18 ms·

It’s the End of California as We Know It

79 points by tysone 7y ago

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
As much as I want to say that Farhad is wrong, I can't. He is right. We can't continue to live the way we have. We are seeing the results of kicking the can, also known as the fix, down the road. We hope that things will get fixed eventually but not now. We feel that somehow it will be easier to fix by the next generation. Unfortunately, it only gets harder. We'll just have to suffer more when the fix is finally made.
- ggm 7y ago
  Fixes which have winners and losers become lost in electoral arithmetic. An example of this struck me some years ago when a friend who lived in Louden County (W. Virginia) said they were subject to frequent power outages which caused catastrophic loss of the goods in the freezer, but the local authority kept losing the vote for increased local taxes which would pay for fixes to the electricity distribution issues: People don't want to socialise the costs, at personal loss of disposable income. 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"
  - WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
    True, we seem to want everything but aren't willing to pay for it. 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.
  - chrisdhoover 7y ago
    There is no county Louden in West Virginia. There is a Loudoun County Virginia. It was largely rural until recently. It is now a suburb of Washington DC. Part of Dulles Airport was built in Loudoun County.
    - ggm 7y ago
      Thanks for the correction. I'm an Australian infrequent visitor to D.C.
- baggy_trough 7y ago
  Do we even agree what the fix is?
  - Animats 7y ago
    A lot of tree trimming and removal. Lots of heavy equipment. Firebreaks a mile wide. More full-time Cal Fire people and equipment. Recycled 747s as water tankers (there's already one.) More underground power lines. Not really that hard.
    - cma 7y ago
      Maybe drone fire surveillance and rapid response.
    - mobilefriendly 7y ago
      No, the solution is returning to the natural regular burns that are part of the ecosystem in California. Zero tolerance fire-fighting is the main issue at hand, as it builds up kindling to infernos.
      - mokus 7y ago
        And controlled burns. The land WILL burn - why would we NOT let it burn at a time of our choosing, such as the middle of the rainy season when we have the best control over it?
      - ars 7y ago
        Those burns release a lot of pollution and CO2. I've always wondered if it was possible to collect the brush and dry plants and burn them more usefully for energy.
  - fzzzy 7y ago
    Underground power lines
- not_a_cop75 7y ago
  The end of California for most people was generations ago. My folks lived in LA when I was a kid, and the sheer lack of affordable housing even then made them move out to Florida, where water front property was comparatively affordable. California has never chosen to fix the problems that it has. It has instead become a less practical version of New York for the west. Now, if you can tolerate living in California, that's saying something. You can tolerate the crap that most people wouldn't in a thousand years want to deal with. Don't get me wrong there are good things - the climate generally speaking and the education system. But since moving away from Cali, I've always noticed something weird and eccentric about most people that chose to remain. I can't begin to say what it is - maybe an optimism that things will get better as tech giants solve more and more problems. Still, my response is good luck with that. Big money in the hands of just a few has seldom benefited any nation, and that applies to states just as much.
davidscolgan 7y ago
I'm a freelance web developer from rural Indiana and want to move somewhere in the US I can at least possibly stay for a decade or more. Does anyone recommend a city/state that will survive the climate apocalypse, that is well managed, and/or that is doing everything the author of this article is saying California isn't doing? I've had a hard time figuring out where to live since I don't have to be anywhere in particular for my job.
- jmtulloss 7y ago
  Seattle?
  - jmspring 7y ago
    Slated to get a pretty major earth quake at some point.
- paulbaumgart 7y ago
  Storrs, CT, according to Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/where-to-hide-from-mother-nature.amp https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/where-to-hide-fr...
  - mitfahrener 7y ago
    Lol. Lived there during middle/high school when my dad worked at UCONN. A good place to grow up for sure. Winter was cold though!
  - ngold 7y ago
    Fun article, but I would be curious if that has changed after 15 years from the date of the article.
- antidaily 7y ago
  Are you just bored with rural Indiana? Can’t imagine the climate apocalypse will do as much damage to the midwest.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
Somehow I feel this is not only a California problem but the whole US. The country seems to be incapable of or unwilling to address fundamental problems. Instead you are getting endless political fights while infrastructure is falling apart. The contrasts in Silicon Valley and LA are extreme. You have some of the richest people in the world living in beautiful mansions with cities around them full of homeless people, roads full of potholes and power outages. Same for health care. No matter if you like socialized medicine or free markets, nobody should be able to justify the current state of things but nothing gets done. Sometimes it feels like the whole country is just turning into a weird reality show.
- Reedx 7y ago
  Yeah, I'm concerned that what we're seeing around the country is institutional decay. 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.
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    Always an appropriate time to remember that Rome didn't fall in a day. We seem to be experiencing the proverbial frog-boil IMHO.
    - dickeytk 7y ago
      that frog only exists within proverbs! real frogs jump out!
      - symplee 7y ago
        Mars and beyond anyone?
        danielrpa 7y ago
        Eventually we'd also turn Mars into California.
jdhn 7y ago
To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the people, stupid". It seems like there's a lot of Californians who talk about sustainability, but then turn right around and vote in people who continue to promote suburban sprawl, single family houses, zoning that doesn't promote density, and lack of investment in public transportation.
- baggy_trough 7y ago
  California's government isn't so hot either.
  - jdhn 7y ago
    Is this a symptom of one party governance? It's certainly not because of a lack of money or progressiveness. If anything, I would expect that the California state government would be leading in all of these issues.
    - baggy_trough 7y ago
      It's almost as though progressivism and throwing money at problems doesn't really work that well.
      - throwawaytoday5 7y ago
        I forgot the shinning examples of conservative rule that is Alabama and Mississippi. For all the faults that California has political, it's still an economic powerhouse. What does Kentucky have?
      - pas 7y ago
        Nah, it works, it just takes a loooot more money than people imagine. 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.
- lacker 7y ago
  I think part of this is national politics pushing out state politics. Every statewide California race recently has felt like a foregone conclusion. Either the Democrat beats the Republican by a huge margin, or one Democrat beats another Democrat while the two agree on all policies. California just doesn’t have the one-party-against-another politics that make democracy work.
tehlike 7y ago
Sometimes i wonder... Washington doesnt have the income tax, but it feels much better there. Am i imagining this?
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  I was thinking along the same lines. I live in a state with less government (and less proportional revenue), we don't have the kinds of problems California does.
  - orionblastar 7y ago
    I live in Missouri we don't get paid as much as people in California but we don't have their problems here. I live near Ferguson where the riots took place. Peacefull now. Most good IT jobs are in Ballwin.
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    At least on the fire front, Washington doesn't have the desert-forest interface or lack of rain that CA does. On most other fronts we have the same problems as other states, writ large. Hard to compare given how diverse (demographically, geographically, etc.) we are.
- spking 7y ago
  It's definitely better here in WA in many ways. We left CA last summer after 15 years, and I would never go back. 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-Northwest/dp/1570619425 https://www.amazon.com/Full-Rip-9-0-Earthquake-Pacific-North...
  - c256 7y ago
    “Just don’t think about it” is actually a rational approach to the earthquake in WA issue, because if the subduction zone goes, the tsunami will wash everything away.
cft 7y ago
There's a certain smell of absurdity in the air in California. 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.
opportune 7y ago
Part of the issue is definitely that California is the biggest, most influential, and one of the wealthiest states. The federal government is less incentivized to help us out in some ways, because theoretically, we can afford it. 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.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
solidasparagus 7y ago
It's funny because having lived outside of the US, it has always blown my mind how extraordinarily well California/the US handles natural disasters like wildfires. The worst wildfire season ever in a state of 40M people, 18,000 buildings destroyed and fewer than 100 people died?!? 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'.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Previous years, the response has been a bit off, but the 2019 season the Powers That Be have been ready! Perhaps because these fires are closer to the big city power centers, but I'm sure also "practice makes perfect"!
- WalterSear 7y ago
  Shareholders profiting from a corporations externalizing their costs is not a natural disaster.
goodsignal 7y ago
It's interesting to observe the length of time it has taken for a power utility to crumble. I believe the disintegration we're seeing now began with the governmental deregulation of utilities during the Regan administration. The current state was predicted by losers in that round of voting. We are now seeing the tipping point of those regulatory changes. 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.
- masonic 7y ago
  There was no deregulation of CA utilities under Reagan, either as Governor or as President.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ryuukk_ 7y ago
this is why many rich people recently moved to CA? something zionisty is happening over there, i wonder what it could be? something to do with china? hmm

79 points by tysone 7y ago

As much as I want to say that Farhad is wrong, I can't. He is right. We can't continue to live the way we have. We are seeing the results of kicking the can, also known as the fix, down the road. We hope that things will get fixed eventually but not now. We feel that somehow it will be easier to fix by the next generation. Unfortunately, it only gets harder. We'll just have to suffer more when the fix is finally made.

ggm 7y ago
Fixes which have winners and losers become lost in electoral arithmetic. An example of this struck me some years ago when a friend who lived in Louden County (W. Virginia) said they were subject to frequent power outages which caused catastrophic loss of the goods in the freezer, but the local authority kept losing the vote for increased local taxes which would pay for fixes to the electricity distribution issues: People don't want to socialise the costs, at personal loss of disposable income. 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"
- WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
  True, we seem to want everything but aren't willing to pay for it. 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.
- chrisdhoover 7y ago
  There is no county Louden in West Virginia. There is a Loudoun County Virginia. It was largely rural until recently. It is now a suburb of Washington DC. Part of Dulles Airport was built in Loudoun County.
  - ggm 7y ago
    Thanks for the correction. I'm an Australian infrequent visitor to D.C.
baggy_trough 7y ago
Do we even agree what the fix is?
- Animats 7y ago
  A lot of tree trimming and removal. Lots of heavy equipment. Firebreaks a mile wide. More full-time Cal Fire people and equipment. Recycled 747s as water tankers (there's already one.) More underground power lines. Not really that hard.
  - cma 7y ago
    Maybe drone fire surveillance and rapid response.
  - mobilefriendly 7y ago
    No, the solution is returning to the natural regular burns that are part of the ecosystem in California. Zero tolerance fire-fighting is the main issue at hand, as it builds up kindling to infernos.
    - mokus 7y ago
      And controlled burns. The land WILL burn - why would we NOT let it burn at a time of our choosing, such as the middle of the rainy season when we have the best control over it?
    - ars 7y ago
      Those burns release a lot of pollution and CO2. I've always wondered if it was possible to collect the brush and dry plants and burn them more usefully for energy.
- fzzzy 7y ago
  Underground power lines
not_a_cop75 7y ago
The end of California for most people was generations ago. My folks lived in LA when I was a kid, and the sheer lack of affordable housing even then made them move out to Florida, where water front property was comparatively affordable. California has never chosen to fix the problems that it has. It has instead become a less practical version of New York for the west. Now, if you can tolerate living in California, that's saying something. You can tolerate the crap that most people wouldn't in a thousand years want to deal with. Don't get me wrong there are good things - the climate generally speaking and the education system. But since moving away from Cali, I've always noticed something weird and eccentric about most people that chose to remain. I can't begin to say what it is - maybe an optimism that things will get better as tech giants solve more and more problems. Still, my response is good luck with that. Big money in the hands of just a few has seldom benefited any nation, and that applies to states just as much.

davidscolgan 7y ago

I'm a freelance web developer from rural Indiana and want to move somewhere in the US I can at least possibly stay for a decade or more. Does anyone recommend a city/state that will survive the climate apocalypse, that is well managed, and/or that is doing everything the author of this article is saying California isn't doing? I've had a hard time figuring out where to live since I don't have to be anywhere in particular for my job.

jmtulloss 7y ago
Seattle?
- jmspring 7y ago
  Slated to get a pretty major earth quake at some point.
paulbaumgart 7y ago
Storrs, CT, according to Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/where-to-hide-from-mother-nature.amp https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/where-to-hide-fr...
- mitfahrener 7y ago
  Lol. Lived there during middle/high school when my dad worked at UCONN. A good place to grow up for sure. Winter was cold though!
- ngold 7y ago
  Fun article, but I would be curious if that has changed after 15 years from the date of the article.
antidaily 7y ago
Are you just bored with rural Indiana? Can’t imagine the climate apocalypse will do as much damage to the midwest.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

Somehow I feel this is not only a California problem but the whole US. The country seems to be incapable of or unwilling to address fundamental problems. Instead you are getting endless political fights while infrastructure is falling apart. The contrasts in Silicon Valley and LA are extreme. You have some of the richest people in the world living in beautiful mansions with cities around them full of homeless people, roads full of potholes and power outages. Same for health care. No matter if you like socialized medicine or free markets, nobody should be able to justify the current state of things but nothing gets done. Sometimes it feels like the whole country is just turning into a weird reality show.

Reedx 7y ago
Yeah, I'm concerned that what we're seeing around the country is institutional decay. 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.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  Always an appropriate time to remember that Rome didn't fall in a day. We seem to be experiencing the proverbial frog-boil IMHO.
  - dickeytk 7y ago
    that frog only exists within proverbs! real frogs jump out!
    - symplee 7y ago
      Mars and beyond anyone?
      - danielrpa 7y ago
        Eventually we'd also turn Mars into California.

jdhn 7y ago

To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the people, stupid". It seems like there's a lot of Californians who talk about sustainability, but then turn right around and vote in people who continue to promote suburban sprawl, single family houses, zoning that doesn't promote density, and lack of investment in public transportation.

baggy_trough 7y ago
California's government isn't so hot either.
- jdhn 7y ago
  Is this a symptom of one party governance? It's certainly not because of a lack of money or progressiveness. If anything, I would expect that the California state government would be leading in all of these issues.
  - baggy_trough 7y ago
    It's almost as though progressivism and throwing money at problems doesn't really work that well.
    - throwawaytoday5 7y ago
      I forgot the shinning examples of conservative rule that is Alabama and Mississippi. For all the faults that California has political, it's still an economic powerhouse. What does Kentucky have?
    - pas 7y ago
      Nah, it works, it just takes a loooot more money than people imagine. 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.
lacker 7y ago
I think part of this is national politics pushing out state politics. Every statewide California race recently has felt like a foregone conclusion. Either the Democrat beats the Republican by a huge margin, or one Democrat beats another Democrat while the two agree on all policies. California just doesn’t have the one-party-against-another politics that make democracy work.

tehlike 7y ago

Sometimes i wonder... Washington doesnt have the income tax, but it feels much better there. Am i imagining this?

RickJWagner 7y ago
I was thinking along the same lines. I live in a state with less government (and less proportional revenue), we don't have the kinds of problems California does.
- orionblastar 7y ago
  I live in Missouri we don't get paid as much as people in California but we don't have their problems here. I live near Ferguson where the riots took place. Peacefull now. Most good IT jobs are in Ballwin.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  At least on the fire front, Washington doesn't have the desert-forest interface or lack of rain that CA does. On most other fronts we have the same problems as other states, writ large. Hard to compare given how diverse (demographically, geographically, etc.) we are.
spking 7y ago
It's definitely better here in WA in many ways. We left CA last summer after 15 years, and I would never go back. 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-Northwest/dp/1570619425 https://www.amazon.com/Full-Rip-9-0-Earthquake-Pacific-North...
- c256 7y ago
  “Just don’t think about it” is actually a rational approach to the earthquake in WA issue, because if the subduction zone goes, the tsunami will wash everything away.

cft 7y ago

There's a certain smell of absurdity in the air in California. 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.

opportune 7y ago

Part of the issue is definitely that California is the biggest, most influential, and one of the wealthiest states. The federal government is less incentivized to help us out in some ways, because theoretically, we can afford it. 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.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

solidasparagus 7y ago

It's funny because having lived outside of the US, it has always blown my mind how extraordinarily well California/the US handles natural disasters like wildfires. The worst wildfire season ever in a state of 40M people, 18,000 buildings destroyed and fewer than 100 people died?!? 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'.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Previous years, the response has been a bit off, but the 2019 season the Powers That Be have been ready! Perhaps because these fires are closer to the big city power centers, but I'm sure also "practice makes perfect"!
WalterSear 7y ago
Shareholders profiting from a corporations externalizing their costs is not a natural disaster.

goodsignal 7y ago

It's interesting to observe the length of time it has taken for a power utility to crumble. I believe the disintegration we're seeing now began with the governmental deregulation of utilities during the Regan administration. The current state was predicted by losers in that round of voting. We are now seeing the tipping point of those regulatory changes. 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.

masonic 7y ago
There was no deregulation of CA utilities under Reagan, either as Governor or as President.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ryuukk_ 7y ago

this is why many rich people recently moved to CA? something zionisty is happening over there, i wonder what it could be? something to do with china? hmm