I believe in economic Liberty, but I think America has become too dependent upon unlimited growth as an economic model. California is an example of a State where business and government and social reformers conspire to direct development to suit themselves, not society.

Business understandably wants a profit, government wants tax revenues while being seen to comply with all the laws laid down by voters and higher-level jurisdictions, social reformers want quick-fix band-aids on problems that are mostly caused by the ignorance and foolishness of modern culture.

The consequences of these short-sighted goals is that our State is losing its beautiful wild places, country-sides, charming 19th & early 20th century towns and cities, agricultural base, water resources, and livability. These are being replaced with government agencies, ugly commercial and residential projects, freeways that are obsolete before they are open to traffic, life-threatening pollution, and a self-absorbed population that has lost its love of Liberty.

If all we care about is making money, we will never find satisfaction in making money. If our goal is to protect our neighborhoods from destruction by ill-advised development, then we can lay the groundwork for a healthier way to exercise our economic freedoms.

Read “Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America” by Mindy Thompson Fullilove.

Yes and since every homeowner can’t do a thing about the falling lines and collapsing towers of PGE (they started 15 of the 17 fires in N.California in in 2017…this spring already there have been about five small fires because of downed lines in Sonoma cna Napa counties.. As long as PGE stays with the “Run to Fail” model we are in drastic danger and no brush-cutting will save us. In the winter when we used to brush our fire roads on the ranch, we burned the piles of brush in Dec. or January. These days it is almost impossible to get a burn permit because of hundreds of thousands of additional cars polluting the air quality in .our home counties than when we were kids. The problem is population, population, population and while native born Californians have limited their children, 1/5 of the residents wont and continue to have outdated size families.

Stop building in at-risk places? Recent history tells us that at-risk places now include areas formerly considered no- or low-risk. And many individuals and neighborhoods within the overly generalized fire prone zone have taken constructive steps to avert fire.

Mike L.

This encourages others to speculate with adjacent or nearby land, and pretty soon there is a whole city in the wilderness without sufficient fire or police protection. Then, when it all burns down or is washed away in a heavy storm cycle, the first thing the insurance companies do is agree to pay out money for rebuilding in the same place.

And then, it happens again, and again, and again.

There is a word for people who keep doing the same thing over and over without achieving their goal. It is called “insanity”.

If Newsom wanted to do something to reverse the trend toward bigger and worse fire hazards, he would place a moratorium on new construction in our forests, wild places and flood plains as well as set a goal for insurance companies to stop covering rebuilding costs for burned-out or flood-damaged houses.

Or something along those lines, anyway. It is not the responsibility of taxpayers who live in urban areas to pay for all the damage done to properties in places that should never have been developed in the first place.

Liberty cannot be maintained in the absence of wisdom.