I grew up as a member of a wealthy family in a mid-size town. Our family was a well-known name in the timber industry for many generations. Owned thousands of acres of forest lands. Logging operations as well as paper, lumber, and plywood mills. We were kings among men.
Back in the 1980s, my father saw the writing on the wall. Environmental concerns were driving profitability out of the industries that our family captained. Mills were sold off to mega-global corporations. Most of the lands were sold off to real estate developers. Logging operations were shut down and equipment was sold. I still don't know how much money was made but it was enough that a family trust was started and there was a shift to community activism philanthropy, and politics. He knew that our community that had been dependant on timber for so long needed to be led toward a new chapter and he wanted to help lead the way.
For myself, I graduated high school and went off to a prestigious college with only one guiding concept from my father: "Don't learn about how to be successful today. Learn about how to be successful tomorrow." With that in mind I finished college with an MBA and a strong interest in technology, computers, and a new thing that, at the time, we were calling the world-wide-web though sometimes we just called it the internet. I was one of "those guys" who saw the future. At a time when most people thought of the computers and the internet as something nerds did, we saw the potential. So I embarked on a lucrative career in the tech industry before we even called it that. I worked for and/or started just about every tech company at one point or another. Hardware, software, you name it. I worked for them all and was well compensated. By the time smartphones took over and phone apps became the focus of innovation I had accomplished everything I wanted to, had made more money than I could ever spend, and wanted to follow up in my father's footsteps. I left the bay area and returned to my hometown in the PNW.
Despite my father's best efforts the town as a shell of its prior self. No industries had ever replaced the all-mighty timber dollar. The mills were still there but no longer paying family wages. No one prospers here. They just struggle to exist. No one ever has a reason to move here. Just people who are too poor to leave. I've talked to the friends I still have in the tech industry. I know I can get them to move some operations here. To do so they need people they can hire, an infrastructure that will support them, and a local government that will offer the incentives they need to make the move.
