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?
Well from my perspective it’s not that people hate California it’s that they hate the influx of Californians in their state. Tons of tech people moved from San Francisco to Austin and now it’s near unrecognizable. Austin a long time ago used to be a small city with a lot of charm now it’s the tenth largest city in the US. It’s not just Californians moving their but they are the biggest group and they are pretty loud about where they come from.
Everything gets more expensive, they bring some of their failed policies with them, and there are a lot of weird ideas that come out of California. I don’t mean your generic lefty policies that may upset some old timers in Texas but like the weird transhumanism shit that tech people are obsessed with. It feels like a cult, another thing California is known for, and it’s basically the opposite vibe of what Austin used to be. I personally have met a lot of Californians I really like but it’s not hard to see the culture clash. Also when I say California I really mean San Francisco and LA, not like Sacramento or the other parts of California. It’s the tech people, the Hollywood people, and the groupies they aquire. They leave California due to costs and it’s somewhat chaotic nature but then start to transform their new home into California.
If you’ve ever met old timers in Texas you know great don’t like change. They talk about building an overpass as a sign of the apocalypse. So that’s where I assume most of the hate comes from.
And a lot of the folks that moved there did so for the same conservative leaning reasons tech companies did, like less taxes. Feels like a lot of selection bias going on.
And many of the people moving from California aren’t California natives. Some dude who moves from Ohio to California for a year and then moves to Texas is going to be lumped into this group.
I’ve met people from California who now live in Texas and are right leaning and typically they are very right wing. More so than your average Texan. Most older people in Texas don’t like change and are Christian conservatives. The right wingers from California feel different to me. I’ll use the term neo reactionary to describe them, but they are the no regulations, meritocracy, pro eugenics types. You can’t use the old school stuff like “what would Jesus do” which would occasionally work on getting the most stubborn conservative Texan on a neo reactionary as they typically don’t believe in God.
I’ll be honest I’ve heard some of their ideas and they frighten me. They imagine a antidemocratic world controlled by AI and tech executives. It’s very different from the conservative Texan ideas I’m used to seeing. The classic Texan conservative wants prayer in school and the freedom to not wear a seatbelt. They can be stubborn and annoying at times but I’m used to it and I think they mean well. I don’t feel the same way about neo reactionaries.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
For better or worse California is a forward thinking place but also an exclusive one. It’s also very expensive to live there. The price to live in Austin has gotten crazy high and now there is a much larger homeless population. Austin’s solution to this now mimics San Francisco which is to pretend it’s not happening.
Also California loves regulations for some but not others. For every smart regulation they have some “futuristic” new thing that annoys people. Silicon Valley is basically exempt from regulation at all.
For a recent example the Waymo driverless taxis that break down in the road and cause traffic jams. They are only in 4 cities; LA and San Francisco of course, but now because of the influx of tech workers they are in Austin and Phoenix. Used to be that only San Francisco would be a guinea pig for tech and social experiments but now it’s spreading to where they moved to.
Austin has been a tech center since the 80s.
True. Dallas and Houston have a lot of tech too, but Austin has become San Francisco 2 fairly recently. Dell was the big home grown tech company a lot of these other companies and start ups are from California. Nobody would accuse Dallas of being like San Francisco because it’s more traditional corporate tech. I think sxsw attracted a lot of people from California.