As someone who's lived in both states (which both hold a special place in my heart), here's my 2¢.
While ∆9-Tetrahydrocannabinol remains illegal in Texas, almost all other cannabinoids have functionally been recreationally legal in Texas since Trump's 2018 federal Farm Bill, operationally legal (able to purchase and transport from stores without fear of prosecution) since early COVID in most of the major metro areas (e.g. Austin, Houston, DFW). Now to your credit, a handful of police departments are being pains in the rear about this, but even more departments have simply stopped enforcing laws against minor cannabis possession. Being unregulated, it doesn't come without risks, but it does come at a price about 1 order of magnitude lower than what you'd pay in Colorado, gram for gram.
You can have a gender identity that doesn't conform to traditional gender norms, hell, you can even have a gender identity that doesn't conform to a common notion that gender is a binary value, rather than a spectrum. You can have a sexual and romantic attraction to whoever you want. Just don't go around shoving it in everyone's faces, unable to even discuss anything else without bringing it up. That's annoying in the same way a car guy who never shuts up about cars is annoying. I say this as someone with an identity that doesn't conform to traditional gender stereotypes, with a partner of the same biological sex, so trust me when I say that I also understand how unforgiving Texas can be when you do go around doing PDAs in a relationship like mine, especially out in the more rural areas. Thankfully, that's what firearms are for - protecting yourself and your loved ones from crazy bad guys who aren't acting rationally and might pose a danger to the life of myself or my loved ones.
But hey, you can also watch whatever you want. There shouldn't be anyone on all of HN that believes the state government of Texas is actually logistically capable of blocking all adult video entertainment from the entire internet from ever being streamed into their state without photo ID verification. I can (but won't) name a half dozen such sites that haven't appeared to perform any amount of effort to comply with the Texas law whatsoever, probably hosted in jurisdictions that Texas can't even do anything about.
I say this after having returned from Colorado's front range last year - a magical place full of whimsy and charm, my favorite kind of climate, and the most breathtaking natural scenery I've ever seen in my life.
It was also full of a bunch of condescending, unkind, prejudiced, close-minded people who seemed almost incapable of engaging in an honest, good-faith dialogue on the lived experiences and perspectives of people from outside of their cultural "tribe", and as a relatively decent income earner, I felt that the price I was paying to live there (a state income tax bill over $2000/month, more than my rent), was too much for a place that felt very culturally intolerant of me based on dehumanizing stereotypes that serve little purpose other than to vilify and otherize, and which I felt unfairly compacted the nuances of some of my lived experiences into trite anecdotes to be mocked, so I respected their wishes and I left.
Colorado talks a good game about their empathy, kindness, diversity, and tolerance, but I sure feel a whole lot more empathy, kindness, and tolerance from the middle aged southern waitress in Texas that calls me "hun" and actually listens to me when I'm talking to her, than the tatted up cute bartender chicks in Colorado that would roll their eyes at me in smug condescension and start using words with fewer syllables after I respond "Texas" to her question of where I'd moved from. Those two couldn't be any better representations of my lived experiences in TX vs CO.
I assume from your response that you are a man since you didn’t mention the most important freedom of all that I mentioned, the right to have reproductive healthcare.
I generally like Texans but your government is wack. Also the property taxes are pretty insane so I wouldn’t exactly say you have no tax burden there.
You aren’t wrong about prejudice towards southerners in blue states though. Sorry you had to deal with that.
No disagreement about the wack government. I'm not big on the conservative christian bits, but I respect those people's beliefs and their right to hold those beliefs, no matter how much I may personally disagree on some fundamental aspects of those beliefs. I find that most people, even most of those people, are willing to be kind, respectful, and accepting of others who treat them with the same kindness, respect, and acceptance... even if you don't personally accept every idea they believe. To your point, though, I wouldn't object to a little bit less of the conservative Christian stuff in my state government, all else equal.
I'm a renter, property taxes are baked into my rent. I live in an exceedingly safe and quiet area, a high income, low crime primarily suburban zip code. This isn't a discrimination thing, this is part of how I've learned to cope with feelings that I struggled with after being the victim of a traumatic, violent, and unprovoked attack I experienced a few years ago in a less safe environment. I have an attached fully enclosed garage in a townhouse-style apartment where I have nobody above or below me, and I pay less in rent for that than I paid for a condo-style apartment in a rough part of town in the cheaper southern side of the front range.
My (rent + state income taxes) in CO were about $2400/mo more expensive than my (rent + property taxes) here in TX, and that was living in a place with 6x as much violent crime per capita. To get somewhere as safe in CO as I am here in TX would've been even more expensive.
For as many downsides as you point out, there is still a lot to be said about the power of the market efficiencies made possible through the lax regulatory and pro-business environment that Texas has produced for itself.
As for your assumption, I absolutely understand the frustration with the changes to medical care laws down here, but that doesn't affect my partner or I, as neither of us are engaging in any kind of activity that could ever get either of us pregnant, so the question of medical care in the event one of us ever did get pregnant is functionally moot for us.
While ∆9-Tetrahydrocannabinol remains illegal in Texas, almost all other cannabinoids have functionally been recreationally legal in Texas since Trump's 2018 federal Farm Bill, operationally legal (able to purchase and transport from stores without fear of prosecution) since early COVID in most of the major metro areas (e.g. Austin, Houston, DFW). Now to your credit, a handful of police departments are being pains in the rear about this, but even more departments have simply stopped enforcing laws against minor cannabis possession. Being unregulated, it doesn't come without risks, but it does come at a price about 1 order of magnitude lower than what you'd pay in Colorado, gram for gram.
You can have a gender identity that doesn't conform to traditional gender norms, hell, you can even have a gender identity that doesn't conform to a common notion that gender is a binary value, rather than a spectrum. You can have a sexual and romantic attraction to whoever you want. Just don't go around shoving it in everyone's faces, unable to even discuss anything else without bringing it up. That's annoying in the same way a car guy who never shuts up about cars is annoying. I say this as someone with an identity that doesn't conform to traditional gender stereotypes, with a partner of the same biological sex, so trust me when I say that I also understand how unforgiving Texas can be when you do go around doing PDAs in a relationship like mine, especially out in the more rural areas. Thankfully, that's what firearms are for - protecting yourself and your loved ones from crazy bad guys who aren't acting rationally and might pose a danger to the life of myself or my loved ones.
But hey, you can also watch whatever you want. There shouldn't be anyone on all of HN that believes the state government of Texas is actually logistically capable of blocking all adult video entertainment from the entire internet from ever being streamed into their state without photo ID verification. I can (but won't) name a half dozen such sites that haven't appeared to perform any amount of effort to comply with the Texas law whatsoever, probably hosted in jurisdictions that Texas can't even do anything about.
I say this after having returned from Colorado's front range last year - a magical place full of whimsy and charm, my favorite kind of climate, and the most breathtaking natural scenery I've ever seen in my life.
It was also full of a bunch of condescending, unkind, prejudiced, close-minded people who seemed almost incapable of engaging in an honest, good-faith dialogue on the lived experiences and perspectives of people from outside of their cultural "tribe", and as a relatively decent income earner, I felt that the price I was paying to live there (a state income tax bill over $2000/month, more than my rent), was too much for a place that felt very culturally intolerant of me based on dehumanizing stereotypes that serve little purpose other than to vilify and otherize, and which I felt unfairly compacted the nuances of some of my lived experiences into trite anecdotes to be mocked, so I respected their wishes and I left.
Colorado talks a good game about their empathy, kindness, diversity, and tolerance, but I sure feel a whole lot more empathy, kindness, and tolerance from the middle aged southern waitress in Texas that calls me "hun" and actually listens to me when I'm talking to her, than the tatted up cute bartender chicks in Colorado that would roll their eyes at me in smug condescension and start using words with fewer syllables after I respond "Texas" to her question of where I'd moved from. Those two couldn't be any better representations of my lived experiences in TX vs CO.