Environmental stressors can often be beneficial for organisms, including communities. Look at Singapore, Israel, or Ukraine, for example. Existential problems c

Environmental stressors can often be beneficial for organisms, including communities. Look at Singapore, Israel, or Ukraine, for example. Existential problems can help communities focus and cooperate. Nothing cuts through political punditry, rhetoric, and arm-chair policy opinions like bone fide emergencies. Of course, a prerequisite is that the community and its institutions must be sufficiently functional. But I don't think California is so dysfunctional yet that it's doomed to economic and social regression. I think it's too early to say much of anything other than that California is barreling toward interesting times.