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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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California dreamin’? All is not well in the Golden State of California these days as the citizens of that fine place continue to struggle under the governorship of Gray Davis, the man who helped acquaint Californians with the sort of power blackouts we Brits used to get in the unlamented 1970s.
This article (link courtesy of Virginia Postrel) shows how bad the tax revenue situation is on the West Coast, but also points out that the public sector there is as bloated as ever.
My recent trip to California last year confirmed such reports. One thing I was struck by was the poor quality of the freeways, in contrast to the smooth fast roads of neighbouring Nevada.
California could certainly use someone like Ronald Reagan, its last great governor, to shake it up and kick some ass in that state. Many political and economic trends seem to start on the West Coast, like the internet and tax revolts. A place for we Anglospherists to watch.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Unfortunately the link is dead now. At any rate, government spending here is actually more bloated than ever, and getting worse all the time. It’s not just Gray(out) Davis, either–the state legislature is totally dominated by socialists. There’s not much chance of it changing either, since the Republican candidates here are just as socialist as the Democrats. It wouldn’t suprise me if we get a situation like Massachussetts where large numbers of Republicans vote Libertarian just to have some kind of choice.
I have to disagree with the comparison of highways in California and Nevada. The Nevada highways have only a tiny fraction of the traffic California highways get, so they don’t suffer as much wear and tear. If they did, they’d be just as bad. There’s a highway expansion in Las Vegas that’s been under construction for around ten years now–that’s California level inefficiency.
Unfortunately for surrounding states the liberals who fled here to escape the effects of their policies on the eastern states are now starting to flee the effects of their policies on California. Las Vegas is one of the unfortunate recipients of that liberal creep (as are Denver and Phoenix).
I can’t let this comment go by – I hardly think that a web page that claims to have some Libertarian leanings (or at least a vague sense of economics and history) should hold up Reagan’s reign as a salutary example of economic management.
Reagan oversaw large government spending and tax increases in California (http://www.hjta.org/content/ARC000024B_Prop13.htm), and massive increases in deficit spending during his presidency, and the ultimate responsibility for that is Reagan’s (that’s what it means to be the cheif executive). Feel free to love the guy as a Big Government Social Conservative if that’s your thing, but as a Libertarian? Puh-lease
California is too large and diverse to be effectively governed centrally. Smaller states and states with weaker central authority do better. There are three or four states in California. Changing the governor won’t help much, though Davis is certainly innefective.
Hey, Gene Thug’s comment is partly right, I reckon, but he is too harsh on Reagan. Yes, deficits did balloon during his watch at the White House, but this was because of: supply side tax cuts (hurrah!), defence spending rises which arguably helped win the Cold War (qualified hurrah!) and a Democrat-run Congress which refused to hold the line on spending on domestic programmes (boo!).
True, also that Reagan was no libertarian. However, unless one lives in some sort of libertarian dreamworld, I would say that Reagan in power was heaps better from an expansion of liberty point of view than the other side.