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DES MOINES, WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME?

May 29, 2008

Paul Graham ponders what "messages" cities send:

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.

What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to.

Tim Lee says St. Louis sends a different message:

Here in St. Louis, the message is "you should have met the right people in school." The cliche here is that the first thing St. Louisans ask when they meet each other is "what high school did you go to?" The answer tells them about the speaker's social class and often his religious background. Also, if you want to be successful in Missouri you don't don't go to the highly-ranked Washington University, but to the University of Missouri in Columbia, which is where the kids of other rich and powerful Missourians go to school. Needless to say, moving to St. Louis in your 20s isn't a brilliant career move:

Arnold Kling says Tim Lee is right. Maybe that's why I only lasted a year there. I never got invited to the Veiled Prophet Ball, after all. I did notice even then that St. Louis had a strange small-town feel.

What about Des Moines? On one hand, there is some of the small-town feel; people do ask what high school you went to, and the municipalities are run by and for a network of old political families. In business, though, it's not so insular. While there are a few prominent old families, the scene here is dominated by financial institutions like Principal and Wells Fargo, which are run by people who moved here from small towns all over Iowa, or from out of state. While it doesn't hurt to be friends with, say, the Ruan family, it's not required.

So what message does Des Moines send? A few candidates:

- Your name should end with a vowel so you can get a job with Polk County.

- Why aren't you at your kids' soccer game?

- Make enough money to buy a nice Florida condo.

Comments are open for your thoughts.

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