this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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I think California is an okay place, but there are several things that annoy me about it, and here are some:
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.
The biggest issue with Prop 65 is that the lost of chemicals includes things that cause cancer under specific conditions that consumers aren't likely to encounter and chemicals only known to cause cancer in animals. Ceramic fiber is a listed chemical, which means you need a Prop 65 label on ceramic mugs, even though ceramic fiber exposure would only occur upon breaking the mug and the effects would be negligible unless you're crushing mugs up into powder and railing the lines like Tony Montana.
Ok so you made me check. None of ceramic cups I have in my cupboard has this warning.
I see it is still listed: https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/ceramic-fibers-airborne-particles-respirable-size
So either these companies are violation of the law or (more likely) their product to comply.
Also keep in mind that prop 65's name is: The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986
One of the main goals is to protect our water from pollution, which even if the cups aren't carcinogenic when aren't broken the use of the chemical to produce it will likely end up in water due to production process. Also the chemical will be exposed to the environment once the cup is tossed away (especially after it breaks)
There's a picture of a mug on the Wikipedia page with the warning.
Furthermore, Prop 65's name isn't all it does. The Prop 65 labels you see in products are there because of the second part of the act. "No person in the course of doing business shall knowingly and intentionally expose" anyone to those chemicals "without first giving clear and reasonable warning."
That's what the warning labels are for. It has little to do with the production process and disposal process, and is there to warn the consumer of the final product being purchased and what it contains.
Yes, this is essentially what I mean about the difference between science and california’s knowledge. The warning labels are directed at humans using the products, so one would hope that the warnings would be for things that would have some reasonable chance of causing cancer to humans using the product but that’s usually not true.
Don't forget industry purposely overusing the tag to both a) water down it's effectiveness and b) try to weasel out of any future lawsuits with that particular product.
Truth be told, the law needs to be rewritten now that loopholes/exploits have been found. Humans make mistakes when writing the laws. We just need to do some tuning.
The labels are there to encourage businesses to seek different formulations, as product with labels will sell worse than one without.
The enforcement is done via civil suit so placing label that makes it hard for ordinary person to reasonably avoid exposure won't fly in court with jurors being those same people.
I've lived outside NYC and in SoCal. I don't think fair to only consider the total numbers (especially "living outdoors") when one place is freezing and inhospitable for a few months every year while the other is relativity (and in some parts, actually) a tropical paradise. People are going to migrate from all around the country to the most comfortable places to live outside. Not to mention cities literally bussing their homeless out- NYC was actually the first and still has the largest program:
There we go. This is what I was looking for.
Prop 65 is definitely useless. But I don't see that as a reason to move out of the state.
The whole thing that prompted me to ask was that I was told some people left the state for Montana because of the "policies" but I couldn't get a good answer on which policies they disagreed with.
Homelessness is certainly a problem here that's worse than most places. But it's still a problem everywhere you go.
Yeah, I don’t think anything I said would be a good reason to move away, but then again, CA is probably one of the top 5ish states I would live in.
It's far from useless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65#Accomplishments
It forced companies to reformulate their products to use less harmful chemicals to avoid having to use the label. And it was highly successful at that, not only in California but outside, because businesses don't want the labels on their products. Especially food products or products meant for kids.
What you see is malicious compliance from businesses as there is no penalty for putting the sign if there's no dangerous chemicals. If they put it often enough, then most people think this law is ridiculous. For example. If Disney would get a civil lawsuit (this is how the law is enforced), because for example one their restaurants were using dangerous chemicals, this sign won't protect them. So it serves no other purpose than to make it appear that the law is pointless.
Other ways they fight it is trying to pass federal law banning it, they had several attempts.
They also making strawman lawsuits, even creating companies specially for the lawsuit to show that this law hurts business.