Conservative criticism of California focuses, with good reason, on the perils of progressive ideology. The dysfunction caused by progressives in power is evident in the state’s dismal system of public education, its ongoing challenges maintaining law and order, and chronic, escalating state and local government budget deficits that threaten to entirely collapse services that are already inadequate.
Criticisms are endless and warranted. Perhaps topping the list is the punitive cost of living, itself completely the result of political choices. There is no reason why California, a state with abundant natural resources and spectacular wealth, should not allow private companies to compete in producing the essentials of life at affordable prices while themselves still earning a profit.
This is a moral and functional decay that hides behind the ideals of racial and sexual equity, along with the environmentalist imperative to protect the planet. Sadly, this rot has not merely prevented new investments and innovations that would allow California’s working households to once again have a chance at upward mobility. Californians are losing what they already have. The state is falling apart.
A sad and telling example of this is the Santa Cruz pier. Built in 1914 and extending 2,700 feet into the Monterey Bay, this iconic destination is a site for boat tours, dining, fishing, and sightseeing. There are fish markets and restaurants, and gift shops catering to over a million visitors per year. At the end of the pier, through fenced-off squares cut in the pavement, families have enjoyed watching sea lions fighting and frolicking on the lower beams and jumping in and out of the water for decades.
All of this came to an abrupt halt in December 2023 when a storm caused a 150-foot section at the end of the pier to collapse into the waves. For over a year since that storm hit, mired in litigation, bureaucracy, and funding challenges, the pier was closed. In early 2025, it reopened, with the city all but resigned to never restoring the last portion of the structure. But it didn’t have to be that way.
As a local paper reported, “decades of maintenance backlog and insufficient money for repairs contributed to the end of the wharf’s collapse in December.” For years, potential state and federal grants to fund badly needed wharf maintenance were held up by lawsuits. As it is, the remaining stretch of the Santa Cruz pier is vulnerable to the next storm. But instead of just sending crews down there to replace the corroding fasteners that hold the pilings together, maintenance of the pier was and is mired in bureaucracy and litigation.
It isn’t as if the money isn’t there. The City of Santa Cruz, which owns the pier, has a population of 61,000, yet has 20 employees earning pay and benefits that cost taxpayers over $400,000 per year each, another 44 earning between $300,000 and $400,000, and another 86 employees making between $200,000 and $300,000. That’s a lot of money for a small town to pay its employees, and it’s pretty good pay, even in California.
The point here isn’t to analyze the budget and spending priorities of the City of Santa Cruz, even though there is irony in the fact that public employees in California could afford to make less if they made less. After all, they too are subject to the state’s crippling rates of taxation. But the reason to bring it up is more systemic. California’s welfare state has taken people who might have worked on the Santa Cruz pier, along with countless other maintenance projects, and turned them into jobless welfare recipients. And that’s the money that—in a less regulated, less bureaucratic place—would have instead been paid to fix the pier.
It’s easy to criticize this ideology in terms of the financial devastation it causes. A government that exists to serve itself doesn’t want to fix things, whether it’s the schools, the crime, or the people who have decided California’s cost of living is so high that they opt instead to rely on welfare. Because for a government that exists to serve itself, these failures constitute success.
The price for this is a financial catastrophe, but it is also a human tragedy. And even for the people lucky enough to remain productive and financially independent of state handouts in California, there is the burden of living in a state of decay. Examples are endless.
One of the most scenic roads on earth is the fabled Highway 1, the coastal road that runs from San Diego all the way into northern Washington State. Hugging cliffs, bridging canyons and estuaries, through tunnels and over causeways, with forests and grassland off its eastern shoulder and beaches and the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, it is a road that offers stunning beauty. One of the most pristine, unforgettable segments of this road connects Carmel and Big Sur to the north to San Simeon and Morro Bay to the south. Travelers who navigate these 120 miles will never forget their journey, as redwood forests give way to oak woodlands, and at every turn, there is another endless vista of blue water and shoreline.
But no more. Starting in January 2023, a series of winter storms triggered landslides that have closed Highway One for repairs, which are now expected to last into 2026 if not longer. At least in this case, work is proceeding to get the road back open. But California’s forces of decay are nonetheless active, calling for the permanent closure of this treasured highway because road closures can potentially benefit wildlife by creating a more undisturbed environment and, of course, because “climate change is accelerating erosion.”
Give up. It’s not neglect. It’s climate change. Use the money instead on equity programs run by government employees.
Across the entire state, you see this decay happening, sometimes all at once because of a storm or landslides, sometimes in slow motion. In cities from Los Angeles to Sacramento, urban groves of majestic redwoods are dying, one by one, not because they couldn’t thrive with irrigation as they always have, but because the state now rations water. And our neglected water infrastructure in California is just a statewide analogue of what’s happened in Santa Cruz. It’s easier to neglect public amenities and blame it on climate change than it is to confront and reexamine government budget priorities.
Progressivism in California may be an ideology, but in practice, it’s a grift. Its ability to diminish our freedom and erase our quality of life has been proven again and again. Progressivism, ultimately, is a fraud. It sounds great and seduces well-intentioned people with the rhetoric of compassion. Help the disadvantaged. Save the planet. But the only practical beneficiaries are special interests. And in the real world, the only aspect of progressive ideology that is authentic is its nihilism.