I've lived in a dozen cities all over the world and there is something special about the people in the Bay Area.
This is the area where the Gold Rush happened. It was an entrepot for valuable commodities. It still has that dynamic to this day. People come from all over to extract as many resources as possible, sell them and run off to somewhere else not caring about the externalities their opportunistic behavior creates. The political landscape here is mostly about pandering to special interests and never really solving social problems. Whoever panders best uses their constituent base to get elected into state and federal government positions leaving behind the dumpster fire that is the Bay Area.
the most special thing about the bay is its the best place for a software engineer to find a job in the entire country, and maybe the best density of highest paid software jobs in the world
You may think you are special, I assure you you are not.
Sort of like companies claiming to only hire "the top 3%".
The rest of your comment shows why the area as a whole is often kind of stupid.