[rb2k_]

> Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandiose and not good for society

Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Governor of California. At least as far as the 'what makes him qualified' thing goes, apparently that's not a real concern for voters :)

[mc32]

Let's not forget Grey Davis' being a politician didn't help California against rolling brownouts and massive deficits in the 2000s.

[CalChris]

> Let's not forget Grey Davis' being a politician didn't help California against rolling brownouts and massive deficits in the 2000s.

The correct spelling is Gray Davis [1].

The rolling brownouts were caused by Enron [2] who was enabled by legislation (AB 1890) that his predecessor Pete Wilson signed in 1996 [3]. People went to jail for that. [4]

There were no massive deficits under Davis. When the tech bubble burst in 2001, there was a revenue decline but that's about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Davis

[2] https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/wec/enron...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

[mc32]

Arianna Huffington has a different take on the issue. Others do as well. Davis blames federal regulation while at the sane time has retrospectively apologized for being slow to act as the crisis began.

[CalChris]

No, Davis doesn't blame Federal regulation because it wasn't Federal regulation that caused the California energy crisis. The crisis was caused by state de-regulation. That de-regulation (AB 1890) was engineered and signed by Governor Pete Wilson.

  Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed
  market design and inconsistent rules made possible 
  significant market manipulation as delineated in final
  investigation report. Without underlying market
  dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market
  would not be successful.

This wasn't on Davis; this was on Wilson and Enron. As for Arianna Huffington, she ran as an independent against Davis is the recall election engineered by Darrell Issa. She'd been a conservative commentator (supporting Newt Gingrich) before she and Andrew Breitbart launched HuffPo.

Et cetera.

[mc32]

Still Pete or Gray, their experience in politics did not prepare them for the events that followed. All major players have some blame, Pete, Gray and Enron. Enron was greedy and Pete and Gray, as evidenced by their political careers, didn't handle the sitch well in the eyes of the public.

[CalChris]

As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, I'm greedy, quite greedy. But Enron wasn't just greedy, it was a criminal organization. As such, people went to jail and it went out of business. The job losses at Enron were 4000 but they were 85,000 at Arthur Anderson, its accounting firm.

Wilson enabled this although to be fair, he didn't foresee it. The CA energy crisis was the result of mid-90s neoliberal hubris. Like supply side voodoo economics, its lessons get quickly forgotten. Hubris is like that.

[Applejinx]

Yeah, he was powerless against the Uber of its day: Enron.

I'm not sure the fault there was Grey Davis's. Seems there was skulduggery afoot (it's actually a really interesting story, and seemingly a perennial one)