1. An economist named Ray Vernon, a wonderful guy btw, had a simple answer for this in a model of industrial location he called the product cycle model for industrial location. It works like this. https://twitter.com/techinsider/status/1337783400481107970

2. People, companies and industries cluster tightly when new inventions, technologies & management methods lead to the birth of a new industry. Think of Pittsburgh in steel, automobiles in Detroit, Silicon Valley and high-tech.

3. But over time, those same once-novel innovations, technologies & business processes become standard. At the same time, the existing clusters become more expensive, and to borrow a page from Mancur Olson, rigidities develop, some economic, others political.

4. As this happens, firms begin to move production away, in the past to the suburbs, Sunbelt and abroad. Today, well, I guess to Austin ...