Ezra Klein: commitment

Transcript context

…Why isn’t California a better-run state than it is? I think that’s actually a pretty deep question, and this is a question I would like to have a better answer to, and hope over the next year — now that my book is done — to find a better answer to. But I will say in a big level that I think the failures of governance in California are much more profound failures for the Left and for progressivism than people give them credit for. The fact that California cannot figure out how to make it affordable to live in its major cities, or usable to get around as a state, not just inside the cities, where transportation in LA and San Francisco are really bad. The failure of high-speed rail in California is such a cosmic embarrassment for the Left that I think it really needs to be taken a bit more seriously. It’s something that the Left needs to figure out how to change. If they can’t build high-speed rail with the billions and billions and billions of dollars earmarked for that project, why should people trust them on the Green New Deal, etc.? It’s not like it’s going to be easier outside of California. California had very big Democratic majorities. So, the failures of government in California — I can tell you about them at some levels, right? You have very powerful NIMBY-istic politics there. Prop 13 has certainly made taxation hard. California, for a very long time, had extremely sharp strictures to the proposition process and, through some other constitutional changes, on what you could do even in the legislatures. So, not only is a lot of the money already earmarked through propositions, but you had for a long time — and I might get these numbers a little bit wrong from memory — but I think you needed a two-thirds vote to raise taxes in the legislature. I think you needed something similar to do budgets. I haven’t looked at these rules for a little while, and I think at least they’ve been partially, though not in any way fully, repealed. But California actually had a kind of super filibuster operating that made it much harder to govern. The way power is distributed between the governor, sort of the state level and the local level, is a little bit unusual in California. There are a bunch of reasons, but I think that those reasons do not fully explain the level of the failure here. And then, I think that there might be some interesting things in actual liberal psychology that are operating. So, to a little bit go back to a Jon Haidt Moral Foundations Theory of Californians, it is true that California is quite liberal, and when I say “California liberal,” something is going to come to mind for people. There’s a certain stereotype there that’s maybe a little bit different than a New York liberal, maybe a little bit different than what you would imagine, say, a Colorado liberal, even, to be in. But that kind of preservationist, a little bit skeptical — for all that Silicon Valley has taken over a lot of the economy — a little bit skeptical of certain kinds of progress. beral, even, to be in. But that kind of preservationist, a little bit skeptical — for all that Silicon Valley has taken over a lot of the economy — a little bit skeptical of certain kinds of progress. I think those are pretty strong undercurrents in California that oriented against certain kinds of change, oriented towards protecting people who are already there. And the status quo is somehow more natural, oriented against a lot of important housing and building structural reforms that we need to do. So you may be seeing things that are not just at the legislative-social-political-dynamics level, but also a little bit in the psychology of liberalism that creates real problems for the progressive agenda writ large.…

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