California Is Becoming Unlivable | Hacker News Reader

California Is Becoming Unlivable

theatlantic.com

25 pointsumeshunni13 comments

I don't disagree, but this was a very narrow, and IMHO naive analysis.

PG&E is screwed because of years of graft and mismanagement. But now also because they are now (thank you) saddled with decades of deferred maintenance (technical debt) and lawsuits (thank you). But they can't raise rates and they can't generate more revenue. So the only path is cutting costs (corners) more. So... guess what isn't getting fixed anytime soon.

The "affordable" housing crisis is not a crisis, it's a bubble. Again (2007). Again (1999). It will, again probably, fix itself but at the great expense of mass foreclosures when it pops.

The fires are as much a constant as they are an effect of mismanagement and inattention to the fact that Californian's love to build sorta very super expensive suburban homes in the middle of tinder dry scrub-waste-land.

Whatever you blame on climate change, this is not it. This is building high-density in the desert with blinders on. And blaming "Climate Change" isn't going to clear the brush. Which BTW, we already pay the state, county and cities large sums of taxes and fees to do. But (see PG&E) they don't. They neglect more and more of the work to pad more and more of the bureaucrat salaries, so they in turn can barely afford to scrape by in the "overpriced" housing markets (and also afford to drive Audis/Teslas/Range Rovers, etc.).

So yes, California is becoming unlivable. And it's due to it having become ungovernable and economically unsustainable.

IMO we need to repeal Prop 14 / 2010, the “Top Two Primaries” Act. I’m not saying Republicans are any better than Democrats. I’d pick neither if there was an actual choice (there isn’t thanks to that law). What I am saying, the current SuperMajority has substituted “collegiality” for critical thought and imposing tough choices, and chooses instead to vote as a bloc, called by the Quarterback of their house. The Capitol is literally full of mostly empty suits. Empty until some agenda to benefit their corporate donors is in play.

Having lived through it, I can say the gridlock of the past was preferable to what we have now.

The bad part about Prop 14, it’s only reversible through another ballot initiative. Without a groundswell of support to get this changed, someone is going to have to raise tens of millions to pay for the signature collection and the media campaign.

  it’s only reversible through another ballot initiative

It was a Constitutional Amendment. It can replaced by another Constitutional Amendment, which can come via the Legislature or via initiative. Whichever process is used, it must be approved by popular vote, but only a simple majority.

It's also reversible by a single vote. Mine - when I leave and take my production and my consumption elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure I've read — quite possibly right here on HN — that with some effort and expense, it's possible to build houses that will survive wildfires, or at least have a pretty good chance of doing so. Seems like something we're going to have to do more of.

Yeah, build actual houses not made of cardboard like in the rest of the civilized world.

Paying 1.2M+ for a palework built with rotting wood in the Bay Area is simply laughable at this point.

The connection they are trying to make seems tenuous.

Fires seem to be exacerbated by decades of poor utility maintenance combined with an abundance of dry and dead brush, warmer temperatures, and high winds.

None of those factors are caused by barriers to housing construction.

The wildfires threaten humans because human settlement sprawls out into the wilderness. The wilderness will always get dry and windy and sometimes sparky, but it doesn’t have to have people living in it. It’s a policy choice to accommodate population there vs. in cities.

California has dry weather, vegetation that can burn. When a strong wind comes, the tiniest fire can spread like crazy. This can happen anywhere in theory; it is just that the annual Santa Ana winds have met up with the dry conditions and the endless fires started by humans and the power company.

All these problems can happen anywhere, bad power company, human started fires. Who knows if new weather patterns will happen that lead to repeatable strong winds for days at a time. The polar vortex seems to be a more recent common phenomena, other weather patterns can change, this can happen anywhere.

It's like NYC in the 1970s.

What were the similarities?

Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded.

Sounds like they've overshoot the ecological limits. Yet not a word on shutting off the immigration firehose.

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