[api]

I realized after a while of living there that California is run as a real estate cartel. Land owners who bought when the state was cheap own it, and everyone who bought later is beholden and locked in with golden handcuffs to the high price environment they created.

I call it a cartel because the scarcity is 100% a policy choice. Density is not high, public transit is awful, and there is a ton of land left to develop on. Real estate in California is like diamonds from DeBeers.

If you aren't rich, don't stay there. All your surplus will go to landlords. If you buy at these high prices >50% of your income will go to servicing the mortgage and if the property market there ever does crash you'll be ruined. You’ve basically bought into a cartel.

I'd say for the Bay Area it's worthwhile to go to build out your career but if you aren't making at least $350k/year by age 35 leave.

Personally I’m glad I left because I loathe this property cartel and what it does to people and wouldn’t want to put my money into it.

IMHO the state has this totally fake reputation as a liberal “woke” place when in reality it’s a landlords kingdom. Texas is more progressive than California because a working class person can afford a home.

[nostrademons]

It's interesting to trace the impact that Prop 13 has had on further policy choices and subsequent culture.

Prop 13 caps property taxes at 1% and also limits the increase in assessed value to 2%/year. In a region where housing prices appreciate by ~7%/year and that filters down into the basic cost of living for most municipal workers, this makes it impossible for local municipalities to balance their budgets without a steady influx of new buyers. The only way they can bring their tax basis up is to ensure that new homeowners buy in at ever-increasing prices, so that the tax basis can be reassessed upwards on purchase and the new homeowners can subsidize old homeowners who are paying well below market rates on taxes. Local municipalities in turn control planning and zoning, and so they pass zoning codes and approve projects on the basis of what will increase assessed values and hence tax revenue the most. This further exacerbates the housing shortage, raising inflation and increasing the need for ever-increasing home values even more.

Basically CA voters enshrined a pyramid scheme into the state constitution in 1978, and it's filtered down into every aspect of the state's economy by now.

[shostack]

If you consider Texas more liberal than California purely on the basis of home affordability it is clear you're not interested in making a serious point.

[api]

My point is that I see deep hypocrisy in a society that prices housing out of reach of anyone below upper middle class while pretending to be liberal and progressive.

I don’t consider Texas liberal but at least you can have a home without earning $200k or above or having a liquidity event.

My personal opinion is that any good done by liberal policies in California is negated by housing.

[toomuchtodo]

Chicago and the western suburbs in Northern Illinois would’ve been a better example than Texas imho.

[screenobobeano]

Sounds like you haven’t met the Texas cartel yet! They’re nice, they are sorry about the fact that you’re going to have share a police force with 3 other districts, but they promise you can get electricity all year round this year.

[readyman]

>California is run as a real estate cartel

Literally the political power that got Tesla off the ground (with fed funding) to save real estate prices in the San Bernadino Valley, LA, etc.

[shuckles]

Tesla's primary R&D and manufacturing operations are in the San Francisco Bay Area. How does that impact land values in Southern California?

[GaryNumanVevo]

Read up on the history of California's Zero-Emission Vehicle credits, Tesla regularly makes revenue in the hundreds of millions by selling these credits to other auto manufacturers. https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/teslas-...

These credits were originally thought up to incentivize EVs because the smog in LA was near apocalyptic level.

[shuckles]

Smog in LA peaked decades before EV credits were thought up.

[readyman]

That's irrelevant. EVs are necessary to preserve land values in Socal, which is why Cali real estate funded Cali politicians to use all of their weight to win fed funding for the Tesla project in the first place.

Everybody knows (whether they admit it or not) that EVs don't help with global warming. They merely displace polution from places like the San Bernadino Valley and Los Angeles, which is all they were meant to do, for the purpose of preserving real estate values. And it's working.

[shuckles]

So your theory is that China is investing unprecedented amounts into EV production to improve air quality in coastal California thereby propping up land values? Wouldn't it be cheaper to pass permit reform so that LA and SF metro areas could just build mass transit?

[readyman]

>So your theory is that China is investing unprecedented amounts into EV production to improve air quality in coastal California thereby propping up land values?

China has the necessary political organization and willpower to meaningfully invest in nuclear energy, making EVs an environmental benefit. That does not apply to the US.

>Wouldn't it be cheaper to pass permit reform so that LA and SF metro areas could just build mass transit?

No. Better public transit could work in SF but SF isn't the problem. LA is the problem because it's surrounded by mountains on most sides that trap the pollution, and LA city planning makes public transit a nightmare no matter how you build it. You can't plan a city around interstates then bolt on public transit later.

[smcin]

> You can't plan a city [LA] around interstates then bolt on public transit later.

LA used to have a perfectly functioning public transport network, then in the 1900s-1950s it was systematically dismantled by holding companies fronting for car companies buying up rights-of-way and depots.

> China has the necessary political organization and willpower to meaningfully invest in nuclear energy, making EVs an environmental benefit. That does not apply to the US.

Better to restate your criticism of EVs not being environmental as "[claim:] EVs are only a net plus for the environment if they don't just relocate poullution to electricity generating plants, but use lower-carbon-emission generation like nuclear". There are still environmental benefits to moving smog out of/downwind of Los Angeles County (pop 9.7m) to its neighbors [0].

Building new nuclear plants (or even extending the life of the last existing one) in California is for decades already a political hot potato, it will only get approval when the grid is repeatedly straining at its limits in peak summer or winter. So that's a political question, not an engineering one.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Cali...

[seanmcdirmid]

> Everybody knows (whether they admit it or not) that EVs don't help with global warming.

That isn’t true: this is very a popular crank theory right now, but it’s not a popular opinion in mainstream science or among the public at large.

[readyman]

It's absolutely true. The detriment of manifesting the necessary new and very nasty manufacturing processes make it a done deal, especially compared to simply building trains, which is admittedly not simple in the US due to the cruel and unusual political economic situations. Nevertheless, all of this is true.

[seanmcdirmid]

I get it, it’s the most important theory of crank science today. But it makes assumptions like people buying EVs and incinerating their existing ICE cars, everyone getting electricity from small island diesel generators or the dirtiest coal plants, etc…

China is doing all of the above, BTW and it’s working well for them. You build out HSR, local transit, and EV capabilities out all at the same time. It will work out well for them.

[api]

Total nonsense. An EV running on coal emits less CO2 per mile than an average efficiency gas car, and that’s the worst case. Almost nobody gets all their power from coal. California can be >50% solar during the day.

Transit is better but there is zero chance of replacing all cars with transit. Car centric development is deeply entrenched nationwide not just in SoCal.