The Idiocracy that Is California Politics

0:00the ideocracy that is California politics by William L. Anderson. After having lived in California the past four years, I can attest to the near insanity of progressive politics in this state. Yet, California's very progressive governor, Gavin Newsom, is considered a front runner for the Democratic Party's nomination for precedent in 2028. Given how the Trump administration has helped to tank the economy through its tariffs, inflation, and outright regime uncertainty, there is a real possibility that Newsom can make California governance a reality for the entire country. In other words, politically speaking, there seems to be no ceiling for the damage that progressive politicians in California can do with no objections from their constituents.

1:01Thanks to the state's governance, the cost of living here is well above the national average, even though there is no reason as to why that should be the case. The highly abstract worldview from which progressives draw their governing ethos continues to claim victims, but Democrats, who make up the overwhelming voter block in the state, do not care about the damage being done, since they can always blame Republicans, and capitalism just like Big Brother blamed Goldstein. The latest legislative caper is a wealth tax on the state's 200 or so billionaires that is so onerous that should voters approve it in November of this year, will drive businesses, and their owners out of the state altogether. However, California's mostly Democratic voters have signaled they are more than willing to approve the tax,

2:05even though they know it will cause economic harm. While I wrote the following piece more than four years ago, it still holds true, and there is no chance that the political and legislative balances in the state will change, except for moving further to the left. My colleague from the philosophy department at my former employer, Frostberg State University, was becoming increasingly angry. He was trying to be polite, but it was clear that he was raging inside. After a few minutes, he smiled a very strange smile and excused himself. Our conversation was about California, or to be more specific, California governance. As readers can imagine, he was bullish on how the Democratic Party governs the state, California being perhaps the most one party state in the USA. Every statewide election

3:08has gone to a Democrat in the last decade, and Democrats have a super majority in the state legislature, which means that there is no meaningful Republican opposition, and whatever the Democrats want they get. Not surprisingly, California governance is squarely progressive. The unions representing government employees effectively run the legislature, and as a result, pay benefits and pensions. For those workers, increasingly are straining the state budgets. Stephen Greenhut, a libertarian journalist based in California, has documented the unsustainable growth of government in that state for nearly two decades. Yet, the state continues to march politically and economically in the progressive direction, as though the laws of economics didn't

4:09matter. For the most part, I have observed progressive California from far away, but my life took a different turn a few years ago, and the state is becoming my new home. I married a retired nurse from Sacramento in 2018, and because of health issues with her adult daughter, she has to remain in that city, something not in our original plans. Because my school's campus either was closed or severely restricted during the COVID-19 lockdowns, I spent most of the 2020 working for my wife's home. Living and working in California has offered me the opportunity to observe California progressivism up close, and it has been an interesting experience. Yes, the state where I officially reside, Maryland is famously one party and progressive, but the progressivism of California

5:16makes Maryland's legislature look almost red state by comparison and surreal in some ways. For example, the California legislature and its progressive wisdom effectively decriminalize theft as long as thieves take less than $950 worth of merchandise, officially reducing such theft to a misdemeanor, but in effect making it legal, since progressive California prosecutors don't like to be bothered by petty criminals. In practice, that means consumer goods are much harder to find in California stores than one might experience elsewhere. For me, the difference was quite revealing, as I recently returned to Maryland after spending close to nine months in Sacramento. When I go to the Walmart near my wife's home, I find many things openly are on display in Maryland

6:19are behind locked cases in California. Furthermore, California's draconian labor laws mean Walmart has fewer employees, so if I wish to purchase something I easily could buy in Maryland, I have to wait for a long time, and often I just walk away because no one is available to open the glass case. Yet even with these provisions, shoplifting losses for California retailers are enormous, and the state's pro theft laws have encouraged organized grab and run rings. My progressive colleagues, like my philosophy professor friend, see no problem with such developments. To them, the real thieves are the capitalists, the retailers like Walmart, which refuse to pay living wages to their employees, and according to Senator Bernie Sanders, the capitalists have been

7:23looting Americans for years. Thus the wave of theft in that state is a positive development according to progressives. I can go on, but it isn't difficult to expose the vast array of sins, economic, and otherwise committed by the California political classes, and I liken this kind of punditry to swinging a bat in a room full of piñatas. One simply cannot miss. Stephen Greenhut has been exposing California's follies for years. However, perhaps the best recent commentary I have read on the progressive mentality that governs the state comes from blogger Mike Salana, who defles skewers progressive politicians from the golden state who now accuse the tech industry of having extracted wealth from California, before leaving for the greener pastures of lower tax havens such as Texas and Florida. Salana's rip is worth a read if for

8:29no other reason, then that he exposes the cluelessness of progressive politicians and pundits, and one can be assured that progressive politicians will fit Talleyrand's description of the bourbons. They had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing. Yet Salana also is puzzled as to why Bay Area politicians who fail spectacularly also win landslide elections. Nothing in San Francisco can be set on a path to slow correction, until at least six of the 11 district board seats, along with the mayorship belonged to sane, goal-oriented leaders, cognizant of our city's many problems, and single-mindedly focused on solving them. The politicians will likewise need to be extremely well-funded. This is to say we need a political class funded by a political machine,

9:29neither of which currently exists. Even were both the class and the funding apparatus to rapidly emerge, and even were the new political coalition to win an undefeated string of miracle elections, it would take four years to seize meaningful political power from the resident psychotics in charge, who, as per the last election, appear to be very popular among close to 90% of voters, a curiosity for another wire. This is to say nothing of the broader Bay Area political toxicity, nor the state political dynamics, which are poised to exacerbate every one of our problems. It is a multi-front political catastrophe. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which California politicians, and especially Governor Gavin Newsom, mismanaged spectacularly, California voters overwhelmingly chose

10:34the progressive status quo. While writers go on and on about the mind-boggling politics of California, the voters continue to send the left-wing progressives into office at all levels of government. While some might believe that education is the key to the so-called self-governance of democracy, voters in California clearly are choosing their candidates for reasons other than demonstrating wisdom in office. Indeed, why voters insist on putting the worst on top is perhaps the most intriguing question one asks about California politics. Typical wisdom says that voters vote for their pocketbooks, but the progressives whom the lower-income voters overwhelmingly choose to elect are responsible for California having the nation's highest poverty rates. Furthermore, for all the

11:40anti-wealth rhetoric that California's progressive candidates spew out, the very poor and the very rich voters in California tend to choose and support the same candidates, and the Democratic Party is the party of choice of the state's large number of billionaires. There is little or nothing that the current progressive state government has done that promotes the promotion of real wealth in California, yet even as state authorities actively destroy economic opportunities, the voters respond by demanding more the same. That would seem to be a mystery, but maybe not. Let me explain. In the past few years, wildfires have ravaged huge tracks of mostly public land in California, and in much of the West, although California has been hit the hardest, there are many reasons for the fires. The most obvious being that most of California

12:48receives little rainfall and many fires occur in mountainous terrain, where it is difficult to fight them. But there is much more, and most of it has to do with progressive policies. Even the George Soros-funded pro-publica recognizes the role of fire suppression based land management practices in making the fires worse. The pattern is a form of insanity. We keep doing overzealous fire suppression across California landscapes, where the fire poses little risk to people and structures, as a result, wildland fuels keep building up. At the same time, the climate grows hotter and drier, then boom, the inevitable. The wind blows down a power line or lightning strikes dry grass in an inferno ensues. This week we've seen both the second

13:48and third largest fires in California history. The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic. Timingles be said. There's only one solution. The one we know yet still avoid. We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load. Yet the progressivist religion that defines the Democratic Party in California cannot acknowledge that the leave nature alone policies could have anything to do with the scope and intensity of the wildfires. Instead, the powers that be have decided that climate change and only climate change is responsible. And the way to deal with the problem is to impose draconian rules that make life difficult for most people living there, from outlawing new natural gas residential hookups to its infamous road diets imposed to discourage people from driving cars.

14:56Despite the fact that California politicians, such as Governor Gavin Newsom, claim that these policies will significantly reduce global temperatures and make wildfires less intense, the reality is quite different as California accounts for less than one percent of so-called greenhouse gases in the world. Perhaps the most symbolic action by California's government of progressive arrogance is the continued development of the bullet train and ambitious to be charitable, project to build high-speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Under urging from then-governor Jerry Brown, voters in the Golden State in 2008 agreed to permit a bond issue to begin funding what Brown claimed would require a maximum of $33 billion dollars. California's mountainous terrain forced design and route changes,

16:02turning the LASF dream into a train that would run between Bakersfield and Merced two cities in the flat central valley. To make matters even worse, passenger rail service via M-track already exists in the valley, and even if everything were to go to plan, a heroic assumption one might add, the bullet train would save only 45 minutes in travel from the existing route. As the proposed length of the bullet train becomes shorter, the cost continued to skyrocket. The original $33 billion estimate now has ballooned to more than $100 billion dollars if the project even is completed, yet the project continues to live. Last year I spoke to a former co-worker of my wife who enthusiastically supports the rail project.

17:02When I asked her about the cost and the fact that there really is no demand for this service, her response was instructive, but we need trains. Never mind that this is a boondoggle that dwarfs almost anything else we know as government waste. Never mind that California taxpayers are being forced to fund a massive wealth transfer to politically connected contractors in which there are all costs and no benefits. The state needs trains. My faculty colleague also became angry at my panning the California bullet train, and I have wondered why progressives are so defensive about this project. There is no doubt that it is a huge waste of money and that the passenger mile costs are well above anything else that exists in public transportation, but that doesn't seem to matter. One would think that good government progressives would see the disconnect here.

18:09One possible explanation comes from Murray Rothbard, who recognized that progressives ultimately are at war with nature. While Rothbard was writing about egalitarianism, nonetheless one can argue that progressive policies are aimed at producing very different outcomes than what would happen if people were free to make their own choices, and especially choices with their own money. Because of the rise of the tech industry, California has seen an increase in wealth that probably is unprecedented in the history of this country and maybe the world. Not surprisingly, the state's tax take has massively increased in the past two decades, where the percentage of income tax revenues rising dramatically, as tech entrepreneurship has created a new billionaire class. While one can think of these new

19:12billionaires as a new class of wealthy, in many ways their outlooks, at least after they become wealthy, often reflect the outlooks of the wave of entrepreneurs, such as Andrew Carnegie, who developed new technologies, put them to economic use, created vast amounts of wealth, and then created the foundations that ultimately would be governed by a wealth-destroying philosophy of progressivism. In part, the wealth created permits foundation financed visionaries to demand that resources be directed in a different way, than would be done in a market economy, with serve of the people, and make a difference as mattress. We see that time and again in California, where tax-engorged visionary progressive politicians seize wealth, created by private enterprise, in order to pursue their own causes,

20:17such as environmentalism. Of course, as we already have pointed out, progressive policies tend to make the original problems worse, not only have progressives made mass wildfires more likely, but they also have been behind the rise in homelessness in California. In the late 1970s, the San Francisco City Government instituted rent controls, not surprisingly, housing shortages followed, and the real price of housing skyrocketed. As shortages became worse, progressive politicians doubled down on the controls. Today, more than 5,000 people live on the streets in San Francisco, and the government bound by its own progressive ideals, is helpless to do anything but hand out money and defend its policies, and this in the city with the most billionaires per capita in the world.

21:21There are three reasons why California governance will not change even as it heads toward a fiscal cliff. First and most important, progressive ideology is intractable and does not yield to the laws of economics. Progressive politicians are fetted in the mainstream media, and in California's left-wing education institutions, and voters don't seem to want any alternatives. After all, California needs trains. Politicians who raise questions as to this model of governance can expect to be demonized in the media, and will face violent protests if they show up in public venues, and especially on college campuses. The second reason is that California voters are drawn to progressive Democrats, no matter what disasters these politicians might inflict.

22:22The highly educated voters do not support progressive Democrats just on economic issues, but also on the highly contentious social issues, and with the 2020 revolt of the rich dominating Democratic Party politics at the present, it is doubtful that this current wave of progressive favoring voters will change direction. Democrats also have the immigrant vote in their back pockets, and California, seen a wave of immigrants, help turn it into a one-party state. For now, the numbers are just overwhelming, and we can expect California to move even further to the left as its housing and poverty problems become worse, and Democrats successfully convince voters that free markets are cause. The third reason things won't change in California is that

23:24progressive government creates its own sets of monopoly rents that are distributed to politically connected interest groups. In the case of the Golden State, state employee and municipal labor unions are by far the most powerful political entity, and they control vast blocks of voters. Their power was recently demonstrated by their support of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the state, during which public employees continued to draw full pay even as the lockdown policies ravaged the state's tax base. Should one doubt the power of California's government employee unions witnessed the success of what was called AB-5, the law that almost killed the gig industries in the state, putting thousands of freelance writers and musicians out of work,

24:25written by the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, as a means of ending the uber and lift right-chair services and protect unionized taxi and public transportation workers, the fallout was so bad that even the legislature had to back off some of the restrictions. Voters did the rest last November when they beat back most of the most onerous provisions of the law. One doubts that the musicians and writers that lost their jobs changed their progressive voting patterns in the most recent election, such as the staying power of progressive ideology. If one believes that perhaps the wave of progressive voters will become converted to a free minds and free markets approach, the left libertarian position,

25:28the experience of New York City should be instructive. In 1975, the economy was in recession, businesses were fleeing the city's onerous tax rates, and anti-business climate, and city officials were fraudulently selling capital bonds to pay for previously issued capital bonds. William E. Simon, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in 1975, laid out the entire scenario in his blockbuster A Time for Truth. New York's problem was obvious, except in the minds of progressives. Where most of us would understand that having unions running away with budgets while suppressing productive, private enterprises is a losing proposition, progressive CA nefarious capitalist plot that New York City had a relatively brief renaissance

26:30in large part because of the deregulation of banking and finance, which was begun by President Jimmy Carter, plays no role in progressive thinking at all. Unlike New York City, California does not have an economic ace in its pocket. Even though much of the tech industry is prospered during the state's draconian pandemic shutdowns, the state government, not to mention cities and counties, is facing the worst financial crisis perhaps in its history. Not surprisingly, the progressive response is to increase incendiary rhetoric toward wealth creators and demand even higher taxes and more business regulations. Progressivism is a utopian philosophy of governance that will never find nor create its utopia. If California voters and

27:33politicians do not understand the current crisis and how it came about, they probably never will understand. Instead, we will see the continuous march to tradition as California politicians refuse to acknowledge that they are killing the geese, laying the golden eggs. For more content like this, visit mises.org.