Regulation problem, too much red tape in many respects, pronounced housing shortages (intersecting a bit with over-regulation), but the biggest source of its problems - too many people. A little emigration out of CA isn’t a bad thing for anyone.

Obviously many use Texas as the great red counterpoint to blue CA. Texas has problems of its own, accentuated by its power generation disaster several years ago. Simpletons like TommyK want to boil it all down to red vs blue. TX’s deregulation and “energy nationalism”, as it were, caused a disaster. It in essence seceded from the national grid and got badly burned.

Interesting, if a bit of a threadjack - TX rails against all things ESG, practically making it a crime to invest based on carbon concerns. Yet, ironically, Texas is leading the nation in the green transformation. It has a lot of wind and a lot of sun. Politics is taking a back seat to economic opportunity. Some of the reddest, ruralist parts of Texas are green energy’s biggest fans, because it pays.

But, also ironically - the private sector would have had a much tougher time implementing green energy on that scale in CA - much more red tape to navigate. Ironically yet again - it was the renewable part of Texas’ freezing, isolated grid which held up in its crisis. The fossil fuel part fell down.




[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 12/31/2023 09:59AM]