The article overstates CA's response to its problems. The slashing and "vast numbers" aren't enough to right the ship and are pretty minimal compared to private industry, or even other state governments. The response of state employees and their unions to furloughs (walkouts, infighting, demands for still higher taxes) demonstrate seriousness hasn't set in.
Booms and busts define the state, long before the housing or internet bubbles, there was the gold rush, the oil boom, the space race, the PC revolution, you name it. There's always another boom to cover the last bust—this time, too. That boom and bust mentality extends to radical political solutions that become problematic in themselves, like the initiative process, super-majority rules, and prop. 13. The state pretty much is the guy described in the Lisp thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859669
Maybe it's in our interest to be the world's hypomanic dreamscape? If so, the feds and everyone else can bail us out, like they do the rest of the nation's problem children (banks, farmers, automakers, savings and loans, tire makers, steel producers, railroads…), leave us to our booms and busts, enjoy the gravy when times are good and let us live in their basement strumming our guitar when we screw the pooch.
But, Uncle Sam's not much better off. He's just running on a slower pace. Long enough in his basement and he'll start to see how alike we really are—right around the time he gets foreclosed on. Our federal system has a seriously great architectural basis, but it's an 18th and 19th century design burdened with two centuries of gnarly patches and tweaks hacked together in two-year bursts by groups of 535 glad-handers and administered by a nameless, faceless, unrepresentative bureaucracy. As the nation scaled-up, the exquisite balance of republic and democracy struck by the founders turned into an opaque, incomprehensible, unfair, inefficient, ineffective cancer. Some major refactoring needs to be done. CA, having the same issues, will serve as a proving-ground for reforming the whole country. If it doesn't work out, well there's always another boom after the bust.
Comments
The article overstates CA's response to its problems. The slashing and "vast numbers" aren't enough to right the ship and are pretty minimal compared to private industry, or even other state governments. The response of state employees and their unions to furloughs (walkouts, infighting, demands for still higher taxes) demonstrate seriousness hasn't set in.
Booms and busts define the state, long before the housing or internet bubbles, there was the gold rush, the oil boom, the space race, the PC revolution, you name it. There's always another boom to cover the last bust—this time, too. That boom and bust mentality extends to radical political solutions that become problematic in themselves, like the initiative process, super-majority rules, and prop. 13. The state pretty much is the guy described in the Lisp thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859669
Maybe it's in our interest to be the world's hypomanic dreamscape? If so, the feds and everyone else can bail us out, like they do the rest of the nation's problem children (banks, farmers, automakers, savings and loans, tire makers, steel producers, railroads…), leave us to our booms and busts, enjoy the gravy when times are good and let us live in their basement strumming our guitar when we screw the pooch.
But, Uncle Sam's not much better off. He's just running on a slower pace. Long enough in his basement and he'll start to see how alike we really are—right around the time he gets foreclosed on. Our federal system has a seriously great architectural basis, but it's an 18th and 19th century design burdened with two centuries of gnarly patches and tweaks hacked together in two-year bursts by groups of 535 glad-handers and administered by a nameless, faceless, unrepresentative bureaucracy. As the nation scaled-up, the exquisite balance of republic and democracy struck by the founders turned into an opaque, incomprehensible, unfair, inefficient, ineffective cancer. Some major refactoring needs to be done. CA, having the same issues, will serve as a proving-ground for reforming the whole country. If it doesn't work out, well there's always another boom after the bust.