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THE CONSEQUENCES OF CENTRALLY PLANNED
COMPASSION BY EDWARD RING, CALIFORNIA POLICY CENTER
Firefighters spray water on a fire that began in a homeless encampment and spread to a vacant two-story commercial building in Venice Beach, January 13, 2021, in Los Angeles
Sixty years ago, when California was governed by people who were sane pragmatists, homes were affordable and very few people were homeless. To support new housing, government funds were focused on building enabling infrastructure. California’s
freeways and expressways connected new suburbs to urban cores, and the California Water Project delivered abundant water to the growing population. As a result, industry, jobs, and people poured into California, attracted by the beautiful weather and the low cost-of-living. Back then, California was the best place on earth to live.
For at least the last twenty years, California politics have been controlled by leftist ideologues. Their policies are impractical, the consequences are insane. Homes are unaffordable and entire cities
have been taken over by homeless encampments. California’s infrastructure is neglected, and the ability of private developers to profitably build homes that normal people can afford has been destroyed by overregulation. In 2020, for the first time since achieving statehood over 170 years ago, California’s population actually declined.
How California’s politics devolved between 1960 and 2020 to put the state into its current predicament is a long story, but two overriding principles governed the descent into madness and dysfunction: a preference for central planning and misguided compassion. With compassion as the moral imperative driving concern over poverty, racial injustice, and, more recently, climate change, California’s politicians turned increasingly to central planning to solve these crises. And because central planning does not work, and
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Edward Ring co-founded the California Policy Center in 2010 and served as its first president. He is a prolific writer on the topics of political reform and sustainable economic development. Ring has been interviewed, published or quoted by the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, Die Zeit, Real Clear Politics, Politico, American Greatness, City Journal, Zero Hedge, KFI Los Angeles, KABC Los Angeles, KOGO San Diego, KGO San Francisco, and other media outlets. Ring has an undergraduate degree in Political Science from UC Davis, and an MBA in Finance from the USC.
APARTMENT MANAGEMENT MAGAZINE - JUNE 2021 CS-7