I don't consider Minnesota to be a country within a country. Sure we have about the same population as Costa Rica, but we share a common culture and have much in common with our immediate neighbors, Canada included. We have autonomy and control over our economy on a state level, but federal government is still very much in our lives.

California to me, by contrast, is very much a country within the United States. It has a population that exceeds the entirety of Canada and has the 5th largest economy in the world. If it actually DID become its own country, it would have a GDP on par with Germany, the most powerful economy in the EU--- And California is only a goddamn eighth of our population. I say ONLY but that's quite a bit, really.

The federal government has pretty much just as much power in a Californian's life as it does in a Minnesotan's life, but the state government is just that much bigger in Cali.

The power of the government of California is one reason I consider it to be a country within a country. The second you cross over into it-- and I've done so from both Nevada and Oregon, you start to see street signs. A lot of them.

STREET SIGNS

I was noticing this in Canada as well, you can judge the size of a government by the amount of freaking street signs there are. For example, I remember in Prince George there was a street sign pounded into the ground to let people know that a curb was beginning. That's it. 

You also regularly get 2 warnings signs before a merge on the highway. That's a total of 3 signs for 1 merge. In my state we don't typically get a warning, which is just 1 sign.

You have street signs with flashing beacons / lights on them. Solar powered or not. Lights that flicker for an ISLAND coming up in the middle of the highway. Something that wouldn't be hard to miss otherwise. Lights that flicker for sharp turns and decreasing speed limits. Lights for street lights coming up. They CANNOT be cheap to make. Sometimes you have flashing yellow lights next to a street sign that has a light aimed at them.

Even the street NAME signs that hang from traffic lights are boxes with lights in them.

In addition, over 90% of the speed limit signs have ANOTHER sign under them that say "will be enforced", "enforced by radar" or "enforced by aircraft"--- whatever that means. We know it's going to be enforced. We kind of expect it to. A speeding ticket is probably the most common interaction between a citizen and law enforcement. We don't need signs to let us know.

When you have construction coming up you'll typically have a minimum of 5 signs leading up to it, one of them will be an illuminated sign where words can be programmed and even that says "will be enforced" when warning of an incoming reduction in speed for a construction zone. Yeah, we know. We should slow down. The other 3 signs said so too.

I'm sure the number of signs there are costs them. There's not only pounding them into the ground but the maintenance. 

ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS

California boasts the largest economy in the nation so it has a lot of dickswing when it comes to industrial standards. There's no sense making 2 kinds of cars, 2 kinds of plastics, or 2 kinds of electronics for one country so most manufacturers look to California's standards and cookie-cutter that for the rest of the nation.

Even gas stations have special hoses that cover the gas pump nozzles to keep down on emissions. I can see why, a gas station is typically the biggest emitter of pollution in a neighborhood. In Minnesota on days where there's been zero wind for long period of time, they ask people to avoid driving AND pumping gas. 

I admit, these special nozzles are kind of annoying on a motorcycle. You need to use two hands, one to hold on the trigger, the other to pull back the gas pump's foreskin, otherwise the trigger literally won't engage and no fuel will pump out. I saw it here and there along the west coast and in Canada, but California has this everywhere by law.

As was made known to me by an old meteorologist friend, California's geography is part of the reason you see the high emissions standards. The entire state is a huge bowl. Because much of the population is backed up against mountain ranges, pollution isn't blown across the country and emitted into the atmosphere. Like a haze, winds off of the Pacific ocean blow into the state and keep the smog backed into a corner against the mountains and it just hangs there with nowhere to go.

After looking at what images of California looked like in the 90s and earlier, I believe it's worth doing and it's working out for them. It also holds the rest of the nation to the same standard, which I believe is a good thing. Call me a tree hugger, but I don't really prefer car manufacturer profits over air quality. I could give a damn about Ford's share price, and I think I still have a share on my old Robinhood account.

HIGHWAYS & INFRASTRUCTURE

The highways are wide. Because public transit took a nosedive in the post-war years to now, we've seen a massive expansion of California's highways. In any suburb around the bay area-- hell, even in Sacramento, a mid-size city by Cali standards with half a million people, we see 10 to 12-Lane Highways. That's an absolutely obscene amount of space for transit.

One nerd fact about me is I've spend some time lulling myself to sleep with non-fiction books about urban planning. I find it interesting. From these books I've learned that one issue with making highways wider with more lanes is that 'more people use them'. Unless you plan on vastly expanding the highways beyond and into neighboring homes and businesses, you're not going to cut down on congestion that MUCH by expanding roadways.  It's what economists call the "induced demand" Problem. "If you build it, unfortunately, they'll come." Increasing supply means people will want it more. On the supply-demand curve, the intersection of the X just moves straight up and land space goes down.

California seems to have taken a long time to understand this. At night it's pretty fun weaving around in a large share of lanes, though. 

In addition, because of California's tectonic situation, the malleable plates here are folded in some SUPER fun ways that make this state one of the best to have a motorcycle in.  Winters don't come with a lot of snow (unless you're in the mountains) and you can always find a more rural, long-route that follows a mountain ridge somewhere. Also, there's a lot of public land, so when you ride these highways they're going to be completely isolated of people.   We're talking few intersections and virtually no homes.

NOCAL SMALL TOWNS ARE NOT IN DECAY

You could chock it up to the higher minimum wage, you could chock it up to the higher number of social safety nets in California, but rural areas in Northern California are not doing as bad as the rest of the country (or Canada for that matter). It could be that there are people from the cities looking to get out and they take their big Silicon Valley paychecks and splurge out in the countryside. It could be that the people of California have more money moving around. Actually, that's exactly it, there is more money moving around for everyone. The real question is- how? 

We know that warmer climates attract the homeless. This is no exception in Canada. Also, homeless folks may tend to go where the better safety nets are. California is the biggest example known of this. It seems like the state has more financially flourishing rural areas and it could be at the expense of having more homeless in big cities. 

I'm not sold on my theory, I'm just trying to figure out how. I don't see shuttered stores and vacant lots. I don't see "going out of business" signs still hanging in the dusty windows of vacant mom-and-pop shops that had closed even pre-dating the covid years. I saw a GOOD cross section of the state as well. I haven't just been in the ritzy places like Napa or the rural regions in the orbit of the bay area. We're talking RURAL California, like isolated mountain towns near the Oregon and Nevada borders. We're talking sand-blasted desert towns that survived their ghost town neighbors going into the post-war years. I'm just not seeing the decay and I am very pleasantly surprised. Not even rural Canada has it as good, and they're doing better than any other US state by far.

More notes on California later!!