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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23465 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Why do they have to be in NYC?

How else are middle managers supposed to feel important if not by holding fancy conference calls where they get to say, “New York on the line”?

Wherever the hub for an industry is, is the place to be, for networking, available talent pool, etc. JPMC has 300,000 employees and it’s absolutely fine that they don’t keep their mortgage division on the isle of Manhattan. But as long as NYC is America’s financial hub, they’ll miss out on talent and all sorts of other opportunities that are downstream of networking if they move their investment banking out of the city while Goldman, BoA ML, MS, etc. don’t. It doesn’t matter that it is NYC specifically, but it is NYC, practically.

Maybe TXSE takes off, maybe ICE moving some operations to Texas is part of that same migration. But it’s a huge risk to pull out of NYC too soon. If the financial industry ever actually picks a new hub, it’ll be a gradual shift.

There are all sorts of smaller businesses around the financial industry that have significant presences in NYC as well. How many of you are familiar with what Topan Merrill and RRD’s financial print divisions do? When Latham is working on a company’s IPO or merger they can set up shop in one of the former’s conference rooms, etc.

But see what you've described is an advantage as opposed to a requirement. A would like to or a should rather than a must.

It's one thing to say legally I must travel to this office and I cannot reach it by car.

It's another to say, NYC has advantages in terms of networking and disadvantages in terms of congestion pricing. NYC is already a stupid place to have a car unless you're rich or must have one for work, NYC already has disadvantages for having a car.

What’s the practical difference between a significant advantage and a requirement in a lucrative and competitive industry? Sure, we can go back up thread and parse “have to”. I fully concede there is no law mandating it.

To the degree there's a misunderstanding between us, it's because my initial question was aimed at clearing up any misconceptions that other posters may have had that banks have to be in NYC because the stock exchange is there or because of laws or whatever.

More broadly and theoretically, there's a moral difference to me between the two situations:

a) The government legally requires that I go to a location, and then creates policies that restrict how I can reach that location. Such as placing it out of town and away from transit somewhere that can only be reached by car so that poor people and drunks are out of luck or taking an expensive Uber; or placing it downtown somewhere without any available parking where I can't reach it by car.

b) There exists a Thing, government makes a decision which restricts which transit modes can most conveniently reach the Thing.

Scenario a) strikes me as inherently tyrannical in that they're double-dipping on government power, while b) strikes me as the kind of inevitable choice about whose ox will be gored today that is inherent in any government decision. It strikes me as fully within a government's core competency to make choices that will benefit one group or another. If the financial industry in NYC really, really didn't like it, it's unlikely it would have been implemented in the first place; Wall Street is hardly an oppressed minority.

It's one thing to say legally I must travel to this office and I cannot reach it by car.

Cannot? That's a bit exaggerated eh?

Sorry, I skipped a step, that's a hypothetical.

I have told people that I'll still own my current truck when it is illegal to drive it in manhattan.

You skipped from "a couple bucks" and "illegal to drive it in". That's a lot of distance.

I fully expect it to be illegal (or at least extremely inconvenient) to drive a private ICE car into Manhattan within ten years. It just makes sense to me.

Maybe? I don't have a solid prediction on that possibility, but it seems like you should mention your expectation on that so we know what the heck you're talking about.

If that never comes to pass, will you amend your position?

If that never comes to pass, will you amend your position?

My position on what?

I think it's bad if the government places essential services that one must access in places that people can't get to them. Typically in planning this comes up with the opposite valence, that government offices must be served by public transit to protect the car-less. I don't think it's necessarily bad to limit car traffic in inner cities.

Proximity to the NY Stock Exchange, among others, I'd venture.

Don't tell anyone but the stock exchanges are all in datacenters in NJ now. The trading floor on Wall Street is just for show.

Options and futures markets are in Chicago.

Not something you need thousands of employees for, at all. A small nominal office could do that while moving the rest of your staff to Wilmington or Greenwich or Trenton.

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