The Definition of Insanity: California Edition

I moved to California in 1990. The economy was on an upswing. Teachers, firefighters, and nurses could still afford to buy a house. Thirty-five years later, after uninterrupted progressive governance, the median home sale price in Los Angeles County sits at roughly $910,000. Gas averages over $6.15 a gallon statewide—not because of some distant conflict, but because California’s regulatory apparatus drove its own refineries out of business. Net domestic out-migration hit 288,600 in 2025; the sixth consecutive year California led the nation in residents packing up and leaving.

Nobody who voted for any of this campaigned on it. They ran on compassion, housing equity, and saving the planet. They delivered unaffordable housing, a homelessness crisis that looks like a third-world city, and an energy grid that can’t keep the lights on reliably. That gap—between what was promised and what was built—is the defining political fact of modern California.

In December 2025, Governor Newsom called housing unaffordability “the original sin going back decades and decades.” He said this after years in office. He said it without apparent irony. The same coalition that built the problem is now asking for your vote to fix it. That’s not governance. That’s recycling.

The Rita Mae Brown line—often misattributed to Einstein—defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. I first heard it from my father after another Red Sox loss. I’ve carried it through thirty years structuring deals in private equity, private credit, and family offices. Markets don’t forgive repetition. They punish it. California voters, unfortunately, have been more patient.

The numbers are not ambiguous. California’s overall tax burden ranks among the highest in the nation. Its business regulatory environment consistently finishes near the bottom of every credible ranking. Corporate headquarters—Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Tesla, Charles Schwab—have been relocating to Texas and other states for years. What’s leaving isn’t just companies. It’s the tax base that funds the programs the progressive coalition depends on to stay in power.

The policy response to each failure follows a predictable pattern: the problem wasn’t the approach; we just didn’t go far enough. Housing unaffordable? More zoning mandates. Grid unreliable? More renewable mandates. Schools failing? More money to the same system. California spent roughly $23,000 per pupil in 2023—more than nearly every other state—and still produced NAEP scores that rank near the bottom nationally. The investment is real. The results aren’t.

The Marine Corps drilled one principle into my skull: you don’t grade the mission on effort or intentions. You grade it on results. Outcomes are auditable. NAEP scores. Energy prices. Net migration. Median home values. Debt-to-GDP at the state level. These are the numbers that tell you whether a policy worked. Not press releases. Not applause at a campaign rally.

California isn’t out of options. School choice would break the monopoly that’s failing a generation of kids, particularly in lower-income districts where the damage is most visible. Regulatory reform—real reform, not the staged kind—would let builders build and refiners refine. Repealing AB 5 in any serious way would restore economic mobility for hundreds of thousands of independent contractors the state reclassified out of existence. None of this requires a revolution. It requires electing people who measure their own performance by outcomes rather than ideology.

The same politicians who ran the same failed plays for thirty-five years will appear on your ballot again with updated slogans and fresh faces beside them. The question isn’t whether you’re angry—most Californians are. The question is whether that anger produces a different decision in the voting booth, or just another cycle of recycled promises from the coalition that built the problem.

Adjust your stride. Clear the hurdle. Stop handing the keys to the same drivers who put you in the ditch.