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The California model.
I just got back from a brief trip to California that didn't include the parts where the violent drug zombies live. It was a lovely vacation. California is absolutely beautiful.
Let me introduce the secrets to California's success.
Be blessed with the most amazing geography and weather anywhere in the U.S. and maybe the world
Be the center of the world tech and entertainment industries
Make a deal that baby boomers get to live out their natural lives in splendor and grace while a complete population replacement happens beneath them
As a wealthy tourist, it was all very nice. Whereas the coast of Florida is loaded with aggressive traffic and people, the coast of California is dotted with pleasant beach communities. All the houses cost like $3 million dollars so no one can afford to live there. Despite the best weather and scenery on the planet, the population is going DOWN. People are friendly and nice. The restaurants are full of white retirees, still paying $1000 in annual property tax on their $4 million house they bought for $200,000 in 1981. 95% of the workers are Hispanic. I have no idea where they actually live. But the quality of service was very high and prices were reasonable (at least compared to Seattle).
A quick 5 minute drive from Santa Cruz and you're in a beautiful redwood forest. No houses or people here. Just a beautiful state park with miles of trails. I saw a school group with an earnest white teacher explaining tree rings to a group of about 20 young students. 100% of the students were Hispanic.
People are actually leaving this state, the state that has everything, that was dealt a hand of aces. Productive citizens are taxed at eye-popping rates to prop up the seniors and the underclass. It works for now. It seems kind of similar to what's happening in Europe and where the rest of the U.S. is headed as well.
In any case, I had a wonderful time. I highly recommend California as a tourist destination.
offtopic: is there some alt history fiction where China or Japan colonize California before Europeans (maybe by sending their convicts there)?
Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" has some of this. The premise is that the Black Death killed 99% of Europeans in the 1300s, instead of 30-50%.
Also Journey to Fusang by William Sanders, a much lighter book in tone.
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New resident of California as of this year; was unexpectedly sent here by my work.
As far as I can tell, the workers live 2-3 to a room in rented houses, which is why many neighborhoods of East Palo Alto have 5-6 cars parked in front of 1000 sq ft (100 sq m) 3br houses.
I was in Asia over the holidays, and the food there is better (at least to my tastes), costs 1/5th as much even without counting taxes, tip, and the bevy of surcharges they add (somehow a prix fixe dinner advertised at $95 a head costs over $270 for 2), and much more conveniently located.
Honestly, I hate it here already and am looking to leave at the first good opportunity. Until then, I'm living well below my means to minimize my exposure to the 9-10% sales tax rates, driving a 20-year old car, maxing out my contributions to tax-advantaged accounts and investments in general, and trying to pay as little in taxes as possible.
A new buyer of said 3 million dollar home would be subject to property taxes in the ballpark of 40k a year. I almost wish we could level the entire area south of I-280 and redevelop it into a megacity with housing for 20 million people according to Chinese urban development practices just to spite the nimbys.
Wasn't something like that the canonical origin of Night City, of Cyberpunk fame?
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You don't even need to import Chinese development practices, you can just retvrn to the housing principles of your European ancestors. Paris proper has a density that is 3x the density of SF proper and it doesn't even have any residential high-rises and only one office high-rise.
Wait. How?
I’m willing to believe that they’re so much more dense, but I want to understand the mechanism. Is it heavily mid-rise? Is it the reduced car infrastructure? Has their density trended up or down in the postwar era?
Mostly 6-story residential vs 2 as the default. You don't see many single-family homes with garages in Paris proper.
For comparison, SF proper is 800k people at 19k/square mile, Inner London is 3.4 million at 28k/square mile, Paris proper is 2.1 million at 52k/square mile, and Manhattan is 1.6 million at 75k/square mile. SF is mostly 2-story single-family houses. Inner London is mostly 2-3-story rowhouses. Paris is mostly midrise apartment buildings, Manhattan is a mixture of midrise and highrise. You can see an almost perfect linear relationship between building height and population density.
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It is heavily mid-rise with minimal street parking, and the flats are on the smaller side, 30-40sqm or so for a 1-bedroom flat.
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You can't compare the cost of food in other countries and meaningfully say "the food prices are better there"--you're implicitly comparing them against your US salary. If food costs 1/x, but if you lived there you'd be making 1/x your salary, it's not really cheaper at all.
Yeah, being a rich foreign tourist is a very different position than being a permanent resident.
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The nature conservation movement didn't get started in the US until California was in play, so I think that's a major reason a lot of beauty is still left. Though some propaganda at the Redwoods Forest says 99% of the redwoods were cut down.
You could imagine how that spirit can make the state intolerable to live in today.
There’s a few confounders. It’s not a coincidence that conservation gained prominence as the American frontier closed. And it was part and parcel of the Progressive reforms which gained ground in that era. Frankly, I think that spirit beats the alternatives.
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My family lives in California, so I've visited almost everywhere except LA (which I've universally heard is a shithole I don't want to see).
It feels like a different country. It's the same currency, abiet effectively devalued by 15%. But I very much enjoy visiting - the food is almost universally excellent, people are kind as long as you pretend to be a leftist, etc. There's just a lot of stuff to do.
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20 people to a three bedroom trailer.
The secret side effect of high housing costs is extreme crowding in lower income households. They need the income from renting out bedrooms to keep paying their own way. And people can’t afford their own place, so they rent rooms, often to share.
I’ve seen people on here wondering how low functioning but not actually dangerous people can be homeless; don’t their extended families take care of them? There’s no room, quite literally, in these households. Couches are being crashed on by someone who can contribute, or a more sympathetic dependent. Bedrooms are rented out for the cost of apartments in more normal cities. You don’t see the same scenes in place like houston where housing costs are more reasonable, because low income households can accommodate people like that.
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