Solutions: Innovative Public Policy for California

The challenges facing Americans today will be overcome, as they always have. America’s best days are in the future. The planet is not experiencing an unmanageable climate crisis, and whatever ravages of extreme weather we experience are just the latest expressions of timeless phenomena to which we will adapt and continue to thrive. As we move further into the 21st century, liberty and prosperity are enjoyed by more people in more places than ever before. By every metric of human achievement and quality of life, the world has never been better.

This fact, that almost anyone presented with a complete and objective assessment of life today compared to any other time in human history would choose to be alive right now, is the core premise of this book. Everything described herein, every unsettling trend, disgraceful corruption, impossible odds, or misguided policies and the tragic waste of time and money and opportunities that result, must be viewed and must be contended with from this core premise. The world has never been perfect. With wars and oppression, disease and poverty, life has never been easy. But this era, despite ongoing calamities, is nonetheless a moment that, more than anything else, holds promise and possibilities that have no precedent and no equal.

This should be obvious but it’s not. For every major issue facing Americans, there is an alarming narrative we are urged to accept, and in every case, extraordinary measures are called for if we are to remain safe. Why is this, if the trajectory of humanity has the potential to be so positive? Why so much fear? This book is an attempt to debunk the negative narrative, or at least put it into a more manageable perspective, and in every case, present alternative solutions that will yield better results - economically, ecologically, politically, and socially. There are solutions. There is cause for optimism, not fear.

This book is about California, but, to echo a truism that is no less true despite being parroted endlessly, as goes California so goes America. And as goes America, so goes the world. When the purveyors of the prevailing narrative claim California must set an example to the world, they’re not exactly correct. California doesn’t have to set an example to the world. But California is setting an example to the world, and it’s a bad example. Nobody in the world wants to live under a regime where everything is monitored, micromanaged, controlled and rationed. Yet that is exactly where we’re headed in California.

We can do better. If anyone, anywhere, can do better, Californians can. With rational arguments, fortified with optimism and empathy, Californians can design and build a future that everyone in the world will aspire to emulate. Californians can demonstrate for the world that abundance can be sustainable, that affordability is the best enabler of social equity, that there are projects that create resiliency while still making economic sense, that every person on earth can enjoy personal freedom and prosperity. That is the California dream. That is what California has always promised. This book offers ideas on how Californians today can realize that promise and keep it.