The Promise of Frontier in California Forever
Abundance Demands Economic Freedom
Abundance and affordability are two concepts that don’t mean anything without context. In an economic sense, abundance is an oversupply of goods or services relative to the demand for them. In the short run, this would lead to falling prices. Affordability is the price of goods and services relative to someone’s ability to pay for them in the quantity they desire at that point in time.
In that one paragraph, abundance and affordability were introduced as separate, but related propositions. And it was done in the context of sellers, buyers, alternatives, values, time, demand and supply. There is a great deal of complexity there and a vast number of mental integrations are needed to fully comprehend the possibilities. However, without relevant clarity, “abundance” and “affordability” are anti-concepts.
Philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand explains this for us: anti-concepts are “an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept.” Other common examples of this are “polarization” and “extremism.” To nearly everyone “abundance” and “affordability” sound good and “polarizing” and “extremism” sound bad, but without precise definitions and context, they are the tools of people with destructive ambitions.
Abundance and Affordability Agendas
But for me to say that some people or ideas are destructive, I must define that. To be destructive is to promote actions that harm human life and considers all reasonable alternatives. Of course, the hallmark of human life is intelligence, and as Ayn Rand also explains,
The use of intelligence is an acquired skill. It has to be acquired by a child’s own effort and automatized by his own mind, but adults can help or hinder him in this crucial process.
Accordingly, anyone who chooses to hinder the process of valid ideas is destructive - and that begins with the choice to think or avoid thinking. Think about that.
Another word that is routinely misused and misunderstood is “radical.” For definition, it is to be focused on root causes and fundamentals. In turn, it is radical to assert that people who promote the abundance and affordability agendas by the force of government are committed to the destruction of the individual and of capitalism.
Naturally, to say that is to invite accusations of “polarizing” and “extremist” from the likes of the activists for the new mayor of New York. He is the guy who will enforce “the warmth of collectivism” after a campaign that included his support of the mass murder and gang rape of September 11th and October 7th.
But there is also the context of the creators, producers, and builders with skin in the game and who have a long-term vision for what a city can and should be.
California Forever Project
In 17th century Manhattan it was lawyer Adriaen van der Donck and the Dutch West India Company. In 21st century northern California, it may be former Goldman Sachs banker Jan Sramek, Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, other venture capitalists, and Solano County. In a joint venture known as California Forever, this grand enterprise is defined as:
An economic engine for Solano County and restores California’s legacy as a place that can build anything. The new city includes Solano Foundry, the largest manufacturing park in America, the Solano Shipyard, the largest shipyard in America, and Solano Living, the first walkable city built in 100 years.
Even to the casual observer, building anything of significance in California is nearly impossible. Not only does the environmental lobby loot the private sector with impact studies and zoning regulations, but it negates the castle doctrine with their own brand of “the warmth collectivism” in the form of home invasion by wildfire.
Combine that with the secular religion of government omniscience and the moral code of self-sacrifice to their goddess Gaia, and you have the perfect storm of a postmodern feudal aristocracy. Recognizing the beast, the first objective for the construction of the project’s Foundry manufacturing facilities is:
By completing 90% of usual entitlement and utility connection steps upfront as part of the master-planned development, Solano Foundry offers permitting as fast as 90 days, enabling companies to break ground quickly and expand to millions of square feet, without leaving the region.
If the construction of the Empire State Building is the standard, these goals are timid and underwhelming, but the America of a century ago rewarded achievement and was not dominated by today’s anti-conceptual mentality. According to Sramek,
If you tried to design a system that was going to completely break up society, make everyone fight and make everyone hate each other, you would design the California Land Use system.
City of the Future
California’s infamous High Speed Rail failure may be the whipping boy of its self-destruction, but the poster boy is its governor. His greatest achievements are firestorms, homeless encampments, and abusive taxation. Fortunately, reason is our absolute, reality always wins, and The Elegant Solution to Housing Affordability explains the recipe:
The solution must include getting “outside the box” of rent controls, zoning ordinances, tax credits, and green construction mandates. Fortunately, markets are resilient, entrepreneurs are creative, capital flows to talent, and consumers have alternatives.
The Foundry project mentioned above will support the shipbuilding enterprise. Not only will the Solano Shipyard reduce America’s dependency on the Panama Canal, but a 10-fold increase in America’s global ship construction market share will bring the United States to only 1% of global production.
This miniscule participation is evidence of the horribly irrational nature of industrial policy. I’m not saying that the industrial policy was bad. I’m saying that federal industrial policy outside of legitimate national security priorities is bad.
The third leg of the stool is called Solano Living – and the online marketing brochure features walkable access to schools, shops, jobs, entertainment, parks, universities, and culture – all in the amazing climate and natural surroundings of northern California. The priority will be home ownership, but there will be rental opportunities, and the long-term plan is for 175,000 homes over the next 40 years.
That may seem like an inordinately long build-out, because it is. The reason is California’s return to a primitive way of life through coercive government – and only rationalized as better than China’s ghost cities.
Maximizing Returns
Investment returns are typically measured as dollars of net profit or as a percentage of capital invested. That is good and necessary, but The Moneyball Method integrates dollars of future wealth with the ultimate investment return – the time to experience the values and aspirations that give meaning to your life.
And surprising only to the destroyers within democratic socialism, the effective management of municipal government budgets must employ the same moral principles. But don’t take my word for it. In his 2022 book, The Municipal Financial Crisis, Mark Moses, MBA and California municipal finance consultant writes,
I want to see the problems of local government finance solved, not simply to save the organizations as an end in itself, but to secure the elements of local government that we need to live our lives well . . . The remarkable things that we see and enjoy when we move about our cities, pursuing our own values, have only been built and preserved because we can move about our cities and pursue our values.
Working against that are the anti-concepts that dominate today’s city and county governments. Those include consensus building, community benefit, and the public good to justify any government action that can be rationalized with good intentions. “Consensus building” requires the compromise of integrity. “Community benefit” requires the sacrifice of individual sovereignty. “Public good” requires a duty to a social contract without prior consent.
Fortunately, America is rich with a few capitalists whose legitimate concepts of integrity, sovereignty and free will have not been obliterated:
By backing California Forever, some of the Valley’s most intelligent investors are betting that California can once again behave like a frontier . . . California Forever is a bet that land that was settled hundreds of years ago can still provide the much-needed physical infrastructure for the intellectual exploits that will define the future. It’s betting that the next frontier lies on the same ground as the old frontier.