It’s the End of California as We Know It
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Sometimes it feels like the whole country is just turning into a weird reality show.
We've been increasingly replacing competence with people who tell us what we want to hear. Entertainment over substance. Short-term, feel good solutions over thoughtful long-term solutions.
Now the results of that are starting to manifest.
My pet theory is that small units govern themselves nest, and I'd support splitting California into as many smaller states as possible.
Of course, a state where building a 4 story housing building takes on average math.inf will not get it together to dissolve itself in anyone's lifetime.
So I guess things will just continue on this track.
I'd support splitting California into as many smaller states as possible
Among other things, that would just replicate CA's legacy of inept representation in the Senate many times over.
I think of government as something very complicated. So the metaphor to me is "you solve a complicated problem by dividing it into smaller simpler problems".
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/too-much-government-i...
There are only two parties in the US right now. And one is for globalization. And the other is for stronger US labor unions.
But predicting the end of times is fun and I'll throw in a take. The US as a nation is fabulously wealthy. That obscures the importance of wealth creation and people are distracted from it as a goal. The US political and social narrative is clearly shifting to focus more on wealth/power distribution than wealth creation. There are good reasons for that but it is a lot less fun that the 60s/70s/80s/90s where ultra-rapid wealth creation was the order of the day.
If big policies are adopted or persisted in that destroy wealth, and I cite things like the endless wars & associated loss of liberties or the response to to '08 financial crisis, then the situation will deteriorate.
I don’t like it when people are told how good they have it compared to other countries or people in the past. It sounds very condescending. This line is also never used to tell wealthy executives or shareholders how good they have it and they should maybe stop trying to concentrate wealth on themselves. Only the little guy gets to hear this.
There are always going to be good uses for resources poured into healthcare. It is, without exaggeration, a bottomless pit of ways to spend money. The US does a terrible job of managing healthcare but that is not a fundamental problem; it is horrible but superficial. They could probably get double the quality for the money spent, or halve spending for the same outcome or something. However, there will always be something else needed in healthcare. The goalpost will shift as it has many times before.
> I don’t like it when people are told how good they have it compared to other countries or people in the past. It sounds very condescending. This line is also never used to tell wealthy executives or shareholders ...
In my post that you responded to I am advocating leaving executives and shareholders penniless, ruined and subject to lawsuits. That is what I wanted to happen after '08. Maybe I was too subtle in my allusion.
And this is strictly a problem of lack of imagination, political will and compromise.
But that's just the symptoms of a deeper festering problem, namely that of increasing political polarization.
F you I got mine, mah freedoms, communism, handouts, those are the recurring 'arguments'. Take this YT dude learning that in order to run business you need to ... actually get permits, license and pay taxes, and all the comments under the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR5n3v9Sih8 Its a never ending stream of "move to another state", "bad government", "stealing from small guy" while dude hacks Salvage title wrecks on his curb (or illegal condemned structure) and flips them to unsuspecting victims. No license, no registered business, no insurance, no liability. 6 months later he is still at it, whining about receiving permanent injunction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XNHVKSjzOY and contemplating car raffles (apparently being taken down for running illegal gambling sounds better than paying taxes) and tax dodging schemes (charities, non profits).
Similarly the infrastructure/public services are quite incredible in the US. I grew up with daily 6 hour blackouts and water brought in by truck because there the city didn't have a working water supply network.
We shouldn't be content with how things are and the article makes some valid points that I'm not trying to diminish, but it doesn't hurt to have a little appreciation for what incredibly high standards we have here before calling California a 'dystopian apocalypse'.
Perhaps because these fires are closer to the big city power centers, but I'm sure also "practice makes perfect"!
What does Kentucky have?
Especially because if you want to tackle local problems that require local service providers (education, healthcare, craftsmen) you'll have to pay local (very high) prices.
Where have you seen this happening in practice?
A political science professor first showed me 25 years ago something I still see in US national politics: a "winner-take-all" voting system that creates a polarizing dynamic, typically resulting in a roughly 51:49 split -- with the potential for radically different outcomes hinging on tiny pockets of voters.
Also, both parties are institutionally corrupted by the dominance of money (cf Lessig on "Fix Congress First", highlighting campaign finance as a fundamental threat to democracy).
But only one of the parties is exhibiting blatant, explicit, direct opposition to the principles of democracy (eg voter suppression, rule of law, etc) from the highest level on down.
The degree to which state politics are tied to the characteristics of the national party makes it difficult for powerful governors or even mayors to deviate from party lines.
Don't get me wrong; the idea of a free marketplace of ideas and the positive value of principled opposition are things I'm sure we'd agree on. But that's not what we have. Wish I knew how to fix it.
There is nothing fundamentally unsustainable about suburbs, single family homes, low density, or cars. 50% of the USA is totally uninhabited, and it is possible today to build a totally off-grid and sustainable single family home / suburb in the majority of it.
You can even capture carbon in concrete. Don't prescribe solutions just because you prefer them, set incentives and goals to favor the right outcomes and let people decide and optimize how to do it.
Your urban utopia is my hellscape, and my suburban utopia is yours. The good news is, this is America, and we can both live here. Good fences make good neighbors.
P.S. most of the $2 trillion real estate market in the Bay Area where I have lived for 12 years exists precisely because our politicians DON'T promote further development, sustainable or otherwise. Most of what's here is decaying, old, unsustainable, whether it is high or low density, and nobody can afford to improve it because all the tradespeople got priced out and left years ago.
While I think the rest of your response is orthogonal (albeit valid), I think this is the heart of the matter relevant to the article. Californian infrastructure is aging and politicians have only made it more difficult over time to build new anything, whether that's power, water, internet, transport, or housing infrastructure. I just wish I knew what the solution was.
That said, intelligent legislation to encourage all types of housing and development (with externalities like carbon priced in as taxes, not government prescribed solutions to mitigate them) would go a long way to bringing back affordability.
The solution in the interim is to vote with your dollars and feet, if you can. And really think about it if your answer is "I can't". Most of the time, that's not really true.
I'm leaving next month. Bye California and your awful policies that literally burn us to death at worst, and make us poorer and stingier zero-sum competitors at best. And for those of you who say "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out" ... check in with me in 10 years and let's compare stories! <3
US suburbs are heavily subsidized with federal dollars[1], this is a huge reason why PGE can't effectively maintain the infrastructure in California. The ratepayers & tax base cannot afford to repipe a suburban neighborhood when the water service lines hit end of design life, let alone repaving, maintaining gas, electrical service, telecom & cable[2]. This is also why Fiber buildouts are so uncommon in suburbs (for-profit companies won't make their money back within a decade).
We have designed an extremely expensive mousetrap of suburbia where you get degrading public services (as maintenance & replacement bills accrue and go unmet), nearly mandatory car ownership, and higher rates of health problems caused by the poor design of these neighborhoods[3].
1 - https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-always-...
2 - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/27/a-texas-sized-...
3 - https://www.webmd.com/women/news/20040927/suburbs-may-be-haz...
We don't need PG&E. The sun gives us free energy, and batteries + thermal energy storage can cover the cloudiest of days.
Well-designed suburbs don't need to be subsidized. And they can also be healthier and happier for you and your family (quiet, safe, better air quality, elbow-room, &etc). Just decentralize large cities by building smaller mixed-use "downtowns" surrounded by layers of variable density housing. Single family homes with yards are a part of that.
I'm moving and will be putting this into practice, instead of sitting back and seeing what happens. My cost of living will go down even though I am self-providing all of my family's utilities.
I might even use the savings to build more than just my own needs... creating opportunities for those with less capital to make the same choice to enjoy a better life at an affordable cost.
P.S. I have done the carbon calculations, and burying it in concrete is a good part of a total solution. "Deluding." Hah. A head not in the sand can more easily look in the mirror!
Sure, fundamentally nothing is sustainable because eventually the useful energy gradients where life can thrive will run out as the universe expands into a cold dark empty vacuum.
But before that let's try to spend the already fixed tax income a bit more efficiently. Compact cities can be more efficient than the endless sea of cul-de-sacs and occasional golf/sports fields.
That said, I have no real horse in this race. If the people of those particular cities want to live like that, let them live like that. Self-determination is important. If they feel that they don't want better mass transit and less sitting-in-traffic, no worries.
Citation needed on cities being fundamentally more efficient. A suburban home can be powered by pure solar, rainwater/groundwater can be captured and recycled locally, an electric car can carpool, and mass transit (sure, let's build more of that too) can easily reach out to the suburbs. You can even telecommute, and that sipping straw of electrons makes the public transit users look like energy-guzzling planet-killers in comparison (Ooh! We all love some tasty moral superiority!)
Even if that weren't the case, there is such a concept as efficient enough. At some level, sanity factors in, and trying to raise a family while dodging needles and poop in San Francisco is enough to make some people say "enough is enough."
I'm all for spending smarter and more compassionately. San Francisco spends $240 million per year on homeless programs, or $30k/yr per individual. And it doesn't even make a dent; the local living costs are so high that $30k evaporates in the blink of an eye.
We need policies/infrastructure that encourage building up AND out to relieve this pressure and better care for the less fortunate people ... while still allowing for sustainable urban and suburban lifestyles.
Making small things are rarely efficient (transformers, inverters, heating, cooling, insulation).
Moving people one-by-one more distance will always require more energy, EVs also have to carry themselves, and thus the more people you can move per trip the better. (Hurray for electric buses.)
I already telecommute (our company already works full remote).
I mean if you have problems with needles and poop, but we don't, and most cities also don't, then it's probably not because SF is a city.
Anyway. I have no problem is people want more personal/private space, better sound insulation, a garden, a pool and whatever. But those luxuries should be priced in, so it encourages building up and compact, so more people can enjoy living in nice places. (Like next to a forest, lake, on a hill, in a valley, whatever).
SF doesn’t have that by a long shot. That’s the actual point.
Also, I didn’t say I had a problem with cities, far from it – I have liked living in the city in the past, and I can understand why someone would want to live in a good city. But [citation needed] on cities being fundamentally and meaningfully cheaper under the externality-adjusted capitalism model.
Urbanization can increase total living costs compared to lower-density living, for example through disease spread, crime, power density and transmission requirements, high-speed waste processing requirements vs composting opportunities, food production locality, and etc.
Whether the efficiency scales balance out in favor of a particular density or not is a mystery to me. I am just not as sure as you seem to be.
Let’s find some data that shows a TCO per capita for a well-planned/well-run suburb vs a similar city. Or, do what I’m doing and get out there and mold your local environment into what you need while letting others do the same – there’s enough space and energy for all of us here and probably >10x if we fill the Earth and Mars.
P.S. While I don’t know for sure, I suspect that the answer to efficiency vs density is: it is either a wash or a small enough difference that it doesn’t matter compared to living the life you want as sustainably as possible.
I agree that there's enough energy and stuff in theory to be green and live anywhere, but currently in practice there isn't. (For example just now with the PG&E blackouts the very real cost of living spread out shows itself.) At the same time you are correct that if some pandemic strikes it might be better in a log cabin, but ... for how long? Are you ready to hunt? Grow your own wheat, and so on? And HongKong seems to be doing fine, after SARS they are doing a lot of proactive stuff.
PG&E's failure is because of poor capital investment, bad infrastructure decisions, and lack of federal antitrust intervention into a mismanaged California-ordained private energy monopoly.
You don't have to live in a log cabin, I am not talking only of pandemics but also the mental well-being of people who want to spread their elbows a bit using the copious land available on Earth, and you don't have to hunt or grow your own wheat to live in a suburban or semi-rural place and buy food and products locally (although there is nothing wrong or crazy about hunting and growing some of your own food, if you want to... we just also have this thing called "money" that you can trade for goods and services that you don't want to provide yourself).
I'm only responding now in an attempt to get you to reconsider the frankly baseless assumptions that you are asserting as facts – the truth is, and the point is: there are ways for people to live efficiently enough in urban, suburban, and rural settings, and we should stop judging that very personal preference and instead focus our time and investments on improving efficiencies across the spectrum (and fighting always to enforce legislation that engenders more competition in every marketplace).
I predict that no measure of substance which demands people pay more to socialize fixes will get up without a fight. I also predict that rational simple fixes applied in other economies (I am thinking of europe mainly) simply won't be considered, because "socialism"
This situation is similar to the country going to war. Where the political leaders are the ones that must convince the population that we must act or lose the war and our way of life. It really does come down to leadership.
But in aggregate, this is really what the people of California wanted. Suburbanization is popular at the voting booth, as are low property taxes. Californians wanted to freeze time in the 80s and that's what they got.
Ban on plastic straws - garbage on highway shoulders on 280 and 101 in San Francisco county
Strictest car emission laws in the Union - fires poison the air to the extent that people die, equivalent to multiple involuntary cigarettes per day
This list can go on and on. Those working for large companies like Google and Apple are protected for now: like in the fortresses. If you are trying to strike here on your own- probably too late- no affordable garages anymore.
Maybe it's a consequence of one party system? I came here in 1999 to go to Stanford. Perhaps it's time to pack up.
I think in other industries we might have seen these problems arise much sooner. But the utilities are slow, colossal beasts that take decades for changes to really take affect.
I've had a hard time figuring out where to live since I don't have to be anywhere in particular for my job.
what does it mean to our concepts of reason and engineering if one of the most "technical" self-selected audiences on the internet cannot read basic graphs and charts?
what possible hope is there to get policymakers to base their understanding and decisions in the science if self-professed engineers can't or won't?
maybe we pull it off this time? seems like a flat out evil experiment to run.
imagine your company running its failover plan to its DR site on short notice. what are the odds of it being flawless?
ok now imagine moving half the farming that feeds everyone you know and love from the midwest to manitoba and ontario. if your reaction to that isn't stark terror at the risk to human life, well then you've played waaaaaaaaaay too many civilization games and your brain has broken into believing this is just a question of right-clicking on the better squares.
Am i imagining this?
That said, I've heard that the biggest issue in this state is old infrastructure and buildings that would basically disintegrate in the next big earthquake. Seismic retrofitting wasn't a thing here until pretty recently.
I've been reading a book about the Cascadia fault that is fascinating and terrifying:
https://www.amazon.com/Full-Rip-9-0-Earthquake-Pacific-North...
California lacks a planning structure. Until recently it was pretty much a land of misfits from the east coast. They should have consolidated local governments long ago and drawn urban growth boundaries. Instead the path they took has resulted in an utter mess.
It's not enough to physically move, there needs to be a change in mindset that goes along with it. Generally speaking, if you've moved somewhere because it's better, then whatever they're doing there is working. Could it be better? Sure, but it could also be a whole lot worse.