Michael Shellenberger on California’s Decadent Tailspin
A few months ago, I interviewed Michael Shellenberger about his run for California governor. The interview, published in Quillette, focused on Shellenberger’s ideas for solving California’s homeless crisis. But the full interview covered quite a bit more territory. There’s one section in particular that I regretted not being able to include in the Quillette piece: the section where Shellenberger discusses the elements of California’s history that—he claims—have led to the current crisis.
In this section of the interview, which I’m sharing here, he paints a classic picture about decadence leading to society’s decline (specifically in terms of California’s massive problems with homelessness, drug overdoses, and unprosecuted property crimes). This isn’t a narrative I fully endorse, but no doubt it’s correct in many respects. It’s also directly in line with the theme of this newsletter—exploring decadence in society.
The following excerpt, previously unpublished, has been lightly edited for clarity.
Peter Clarke: What do you think specifically went wrong in California? You’ve mentioned how the live-and-let-live mentality embraced by the state can eventually lead to the types of issues we’re seeing now. But what was the moment in California history where the homeless crisis really started to go off the rails?
Michael Shellenberger: If you go back in California’s history, it really starts with the Gold Rush. San Francisco and other parts of California ended up with more saloons and bars than churches. And you get to the early 1900s and we had the first opium dens and we were also the last—San Francisco in particular—the last to close the opium dens. So there’s a libertarianism about the state. It’s sort of Big Lebowski-ism: "Take it easy, man,” you know. “They want to shoot heroin in a tent in front of your house. Why are you being so uptight about it, man?” So there’s some of that.
Then there’s a separate but intertwined strain of the radical left. California is the home of the Industrial Workers of the World party, the “Wobblies”—this was an anarchist movement. It was part of an effort to deal with the problem that Marxists and Communists had, which was that simply organizing factory workers did not create a big enough group to overthrow the government. You needed a much larger group—so you had to draw on what Marx and Engels famously dismissed as the lumpenproletariat, which included what we used to call hobos, transients, the unemployed. People that were on the social margins suddenly got brought into the coalition.
You get to the 1950s and 1960s and there’s a celebration of Beatnik culture, a culture of dropping out of society, a culture of counter culture, a celebration of intoxication, of drug use, but also of mental illness and addiction as a kind of spiritual transcendence. You get the late 60s and we get to a kind of sacralization of victims, where victims are now viewed as morally superior, not just as being mistreated and deserving of empowerment and support, but actually of a higher moral and social status.
That’s called victim ideology. It’s the idea that you can split the world into victims and oppressors, that these are permanent categories, that once you’re a victim you’re always a victim, as opposed to victimhood is a moment toward heroism, which is the traditional hero’s journey narrative of Western civilization. So it’s a counter-enlightenment ideology. Although it’s been resisted and resisted, it finally becomes mainstream over the last couple of decades when the so-called progressives (which is really the radical left) start to take power. So ostensibly moderates are in power in California, but they are ideologically incapable of resisting the radical woke left. So, when you look at who’s actually in charge, it’s the radical woke left.
Later in the interview, I asked Shellenberger how bad things might get in California if nothing is done about homelessness—if we just let the status-quo play out for the next ten years without any policy changes. I anticipated that he’d really play up the potential horrors (…mass looting! …cities on fire!) but instead he came back with a more hopeful, optimistic response:
Michael Shellenberger: I don’t think it’s an interesting question to predict the future. First of all, we’re not very good at it. And it’s sort of a parlor exercise. It’s much more interesting to figure out what the potential is. And so the potential is for the situation to change quite significantly.
He goes on to describe how his policy ideas could significantly change California for the better. Shellenberger lost his run for governor, so he won’t have the chance the implement his vision. But I do like that general optimistic take: California, despite its current problems, could still very well have its best days ahead.