Asklemmy

Pretty broadly speaking, it's a population center and they'll always have a problem with those. There's more to it than that, but fact of the matter is even if the shit they tend to latch on to wasn't a thing they'd just find something else.

California is an absolutely beautiful state. Its natural beauty and geography are spectacular.

But it's crazy expensive, Californians are annoying and elitist, and has big social problems in its cities.

I think it's just all politics at this point, that and prob the cost of living being so high too.

But from what I can tell it's a great place to be. Not without flaws but just like any other state

Extreme cost of living.

Whatever else is good or bad about the place doesn't matter very much if you can't afford to live there.

It's endless soulless suburbia interspersed by twelve-lane traffic jams, what's there to like?

There's a shitty part of California that runs from SoCal upward through the Central Valley toward the Bay Area. While the lattermost seems nicer the former parts are just the same with less surveillance tech and with the masks off.

So, what is it that California does (policy-wise) that people hate so much?

Consider the possibility that the "hate" is not an opinion being reached in good faith.

The houseless problem seems extremely poorly managed. I lived in NYC for six years and have visited California a few times. From my experiences, both SF and LA appear to have much larger populations living outdoors (I checked and this is true, 75% of LA’s population vs 6% in NYC, and the cities are comparable in both population and houseless population).

I would imagine it has most to do that those people world have extremely hard time surviving winter outside in NYC.

California as a state and population seems to be at least as much bluster as action. I don’t want to detract from some real actions, like car electrification requirements, but for example, prop 65, the “known to the state of California to cause cancer” labels. A) California seems to “know” many things that science does not. B) no one pays any attention to these labels, but they sure cost a lot to produce C) if anything, this will cause people to ignore future warnings for real things or even current ones like on cigarettes.

The proposition 65 aka The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, actually is much more successful at reducing harmful toxic chemicals and affects other states too. Businesses are encouraged to change formulations so they don't have to use the label.

Here's list of chemicals that require such label: https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/chemicals

What you saw, likely was businesses trying to fight it, by being to opaque about it, and make it ridiculous (since there's no penalty for overusing it, and they are doing which results as you pointed out that waters it down) for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65#/media/File%3ADisneyland_Prop_65_Warning_crop.jpg

Although since enforcement is done via civil lawsuits. If they served food or something that did contain these chemicals, a sign like this won't be a good defense that they complied and warned their patrons.

They also trying different ways, like introducing bills on federal level to block it for example https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6022/text

They are trying also via lawsuits, which meant are filled on behalf of strawman. Many businesses were created just for the purpose of filing prop 65 lawsuits.

Though probably biggest issue is that the prop 65 is being used for frivolous lawsuits (as anyone can sue for not informing and get a settlement because no one wants a trial). So now AG needs to approve such settlements to reduce it. There were attempts to reform it.

So yeah frivolous lawsuits are the biggest issue that needs addressing, but other than that the law actually helped reduce exposure to those chemicals not only for Californians but also people from other states.

It sort of depends on where you are, but in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the homeless problem is noticeably worse than almost anywhere else in America. It’s bad.

An ex of mine lives in a pretty posh part of LA (Crestview). She works constantly and really hard to afford to live there. Now there are people literally shooting heroin on the street outside her home and to take her toddler to play at the park, they’re basically walking around the bodies of people high/sleeping.

I mean, I’m as anti-drug war as they come, but that’s no way to live and the police really should clear it out. Even in the poorer parts of most other cities, that’s not something you see.

As a mortgage lender that helps clients relocate out of California, you cannot blanket statement the entire state this way.

You can live in the slums, rampant homelessness or live in paradise. You can live in suburban desert hellscape or on an absolutely gorgeous vineyard.

People relocate out of there all the time but some do move back, realizing they hated the area of California but not the entire state.

Basically right winger media likes to paint California as the enemy (the right wing puppet masters currently hate the governor to really explain it), and the right wing muppets will not realize when they are out of their echo chamber and they will make some comment about commie Cali and your just supposed to agree and be mad. If you ask them to explain why they hate an entire state, the inability to actually explain why "California bad" is a sign that they don't really know and are victims to the right wing propaganda industrial complex

I think California is an okay place, but there are several things that annoy me about it, and here they are:

The houseless problem seems extremely poorly managed. I lived in NYC for six years and have visited California a few times. From my experiences, both SF and LA appear to have much larger populations living outdoors (I checked and this is true, 75% of LA’s population vs 6% in NYC, and the cities are comparable in both population and houseless population). Additionally, I’ve had more issues interacting with houseless people in CA than in NYC despite having lived in Manhattan many times longer than I’ve spent in CA. My guess is this is due to worse services/mental health services in CA. I would frequently buy food or coffee for houseless individuals in NYC and never had an issue. I once gave a couple of dollars to someone CA for bus money. They yelled at me because they needed a couple more for the bus. Another time I was followed for several blocks.

California as a state and population seems to be at least as much bluster as action. I don’t want to detract from some real actions, like car electrification requirements, but for example, prop 65, the “known to the state of California to cause cancer” labels. A) California seems to “know” many things that science does not. B) no one pays any attention to these labels, but they sure cost a lot to produce C) if anything, this will cause people to ignore future warnings for real things or even current ones like on cigarettes.

As a longtime resident of Hawaii, this one just annoys me. California claimed it was the first state to plastic bags. This is false; As of May 11, 2014, they were banned across Hawaii. https://www.surfrider.org/news/hawaii-becomes-the-first-state-in-the-u.s.-to-ban-plastic-bags. This did not stop California from claiming the victory when a law was signed later that year that didn’t go into effect until July 2015. https://www.ca.gov/archive/gov39/2014/09/30/news18742/index.html. California doesn’t just not know what causes cancer, they don’t know how to use google despite it being from their state. I suppose you could argue semantically that Hawaii’s ban was not statewide, as it was technically four bans, one in each of the counties, but that’s splitting hairs.

I also like the "you get what you vote for" comments about CA. WE voted for the best candidate out there at the time for Gov., we've had both parties in the past and they were a mixed lot...the guy who lost during the last recall election was dragging around a live bear to do press events and didnt have much of a position on anything relevant and he lost...