think enough people have tried to make pitches for various cities that have achieved nothing that I don't really see the value in adding another one to the pile of attempts to get the community as a whole to move somewhere.

On the other hand, a lot of people have moved to a lot of places on an individual or small-group basis so I'm happy to pitch where I live, Madison Wisconsin, as a potential place you might not know about which I think is a pretty good compromise on a lot of things that people want from a place to live. 

Madison has a good variety of restaurants, bars, cafes, parks, and other amenities in a small radius. You can rent anything from an efficiency to a whole house in walking distance from all of this without much hassle since there is a large market for student housing due to the relatively huge University in the city.

Rents in this area can vary from 450 a month (if you want to live with me in my house) to around 1800 for a 750 ft 1 bedroom in a brand new high end apartment building a couple blocks away from me. 

Crime: In like a decade parking downtown I have never had my car broken into, although I have had it entered a few times when I left it unlocked. I have never been randomly mugged. My roommate is smol and has walked around here at night for longer than I have and has never had a problem. Like many cities we've had some rioting/looting and increase in other crimes this summer but it's mostly not impacting random people. 

Culture: In normal years, we have a ton of live music and events in various bars, cafes, and theaters, as well as plays, art shows, and so on. Madison is big enough that touring bands usually stop here, although not always, and sometimes if I want to catch a show I have to drive an hour and a half to Milwaukee or 3 hours to Chicago. There is an enormous gaming scene here, with a ton of great MTG players, lots of roleplaying and LARP, as well as tabletop, boardgaming, etc. 

We also have Contra, Swing, and other dance scenes, as well as a few night clubs and an immense amount of bars. 

If you like walking outside, Madison has more parks per capita than any other big city, as well as just tons of trees, gardens, and greenery in most neighborhoods, and multiple lakes and rivers in walking distance of downtown. I can walk from my house to the center of government or into a forest equally easily. If you have a car, you can drive to a ton of state parks in an hour, as well as to The House on the Rock, but even if you don't it's easy to bike to see nature, if that's something you're into. 

We have a start-up and tech job ecosystem, mostly focused around biotech and healthcare industry but we do have a Google office and as well as Epic Systems in the next town over so there is a very significant percentage of people in software also. We have good internet options available if you are going to be working from home going forward too. 

The biggest downsides about living in Madison from my point of view are:

Winter -- Personally I really like having seasons, but if you can't stand cold and snow you will be miserable here for much of the year. 

Population -- Madison only has around 250,000 people, which means that your selection of people to hang out with in niche interest areas is fairly limited. We used to have a nice 8-12 person or so Lesswrong meetup group which fell apart after a bunch of people moved to the Bay Area. If you go to nerdy events you will find that you tend to see a lot of the same people over and over. Depending on your interests, you can still find lots of people to hang out with, but if, eg, you are averse to drinking you may have some trouble. 

Lately I've been thinking Singapore would be a good option.

As requested, I would like to bring into consideration Oulu, Finland.

Cons:

Weather – SAD

Oulu is near the arctic circle. Can maybe be remedied by staying indoors and having adequate lighting? Summers are very sunny!

Salaries

Salaries in Finland and in Oulu are generally lower than those in San Francisco. Student trainee programmer earns about 2000 €/month, middle aged software developer about 4500 €/month, a specialist surgeon about 8000 €/month gross.

Pros:

Visas

About relocating MIRI into Oulu, I would contact Business Oulu, as they should be able to customize an actionable plan and help in details such as visas and permits. As we are talking of lot of people in this case, such an organization would be useful, and this is exactly what their mission is.

Language

You can function with English, Finnish population has generally very high proficiency in English. On basic life level you can expect grocery store clerks and taxi drivers to understand you and be able to answer and explain things to you in fluent English. In professional life, software development cluster of Oulu mostly uses English internally because of international cooperation connections stemming since Nokia times in 1990s.

National political environment / culture

Finland is a EU member state aligned with the Nordic model and tops in many international measures, notable among them #4 in State of the World Liberty Index and consistent top spot of Press Freedom Index.

Local political environment / culture

Some say Oulu is the tech startup hub of Finland. Notable Oulu tech includes Oura ring for personal health tracking and KNL Networks for over the horizon IoT mesh networking.

Oulu has, well, had before Covid, a direct air corridor to San Francisco.

General infrastructure

Finnish infrastructure is generally reliable, resilient and efficient. District heating is mostly done by cogeneration and waste incineration, availability is 99.98% in average year. Electricity is about 0.03 €/kWh for the energy and about 0.03 €/kWh for transfer, totaling about 0.07 €/kWh in Oulu. Tap water is excellent and drinkable, of a significantly better quality than bottled water.

In addition to smooth sailing under normal conditions, the government and private companies prepare for exceptional circumstances by coordinating through the National Emergency Supply Agency, for instance in 2014 they tested how Finland would cope in case of total loss of the electricity grid by powering down the grid in the entirety of Lapland in VALVE 2014 excercise.

So far Finland has fared ok with Covid-19, there are currently 349 deaths because of the disease, and the summer was about disease free. Finland has already got some amount of migration from California because of Covid.

Cost of living

The cost of living in Oulu is cheaper than in San Francisco. Housing is specifically cheaper, an expensive new single family home costs about 350 000 €, cheap older one 200 000 €.

Major price differences to note: Cars and work/services likely cost more compared to USA because of the tax structure, whereas public services such as healthcare, education and childcare cost less as they are funded by the government.

Public daycare is available in English, the cost structure may feel complicated but ends up to cap of about 300 € per child per month, less for parents of low income. Children have subjective right to daycare, which means that the city has duty to arrange daycare offer for the child per parent request.

Education in Finland is a human right and there is no tuition on any level of education including primary, secondary and tertiary education.

Public healthcare is in principle free, though there are nuisance fees of about 50 euros per each of first 3 visits in a year. Employers also need to offer workplace healthcare. Private healthcare insurance for a regular healthy adult person costs about 400 €/year. Cost of prescription medicines is capped to about 600 €/year for residents by national insurance.

Income taxes may be a bit different compared to USA, but as far as I understand, paying them is easier. For 100 000 €/year wage income in Oulu, per income tax calculator the tax percentage is 34% with no special deductions. Income tax is progressive, so lower incomes pay lower percentage and it increases per income level, having a cap at 60%. For 500 000 €/year the tax would be 46% if no special deductions. There is a special procedure for foreign specialist workers which sets the income tax for 32%.

The employer or the enterprise pays pension and social care payment on top of salary which is about 25% of total salaries of the enterprise. Employees are then eligible to the mandatory wage pension, which is covered by about 1/3 by the investment equity saved by the pensioneers and their employers and about 2/3 by pay as you go system where current payments are used to fund current pension payments. Finland's public economy has currently net savings comparable to 55% of GDP, and pension equity is invested over the international market. Pension capital is considered as property of pension principals and can't constitutionally be spent by the government.

Occupancy laws

It is legal in Finland to cohabitate, there is no need for registration. Legal system does not allow wedding multiple persons, but my understanding is that the cohabitation law recognizes polycules, as it considers if a person is deemed to cohabitate with another person, and does not specify that people can only cohabitate with one person. Gay marriage is legal. Sex work is legal, pimping is criminal. In general, there is little regulation on people's sex life as long people are consenting adults; in extreme, bestiality is not in itself criminal but abuse/causing harm to animals is.

Modern conveniences

Oulu has general availability of 1000/100 Mbps cable internet, in the area where the adoption was too slow, people created their own ISP OLKA. Taxi service is fast and reliable. There are multiple nice restaurants and multiple food delivery companies available.

Walkability (/ bikeability / public transit)

Oulu is the cycling capital of Finland and Northern Scandinavia. Oulu has more than 600 km (4 meters for each resident) of cycle routes that take you easily from one place to the next. 17 percent of all trips in the city are made by bicycle. Bikeways are also kept available through the winter (video).

Medical care

Healthcare in Finland is one of the best of the world.

Crime

Finland is a safe country. Gun ownership requires a license and proper reason. Home defense is not a legal reason, armed crime is very rare. Police use of guns is also rare, and police rarely ends up killing people, even terrorists.

Schools

The Finnish education system is highly regarded. Oulu International School is the main public international school in Oulu. Per my own observations, current pupils in our schools seem happy.

Here's my incredibly detailed pitch for Manchester, UK. 

If anyone has feedback, you can reply here or comment on the article itself.

I recently spent a year travelling and deciding very carefully where to settle down. This is somewhat related to the question posed in the post, so I will briefly list what made me choose Bucharest in Romania.

• English is (very) commonly spoken. Probably on par with Nordic countries.
• Taxes - if you work as a contractor as I do, with the right legal structure you can bring your income tax rate (including obligatory social insurance, healthcare, etc.) down to 6%. Capital Gains Tax is only 10%.
• Rule of law and civil liberties - those are pretty well established and respected.
• Member of the EU - with all the convenience, efficiency and the extra protection of your freedoms and rights that a membership in EU brings.
• Local population is extremely friendly towards foreigners.
• Low crime rate
• No tourists
• The city is extremely walkable
• Cheap (Uber here costs less than public transit in London or NYC)
• Close proximity to mountains. 

No, I don't think that the LessWrong community should move here en masse. Just wanted to share my 2 bani's worth. 

Things I like about the Boston area: many different industries, good tech jobs, good public transit for the US, don't need a car, many walkable/bikable areas, good air quality, not very disaster prone, decent governance, queer friendly, poly friendly, many multifamilies and other large houses that can be group houses, seasons, many universities including several very strong ones, nearby international airport, good schools, good traditional dance and music scene, not as expensive as the Bay or New York.

The biggest downside by far is housing costs. Other downsides include darkness in winter, winter in general if you don't like that, and that for many industries it is near the top but not the top.

EDIT: expanded this into a post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-boston

Berkeley has lots of vegan food in comparison to most places and lots of rationalists are vegans.

In light of some of the comments on the supposed impossibility of relocating a hub, I figured I'd suggest a strategy. This post says nothing about the optimality of creating/relocating a hub, it only suggests a method for doing so. I'm obviously not an experienced hub relocator in real life, but evidently, I'll play one on the internet for the sake of discussion. Please read these as an invitation to brainstorm.

Make the new location a natural choice.

• Host events in the new location. If people feel a desire to spend their holidays and time off in the new location, that's a great start.
• Pick a good common hotel. For people that visit regularly, this hotel should feel almost like a second home. Rationalists can bump into each other in the hotel, and they can carpool or get meals together.
• Identify people that can give an "open invitation" for others to visit any time. These people are basically the ones openly ready to make friends with new rationalists. The hope is that, eventually, rationalists start coming into the area to meet up with friends.

Create opportunities to move.

• Invite rationalists to interview for jobs in the new location. This would directly target people that choose to move for work reasons.
• Make the new location more homely for people that have had trouble adjusting to their current location. I've known people (especially married people) to move for social and comfort reasons, especially ones that have had difficulty making friends in a new location. Make it easy to socialize in the new location, and make leisure-time activities more accessible, either with good information or social events.
• Keep track of cheap/shared housing opportunities near the new location. Sometimes people really do move to save money. If people know where the cheap housing is, that's one less excuse not to move. Such a list might even encourage people to get a second home in the new location.
• Create guides to help people discuss remote work options with managers & HR.

Reinforce every move.

• Make sure the work situation is stable: support people career-wise in the area. I don't have ideas on how to do this, but if it's a common reason for people moving, then it should be a common reason for people staying.
• Make the new location homely. Keep track of good leisure-time activities and locations, help stabilize travel by keeping track of transit options, and make sure people moving have chances to socialize and make friends in the area.
• Keep track of housing opportunities for people to move to increasingly-stable locations. For people that want cheap, keep track of cheap housing. For people that want social, keep track of group housing. For people that want a family, keep track of good neighborhoods and school districts.

Use every move to encourage further relocation.

• Keep a counter of the number of people that have moved into the area (but not the number of people that have left). There's something oddly satisfying about making/seeing numbers go up.
• Help new movers host/support events and get started socializing with incoming visitors. Try to get them to do the same things for others that others did to encourage them.
• Encourage people in the area to spread out work-wise to create more interview opportunities for rationalists not in the area.

Mati_Roy [LW · GW] makes the case for Phoenix here [LW(p) · GW(p)].

Full Disclosure: I'm in Phoenix.

The pandemic has updated me in the direction that having any particular place be the center of the physical community is not super important. In some ways, it would almost be better if we less anchored on the idea of trying to get everyone physically together in a single local, and instead thought of ourselves as distributed with many hubs that have strong connections within and between hubs, although those connections within and between look a bit different (local being more about human needs, and between hubs being more about project needs).

For comparison, many businesses operate with multiple offices, the community of academics is highly distributed, and religions have various approaches to this split local/global model. There's no special reason we all need to be physically together in the same city, so I don't think it needs to happen and thus won't.

Put another way, I think of a major rationalist hub that everyone was happy living in as a kind of fairy tale: it's a nice idea to dream about, but the ground conditions simply aren't conducive to it, and we should focus on meeting the conditions as we find them rather than hoping we can find a city that probably doesn't exist that will enable us to have a hub with features that sadly currently sit well beyond the Pareto frontier.

I was fascinated by Robin Hanson's Our Brave New Merged World:

As jobs will less force people to move, people will move areas less often, and the areas where people live will be less set by jobs. As life at work will be less social, people will have to get more of their socializing from elsewhere. Some of this will come from remote socializing, but much will still probably come from in-person socializing. So people will choose where they live more based on family, friends, leisure activities, and non-work social connections. Churches, clubs, and shared interest socializing will increase in importance. People will also pick where to live more based on climate, price, and views. Beach towns will boom, and the largest cities will lose. [emphasis mine]

He mostly seems to consider remote work versus non-work social connections. Global online communities are both like work and like non-work. I am not sure what to make out of it. But I guess the tensions that mingyuan points out are exactly those that occur in such a brave new merged world. I would guess that the solution is not a single place X. I would guess it is rather multiple places that are connected by something that doesn't yet exist.   

I'm a Berkeley rationalist. My partner and I have been considering leaving Berkeley, mostly due to the cost of living and the political climate. We're most likely to move back to the midwest where our families are located, but would move elsewhere for similar social support. We're most strongly considering Columbus or Louisville.  Or maybe a smaller town nearby. We've also considered Czechia, Poland, etc. for the low cost of living and beauty. I don't think we'd go to Canada, which has all the difficulties of leaving the States, but none of the cost benefits.

If you have kids, living near grandparents / relatives provides a LOT of free labor. For me to prefer a rationalist community hub, it would have to have similar kinds of support. I'm imagining a circle of parents that takes turns watching ALL the kids. Or passes toys around in an exchange circle. There is also an issue where rationalists often have very particular ideas about child rearing, and they don't all mesh. Even with people filling the child care role for each other, I think I'd strongly miss not having "elders" around. 

COVID has taught me that I don't actually need all the bells and whistles of Berkeley. I'm fine with my partner and my dog and some new hobbies.  So I'm torn between living somewhere like Berkeley where you can walk to cafes and nice little shops and such, and somewhere in the middle of nowhere where I can have chickens and a permaculture garden. 

Things I care a lot about:
- I love autumn. I don't like if it's very cold or very hot a lot. 
- Community. It doesn't have to be the rationalist community, but I like to exist in very tight knit communities.
- Access to relatives, or other people who will fill that role. 
- Cost of living as related to earning potential
- Being able to afford a nice house
- Less political heat. More "live and let live" than here.
- My partner has to be able to do software work.

 

Just wanted to toss the Colorado Front Range (esp. Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs) into the hat, since I have a hunch this list might get referenced a lot in future conversations.  I don't think we're the best choice for primary hub, but I think we are a very attractive destination for rationalists looking to relocate out of Berkeley and/or for a secondary hub.

Pros:
-We have an existing rationality community, with regular meetups in Denver and Boulder (I host the latter).  I know there's local EA meetups as well, though I'm not plugged into that scene.

-There are lots of STEM jobs in the area.  We have several National Labs, lots of Aerospace contracting (Ball and Lockheed, Northrup, Boeing, Raytheon), plenty of big-name software companies (Google and Amazon both present, Microsoft in nearby Fort Collins), as well as innumerable smaller and growing ones.  Also startup-friendly: Boulder County has the USA's highest VC investment per-capita.

-Outdoor culture means it's easy to stay healthy while enjoying yourself.  Biking is big and growing; bike paths and bike-friendly roads are common.  Mountains are always in sight and make hiking, skiing, etc. all easy.  We have reliable sunshine year round, and winter frequently sees days/weeks warm enough for comfortable outdoor recreation.  I think this is all huge for quality of life, even if it was not all included in the considerations.

-Cost of living is very cheap by major metro standards, though not in absolute terms.  Median home prices are 450k in Denver, 800k in Boulder, and 350k in Colorado Springs.  Everyone complains about the price of housing because it's increased dramatically in the past decade, but salaries still go much farther here than elsewhere.  Even Boulder, known locally for high prices, is 40% cheaper than the disaster that is Berkeley.

-Misc:  We've got really good craft beer, farmer's markets, a growing foodie scene, and vegan / Gluten-free options are everywhere.  Politics are not completely crazy here.  The cities are growing so (except in Boulder) development is happening and often welcome; new urbanism is popular, though no one seems to know how to make it happen.  Crime is low, schools are good.  People are friendly and don't hate each other as much as I've seen elsewhere.

Cons:
-Denver is not a global metropolis.  It's the cultural and economic hub of the mountain west, which makes it more significant than you might expect based on population and location.  And it has an international airport for easy travel.  But some people really want the amenities of a top-20 world city, and Denver isn't.

-You'll want a car.  You won't absolutely need one, if you live in Boulder or Denver, but you'll want one, especially for outdoor recreating.  Distances are often too large to cover practically on bike.  Public transit gets you everywhere you need to go (and lets you take your bike with you) but it's inconvenient.  This is true of basically everywhere in the US outside of small areas in the downtowns of a few major cities though.

-Misc:  Seafood is not excellent, as we're 1,000 miles away from the nearest coastline.  High elevation makes sunburn more likely, and may be mysteriously associated with depression, (though the constant sunshine's got to help on that front).  Wildfires make for a week of bad air quality in a typical summer, though hellscapes like Berkeley is used to are rare.  Likely other negatives I don't see since I really like it here.

Depends on your preferences:
-Very hot and very cold weather exists here, and the climate is dry.  We are a politically moderate state overall, but the most walkable/transit-friendly areas of Denver and Boulder lean hard left.


A minor note:  One of the greatest things here quality-of-life wise is the culture, but the culture has been disrupted a bit by recent immigration from other parts of the US ("transplants").  That makes me slightly trepidatious about posting something like this.  If you think about moving to Colorado, please do it with the intent to coexist with the local culture, rather than to reform it.

It seems like you're making a lot of assumptions about this community. 

—They want to live in group houses

—They don't want to drive or own a car

—They don't want to live in places with cold weather

—They don't want to live in places with Confederate flags or lenient gun laws

You probably know this community a lot better than I do, but to what extent are these known facts vs. assumptions? Would it be worth doing some surveying to verify them? 

It's possible that some of what you observe, e.g. people living in group houses and not driving, is a function of circumstance and cost of living rather than people's true preferences. 

I've always suspected that connecting rationalists with other rationalists who are already nearby would be a relatively low hanging fruit. Eg. by pushing the community map [? · GW] harder.

Is there a large benefit to being in a rationalist hub versus living in a rationalist house? Personally I'm pretty sure my answer to that question would be "no", but I'm curious how others feel.

it's almost certainly still better to live here than in a town where people fly Confederate flags and openly carry guns

I do not really like lenient gun laws, but I haven't gotten the impression that it's especially unsafe to live in those places? Also not sure free-thinkers in general mind being around their outgroup all that much.

schools

If you're forming a largish intentional community, running schooling ourselves would be a lot easier than it normally is, we can pool resources, have different people teach different subjects. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a consensus among parents willing to move for community that we do not need state schools.

Rationalists may be less likely than average to want kids, but that doesn't mean none of us are having them.

Many people don't want to have kids in their 20s, and change their mind later. Ten years later, I could imagine that many rationalists will feel ambiguous, and then something can start a chain reaction of having kids.

Actually, I think it would be super cool to have a generation of kids of approximately the same age, whose parents are rationalists living next to each other and can coordinate on school choice / homeschooling / providing extra lessons in free time.

Ah, kudos for bringing this discussion to a somewhat centralised placed! 

I would suggest about three, four, or five main rationalist hubs as opposed to one. This could be a compromise between total dispersion/decentralization and lack of respect for the differing preferences of rationalists.

One type of evidence to look at in selecting a location is trust, as in how likely people are to say that others can be trusted.

See figure 3 in Trust, Growth and Well-being for evidence by state.

H/T Joseph Henrich's great book The WEIRDest People in the World.