California has a lot of beauty. Virtually the entire coastal area is the stuff of legend as are the National Parks. It's the home of bikini-clad women, laid back surfer dudes, and Hollywood hoi polloi. The weather is gorgeous. It's a great place to visit. But I would never want to live there.
I have seen a lot of expensive beach communities in my travels and Southern California qualifies as one big beach community. One thing you quickly learn about such places is that once you move inland, you are confronted with the back-of-the-house; the support sector for the consumer and touristy enclaves. These are filled with folks fighting to get by, working a couple of service sector jobs for a buck over minimum wage, fighting ungodly traffic jams in both directions. You'll know you're there by the proliferation of pawn shops and junk yards. California does this one better by having a further back-of-the-house to support their agriculture industry. Visit places like Bakersfield and Barstow and Yuba City to see that. It's not pretty.
But that's not why I wouldn't live there.
The Bay area, Silicon Valley, is flush with tech money. Of course since nobody will let anybody build more homes, all your six-figure salary goes to rent for a 12x15 studio apartment where you'll have a 2-hour, stop-and-go to get to your cube in the morning. Don't have the scratch to stay within reach of town? There's always the Modesto-or-Stockton-and-carry-pepper-spray-at-all-times option.
But that's not why I wouldn't live there.
Did I mention the traffic is apocalyptically bad?
But that's not why I wouldn't live there.
California appears to be knocking on the door of something called Anarcho-tyranny. Anarcho-tyranny occurs when an authority has abandoned the difficult task of trying to maintain order and common welfare, instead demonstrating authority by punishing and penalizing easy targets to maintain the appearance of power.
We see the thorough degradation of San Francisco -- residents report there is feces everywhere. People are apparently just dropping trou and leaving souvenirs at will. Housing is unaffordable due to supply restrictions. If you're lucky, the homeless just pester you rather than something worse. And as they need to relearn, there is a reason we enforce hygiene standards in the rest of the country: Down south in LA they've seen an uptick in positively medieval diseases such as Typhus and Bubonic Plague.
The State's fixed payout pension fund is pretty much a lost cause. It's promised payments are so large that tax jurisdictions, from cities to school districts, are often paying fifty cents or more for every dollar they pay in salaries. Imagine trying to increase taxes enough to cover that or keep salaries low enough not to go bankrupt and you'll get an idea of the kind of financial havoc it will wreak pretty much forever. Businesses won't be able to afford to pay anything more than the soon to be $15 minimum wage and at that rate, no one can afford rent. A spiral will begin.
The latest horror is the imposed blackouts. Evidently the power grid is, for some reason, responsible for starting wildfires and needs decades of upgrades, which means residents of many areas will have periodic blackouts for years to come. Folks with critical needs for power (like hospitals) are scrambling to prepare. A World Lit Only By Fire, indeed! Evidently, wildfires are caused by electrical equipment that sets the dried out vegetation on fire. The company line on this is that global warming has made California hotter and drier than in the past and so it's really kind of an act of God, not the fault of the power companies or their government overseers. Of course, this raises the question of why it's not happening in Nevada or Arizona or Utah. Who knew those States had solved global warming? Decades to fix the power grid sounds about right. That is to say, it may never get fixed -- money could run out (see above re: pension), or it could get bogged down in regulation and graft.
You can't help but feel like California is taking the first baby steps towards a kind of dark age, where the feudal lords in Silicon Valley and Hollywood bray about while the poor folks can't afford a home and never get raises and live by candlelight, stumbling about in human waste while dying of the plague.
OK, I engage in hyperbole for effect. But the quality of life in California has degraded, and not just in the sense of a temporary economic recession like we all get from time to time. There is really a sense of degradation of Civilization, albeit small, which might just be unprecedented in the nation's history. If they can't arrest it, they'll achieve the "Anarcho" part of the equation.
What have the leaders of California done in the face of this? Well some have banned plastic straws and bags. Some are busy trying to find a gas price conspiracy. Some are working to kill the hated gig economy. Some are banning college admission tests. Some are releasing seven-time felons who go on to murder innocent women in the interest of supporting immigration.
You can see how these are baby steps towards the "Tyranny" part of the equation.
And that's why I don't want to live there. Anarcho-tyranny.
Speaking as someone who saw the city of his birth, Detroit, degrade into a third-world hellhole, the pattern is familiar. California has lifetimes to go before it approaches Detroit, but that is the vector it is on. I will certainly be dead before it resolves one way or another, but I predict California continues to lose native born residents and only maintain its population through foreign immigration (people coming from places where California looks reasonable by comparison) for the next 10 years. I also predict that before my time is up, California will experience its first population drop. Children born today may live to see California's financial default and its governance turned over to the Feds.
I further predict that I will visit California at least three more times in my life and each trip will be delightful.
Addendum: A great counterpoint to California is Texas, specifically the Houston-Austin-San Antonio region. Massive, productive growth. Yes, infrastructure there is struggling to keep up, but the priorities are correct and there is no degradation of civilization. Hell, at Buc-ee's they brag about the restrooms -- take that San Francisco. If I were young and inclined to make my mark, that's where I would go.
