In 2020, in preparation for the debates with my co-founders on whether we should establish a …

It does seem to vary. The few times I've commuted into Boston over the past six months or so both traffic and transit usage seemed to be pretty much back to pre-pandemic levels as was pedestrian activity within the city. SF seems to be at least something of an outlier presumably because tech is something of a bubble. In general, I'd observe that there's been much more of a reset to pre-pandemic norms than many anticipated. But SF could well end up being something of an anomaly--which would be especially bad news for SF given it may not be a broad-based crisis that the government at the national (or maybe even state) level is going to be especially concerned about.

I don't think you were too aggressive with theories 3/4 at all. The impacts from the pandemic, the Federal Reserve's reckless monetary policy, Congress' inability to figure out how to deal with the US debt, and Wall Steet's continual pursuit for profits are all pointing to an economic disaster. We're just continually spiraling into the calamity to come and everyone is in a petty blame game and culture war.

This was a very balanced take. But I don't understand why people make such a fuss about some cities losing prominence and eventually crumbling from a previous period of wealth. This happens as history and technology progress. I don't see how wealth is lost when it is just being redistributed. The workers didn't disappeared, they are just living elsewhere, bringing business opportunities and improving across many different places. Perhaps it will be healthier for the economy as a whole than having only a handful of cities as beacons of investment.

I think the driver of Theories 3+4 will be that with high interest rates we are heading into a recession. A major driver of this recession will be a massive collapse in commercial real estate and CMBS. As the recession really gets underway then the back-to-office movement will flip on its head and companies will start to really get aggressive about cuttings costs and shuttering offices in order to survive, which will only accelerate the commercial real estate collapse even more. The headcount reduction in tech so far has been literally nothing. Mostly that was just readjusting for the post-pandemic hiring explosion in tech. It'll still be 6-12 months though (at least) before higher interest rates really start to bite. There's $162B in commercial real estate securities maturing in 2023 which is going to be the first real substantial detonation in the economy. That should set us up for hav…