Politicians are incentivized to pass more bills to show they are "doing something." However, this constant addition of regulation and process often makes issues like housing and education more expensive and complex, demonstrating a paradox where less government intervention could yield better results.

While politicians can ignore massive fraud to maintain patronage systems, the financial markets will not. As the scale of waste in states like Minnesota and California becomes clear, bond investors will reprice the risk of municipal bonds, potentially triggering a fiscal crisis that forces accountability where political will has failed.

Success in Sacramento is often measured by legislative activity—the number of bills passed—rather than tangible outcomes for citizens. This "performative politics" creates a system that generates a lot of activity but lacks a feedback loop for real-world impact and accountability.

Runaway costs in education, housing, and healthcare stem from government intervention. When the government promises to provide a service (e.g., student loans), it becomes a massive "buy-only" force with no price sensitivity, eliminating natural market forces and causing costs to balloon.

Despite a massive budget increase from $36.5B to $127B since 2000, key metrics like safety and education have declined while population growth was minimal. This shows that simply increasing spending doesn't solve civic problems and often indicates deep inefficiency.

The state's most visible problems—homelessness, high costs, and corporate exodus—are framed not as complex policy failures but as the direct result of a singular, decades-long failure to build enough housing, office space, factories, energy, and transportation infrastructure.

NYC spends more per homeless person than the median household income, yet its homeless population is growing. This suggests that without proper outcome tracking and incentive alignment, massive funding can simply make a social problem more comfortable and entrenched, rather than solving it.

Criticism of the 'non-profit industrial complex' is misplaced. The root cause of misaligned incentives is politicians failing to tie public funding to performance. Elected officials must create outcome-focused contracts that hold service providers accountable for measurable results, rather than just activity.

Every negative news story creates a legislative impulse to add more rules for safety. This "safetyism" leads to layers of process and bureaucracy that ultimately hinder progress. It's a politically safe way for legislators to appear active without being accountable for actual outcomes.