Ideas for improving the State of California (writeup)

“If California were a country, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world.”

“California has a distinct cultural identity with regards to the United States.”

”California has 40 million citizens and has a lot of landmass, and thus is larger both geographically and by population than many countries in the world.”

These are a lot of the general consensuses on California, and yet the government of the State of California is not regarded with a lot of prestige by Californians, nor is there very much civic participation in the unique political issues that pertain to California and California only. (Part of this has to do with California being extremely far from Washington, D.C. and thus far from the center of government and civics culture in the U.S.).

If California has the trappings of a fully-fledged country, it should take itself with the seriousness and political identity of a country to the best reasonable extent possible. California has the wealth; educated citizenry and world-class educational institutions; single-party political system; preference for government proactivity; and cultural openness and inclination towards innovation for its state government and civics to solve its societal issues and improve standards of living.

Here’s a brainstorm of some of my ideas on how to improve the State of California. Please note that these are imaginative, early-stage ideas that warrant further research and citation and are not to be regarded as firm political stances by any means.

California improved civil service:

• “What if Google ran the DMV?”: Form a relationship between the CA DMV and the big tech industry to do a digital and UX overhaul of all DMV services. This will increase the public’s faith in the state by demonstrating that the state can serve everyday citizens’ needs without dysfunction; and allow big tech to get their foot in the door with modernizing government systems, hence ameliorating some of their antagonized relationship with governments in general, or currently absent relationship with the State of California in particular.

• University of California merit full scholarships provided by the state of California where you have to serve a tour / bond for 3 years in civil service after graduating. This would turn the prestige of working for the CA state government up, and force a lot of talent into the system. Tom Kalil says one of his biggest wishes is if there were more opportunities for talent to serve “tours” in government because this is an extremely effective tool. Here’s what I think, incorporating Kalil’s reasons:

  1. More talent is willing to consider it because they know it’s not permanent.
  2. Because it has a termination date, it forces the person to want to effect change faster.
  3. The person knows they aren’t tied to the bureaucracy so they can take more risk.
  4. There are many examples of this working in other countries, especially Singapore.
  5. This hasn’t been attempted at state level yet and may be politically winnable.

  It’s very much what Jennifer Pahlka and US Digital Service, Rewiring America, etc. are about, serving these digital tours. But it doesn’t have to stop at IT projects. The fact of the matter is that you just need more smart people going into the state government doing everything.

California YIMBY:

• Create a YIMBY-Pro Choice Housing Alliance in California: This idea is inspired by the following Ezra Klein quote: “I think of housing as basically the key to everything else in California. If people can't afford to live here, nothing else we do can really be just. Great climate policy in a housing climate that forces people to move to Texas isn't great climate policy” (source). Likewise, the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade casts a greater significance on which states Americans live in determining their civil liberties and abortion rights. In 2022 and 2023, California has passed a number of bills that make the state an abortion haven for out-of-state Americans, but the state can go further in this aim by reducing the cost of housing so that more people can afford to move to and permanently live in California.

• Pennsylvania I-95 emergency declaration but for California homelessness housing: The government of Pennsylvania recently made headlines this summer for its success in repairing a collapse in the economically vital I-95 highway in the span of only a few days, when experts predicted it would take them years to accomplish. This was largely attributed to the governor’s extremely strong emergency declaration that nuked any manner of red tape that stood in the way of the I-95 getting repaired. The state of California could declare an emergency that would allow it to yank certain housing projects completely out of red tape, if this example were studied more closely.

• Introduce the Korean fire escape model as a way to reduce California building code restrictions: A known issue with American construction that accidentally results in bad architecture (unlivable design) is that the building codes call for things that are well-meaning, pro-accessibility, good for emergencies (many things that are genuinely useful), but many of these restrictions cause bloats in housing costs and housing density (thus creating the “gentrified apartment structure”) that reduce quality of life. Building codes tend to require two huge emergency stairwell exits, among other provisions. But in Korea, they actually have fire ropes in every room instead. It seems to me that there are many inventions in other countries that facilitate emergency exit and thus enable architecture with higher livability.

California improved governance:

• Create think tanks focused solely on the State of California: Think tanks are an integral part of Washington, D.C. when it comes to policy formation and improved governance. Perhaps universities like UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, and Stanford should have think tanks that do research and propose policy that improve effective governance in California or advance aims like Progress Studies.

• Form a state department or external nonprofit that hires the best civil servants from Japan, Germany, Singapore, etc. as consultants and invites them to teach the state how to run things better. This may be particularly good for mass transit developments, zoning reform, and civil service reform. This idea is inspired by the reputation of American governments tending to wholesale ignore the successful models abroad of governance (”America eschews copycatting to a fault”), whereby the simple solution is simply to actually try to learn what other governments do. The high-level argument is that California has a weird cultural history as a contrarian state to an already contrarian country (USA), and so may buck the US trend of bucking the trend by copycatting good governance examples from around the word. Further reading: “Why California Has So Many Problems”.

California industrial policy: These are initiatives for California to cultivate new industries in the state that ensure the state stays at the forefront of economic prosperity and dynamism. This is largely inspired by the United States federal government’s recent foray into more proactive industrial policy.

• Promote an education of the trades in the Cal State and community college system because there is a shortage in the trades. Instead of force an either-or situation between a college degree and a trades certification, someone should be able to get both at the same time. Hypothetically, college-educated tradespeople should also be more capable of starting new small businesses in the trades.

• Create an industrial base around phage therapeutics, a nascent field of precision medicine biotechnology that has the promise of helping solve the global antibiotic resistance crisis.

• Create an industrial base around biotechnology more broadly. Although California is already considered one of the world leaders in biotechnology (San Diego, Silicon Valley), it does very little as a state to ensure this ecosystem flourishes. The state could create new biotechnology innovation prizes, among other things that explicitly advertise California as the indisputable center for biotechnology innovation globally.

• Create a magnet program for Korean film industry talent to come and stay in California, thus maintaining Hollywood’s dominance in the global film industry for more decades to come.

• Create a California International Freight Standard: There does not currently exist an international standard for freight information and documentation, especially in a digital form. As a state that has the best tech hub in the world and one of the largest ports in the world, the Port of Los Angeles, the state would be capable of writing a sound international standard for conveying freight data digitally, in a way that private initiatives like the Maersk-IBM blockchain cannot, in the sense of kindling adoption of the standard.

• Acquire the Port of Los Angeles - Port of Long Beach complex: The Port of LA-LB complex in California is run by local county and city governments even though the complex is a strategic national economic asset. These local jurisdictions have neither the resources, the money, the incentives, nor the power to ensure these ports are upgraded and run smoothly, and this was demonstrated by the unprecedented port blockage in 2021. Washington, D.C. is too far away to really have a good understanding or control of the port even if they wanted (which is why the 2021 envoy was too little too late), but the State of California is close enough and large enough to manage these ports better in the interests of the California and American public, given that the port affects the entire economy.

California global health: These are initiatives for California to take a leadership role in global health. In this way, California is able to increase its international relevance beyond its current relationship to the world as merely a state within the United States.

• Create a campaign of doctors to lobby the state to incentivize the elimination of antibiotics in animal agriculture (mainly because this is breeding antibiotic resistance and causing humanity to run out of antibiotics for itself). This is yet another “sciencey slow-burn collective action problem” like climate change or pandemics that needs policies and R&D to solve. A campaign like this should first put some policy and science heads together and write a 15 year plan for the elimination of antibiotics in agriculture. The first step should be getting the state to fund R&D on new animal husbandry methods (HVAC systems, probiotics, DNA surveillance) that offset the need for antibiotics; fund R&D in cultured (lab-grown) meat; fund R&D in discovering new antibiotics or antibiotic technology to replace the ones we’ve lost. The second step is to introduce policies that subsidize these new animal husbandry methods to get them deployed affordably. The third step is to introduce a statewide tax on the use of antibiotics in agriculture because it is a negative externality, then put that money back into the R&D.

• Create a new branch of the California state government that is focused entirely on being a command center for public health and pandemic defense. In this way, California is better positioned to fend for itself when the next pandemic emergency happens. But also, California can be thought of as a regional leader or helping to coordinate the West Coast states’ response to a pandemic. California should be running pandemic drills (or “wargames”) to practice pandemic response, in the way that pandemic experts currently advocate for all governments to do. If California becomes a world leader in running pandemic drills, it will likely form relationships with other governments, domestic and abroad, to teach and coordinate these systems. This new pandemic department of California should function like the U.S. DARPA in that many civil servants serve “tours” for a few years in this department. There can also exist a state-related external organization of citizen volunteers, or “civilian corps”, who help maintain California pandemic readiness (public-private relationships, media relationships, supply chain logistics) over a long period of time, like a “firefighter brigade,” “national guard,” or “standing army.”

Useful links relevant to this blog post:

• “The Book I Wish Every Policymaker Would Read”
• “Tom Kalil on how to do the most good in government”
• “Trump and Kim Can Learn a Thing or Two From Singapore” (archive)
• “More on Singapore and public sector talent development”