Geography in history has subjected the state to the same pressures and influences. actual. Islands So insular towering Mountains separate the bulk of the state from its neighbors, but America's largest desert places hundreds of miles of harsh, sparsely populated landscape between it and the more populated states farther east. Conversely, the largest, richest and most influential cities in California all sit on the coast.

San Diego Los Angeles and San Francisco Granted statehood in 1850, California began its interaction with the rest of the nation by ocean. It did not border any other state. the next nearest was Texas. The interior was considered hostile dangerous Wilderness but also just fundamentally lacked roads so steamships would leave from the East Coast snake through the Caribbean and drop off passengers in Panama.

The uninitiated might assume that San Francisco and Silicon Valley are more or less one in the same. sure. San Francisco has a big Tech scene, and the major headquarters are distributed across the towns and cities to the south of it. Google is in Mountain View Apple is in Cupertino Netflix is in Los Gatos What this means is that these Titans of tech, some of the largest companies in the world are headquartered in some rather small cities Eighty two thousand, sixty thousand, and thirty four thousand residents, respectively.

Therefore, they're regulated by tiny, hyper-competitive local governments. In fact, San Francisco the city you know 26 is not even the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area San Jose has 983 000 residents to San Francisco's 815 000 because the entire area is just subdivided into a huge number of smaller cities and towns, which is a bit of a trend. Los Angeles County Encompassing most, but not even all of the metro area is composed of 88 different cities plus unincorporated areas across both of the state's largest urban. Look at that smog.

Oh, you're puffing the cancer, bro, you're puffing the Cancer Daily Look at this cancer. It's the largest urbanized Solutions Like one city operates as dozens, even hundreds, leaving few comprehensive, overarching bodies to align. Incentives zoomed in considering the odd relationship and power dynamics of neighboring communities, or zoomed out considering the state's historical and contemporary isolation. California's as unique a state, there is, uniqueness has brought benefits, but uniqueness has also created unique problems and bizarre, sometimes convoluted means of solving them.

Take homelessness. Yeah, a real the hot button. highly visible issue with complicated causes and largely theoretical. Solutions Is this I'm not kidding.

We pass the next video, you don't listen and bro, just like a kitty goes like huh, these guys are they live there and I'm like Oh my bro, um, conversations over it to spiral out of scale. A quick look at the statistics, however Jesus One thing unmistakably clear: California's homelessness you didn't know is uniquely bad. Of the 582 462 people experiencing homelessness, Nationwide In 2022, 171, 521 were in California. That's nearly 30 percent of the nation's total.

Or for comparison, some 97 000 more than New York and some 150 000 more than Florida. The states with that is homeless populations. But California is the most popular state in the nation, so this should be considered at a per resonance rate. And here too, California outpaces the rest with 44 people experiencing homelessness for ten thousand more trouble.

Well, I mean there's a pretty close, like pretend thousand more Troubling. Still, despite the highest total and the highest rates, the problems only getting worse from 2020 to 2022, while 23 States saw decreases in their homeless population. California So it's a big bad and worsening problem, and while it's at the top of meeting agendas from small City Halls all the way to Sacramento, it doesn't look like it'll be fixed anytime soon. Well, no state has figured out how to solve homelessness.

It is generally understood that providing stable shelters and Housing Programs is associated with lowering numbers. It tracks then that California has comparatively little in the way of shelter beds, as the state has instead opted to prioritize permanent housing projects which have proved expensive and incredibly slow to build. This has left more and more else in 2022. two-thirds Why does it slow to build? If people want to make a make a mansion that like it spawns in, they want to make something nice and it takes forever to build.

I'll get it. California's homeless were considered unsheltered, living out of tents, cars Campers or on the streets far from shelters or services. That could potentially turn things around. Now the state government has watched this problem grow and spread and try to think of solutions while throwing Millions upon millions of dollars at it.

Yet, the state has the largest most visible homeless problem in our nation, and as little in the way of solutions or even stop gaps in places. Much of this is the function of a simple reality that the state government has surprisingly little control over. It's really hard to build in California The difficulty in finding housing extends to everyone. here.

The state is in the middle of a housing crisis, but this isn't because of a faltering economy or meager weight. Yes, but this isn't. Well, they're building man like this that is so goofy dude. look how goofy that is because of a faltering economy or meager wages.

California year in year out drinks is one of the highest average income states in the nation. And yet in one analysis of 20 chat, what does Connecticut do? What is it? Do they just sell cocaine? bro 70? This is her balling out. and I'm I'm guessing that because of life isn't even that much either. Messages be chilling.

Obviously, all that bricks adjusted for cost of living, it plummets to 48. it's all old. Stones It's the Sky High Cost of Living that puts so many so perilous one medical emergency. Bizarrely, the explanation could be that the state's economy is too strong for its own good.

Take this simple metric: the jobs Housing issue, which considers how many jobs are created in relation to how many units of housing are added to a given area for local employment to remain healthy without adding to congestion, traffic or displacing long-time residents. the U.S EPA considers a ratio ranging from 0.75 to 1.5 as healthy for an urban area. In the last decade, popular cities clearly on the rise have begun to push the upper reaches of this range. Phoenix's metro area sits at 1.34 Seattle's 1.43 Austin's 1.47 and Denver's 1.73 But California has blown the roof off this range.

The LA Long Beach Anaheim Metro topped two Riverside San Bernardino Ontario has reached 2.72 and the San Jose Sunnyvale Santa Clara ratio. What new jobs per unit of housing hit a truly staggering 3.19 Three jobs per house. Unrelenting economy only accounts for the numerator. here: the jobs.

The denominator is just as responsible for the state's housing crisis, but this is the outcome of a concept a bit more nebulous. The California Dream Of all the floating and Nightmare assumptions as to what life in California is supposed to look like, the long sunny days and pleasant temperatures along with a plethora of good jobs, beaches, and open space, it's the single family home with a lawn and perhaps a pool that's proved the most important, the most concrete, and currently the most controversial. And it's this core tenet that's causing such massive problems. Californians after all, desperately want to keep what they were sold on and they're willing to fight for it.

Take Atherton a small Silicon Valley Town just minutes away from Stanford in 2022 to keep up with State mandates on housing requirements. the City council began the process of rezoning one single-family lot to build an apartment building. The project was quickly axed. It wasn't a lack of money or a lack of Municipal will.

It was asked because the city's most influential powerful Executives and even basketball player Steph Curry banded together and pressured the city out of it. To them, the project would hurt their property values, cut off their views, change the character of the community, and create more traffic. So, the project and its 16 units of desperately needed housing died on the vine and four city planners back to the drawing board. Well, the characters might not be as high profile as those in Atherton.

This happens all the time, all over the states. Here, the city got these facts. There's roughly five uneducated people, almost 16 million homes left vacant. Rich.

I Mean that's just that's just a Fabrics of society problem. You're not gonna decided to designate itself as a mountain lion Sanctuary which was odd, but conveniently allowed it to forego new Housing Development Here in 2019, construction on a 154 bed shelter broke ground only for Venice Beach to sue the city of Los Angeles to Halt construction here. residents of San Francisco's Embarcadero area did the same. Yeah if you if you live here the minute you bought that house to be honest, we live here.

our bricked that is on the same neighborhood and across the larger Bay Area Those who want California to stay the same low density California of old have created their their own organizations, discussions and committees better. Cupertino and Palo Alto for sensible zoning to name a few. This isn't just a fringe, more and more anti-density proponents are winning local elections. All of this is after all and you would think the people that live next to the beach right or out down their balcony and during the sunlight of people say the location Okay dude yo yo.

one with 100 sandals on the beach foreign not one person yeah a a two two it's old, It's not well innovated it looks like and three it's disgusting. It's full of salt and and and sand from the wind and it looks disgusting. That is trash. Nobody nobody anything.

There's the location. Nah, just stop it. They they they they they they say this video people buy, they put the price. It's disgusting.

Interesting problem. over to the next. Clearly a constituency will opt for that over something that could damage their property values. The state has the money and the interest in solving its problems with homelessness and housing shortages, but can only do so much when powerful local governments resist even the most minor of zoning changes and the smallest of housing projects.

So, unexceptional problems have grown into the exceptions and is the unexceptional solution of Simply Building more housing gets rejected. The state legislator turns to this spectacular launching projects to systematically convert motels into housing units, backing anti-nimby laws and filing lawsuits against its owners. Absurd. Max is confined to the issue of house.

No, There are, of course, fires. There's also too much water in some places and too little in others. There's spats about who deserves Colorado River Water at the state level, and at the local level, there's traffic, There's aging infrastructure, there's companies leaving the state, and middle class workers following them. There's a lot of bickering, and a lot to bicker about clearly and systematically.

They aren't getting something seems fundamentally wrong with the states, so maybe it needs a fundamental solution. California should just be a country. It sounds ludicrous, right? Of course. California can't become a country.

It would never happen. Congress would never allow it, right? Perhaps the point worth focusing on is how much less ludicrous it sounds when considering the arguments. After all, California wouldn't be out of place. As a country, it would rank 59th in physical size between Iraq and Paraguay, 38th in population between Canada and Poland, fifth in GDP between Germany and India, so it would actually be above average.

One of the common refrains against secession movements is that Breakaway regions could not survive economically on their own. For example, according to the UK government, for every dollar Scotland pays in taxes, it receives about 1.32 cents back. The country would have an immediate and dramatic budget deficit upon full. Independence This fact undergirds some of the strongest hesitancies among before the pandemic skewed the data.

The state received just 97 cents back happy holidays. This put the state each year in a small camp of around 10 that received less than what they gave. While Others like Mississippi Kentucky and West Virginia consistently received receive dollars back for every dollar they sent. Of course, this is by Design.

The US's progressive tax system is supposed to take disproportionately from the wealthy and give disproportionately to the lessons. What if the people that are just the elites, the massive ones at the top of tech just paid their taxes even remotely close to normal people? Uh, instead of just breaking the system apart California's perspective, many wonder why they're sending all their dollars to unappreciated States thousands of miles and adding to that California doesn't even get as much of a say in how those dollars get spent. Given the unequal distribution of electoral votes in presidential elections, every individual in Wyoming has the voting power of about 3.7 Californians While the Senate system of two senators per state regardless of population further compounds this weak representation. again, the system was purposely designed hundreds of years ago to amplify the voices of smaller States.

But from California's perspective, they get the short end of that stick. California has long legislated less like a state and more like a nation passing sweeping powerful laws when it feels like the federal government can't or won't For example, it's long had a ban on assault rifles. so get out of the dense cities. that's it.

They should just stop it. Stop the delusion, brat government can't or won't. For example, it's long had a ban on assault rifles similar to the one that the Biden Administration is attempting to pass. It's announced a ban on gas-powered Vehicles by 2035.

Similar to other bans passed by countries, it's establish its own immigration law largely focused on. By the 2013, we're going to be in city of Atlantis Roll. we're going to be Indiana jonesing. We're gonna be going through the City and Gold in the water bruh.

It's even form relationships with countries. Having signed a joint environmental Accord with New Zealand at cost six. In many ways, fixing perceived Federal shortcomings has become a central focus of Californian politics. But unsurprisingly, this Dynamic has spurred tensions with DC, especially when Federal power sways towards the right.

There certainly is not the political will for California secession right now. not even close. But if there was one big perceived encroachment on California's rights, a knockdown of their assault rifle ban or a nationwide abortion ban, one could imagine that most political people in California pay their taxes, but it's still a largely amount because it would almost certainly be fixing it before increases our money like there to strip club. A bigger problem, as much as California might be held back by sending dollars to Washington or sitting subject to its laws.

the state is massively buoyed by its inclusion in the largest economy in the world. Removing itself from the US would have dire Economic Consequences that would surely outweigh any game. Perhaps the closest equivalent is Brexit. Much of the political will came from a belief that the European Union was taking the country's money and encroaching on its sovereignty.

But now just a few years on with mounting issues on trade and travel, public opinion has shifted decisively towards regrets. Most agree that removing the UK from the world's largest economy was not. May I believe. Public opinion on Californian Independence has never neared a majority, but there have been enough Fringe movements seeking secession that the question has been included reliably demonstrating surprising support 14 times.

32 of respondents were for Californian nationhood. In fact, in one poll run by a Stanford-affiliated think tank, the 18-29 demographic responded as 36 for and just 40 against. almost even demonstrating that wow, the opinion is not nearly in support of the extreme unprecedented measure of modern State secession. The perceived disconnect with Washington has pushed the idea up to surprising levels of legitimacy.

We all know pragmatically, the secession will never happen in anything close to this reality, but partition could. The underlying idea is the same that California is Big understood Aussie is cancer. Look at this. the solution is just less extreme.

Split it intestine. States This has been proposed over 200 times, and the most recent conservative flash was led by billionaire investor Tim Draper in 2018. he proposed splitting the states into three parts, called Northern California Southern California and California attempting to balance population, wealth and politics somewhat evenly across the three. The central argument was that the state government was out of touch with local governments given the huge difference in size between the two, and that the federal government was out of touch with the state government given the diluted representation.

So the solution was to reduce the size of the state and also given the two senators per state system, give more powerful Federal representation to the population. The arguments Now 1 000 signatures before election day long was struck down by the state Supreme Court's unconstitutional grounds. Even so, it probably wouldn't have passed politics support between 13 and 17. But even if the state did vote for it, it then be up to the Federal government to approve such a split and the Federal government will certainly never think about the United States and Republicans would bark at the four additional left-winning Congress people it would send to D.C Everyone would ask whether it be too dangerous a precedent to establish, so the big Solutions aren't reasonable and these small Solutions aren't working might as well use them.

Perhaps the answer is that California is just too unique because it definitely is unique. There wasn't this shift, region or other National subdivision with a larger economy on Earth and going down the list, there aren't really even near equivalence. Texas is number two, but it's run by small government conservatives. meaning State Interventional This is limited.

New York is number three, but nearly all of its GDP is concentrated. It's far simpler. You then have England, but it acts as a nation within the nation. then Huangdong and Chiang TSU.

But China isn't a democratic state in Florida, but it has a Texas-style small government bent. Then Chengdong and Shishong also China, then Illinois mostly one city, then Hanan also China, Then finally Pennsylvania. With its comparatively conservative, smaller government politics, it's not a great equivalent to California, but it's the closest so far considering its wealth is somewhat geographically distributed and its government is more open intervention than in Florida or Texas. So that's to say California is not only us, it's Unique to the world.

Truly, nobody is trying to manage such a big economy with anything less than Nation status. It has unique problems. It feels disconnected from the nation. Oh, that's the power of the nation.

And yet it feels like it needs to act like this should sound familiar because in 1776, 13, North American colonies declared independence from Britain citing their unique problems, feeling of disconnection, lack of nation scale power, an inkling that just being a nation was a way to fix it all. What happened next today's was: America What happened after that was American Exceptions is fundamentally and dramatically unique. anyways. true, there just aren't places that mirror the US's scale, geography, and demographics.

but this feeling undergirds perhaps the most fundamental feature of American politics. I Believe that as a unique place the US needs Foods only lead all the way back home EU UK Now Brexit, Man, Bro man. tough run, bro, that is tougher. There is a systematic rejection the solutions that have repeatedly worked in close cultural equivalence out of a belief that they're incompatible with either what makes America unique or the uniqueness itself.

So that means that California is the exception To the exception. the state is exceptional. It is fundamentally different to the rest of the nation, and therefore an analogous idea of Californian exceptionalism permeates through Sacramento undergirding a belief that they too, require unique. Solutions After all, California is supposed to be the land of Economic Opportunity a destination free of persecution, an idyllic antithesis to the status quo.

California is America's America Oh, exception is not the norm. it is why I live. Ah, the norm. It's something more like in Hollywood And sunset California is like the hyper distilled version of America itself developing.

for many of these same reasons as the nation itself just a century or two on. It's no wonder that the state centered on rejected storms rejecting Norms might stray for the most obvious path. It's also no wonder that in the same way, America itself becomes the infatuation of international media, a source of political entertainment. So too does California to the U.S at the end of the day, California politicians might just be terrible, the GOP talking points might be right, and the states might be the evidence that liberal politics are government is a slavery.

It's not possible to sift through the political rhetoric and actually objectively analyze what does that mean? However, it's reasonably clear that Californian politicians like American politicians have a tougher job to do navigating a truly singular situation. Decisions are made without precedence, and then, in retrospect, with precedent established failures seem obvious. So the question of how to solve California's problems is more to the question of how to solve America's problems. to fight exceptionalism with exceptionalism or can unexceptional Solutions work for unexceptional problems even when they happen on exceptional places? Man, bro.

Uh, last year in a video about carbon offsets, we covered California's unique cap and trade program which was propped up. ineffective. carbon offsets the amount of human life. not people that die yet parts of you that stuck in the amount of humanity that dies AFK in traffic nickel Forest Management practices.

This is a classic story. In the car. dozens of lives in the theory because the time fails in practice. that's because the carbon offsets are really only as good as the entity managing them.

That's why I'm so excited to have Ren as a sponsor I Didn't trust Ren At first nobody should really trust any carbon offsetting provider at first as the industry is ripe with scams. but because they were interested in sponsoring and were insistent they had found. Ah man. Okay, all right, chat guys, yo.

this is X x on the video I'm going through my voice as well. that is anyone knows that boy I Don't know, he's just so soy. Anyone knows that boy I Don't know, he's just so soy.