I recently moved to California. Before i moved, people asked me “why are you moving there, its so bad?”. Now that I’m here, i understand it less. The state is beautiful. There is so much to do.

I know the cost of living is high, and people think the gun control laws are ridiculous (I actually think they are reasonable, for the most part). There is a guy I work with here that says “the policies are dumb” but can’t give me a solid answer on what is so bad about it.

So, what is it that California does (policy-wise) that people hate so much?

  • takeda@szmer.info
    5·
    1 year ago

    The houseless problem seems extremely poorly managed. I lived in NYC for six years and have visited California a few times. From my experiences, both SF and LA appear to have much larger populations living outdoors (I checked and this is true, 75% of LA’s population vs 6% in NYC, and the cities are comparable in both population and houseless population).

    I would imagine it has most to do that those people world have extremely hard time surviving winter outside in NYC.

    California as a state and population seems to be at least as much bluster as action. I don’t want to detract from some real actions, like car electrification requirements, but for example, prop 65, the “known to the state of California to cause cancer” labels. A) California seems to “know” many things that science does not. B) no one pays any attention to these labels, but they sure cost a lot to produce C) if anything, this will cause people to ignore future warnings for real things or even current ones like on cigarettes.

    The proposition 65 aka The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, actually is much more successful at reducing harmful toxic chemicals and affects other states too. Businesses are encouraged to change formulations so they don’t have to use the label.

    Here’s list of chemicals that require such label: https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/chemicals

    What you saw, likely was businesses trying to fight it, by being to opaque about it, and make it ridiculous (since there’s no penalty for overusing it, and they are doing which results as you pointed out that waters it down) for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65#/media/File%3ADisneyland_Prop_65_Warning_crop.jpg

    Although since enforcement is done via civil lawsuits. If they served food or something that did contain these chemicals, a sign like this won’t be a good defense that they complied and warned their patrons.

    They also trying different ways, like introducing bills on federal level to block it for example https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6022/text

    They are trying also via lawsuits, which meant are filled on behalf of strawman. Many businesses were created just for the purpose of filing prop 65 lawsuits.

    Though probably biggest issue is that the prop 65 is being used for frivolous lawsuits (as anyone can sue for not informing and get a settlement because no one wants a trial). So now AG needs to approve such settlements to reduce it. There were attempts to reform it.

    So yeah frivolous lawsuits are the biggest issue that needs addressing, but other than that the law actually helped reduce exposure to those chemicals not only for Californians but also people from other states.