California population declines for first time in more than a century

Let's walk through some of the numbers and issues in detail, together.

As of 2019, San Francisco county has a population density of about 18,000 people per square mile. Let's say that San Francisco county is the ideal scenario for the Raldi Model. And clearly, lots of people do want to live there now, so it can't be all bad.

Let's take that model and cut the population density in half and extend it across the greater Bay Area. Magic wand, presto-chango, the population density of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties is now 9,000 people per square mile, uniformly.

That gets us 70 million people in just the greater Bay Area. Awesome! We did it. 30 million people get to share the rest of the state, everything is grand.

What was the cost?

Well, if the greater Bay Area were a country, it would now be the world's 3rd highest population density (give or take) [1]. In terms of scale, it would blow away any other competitors in the list, dwarfing most high-density countries' total populations by a significant factor, except Bangladesh.

There was a thread yesterday on California's water woes [2]. What impact would the Raldi Model have on the state's water demand? San Francisco County uses about 41 gallons of water per person per day [3], which is less than half the state average. Fantastic! We only need to find about 3 billion gallons of water per day to serve this area, or 5.6 million acre-feet per year. This amounts to only about 5% more water than the state is currently consuming, so we only need to build one new reservoir that's a little bigger than the Shasta Reservoir, the state's current largest, and, somehow, fill it. Or, build 175 more Carlsbad desalination plants at $1 billion each, your choice.

Okay, water's solved! Next, energy. We only need an additional 448 TWh to serve this area at current San Francisco County per-capita usage levels [4]. Well ... 449, since we tore down the Altamont Pass Wind Farm and replaced it with high density housing. California currently consumes around 260 TWh statewide [5], so... uhh... we'll build 10 more nuclear power plants somewhere [6], somehow -- handwaving away all the costs and political challenges, and also their locations, since Diablo Canyon sits on 900 now very valuable acres of real estate. And the rest, let's just say rooftop solar covers the gap, haha.

Recreational space! Well, look, I have some bad news here. A lot of parks are gone now. Mount Diablo, the entire East Bay Regional Park system, the wildlife refuges in the north bay, Point Reyes, Muir Woods, they're all gone. Fortunately, people have all the same walkable concrete that San Francisco has. But, if you want to get away from one of the world's densest population centers for the weekend, don't go to Yosemite: due to consistently high traffic and the impacts it causes, Yosemite is using a reservation system for day passes now [7], and they'll want no part of 70 million more people visiting from the Bay Area.

Waste management: here, the Raldi Model gets a big point in its favor, since San Francisco overall does a magical job of reducing waste and landfill usage through multiple programs [8], although I'm skeptical we're getting a complete picture [9]. Even so, San Francisco County takes advantage of nearby open spaces for things like composting, and those open spaces are gone, so more waste needs to be transported farther afield and handled there. But, compared to the last few logistical issues we've handwaved away, this one's a peach.

Let's fast forward a bit and assume that everything else is taken care of too. There are enough teachers. All the paving that needs to be paved has been paved. Everyone is still, somehow, able to get all of the locally-grown organic food products that San Francisco County currently demands, we just have to stretch the definition of "locally grown" a bit. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was found to be taking up valuable real estate, so it was relocated to let's say San Diego, they'd love to have it there. All the trillions of dollars needed to make all this happen just sort of flew in and everybody looked at the plan and went, "yep, looks good to me."

Now, honest question: do you, personally, want to live here?

Lots of people would, no doubt. Lots of people live there now. But it's unclear how many people actually enjoy living there, and that kind of population density brings some serious human problems along with it [10].

I am extremely skeptical that, even if all the logistical problems could feasibly be solved, we'd find 70 million people in this country that would choose to live in that region once all the dust settled.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27068716

[3]: https://sfwater.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=145...

[4]: https://ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx

[5]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/05/f22/CA-Energ...

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

[7]: https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news/yosemite-national-park-t...

[8]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/how-san-francisco-became-a-g...

[9]: https://discardstudies.com/2013/12/06/san-franciscos-famous-...

[10]: https://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm, ctrl-f "excrement". Also https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/17/san-franc..., https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/technology/san-francisco-..., etc.

Where am I "basically saying" any of those things?

One big general cause of failure was that companies were allowed to stop paying into the funds without paying enough into the fund to cover their employees who would receive.

However, the particulars don't actually matter here. No matter the reason, it will have been the responsibility of the employer, fund manager or government regulators. The average Joe, who will lose his retirement if the pension is allowed to go bankrupt, didn't have enough control of the fund to be held responsible. As such, punishing him will do nothing to de-incentivize this from happening again.

I suppose I should have instead just said, "if raldi were right, the whole world would be Tokyo by now, wouldn't it?" and left it at that.

Instead of companies filled with risk takers working for crazy founders, now it's just the path followers playing it safe, checking off the boxes to go get the guaranteed money and not that much work at the FAANGS.