Those who can see the issues and no solutions in sight are leaving. I was surprised the other day that my brother who has lived in California for many years plans to move out of there next year when he retires.
It is particularly galling for those of us who have lived here for 30+ years, because we’ve seen the before and the after. And it is maybe not so understandable to those who don’t live here because for the most part it is as nice a place in terms of weather and scenery as it ever was.
When I first moved to CA in 1971 it was a boundless, blank slate of whatever you wanted it to be. There seemed to be a general pride as in “look what a cool clean place we have”. With top-notch schools and roads. At any skill level, there was no business you could not get into. If you wanted to be a printer, you could go find a printer and sweep the floors if you knew nothing about printing and you’d be a printer in a few months. The same could be said about almost any kind of endeavor. It was wide open, not very crowded other than the obvious LA and SF areas. The middle of the state where VDH lives was desolate yet very productive farmland. Sure, there were heavily industrialized and dirty areas, but they were confined and focused and they still worked even if they were built in the 20’s or WW2.
If you are any sort of entrepreneur (and I have had multiple businesses in CA) you can maybe find something that serves a zillion people or some very high-tech niche, but very little in between, and the regulatory burdens out here are ludicrous. My brother is trying to build an entirely conventional building in an area zoned for the proposed building use. It’s kind of on a service road for the highway so it’s not like it’s a national park or nature preserve. The county want him to install a fire hydrant (about $75K) and to generate a report stating that the lighting from his parking lot will not interfere with the observational abilities of the space station (NOT KIDDING) and he is supposed to hire a bird specialist to confirm that any trees he is planning to remove (or plant) will not interfer with any migratory bird flight patterns (NOT KIDDING) So far he has spent 18 months and had to revise his plans 3 times.