Sunday was a gorgeous day here in Los Angeles, clear, windy, just a hint of smoke from the fire up above Santa Clarita.<\/p>\n
The SO \u0096 who is the \u0093perfect pillion\u0094 as well as a pretty good rider herself \u0096 and I took the motorcycle out and spent the day with some friends riding through the canyons up there, and on the way I was strongly reminded of why I am a liberal.<\/p>\n
First, the clean air.<\/em> And I remember summer days in high school when you couldn’\u0092t see the end of my West LA block for the smog. Two-a-days in the pool at school when you spent the day with \u0093aqualung – \u0094\u0097a chest so sore you couldn\u0092’t raise your voice.<\/p>\n My sons haven\u0092t had those problems (I am aware of the higher incidence of asthma, but there\u0092s a bunch of interesting epidemiology on that). I don\u0092t think their children will, either.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n The damn bureaucrats, and their command-and-control bureaucracy. Personally, I think there are more refined tools available to us in the Information Age \u0085 Precision Guided Munitions of regulation, rather than the crude daisy-cutters. But if we don\u0092t regulate, we\u0092ll choke. Next, the infrastructure.<\/em> In the canyon you can see the remnants of William Mulholland\u0092’s last great project, the St. Francis Dam, which failed catastrophically in 1928, killing at least 500.<\/p>\n But Southern Californians live on the desert because of the infrastructure that gives us water, protects us from floods, lets us move around, etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n I know that each of these is the heavy boot of man\u0092s dominion over nature\u0085 – but unless we are all willing to live like Gabrielinos, we need it.<\/p>\n And the infrastructure isn\u0092t just physical, but social as well. I have a bachelor\u0092s and a master\u0092s from the University of California, and it is a truism the public university has changed people\u0092s lives.
\nThe population of Southern California has gone up by about 60% since 1970, according to the Southern California Association of Governments. Auto ownership and use has grown faster, probably about 25% more, I\u0092ll estimate, so we\u0092re looking at a 75% increase in vehicle-miles. We\u0092ve probably lost a bunch of manufacturing and refining, but employment is still a whole bunch higher than it was back then.<\/p>\n
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\nOur normal ride, up Bouquet Canyon, was closed due to the fire, so we rode up San Francisquito Canyon instead (past \u0093A Place to Shoot\u0094<\/a>, a pretty decent firing range).<\/p>\n
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