Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Let's Talk California (Has Their Lucky Streak Run Out?) || Peter Zeihan" video.

Wow. Way to push The Narrative(TM), Peter. California is screwed for a number of reasons, many of which really are based on bad decisions they've made. - Dehydration -- California is already at just about carrying capacity as far as water is concerned. Water is too heavy, necessary at such enormous volumes, and California too isolated, to significantly increase supply. The Southwest is in the same predicament; it has nowhere to go but down, from here. Unless Humboldt County dredges their Bay and starts being growth-friendly, California is as big as it's ever going to get. - Got Woke, Went Broke -- California, being so isolated from the rest of the country by a huge mountain range, increasingly convinced of its own rightness because of its billionaire status, and more than a little weird in the first place, became increasingly out-of-touch with the culture of the rest of the country. This disconnect caused Hollywood to destroy itself at the box office. See: Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Lord of the Rings. - Utterly incompetent governance -- Or rather, far better at accruing power, than at wisely using it. California House Speaker Willie Brown, the most important politician no one has ever heard of, gathered so much power he basically ran the state for decades. This, in accord with corrupt and ineffective Leftist policies that ranged from unsustainable to self-destructive, funded by the tech boom. Nancy Pelosi took lessons from him, about what kind of power a Speaker could have, ossifying the Federal government as well. Kamala Harris is Vice President (indeed, has a political career at all) specifically because Willie Brown thought she was attractive, to put it delicately. Gavin Newsom is an empty suit full of platitudes and policy ideas that have turned out disastrously in every jurisdiction he's gained power in, starting with San Francisco and spreading out to the state at large. - Tech is mined out -- Moore's Law hasn't been true for most of a decade now. This means that big new crazy ideas remain crazy, rather than becoming feasible. Another set of advances could bring another several branches of fruit into "low-hanging" territory, but there have been several "next big things" that simply haven't panned out.
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@teekay_1 The US would be very well served by closing down half the Federal bureaucracy, dispersing the other half amongst the rest of the states, and knocking down every ugly government building to keep them from coming back.
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@darkgardener9577 Sacramento can't manufacture more water. Environmental regulation hurts agriculture, absolutely, but at a certain point the fresh water sources simply don't have the volume to satisfy potential demand.
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@wisenber The Boomers are about to die, like they're about to retire. Gradually, over decades. The fact that Peter treats this as a step-function is one of the most irritating factors in his analyses.
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@wisenber Not sure you caught my meaning. Boomers will die gradually, over decades, like they have retired gradually, over decades. I was complaining there that Peter has a tendency to treat this passing of average Boomer retirement age, like it was some kind of sudden numerical spike in his calculations. I find that irritating, because it doesn't make much sense. There will be a gentle downslope in the number of retirees per year, just like there was a gentle upslope in the number of retirees up until now. (That is, unless the arbitrary demarcation of the time of the "Boomer" generation was frontloaded or backloaded in terms of birthrate.) There are no cliffs to fall off of, here.
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@deanfirnatine7814 Depends on how patient people are. For a while, you can get away with forcing people to park their car (for an exorbitant fee) in a razorwire-enclosed parking lot, and walk down the sidewalk through what feels like someone's living room (watching where you step), to be crammed into a tiny commercial space for the sake of a startup. Only, once everyone wakes up to the fact that quality of life matters, things can collapse very quickly.
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@erikvan9582 I don't think anyone on the Right would be complaining if we limited immigration to the amount we could assimilate to a culture of social responsibility.
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@dulles.gehlen Are you troll, or just a monster?
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@abexx8485 Only if CA had enough reservoirs. They need more, whether the environmentalists like it or not.
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@wisenber Yeah, I noticed that about his calculations for GenX as well. Of course we're going to have on the order of 75% fewer people in that generation if they've got a proportionally smaller span of years. But if you look at actual birthrates, Roe v Wade took a serious bite out of GenX. That particular discontinuity in the graph just jumps out at you. I definitely see Zeihan as being better at describing what cards various regions hold. How they play them, still counts for something - as do historical accidents. Otherwise, there's no reason the Hudson Valley watershed and Chesapeake would be so dominant, compared to the massive Missouri watershed. I suspect that's an accident of history, based on migration patterns from Europe to America. Although, it's also possible that Zeihan also overestimates the advantages of riparian over maritime transport. I'd be curious to ask him, what it would take for the Midwest to become as dominant as their river network supposedly destines them to be.
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California is culturally isolated by an enormous mountain range, and convinced of its own rightness by the success of its billionaires. Bob Iger over at Disney invited a mass of activists into his company because he thought that currying favor with them would land him in the White House. He Got Woke, and is in the process of Going Broke.
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@wisenber The entire Electronics training school at some of Silicon Valley's colleges, is lifted straight from the Sunnyvale Lockheed plant's internal training program. So.... more than a little bit of overlap, there. Silicon Valley would never have happened without the DoD's major presence in the area to provide a critical mass of skilled personnel, with ready-to-commercialize knowledge about microcomputers and what would become known as internet protocols. It even had an effect on the purely commercial side -- Steve Wozniak's dad was an electronics engineer defense contractor, so Steve grew up soaking up that kind of engineering expertise. The two major points that broke in Silicon Valley's favor, though, were ultimately a Massachusetts' judge's decision to enforce a non-compete agreement (which California judges ignored), and Terman's insistence that engineers get cut in on a large amount of corporate equity. This formula's not as well known as it could be, but it's not exactly a secret either. As long as you don't mind letting talented engineers work where they like and get rich doing it, that's what it takes.
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Hey Peter, I dare you to walk around San Francisco's Union Square. In fact, do a video from there -- and try to make the "it's not political" argument with a straight face. Just be careful where you step. And bring your own security.
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Maybe he's actually in San Francisco right now, and decided that showing us what's actually going on there would wreck his thesis that policy played no role in California's decline.
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@olivesama You decided to dismiss all the words that weren't about the culture war, to focus on the culture war. That's on you.
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Yeah, I think one of Peter's associates noticed that he's an influencer, and decided to give him part of The Narrative(TM) to push.
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Amen, brother. It may well be again, as the Hispanic and Latino immigrants get their feet under them economically and start voting Conservative.
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@LividImp Agriculture is only 1% of California's economy... Wow -- California's economy could conceivably drop by nearly 99%?
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@licheong Yes, it does that a lot.
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If they can convince Humboldt County to dredge their Bay and become pro-growth, they'll be okay. Can't really see any other option, though.
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@darkgardener9577 I agree with what you're saying. On the other hand, while Prop 187 passed, it was (if we are to believe the electoral results subsequent to that) a political disaster for the Republicans that the Democrats have molded their national strategy around to this day. What is to be done about that?
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@dulles.gehlen Pushing a depopulation agenda like that counts someone as a monster. Joking about it counts someone as a troll. Objectively, you are one or the other.
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@george2113 With a few exceptions (the reservoirs on 280, which is bang on San Andreas) the dams aren't in earthquake country, they're up where it rains in the Sierra Nevadas. Halfway across the Central Valley (which is midway between San Andreas and the Sierras) even the big earthquakes are just kinda fun.
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@dulles.gehlen Nah, trolls are just jokers.
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@abexx8485 California's better equipped to deal with future droughts, only because people are moving out.
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@honeytubs How far north are we talking? Everything south of the Delta and north of the Tehachepis is oak savannah -- a half-step above desert -- not a swamp. Wherever you get significant rain turns into the Redwood Empire, including an enclave in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a little bit of Marin. But even Napa is irrigated these days. Granted, I'm not as familiar with Chico / Redding as the rest of the state. Aside from the Delta, where are these swamps you're referring to?
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@jfkst1 The Northeast has absolutely insane city layouts. For all the masons are supposed to have been secretly in power there, they seem to be utterly incapable of laying out streets or buildings oriented north-south. Rumor has it, the road networks of Boston were actually designed by cattle. You have to wonder how much more housing could fit into New England, if they had proper subdivisions.
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@davocc2405 I wonder if Peter noticed in his travels to Monterey / Carmel, just how many of those exorbitantly-priced houses were unoccupied.
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Someone noticed Peter is An Influencer(TM) now, so they've given him part of The Narrative(TM) to push on us. The fact is that California Got Woke and Went Broke, all the while pioneering insane levels of Leftist bureaucracy. The Establishment is desperate for the electorate not to notice this.
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@2639theboss You're only remembering the ones most people remember. What about the Dutch? Poland-Lithuania? The Hanseatic League? The Swedish Empire? Mansa Musa? John Sutter, who owned most of the lands of the Gold Rush? For every story you're citing, there are a dozen you forgot, or never knew. California has been hollowing out ever since the Cold War ended and their aerospace industry started to fall. Agriculture is phenomenal, but maxed out. Sic transit gloria mundi
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@theyux1 Agriculture is maxed out, and under attack from insane environmental policies. Tourism is cratering because coastal cities are unsafe. Tech has stalled out, with Moore's Law broken for most of a decade now. Hollywood Got Woke, and is in the process of Going Broke. Every single advantage you cite there is on a downward trajectory, and only agriculture and tourism have any kind of floor. California could come out of this tailspin no more than a banana republic.
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@theyux1 A terrible housing market crash happened in 1992, for starters. Increasing environmental regulations sapped the vitality of the agricultural sector. The peace dividend started the fall of the aerospace industry. Much of Southern California has never recovered from that, by the way. A lot of this was masked by the tech boom, driven by that peace dividend's shifting California's high tech workers from aerospace to computers. Why do you think Silicon Valley happened in California, and not, say, along Massachusetts' Route 128? While Moore's Law was in effect and fiber optic networks were built out, more and more amazing things could be accomplished with computers and networks. However, connectivity has gotten about as good as it's going to get (to the point that it's clogged mostly by video nowadays), and Moore's Law hasn't been true for most of a decade. The miracle factory has stalled out. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. California rose with tech, now the hollowing-out of all its other economic sectors -- which probably won't come back, barring an anti-green, pro-defense revolution in California politics -- California will fall with tech. The only way California can keep from collapse now, is if vote-counters start seeing a lot more Republican ballots. Do you see that as likely? I don't.
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@theyux1 Rome collapsed because their fertility rates went into free-fall, and they inadequately assimilated masses of immigrants that arrived to replace them.
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SHHH! You're not supposed to notice that! You're supposed to keep thinking that enormous bureaucracies full of well-credentialed elites pursuing authoritarian central-planning policies, are the government of the future!
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Climate change affects everything totally everything is based on climate change everything bad that happens is the fault of climate change every scientist agrees that climate change is everything
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Costs, regulation, and the end of the Cold War. On the other hand, that "Peace Dividend" arguably queued up the Tech Boom, as cutting-edge technology workers went from defense contracting to commercial enterprises.
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@wisenber Yeah, the "Apollo generation retirement" problem was big when I started. I don't think the passdown was handled well. Now we've got the "Cold War generation retirement" problem, and it's not going much better as far as I can tell. If defense contracting starts to be the best game in town again, that could change. If Peter's right about venture capital drying up -- and San Francisco's fall could well be symptomatic of that, although its Covid, shoplifting, homelessness, and drug use policies are largely a self-inflicted wound -- then the wining and dining of prospective customers in the billionaire-playground of SF, just isn't going to be as important anymore. I hope Peter's right about the re-industrializing of America, although there's still so much talk about "favorable labor cost profiles" in places like Mexico and Columbia, I'm suspicious that all his talk about on-shoring is just gaslighting.
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@titanicisshit1647 Lol, the 2010s are gone, and very shortly whatever influence they had on the 2020s will be too. =) We're going to be going back to traditions that we know work, because so much of "modernity" has failed. We're never going to look back at the Obama era (especially his 2nd term and its fallout) as anything but a cautionary tale.
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@olivesama One in four of those points is culture-war related. Try again.
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@olivesama Lol, if all you saw there was "culture war", that says more about your obsessions than about my thinking.
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He's in San Francisco, but decided that actually showing the facts on the ground there would wreck his thesis that none of this is policy related.
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@KLRJUNE It doesn't work anywhere. Pot destroys initiative, in most people.
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Apparently there are still 10 righteous men in the area.
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San Francisco is an old, STD-ridden courtesan.
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