I'm so glad I left California 6 years ago. They are going to regulate and tax their startups and innovators away to other states. This is supremely stupid.
What you describe as "single-party government" is in fact a democracy where one party is more popular than the others. Or are you trying to imply that California's elections are not free and fair? If voters want to hold politicians accountable, they can vote out the incumbent.
I see it as a problem primarily with education and public opinion. Regular citizens routinely support bad policies across the ideological spectrum. Often we have to live with the fact that bad policies are popular; that's democracy in action.
It's also a problem of having no good alternatives. There are historical reasons, going back to the 1960s, why the Democratic party is perceived as the lesser of two evils when it comes to civil liberties.
It doesn't matter how a single party came to run the government, but being the case that it is, there's few checks and balances on the party, so it makes bad decisions it wouldn't have made if it had competition.
Chances are it will eventually be run so poorly that it is no longer unopposed, but the system doesn't guarantee that it is quick.
> Or are you trying to imply that California's elections are not free and fair
Among other issues California is extensively gerrymandered, and recently voted to temporary disable the anti-gerrymandering constutional provisions to allow it to make changes that would have been unlawful under the state constitution and become one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation for congressional districts (in terms of ratio of party seats vs party registrations).
While departing from California deregistering from both health insurance and my drivers licensed triggered voter registration even though I'd specifically indicated that I was no longer a California resident. Vote by mail makes it easy for someone to drive a neighborhood and steal ballots, makes it trivial family members to coerce votes out of each other or simply take their family members votes.
The freeness and fairness of California elections are not difficult to take issue with.
> There are historical reasons, going back to the 1960s, why the Democratic party is perceived as the lesser of two evils when it comes to civil liberties
The democratic party of today is a very different one that the party of the 1960s or even 1990s and is much less well aligned with civil liberties than it used to be, lesser or not depends on what aspects you prioritize but whichever way you slice it today it's a party which is generally opposed to civil liberties including the most critical of them: freedom of expression.
> Often we have to live with the fact that bad policies are popular; that's democracy in action.
The US was constructed as a democratic republic specifically to avoid the tyrany of majority rule.
> If voters want to hold politicians accountable, they can vote out the incumbent.
Or-- more effectively-- move to a state with more competent policies.
You don't follow politics in CA very closely if you think that. The way it works in CA is that the party makes sure that only 1 candidate runs in the Dem primary. Then they gerrymander the districts to make sure that they know which party will win in which district. The result of this is that the party insiders choose the politicians, not the voters.
PS Nobody in their right mind thinks the Dems support civil liberties. You just wish that was true and/or live in a bubble.
According to the Princeton Gerrymandering project, California's districts are better than average, with some bias. You can see a map of the entire U.S. on their front page.
Before the recent wave of gerrymandering started by Texas, California had an independent, non-partisan redistricting committee.
Could you provide a source for the claim that before 2025, there was significant gerrymandering in California?
As I said about civil liberties, there is a perception that Democrats are the lesser of two evils, given the realignment of the parties around segregation and civil rights in the 1960s. The Dixiecrats who were in favor of segregation left the Democratic party, while Republicans who favored racial integration joined the Democratic party. Then the Republican presidential campaigns of Goldwater, Nixon, and Regan shifted the party line to appeal more to the former Dixiecrats in the South. I'm agnostic about which party is better on civil liberties in 2025; I'd be interested in any research on the topic.
I get to carry and make sure that I’m not a useless decoration if I or my family is ever in trouble because of someone that shouldn’t be in general population.
Need :) Ya, I see how you sell it to yourself as a negative.
I prefer a working police force, fewer rEsPoNsIbLe gUn oWnErs, and not to increase my, or my family’s, chances of dying by firearm, but I guess we all need to feel we are worth it, in one way or another - damned be the costs.
No it’s not. Xi has power as absolute as Newsom and manages just fine. When your country has large, but solvable problems, absolute power works great for quelling unrest by fixing problems quickly and efficiently. Newsom is just generationally incompetent.
The issue is that you don't know what free actually means. You rely on a lot of government support for your perceived notion of freedom, its just invisible to you because its never been taken away. And if you ever get to experience a life where its been taken away, you sure as shit will be in favor of more authoritarian government.
The Human Rights Index for the United States dropped from 0.93 to 0.83 in 2025, which is concerning. Meanwhile, China scores 0.18, which is significantly worse. For comparison, countries that score higher than China include Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.
Globally, China is 6th percentile on the Human Rights Index. The United States is 65th percentile. That puts the U.S. well below most developed countries, but it's nowhere close to "just as bad."
I would expect China limiting the movement of their rural populations from moving into cities might be a big factor.
Also it seems to end in 2025 before Iran started killing protesters in mass. Glancing around the index in question is very focused on civil liberties vs financial and life attainment in others.
Iran was not a haven of freedom before 2025. Women could get stoned for not wearing a burqa or attending men’s volleyball matches. Scoring Iran higher than China at any point in the past couple decades is ridiculous.
- The detention of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, forced labor, and mass surveillance in Xinjiang. The destruction of Tibetan society and culture. The only comparable violation of human rights on this scale in the other countries is potentially Russia's war in Ukraine.
- China does not have competitive elections or an independent judiciary. The other countries do have these institutions to some extent, though deeply flawed and authoritarian.
- There is no freedom of religion in China or Iran. Russia persecutes some religious minorities, but tolerates different religions. Venezuela has constitutional protections for freedom of religion.
- There is no freedom of association in China. Independent trade unions, NGOs, and professional organizations are heavily suppressed and censored. These exist to a greater extent in the other countries.
- There is no freedom of speech in China. Political dissent is forbidden. All major media outlets are state-owned. Large parts of the internet are censored. Private conversations are monitored proactively. The other countries persecute speech, but in a less comprehensive, more retroactive way.
Every argument against California can be easily disproven by the fact that people aren't moving out in droves like everyone says, and house prices are still very high because people want to live there.
Covid should have dropper the house prices drastically in Cali since people had the option to do remote work in a cheaper cost of living state, but all it did was just move the rate negative for like one year - everyone who couldn't afford it was able to get out, only to be replaced by people who can afford to live there.
Social Media, and specifically Facebook / Meta, will go down in history as one of the worst developments in technology in the 21st century. As Frances Haugen stated in her testimony, Mark Zuckberg needs to be removed from the helm at Meta.
Radio did plenty of harm as well (especially post 1987). Rush Limbaugh had a peak audience of 20-30 million listeners a week in the 90s. The current state of politics might've been unpreventable, at least in the US.
It's unfortunate what happened to DB over the years. I last rode a DB fast train in 2018. We just stopped in the middle of a field for no announced reason for 70 minutes. I missed my international flight home as a result. I haven't rode the DB since, and hear it has only gotten worse.
I was on a lovely fast smooth ICE Sprinter to Berlin last week. All was going well until they announced that the train would terminate at Erfurt (roughly half way) because… who knows?!
These days, a DB journey that doesn’t involve some sort of disruption is the outlier.
I am a fan of the fish cursor. We should make the internet quirky again. This is like a modern take on Geocities websites, and they should do things like fish cursors now while they still can before a board of VCs comes in and makes them remove the fish cursor.
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