I've been following Sam for awhile, his business model makes heavy use of outsourcing production of components to skilled partners. It's no sweat off him if he makes the Impulse stove in California or not.
His point is that it's impossible to manufacture much of anything in California if you aren't grandfathered in. Seems pretty important for economic and security issues.
The electric induction cooktop he and his team has made is pretty cool! I'd check it out.
Unless you believe there needs to be a plan for CA to secede in the future and thus it needs to be self-sufficient, why does manufacturing need to be in CA? As you stated, the Impulse stove makes heavy use of outsourced manufacturing to other parties; as long as those parties are within the US (which I'm not claiming they are, but there are states like TX that are far less concerned about environmental impact than CA is and thus could pick up any such slack), why is there a security concern here?
As for the economic concern, it seems like this is backwards: I'd argue it's the HCOL that drives industry with the need for low-wage labor away to non-CA locations. There's nothing stopping non-polluting corporations from working and hiring large numbers of people in CA.
And, yes, it's a really neat stove... for wealthy people. At an installed cost of ~$8k (more if you're having to replace a standalone oven/cooktop since you need the stand for it), it's competing with lower-end Viking gas ranges that include an oven, and those have an extensive service network that Impulse doesn't (yet) have.
I am sure the 5th largest economy in the world is truly suffering under their draconian regulations. Everyone in California making the 5th highest median income in the country wishes they were working at a local oil refinery.
To your last point, I am somewhat doubtful that this website is being honest about automotive paint shops being banned in California. Am I to believe that the 3,000 auto body shops in Southern California sit on their hands all day? Was West Coast Customs just a fake TV show filmed in Texas?
If this website’s author is correct I’m supposed to believe that no paint gets applied to cars in Canada.
I also think that readers in this thread should remember that California has strict air quality regulations because its geography especially in Southern California lends itself to bad air quality. These regulations are very much written in blood. Globally, almost 7 million people die prematurely every year due to air pollution.
Really difficult to say because it doesn't make many concrete claims. It doesn't mention any regulations or say what chemicals or processes are actually banned. These are not easy things to look up. I can tell you that at least the semiconductor fabrication stuff is false, there are many fabs in California and here's a new one as of a few days ago: https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/02/19/san-jose-tech-nokia-i....
I realize it isn't completed yet but I don't think anyone is buying sites for something that's impossible to build.
I can tell you that your two articles that intended to refute the semiconductor fabrication stuff fail to do so. Both sites were existing facilities and would therefore fall under the granfathered in point in the site.
> so obviously his point can’t be true
> so obviously he’s biased and we can’t do the mental work of sifting
> so obviously I can dismiss this as teleologically false.
Please don’t be so lazy you guys. There is something to be gained here.
> so obviously he’s biased and we can’t do the mental work of sifting
This guy, with an obvious bias, created a website that misrepresents the situation in California (by implying things are banned or "nearly impossible" when in actuality they just take time/effort), while also failing to show the specific regulations or requirements for any of it. Without supplying that kind of information this website is little better than "It's banned. trust me bro". It's not our responsibility to try to dig up evidence to support or verify this guys claims just because he can't be bothered to do it.
His motivations, his framing of the problem, and his failure to back up his own statements makes the site pretty damn easy to dismiss and I don't even doubt that there might be instances where bad regulation exists, especially regulation that protects the profits of established players in certain industries by keeping out competition. I'm entirely sympathetic to the idea that it might be happening, but if there is something to be gained you aren't going to find it on this guys website. Serious coverage on this topic would include actionable information we can use to identify and solve specific problems. This is just anti-regulation propaganda.
I don't think it makes a good case for itself. No automotive paint shops sounds kind of ridiculous. I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??
But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic, makes me wonder how many of these banned industries I don't want in my state. I think if we want to build them in the US maybe don't build them in the most agriculturally productive and highest population state. Or first figure out how to do it without turning the US into China with its "cancer villages" from poisoned river water.
I'm not defending the dysfunctional CA bureaucracy, but the site should probably focus on specific cases of government-produced insanity than a general complaint that certain industries are banned from operation.
Wait, hold on - I watched all the seasons of "Rust To Riches" on Netflix, about a small shop that flips cars.
They routinely painted cars.
They'd paint in this sealed-up room/garage thingee, the guy would wear and industrial-grade mask, and the camera would slide past as he expertly painted the car. The 30 second montages looked awesome!
That show took place in Temecula, California. So there's no way that site is accurate.
And, more to the point, if they want to show that they are accurate they should be linking to the rules & regulations that actually prohibit these things instead of just making a claim & calling it a day.
They're likely falling under some "we aren't selling car painting as a service or main part of our business, we're painting our own cars as a small ancillary part of our real business" exemption.
I assume you use semiconductors yourself, since you are posting here. But you want their manufacture to be banned in your state.
So the right thing is to outsource the dirty jobs to countries that can’t afford to be picky?
Wouldn’t it be better for the world if we used our wealth to develop methods of safe semiconductor manufacturing with low environmental impact, and proudly built those facilities in California?
It's not like the laws are simply "you can't make semiconductors here". The laws ban the harmful externalities of the process. The companies that want to make semiconductors don't want to find a way to make the processes less harmful: it's cheaper and easier to just go somewhere where they can pollute instead.
> I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??
There are. They just cost more and take more time.
> But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic
People say this all the time, but semiconductor fabs simply aren't very toxic compared to just about every other industrial manufacturing process. Mostly this is because everything is sealed and sealed and sealed some more.
Yes, they handle stuff like arsenic gas (arsine AsH3), but they really try to reclaim it all. The semiconductor waste stream is often purer than most industrial inputs. Yeah, old plants would just dump crap into the environment. However, for modern semiconductor facilities, it is generally more economic to reprocess your waste than try to purify from primary sources.
Now, PCB manufacturing, on the other hand, is quite terrible or at least it used to be. I don't know if people have sealed and automated that yet.
The Grandfatherd-in section is incredibly misleading. Look at the Semiconductor Fabrication section, for example. The implication is that these are the only fabs in the state, they wouldn't be able to get new permits today, and the red dots indicate that it would be "effectively impossible" to open any other ones. In fact (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...) there are at least 18 fabs in California, and these are just two random examples of particularly old ones. Obviously they couldn't reopen under the same permits they got in the 60s, why would anyone expect that to be the case?
A lot of these are actually grandfathered in. Vulcanization, electrolysis, auto painting, etc. I think the emphasis is that CA has effectively made it difficult to get regulatory authorities to agree to issue new permits. That was the part that stood out to me.
I wouldn't expect it to be impossible, and it isn't, but I would expect the permits to be different than they were 60 years ago. You can still build a house today, but that doesn't mean you can build one using the same permits you received in 1965. This is true for everything.
Of course. And the goal in part is to enrich prior entrants and also to create massive unearned gains for them by printing a license for something no one else can have. This explains a lot of the housing prices writ large -- boomers and others who own houses that are grandfathered in via various regulations that let them build for cheap but not you, and making a new one has to be done at much higher regulations, basically printing money for those grandfathered in without them having to do anything but add regulations that apply to everyone else but them.
Listen y’all, it’s not just that we aren't letting companies spew chemicals into the air. The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible.
Instead you have to ship things from out of state and other countries, which generates emissions and pollution itself that might actually be more than local production.
Its the same issue as housing. Endless rules and regulations, many of which make no attempt at doing anything but block, cause the wealth of socirty to be siphoned away. An apartment project in LA with permits complete is worth twice as much as one without. How do we see this and expect our economy to do anything except drown in bureaucracy?
My advice is dont ever manufacturing anything in CA. They will try and kill your business for simply existing no matter how perfect you are.
> The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible.
This didn't occur in a vacuum. Business interests and their aligned politicians fought successfully for a century for their freedom to destroy human health and life in pursuit of profit. Many died, many were injured and countless more had their lifespans cut short. There's obviously legitimate concerns about over-regulation, but concerns about corporate abuse of power are just as legitimate if not more so based on the history. And it's not unopposed either, but most of the backlash in California has centered on housing construction and occupational licensing - not the rights of investors to build new industrial facilities in a post-industrial state.
Oh I didn’t realize pineapple farms were banned in California and Alaska.
I thought they hadn’t been built for other reasons over the last decade. But according to this, not being built means banned. TIL!
Started reading this site but the massive gaps in logic and reasoning are like nails on a chalkboard.
No new fabs being built in CA means fabs are banned?!
Okay well fabs are banned in pretty much the whole country then, so why call out California?
Just because something isn’t done doesn’t mean it’s banned. Neither is it necessarily bad. There’s a lot of reasons why not to build certain things certain areas - labor cost, earthquake risk, land is more desired leading to higher cost, blah blah blah
That doesn’t mean something is banned. Maybe we should look at making some things easier but this website is just a hit piece and has a clear motivation rather than being a trustworthy evaluation.
It’s like those cringy billboards on highway 5 about Gavin newsom and water.
Edit ——
Complaining that large factories can’t easily be built in dense population centers like the Bay Area means things are banned is weird - who in the right mind thinks a sprawling factory with emissions should go smack dab in the middle of population centers? Why can’t we build a new nuclear plant in Manhattan or maybe an oil refinery on wall street!? Waah waah so outrageous! None were built in the last decade so it’s the outrageous regulations fault! I want my lead battery smelter in downtown Portland but Oregon banned it! Waah waah!
Aside that, this site is mostly blaming California regulations for the nationwide manufacturing issues driven heavily by free trade
They are playing a bit fast and loose with the word "banned".
> Your smartphone contains materials processed through semiconductor fabrication, chemical etching, metal anodizing, glass tempering, and electroplating — none of which you could start a new facility for in California without years of litigation.
I agree that we should make it easier to do things, specifically by decreasing the amount of litigation involved in doing stuff. But the risk of a bunch of litigation isn't a ban, right? I get that it's trying to be attention-grabbing, but calling it a ban when it's not just sort of confuses the issue.
Being unable to start a project without doing 5 years of legal wrangling once you put shovel to earth may not be a "ban", but it sure doesn't encourage development.
Agreed, words matter.
There are a lot of smart people out there, and the writer of this site makes me skeptical when he/she exaggerates, omits or spins info. Tell us all the facts at least, so we can trust you.
I actually find it exceedingly boring if someone doesn't push the envelope with facts a little bit. Defending something colored well within the lines is just sleep inducing. Make a statement that is just barely defensible, and now we are talking, and it gets interesting.
But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy. There needs to be a path towards doing things other than foisting them on people who are out of sight.
Texans seem more than happy to host these industries. Let them, they have no public land left to protect anyway. The environment is arguably California’s most valuable asset. May as well preserve it so people continue to want to actually live here.
Texans often try to regulate these industries at the local level. The state government has tried to put a stop to most of that by passing the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act which took away the ability of local communities to protect themselves. The state has ruled that Texans will be exploited by industry in order to protect profits and the citizens aren't allowed to vote to save themselves.
You act as though California is no longer one of the largest populations or one of the largest economies.
The “snowball fallacy” is a fallacy because there is no reason California s can’t swing the regulatory pendulum back the other direction if there is too much economy / freedom impacted.
When I took a machining course, the instructor sat in the corner and showed us YouTube videos in Mandarin with English subtitles to teach us the equipment.
All we have is the weather? California is the largest agricultural producer of any state, and it's not even close. Plants like growing here for the same reason people do.
Maps of California are dotted with SuperFund sites where these companies left the taxpayers with the bill to clean up their toxic messes. We don’t “foist” these externalities on other people; they choose to hold lower value on a clean environment than regions which regulate pollutants and other negative externalities.
> But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy.
I would like far less of all of these to exist than we currently produce (I use a 5 year old phone, an 11 year old car, and think the US Navy could function just fine with a lot less budget and warships).
But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy
This is kind of disingenuous.
I mean, not everything used in California, needs to be manufactured in California. Why not manufacture it in New Mexico? Or Arkansas for that matter?
What you're implying, is that Wisconsin, Nebraska, Maine, Florida, etc, etc, etc, should all build out the manufacturing base to manufacture things that are used in those states. That's not really how a healthy economy should work.
I guess what I'm pointing out is that, we don't need to manufacture smartphones in South Dakota. It's perfectly acceptable to manufacture them in, say, New Jersey, and then ship them to South Dakota. Similarly, we don't need to manufacture everything in California.
I agree but I fail to see how bad water infrastructure that allows poop to get into the water supply in Mexico has anything to do with this topic. Nobody is arguing that you should be able to spew cancer causing chemicals into the air. It is possible to do all these industrial processes responsibly. It just costs more to do it. So either you can allow businesses to do these things with reasonable amounts of regulation locally or you can prevent those businesses (what CA does) and import these products made somewhere where they won't follow your regulations. And since pollution notoriously doesn't honor borders, perhaps its best not to use simplistic scarecrow arguments and instead have a nuanced understanding of the topic. But don't let me stop your partisan hackery, I'm sure you enjoy it.
I'm not from California but this to me seems like a great case to move to California. Why not ship your externality creating activities elsewhere? Its not like they pay more for the iPhone.
Sure. A state where housing is dirt cheap and no taxes is great, but if something happens to you, good luck finding a hospital or municipal services. Job prospects are also something to consider.
Just because houses cost more and there's a state tax, doesn't mean it's _bad_.
Well, I find it a bit hypocritical: if those things are so bad, why to forbid manufacturing and not consumption? Otherwise you just pollute a place where people that have no say live.
Some of these items actually net improve clean air and clean water, but you’re instead happy to export those pollutants to another country to feel better yourself
It's always hilarious when a bunch of people in Texas who hate government and government regulations get screwed so hard by the corporations that move in that they start incorporating to form governments so that they can pass government regulation to stop those corporations. See for example Webberville or the efforts to create Mitchell Bend in Hood County. Some people have to learn the hard way. Some never do.
Texas got so sick of Texans trying to protect themselves by creating regulations that they created the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act. It took away the ability of local communities to protect themselves and instead protected the profits of some the state's biggest industry buddies.
If somebody else values their health less - let them have pollution in their own back yard. If enough communities worldwide care about their health, then polluters will have to clean up their processes. But it's not for the residents of California to decide what happens in other jurisdictions.
The reason those countries take the "burden" on is because the USA became a global superpower by developing more industrial capacity than literally every other country in the decades prior to the World Wars.
They want to duplicate this success and displace the West, similar to how the USA displaced Europe during and after World War 2.
Do you not think it’s possible that there are many places where people do care about their health, but they are forced to allow pollution because the alternative is grinding poverty and eventual starvation?
Do you think the ship breakers in Bangladesh do it for fun?
This outsourcing of misery is the absolute worst feature of Western neoliberalism. You get a two for one, dumping misery on other countries because it’s cheaper, while outsourcing strategic concerns because they are “too dirty.” It’s NIMBYism taken to its logical conclusion.
> they are forced to allow pollution because the alternative is grinding poverty and eventual starvation
If these people decide that pollution is preferable to starvation, why shouldn't we let them make that decision? Why should we force them into starvation?
The answer is to spread out all forms of production globally, so nations don’t lose their smaller local industries that may be less efficient than foreign alternatives. Foreign trade should fill gaps in local production, not kill local industry.
The mechanisms by which this can be accomplished are antitrust and careful application of trade barriers. The obsession with “free trade” has done damage to countries all across the world in order to benefit a small class connected to multinational industry. The short lived benefits came at a huge cost and countries are only just now seeing this.
Free trade/open borders libertarians have lost influence to nationalists because the former position is antithetical to maintaining a functional society. It’s possible to build “libertarianism in one country,” and the sooner that people wake up to that, the better. The alternative is some form of left or right despotism.
It's interesting, but is there some conflation of regional restrictions with the state of California?
Example: cites automotive paint shop restrictions as the quintessential example of what you can't do in CA, and qualifies it with a specific Bay Area regulation.
The main processor requires ultra-clean rooms, toxic gases (arsine, phosphine), and chemical etching. No new fabs have been built in CA in over a decade. Intel, TSMC, and Samsung all build elsewhere."
Phosphine is pretty nasty stuff. California was full of EPA Superfund sites when the government got stuck with cleaning up all the toxic waste. Politicians and voters went, "Eff that!" after manufacturers left the state, but left their barrels of shit behind.
Let's be honest: People have no problem polluting elsewhere as long as they can consume the final product without suffering the consequences. TFA isn't important to the people of California.
The site would be better if it linked to the actual regulation that prohibits each type of business instead of just making the claim “0 new factories of this type have been built”.
They lost me at "vacuum deposition - impossible" without justification. As far as processes go it's one of the safest (everything happens in a sealed vacuum chamber). Maybe the solvents used to clean prior to coating?
I wonder if there's a law+econ analysis of comparing the current framework (regulations and upfront permitting) vs having the regulations but then enforcement via combination of randomized gov't inspections and private lawsuits. The motivation would be to allow things to move faster while also requiring the same degree of compliance, but without the massive red tape upfront with administrators having no real incentive to approve projects or move fast. One obvious downside is that it effectively creates an economic incentive to try and skirt the law and/or find loopholes, but that arguably exists to the same degree in the existing system.
Oil refineries in particular are interesting because the sources for the blend of gasoline California requires[0] are either in CA itself or are few and far away. This means that gasoline prices are susceptible to greater supply shocks and so on. Many US regulations follow from California exercising its large market to induce companies to change their policies (electronic one-click cancel, CCPA, No Surprises in healthcare billing) but this one hasn't quite had the same effect.
One can hope that most Californians switch to BEVs from ICE vehicles before this becomes more of a constraint.
Gasoline usage externalities are poorly priced-in so the resulting increase in cost of gasoline here is probably overall a good thing. If we had appropriate carbon/sulphur/etc pricing on the outputs, I think it would be less justifiable since then the externalities would be priced in.
Paint VOCs sounds fine, until it's done at industrial scale, and it's also your neighbor, and also all the children in the neighborhood have asthma, and also healthcare is a lot more expensive...
This list isn't things you "cant do in california" but "polluting things you can't do in highly populated cities".
I'm not sure what the conclusion here is other than health is not important.
Most of this stuff could be done in compliance with the laws but it’s just cheaper to do it somewhere else where you allowed to vent poison in the air rather than having to filter it out.
Are they only banned in the cities, or are they banned in the state, which -- even in California, should have rural areas far enough away from cities to be tenable?
It's an interesting conundrum though, because in many cases, the cities could not exist without the things that are being banned in the cities. It's a curious goal of populations to centralize, then ostracize all the things that enabled that centralization
Everywhere in California that isn't a giant population center is growing food for the rest of the country, or is a mountain where these things can't be built anyway.
They're probably "not banned" only in the "basically lying" sense that they per rule won't approve you in certain cities and if you do happen to be rural the process is hostile and expensive enough that it's not worth it for the value such a facility would generate. That's how that sort of stuff is in my state.
That's the thing, often when people say stuff like "its banned" what they really mean is:
- the cost of mitigating the human health risk is too high
- competitors in low-environmental regulation places don't pay for those costs
- ongoing verification is expensive
I mean, let's face it, "self-regulation" of industries isn't really working that great. And for things that are health hazards that are basically borne by someone else, why should a local government make it easy to cheat and lie about this stuff?
The people arguing against this seem to assume that their right to have a business, make a profit, whatever, is a self-evident Good Thing, and rarely provide any additional arguments beyond "but the jobs". If they were at the VERY LEAST saying "we can make X safe" then maybe it'd be interesting. But as it is, the argument is basically asking us to mortgage the health and safety.
I do not care to try to make things ethically fair for oil refineries. Call me a hypocrite, I do not care, as these companies similarly do not care. "Ya got me!", yup, moving on, I am still glad oil refineries are effectively banned.
I think if we consolidate those operations the better, and then we can improve an regulate legislative or as a market more easily than if everyone is spread all over.
If we consolidate them you wind up with the same situation we have for everything already. The big megacorps who's paid for experts and lawyers (and ability to donate to politics) to tell you why the river glowing is safe get to do what they want and the upstart who may challenge that bigCo to do better never gets off the ground. But I guess if the goal is simply to declare everything "fixed" because the government has agreed it's compliant then consolidation is fine.
Are other states building all this manufacturing/semiconductor capacity? I think it's an overall USA thing, we just don't do manufacturing anymore because it's cheaper to do it in another country.
Not sure what the point of the website is. To me it looks like a bad faith argument. The secular trend in the US has been to increase margins by moving manufacturing to other countries.
The tariffs are certainly not making it easier to manufacture domestically.
Really? Since it’s lacking any comparison to other states and because many of these complaints single out metropolitan areas comparison to nationwide census of metro areas, what actual conclusions are you drawing that are valid?
Context matters a lot. We haven’t built a lot of mercury based hat felting shops lately in California. What conclusion do you draw from that?
I assume you're being a little obtuse. The comparison to wherever manufacturers phones and EVs is implicit. They are manufactured somewhere with looser environmental regulation than California, where they are purchased en masse. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
I saw complaints that amounted to “it’s more expensive to build out large industrial facilities in bay area than in Reno”
okay what’s different in Reno hmmm I could be like the website and try to imply it’s only environmental regulations… or I could acknowledge that land price and availability is drastically different and also labor costs…. But then that wouldn’t help my contrived argument that it’s all the pesky regulations.
Again, without apples to apples comparisons to other areas, wha are you actually able to conclude from the website other than stoking confirmation bias?
A lot of these are stretches or remove nuance. I get the point they are trying to make, but it's a lot weaker than they think and undermined by their own "hero" example: painting cars in California
> A modern auto paint shop emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during primer, base coat, and clear coat application. The Bay Area AQMD makes permitting a new paint shop nearly impossible. This is THE classic example of what you can't do in CA.
Ah yes, the Bay Area, famously "all of California". And on top of that, the restrictions are mostly in highly populated areas.
This site is limiting its focus to environmental permitting concerns, it seems. The problem is that one of the biggest barriers to manufacturing in the US is labor: cost and protections of various sorts.
Don't need to worry about those pesky people and their rights in other countries where people are in desperate need for, or are coerced into, working in these industries.
The claim that aluminum anodizing is "banned in California" because of the sulfuric acid waste it produces is patently absurd. There are no shortage of labs, factories, and more in California that use sulfuric acid, and they all figure out how to dispose of their waste without going "fuck it, YOLO it into the river".
I confess I don't know what to make of this. Without seeing the reasons why these are banned, what is the point? Would be like lamenting how you can't use asbestos. Sure, but is that necessarily a bad thing?
Yeah, I don't think that is generally viewed as a good thing, though? And I would not be surprised to learn California has some stricter rules on it. (Would honestly not be surprised to find out some of these "banned" items are due to asbestos level concerns.)
Ya a lot of people on this site are ideologically positioned in a way that required demonizing CA. I don’t have any skin in that game but it seems pretty clearly A Thing to me from the other side of the country.
A lot of people on this site do or used to live in CA. It is especially galling to have people who have never lived there tell those that have what it is like there. Especially people who have tried to build or run a business in CA.
The Silicon Valley founderati is chock-full of (right wing) libertarians. I can't tell if they were always that way, or are increasingly disgruntled by state-taxes the wealthier they get.
> This has 70 upvotes within 30 minutes. This feels like an astroturf.
Not really surprising given the audience, HN has an awful lot of neo-Technolibertarian types.
The kind who used to complain about government regulation of free speech, and now complain about anything that gets in the way of amassing massive amounts of capital at any social/environmental/political cost.
It's unfortunate that folks who complain incessantly about "facts not feelings" don't appear to be using their critical thinking skills here. But I guess it's not too surprising.
Lot of things could be added to this list. Good luck getting permission to start a hospital, or permission to mine/refine anything with a slightly messy process (e.g. rare earth metals). You can't build a new port. The California Coastal Commission won't let you open a new hotel anywhere on the water. You can't even keep a bar open late in San Francisco.
I just searched "new hospital opened in CA" on Google and see that there were two new hospitals opened in Irvine in December, half of a new hospital complex in Santa Clara opened in October, more being built and slated to open this year or next...
Got a new one. In California—the only place that matters in tech—all operating systems must implement age verification by Jan 1, 2027. Which means this is coming to a computer near you, worldwide.
California can do a lot to private companies, but the supremacy clause allows the federal government to do what it wants. If a business wants to engage in these illegal-in-California practices, they could partner with the federal government.
Edit: Now that I’m doing the research a partnership isn’t even needed, just a contract. Which makes sense, the feds cannot hire a private individual to do what would be illegal for them to do themselves… conversely, a company who is contracted to do federal business also enjoys supremacy by virtue of acting for the feds.
3) I wish people that constantly complained about California's regulations/taxes/politics would just quietly see their way out rather than obsessively whine about it. Enjoy Texas/Florida/wherever you go. We'll be ok without you.
Just look at what they've done about rebuilding the Palisades, and the nonsense they've perpetrated, allowing people to live and build in places that are completely impossible to make safe to live because of incredibly stupid bureacratic policy conflicts. And then the staggering mismanagement of water resources, allowing huge tax breaks and claims on water rights to giant corporations, then completely taxing and running out farmers and landowners with legacy rights, making it impossible for them to live there.
At least if they drive everyone productive out of the state, the environment will be pristine.
It's like some insanely scaled up version of gentrification, but in the most aggressively, offensively stupid way possible. California is a tasteless joke.
I don’t know, 39.5m with net growth might disagree with you. Are you living in California at present? If not, do any of the deregulation in laws where you are trouble you. If so, when do you plan on leaving and where to?
The creator of the website is the CEO of a battery-powered induction cooktop company. (https://x.com/sdamico)
He clearly has an agenda against what he perceives as onerous environmental regulations: https://x.com/sdamico/status/2026536815902208479 https://x.com/sdamico/status/2026552845294792994
I've been following Sam for awhile, his business model makes heavy use of outsourcing production of components to skilled partners. It's no sweat off him if he makes the Impulse stove in California or not.
His point is that it's impossible to manufacture much of anything in California if you aren't grandfathered in. Seems pretty important for economic and security issues.
The electric induction cooktop he and his team has made is pretty cool! I'd check it out.
I'm not sure I agree.
Unless you believe there needs to be a plan for CA to secede in the future and thus it needs to be self-sufficient, why does manufacturing need to be in CA? As you stated, the Impulse stove makes heavy use of outsourced manufacturing to other parties; as long as those parties are within the US (which I'm not claiming they are, but there are states like TX that are far less concerned about environmental impact than CA is and thus could pick up any such slack), why is there a security concern here?
As for the economic concern, it seems like this is backwards: I'd argue it's the HCOL that drives industry with the need for low-wage labor away to non-CA locations. There's nothing stopping non-polluting corporations from working and hiring large numbers of people in CA.
And, yes, it's a really neat stove... for wealthy people. At an installed cost of ~$8k (more if you're having to replace a standalone oven/cooktop since you need the stand for it), it's competing with lower-end Viking gas ranges that include an oven, and those have an extensive service network that Impulse doesn't (yet) have.
I am sure the 5th largest economy in the world is truly suffering under their draconian regulations. Everyone in California making the 5th highest median income in the country wishes they were working at a local oil refinery.
To your last point, I am somewhat doubtful that this website is being honest about automotive paint shops being banned in California. Am I to believe that the 3,000 auto body shops in Southern California sit on their hands all day? Was West Coast Customs just a fake TV show filmed in Texas?
https://www.autobodynews.com/news/new-paint-voc-regulations-...
If this website’s author is correct I’m supposed to believe that no paint gets applied to cars in Canada.
I also think that readers in this thread should remember that California has strict air quality regulations because its geography especially in Southern California lends itself to bad air quality. These regulations are very much written in blood. Globally, almost 7 million people die prematurely every year due to air pollution.
I’m happy this is coming from a real person with skin in the game and not just a veiled PAC with murky intentions.
> has an agenda
Everyone has an agenda. Is anything on this site false? Is it incorrect information?
Really difficult to say because it doesn't make many concrete claims. It doesn't mention any regulations or say what chemicals or processes are actually banned. These are not easy things to look up. I can tell you that at least the semiconductor fabrication stuff is false, there are many fabs in California and here's a new one as of a few days ago: https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/02/19/san-jose-tech-nokia-i....
I realize it isn't completed yet but I don't think anyone is buying sites for something that's impossible to build.
Here's another one: https://www.bosch-semiconductors.com/roseville/
I can tell you that your two articles that intended to refute the semiconductor fabrication stuff fail to do so. Both sites were existing facilities and would therefore fall under the granfathered in point in the site.
Maybe reworded as “He has skin in the game”
> so obviously his point can’t be true > so obviously he’s biased and we can’t do the mental work of sifting > so obviously I can dismiss this as teleologically false.
Please don’t be so lazy you guys. There is something to be gained here.
> so obviously he’s biased and we can’t do the mental work of sifting
This guy, with an obvious bias, created a website that misrepresents the situation in California (by implying things are banned or "nearly impossible" when in actuality they just take time/effort), while also failing to show the specific regulations or requirements for any of it. Without supplying that kind of information this website is little better than "It's banned. trust me bro". It's not our responsibility to try to dig up evidence to support or verify this guys claims just because he can't be bothered to do it.
His motivations, his framing of the problem, and his failure to back up his own statements makes the site pretty damn easy to dismiss and I don't even doubt that there might be instances where bad regulation exists, especially regulation that protects the profits of established players in certain industries by keeping out competition. I'm entirely sympathetic to the idea that it might be happening, but if there is something to be gained you aren't going to find it on this guys website. Serious coverage on this topic would include actionable information we can use to identify and solve specific problems. This is just anti-regulation propaganda.
Lies can be either by commission or omission.
I don't think it makes a good case for itself. No automotive paint shops sounds kind of ridiculous. I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??
But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic, makes me wonder how many of these banned industries I don't want in my state. I think if we want to build them in the US maybe don't build them in the most agriculturally productive and highest population state. Or first figure out how to do it without turning the US into China with its "cancer villages" from poisoned river water.
I'm not defending the dysfunctional CA bureaucracy, but the site should probably focus on specific cases of government-produced insanity than a general complaint that certain industries are banned from operation.
> No automotive paint shops
Wait, hold on - I watched all the seasons of "Rust To Riches" on Netflix, about a small shop that flips cars.
They routinely painted cars.
They'd paint in this sealed-up room/garage thingee, the guy would wear and industrial-grade mask, and the camera would slide past as he expertly painted the car. The 30 second montages looked awesome!
That show took place in Temecula, California. So there's no way that site is accurate.
And, more to the point, if they want to show that they are accurate they should be linking to the rules & regulations that actually prohibit these things instead of just making a claim & calling it a day.
The website is extremely clear about this being about _new_ automotive paint shops, so nothing you said here refutes the website.
They're likely falling under some "we aren't selling car painting as a service or main part of our business, we're painting our own cars as a small ancillary part of our real business" exemption.
I assume you use semiconductors yourself, since you are posting here. But you want their manufacture to be banned in your state.
So the right thing is to outsource the dirty jobs to countries that can’t afford to be picky?
Wouldn’t it be better for the world if we used our wealth to develop methods of safe semiconductor manufacturing with low environmental impact, and proudly built those facilities in California?
Well that's the whole problem isn't it?
It's not like the laws are simply "you can't make semiconductors here". The laws ban the harmful externalities of the process. The companies that want to make semiconductors don't want to find a way to make the processes less harmful: it's cheaper and easier to just go somewhere where they can pollute instead.
In many cases, California’s environmental regulations don’t make an earnest attempt to permit safe ways to do things.
And in all cases, those industries make no earnest attempt to develop safe ways to do things instead of simply doing it where it doesn't matter.
When an industry leaves this many superfund sites in an area, that industry can expect some regulatory blowback from that area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...
https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-y...
I would imagine a paint booth with negative pressure and particle and carbon filters on the exhaust would work fine.
I go by a paint shop every now and then. It’s not nearly as smelly as a quite of a few of the nearby restaurants.
It actually makes me wanna move to CA.
> I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??
There are. They just cost more and take more time.
> But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic
People say this all the time, but semiconductor fabs simply aren't very toxic compared to just about every other industrial manufacturing process. Mostly this is because everything is sealed and sealed and sealed some more.
Yes, they handle stuff like arsenic gas (arsine AsH3), but they really try to reclaim it all. The semiconductor waste stream is often purer than most industrial inputs. Yeah, old plants would just dump crap into the environment. However, for modern semiconductor facilities, it is generally more economic to reprocess your waste than try to purify from primary sources.
Now, PCB manufacturing, on the other hand, is quite terrible or at least it used to be. I don't know if people have sealed and automated that yet.
The Grandfatherd-in section is incredibly misleading. Look at the Semiconductor Fabrication section, for example. The implication is that these are the only fabs in the state, they wouldn't be able to get new permits today, and the red dots indicate that it would be "effectively impossible" to open any other ones. In fact (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...) there are at least 18 fabs in California, and these are just two random examples of particularly old ones. Obviously they couldn't reopen under the same permits they got in the 60s, why would anyone expect that to be the case?
A lot of these are actually grandfathered in. Vulcanization, electrolysis, auto painting, etc. I think the emphasis is that CA has effectively made it difficult to get regulatory authorities to agree to issue new permits. That was the part that stood out to me.
> why would anyone expect that to be the case?
Why would you expect it to be impossible?
I wouldn't expect it to be impossible, and it isn't, but I would expect the permits to be different than they were 60 years ago. You can still build a house today, but that doesn't mean you can build one using the same permits you received in 1965. This is true for everything.
Of course. And the goal in part is to enrich prior entrants and also to create massive unearned gains for them by printing a license for something no one else can have. This explains a lot of the housing prices writ large -- boomers and others who own houses that are grandfathered in via various regulations that let them build for cheap but not you, and making a new one has to be done at much higher regulations, basically printing money for those grandfathered in without them having to do anything but add regulations that apply to everyone else but them.
Listen y’all, it’s not just that we aren't letting companies spew chemicals into the air. The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible.
Instead you have to ship things from out of state and other countries, which generates emissions and pollution itself that might actually be more than local production.
Its the same issue as housing. Endless rules and regulations, many of which make no attempt at doing anything but block, cause the wealth of socirty to be siphoned away. An apartment project in LA with permits complete is worth twice as much as one without. How do we see this and expect our economy to do anything except drown in bureaucracy?
My advice is dont ever manufacturing anything in CA. They will try and kill your business for simply existing no matter how perfect you are.
> The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible.
This didn't occur in a vacuum. Business interests and their aligned politicians fought successfully for a century for their freedom to destroy human health and life in pursuit of profit. Many died, many were injured and countless more had their lifespans cut short. There's obviously legitimate concerns about over-regulation, but concerns about corporate abuse of power are just as legitimate if not more so based on the history. And it's not unopposed either, but most of the backlash in California has centered on housing construction and occupational licensing - not the rights of investors to build new industrial facilities in a post-industrial state.
Oh I didn’t realize pineapple farms were banned in California and Alaska.
I thought they hadn’t been built for other reasons over the last decade. But according to this, not being built means banned. TIL!
Started reading this site but the massive gaps in logic and reasoning are like nails on a chalkboard.
No new fabs being built in CA means fabs are banned?!
Okay well fabs are banned in pretty much the whole country then, so why call out California?
Just because something isn’t done doesn’t mean it’s banned. Neither is it necessarily bad. There’s a lot of reasons why not to build certain things certain areas - labor cost, earthquake risk, land is more desired leading to higher cost, blah blah blah
That doesn’t mean something is banned. Maybe we should look at making some things easier but this website is just a hit piece and has a clear motivation rather than being a trustworthy evaluation.
It’s like those cringy billboards on highway 5 about Gavin newsom and water.
Edit —— Complaining that large factories can’t easily be built in dense population centers like the Bay Area means things are banned is weird - who in the right mind thinks a sprawling factory with emissions should go smack dab in the middle of population centers? Why can’t we build a new nuclear plant in Manhattan or maybe an oil refinery on wall street!? Waah waah so outrageous! None were built in the last decade so it’s the outrageous regulations fault! I want my lead battery smelter in downtown Portland but Oregon banned it! Waah waah!
Aside that, this site is mostly blaming California regulations for the nationwide manufacturing issues driven heavily by free trade
They are playing a bit fast and loose with the word "banned".
> Your smartphone contains materials processed through semiconductor fabrication, chemical etching, metal anodizing, glass tempering, and electroplating — none of which you could start a new facility for in California without years of litigation.
I agree that we should make it easier to do things, specifically by decreasing the amount of litigation involved in doing stuff. But the risk of a bunch of litigation isn't a ban, right? I get that it's trying to be attention-grabbing, but calling it a ban when it's not just sort of confuses the issue.
Being unable to start a project without doing 5 years of legal wrangling once you put shovel to earth may not be a "ban", but it sure doesn't encourage development.
He's talking about taking the government to court to force it to follow the law, not "maybe we'll get sued later."
Agreed, words matter. There are a lot of smart people out there, and the writer of this site makes me skeptical when he/she exaggerates, omits or spins info. Tell us all the facts at least, so we can trust you.
I actually find it exceedingly boring if someone doesn't push the envelope with facts a little bit. Defending something colored well within the lines is just sleep inducing. Make a statement that is just barely defensible, and now we are talking, and it gets interesting.
As a resident who likes to breathe clean air and drink clean water, none of that seems all that bad.
I guess there should be an ability to do this farther from the population centers though.
But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy. There needs to be a path towards doing things other than foisting them on people who are out of sight.
Texans seem more than happy to host these industries. Let them, they have no public land left to protect anyway. The environment is arguably California’s most valuable asset. May as well preserve it so people continue to want to actually live here.
Texans often try to regulate these industries at the local level. The state government has tried to put a stop to most of that by passing the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act which took away the ability of local communities to protect themselves. The state has ruled that Texans will be exploited by industry in order to protect profits and the citizens aren't allowed to vote to save themselves.
This is a self fulfilling profecy.
For a long time, it was jobs and the promise of a better future for your family. By killing that all we have is weather.
You act as though California is no longer one of the largest populations or one of the largest economies.
The “snowball fallacy” is a fallacy because there is no reason California s can’t swing the regulatory pendulum back the other direction if there is too much economy / freedom impacted.
When I took a machining course, the instructor sat in the corner and showed us YouTube videos in Mandarin with English subtitles to teach us the equipment.
We are never going to catch up.
All we have is the weather? California is the largest agricultural producer of any state, and it's not even close. Plants like growing here for the same reason people do.
And if the last several years are indicative of the trend, wildfire season is now a substantial part of the year.
Maps of California are dotted with SuperFund sites where these companies left the taxpayers with the bill to clean up their toxic messes. We don’t “foist” these externalities on other people; they choose to hold lower value on a clean environment than regions which regulate pollutants and other negative externalities.
Plenty of states and countries are okay with having this stuff in their backyard. Most of them encourage it. Let them build it.
> But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy.
I would like far less of all of these to exist than we currently produce (I use a 5 year old phone, an 11 year old car, and think the US Navy could function just fine with a lot less budget and warships).
But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy
This is kind of disingenuous.
I mean, not everything used in California, needs to be manufactured in California. Why not manufacture it in New Mexico? Or Arkansas for that matter?
What you're implying, is that Wisconsin, Nebraska, Maine, Florida, etc, etc, etc, should all build out the manufacturing base to manufacture things that are used in those states. That's not really how a healthy economy should work.
I guess what I'm pointing out is that, we don't need to manufacture smartphones in South Dakota. It's perfectly acceptable to manufacture them in, say, New Jersey, and then ship them to South Dakota. Similarly, we don't need to manufacture everything in California.
> I mean, not everything used in California, needs to be manufactured in California.
Not the parent but nobody is implying that. Just that most Californians consume or want these things and thus expect other states to build them.
What if, hear me out, what if we did these things… in space?!
Assemble a navy in space then just airdrop it through the atmosphere?
To be fair there is quite a bit of space there.
That’s ok, Texans don’t mind having to drink bottled water
I lived in Mexico for a while and while I really enjoyed it it’s horrible that you have to fear the tap water. It’s not humane
I agree but I fail to see how bad water infrastructure that allows poop to get into the water supply in Mexico has anything to do with this topic. Nobody is arguing that you should be able to spew cancer causing chemicals into the air. It is possible to do all these industrial processes responsibly. It just costs more to do it. So either you can allow businesses to do these things with reasonable amounts of regulation locally or you can prevent those businesses (what CA does) and import these products made somewhere where they won't follow your regulations. And since pollution notoriously doesn't honor borders, perhaps its best not to use simplistic scarecrow arguments and instead have a nuanced understanding of the topic. But don't let me stop your partisan hackery, I'm sure you enjoy it.
I'm not from California but this to me seems like a great case to move to California. Why not ship your externality creating activities elsewhere? Its not like they pay more for the iPhone.
Consider housing price and state tax as well
And don't forget the strict laws that prevent people from leaving and require them to complain instead.
Sure. A state where housing is dirt cheap and no taxes is great, but if something happens to you, good luck finding a hospital or municipal services. Job prospects are also something to consider.
Just because houses cost more and there's a state tax, doesn't mean it's _bad_.
> Why not ship your externality creating activities elsewhere?
Like where?
Like the places where people welcome deregulation and jobs?
Not trying to sound like a jerk but there’s plenty of places in the US where people welcome stuff like coal mines and polluting factories.
If the factories have to be somewhere and they consent, then why not there?
There's this country called China that you guys been offshoring manufacturing to...
Unless you are from China, your jurisdiction offshores to China as well.
Well the attitude that puts a full stop (well a question mark) after "NIMBY" says implicity "where the poors live".
Well, I find it a bit hypocritical: if those things are so bad, why to forbid manufacturing and not consumption? Otherwise you just pollute a place where people that have no say live.
Some of these items actually net improve clean air and clean water, but you’re instead happy to export those pollutants to another country to feel better yourself
the plurality of this website are californians so this whole discourse is about as predictable as can be
Export the externalities baby!
> I guess there should be an ability to do this farther from the population centers though.
Maybe Texas is far enough? The [l]one-star state has laissez-faire regulations, and may be more to author's speed.
It's always hilarious when a bunch of people in Texas who hate government and government regulations get screwed so hard by the corporations that move in that they start incorporating to form governments so that they can pass government regulation to stop those corporations. See for example Webberville or the efforts to create Mitchell Bend in Hood County. Some people have to learn the hard way. Some never do.
Texas got so sick of Texans trying to protect themselves by creating regulations that they created the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act. It took away the ability of local communities to protect themselves and instead protected the profits of some the state's biggest industry buddies.
lol. yeah there is but instead of "farther from the population centers" it is "farther from YOUR population centers"
Yes, exactly. That's fine - live and let live.
If somebody else values their health less - let them have pollution in their own back yard. If enough communities worldwide care about their health, then polluters will have to clean up their processes. But it's not for the residents of California to decide what happens in other jurisdictions.
The reason those countries take the "burden" on is because the USA became a global superpower by developing more industrial capacity than literally every other country in the decades prior to the World Wars.
They want to duplicate this success and displace the West, similar to how the USA displaced Europe during and after World War 2.
Do you not think it’s possible that there are many places where people do care about their health, but they are forced to allow pollution because the alternative is grinding poverty and eventual starvation?
Do you think the ship breakers in Bangladesh do it for fun?
This outsourcing of misery is the absolute worst feature of Western neoliberalism. You get a two for one, dumping misery on other countries because it’s cheaper, while outsourcing strategic concerns because they are “too dirty.” It’s NIMBYism taken to its logical conclusion.
The answer is to spread out all forms of production globally, so nations don’t lose their smaller local industries that may be less efficient than foreign alternatives. Foreign trade should fill gaps in local production, not kill local industry.
The mechanisms by which this can be accomplished are antitrust and careful application of trade barriers. The obsession with “free trade” has done damage to countries all across the world in order to benefit a small class connected to multinational industry. The short lived benefits came at a huge cost and countries are only just now seeing this.
Free trade/open borders libertarians have lost influence to nationalists because the former position is antithetical to maintaining a functional society. It’s possible to build “libertarianism in one country,” and the sooner that people wake up to that, the better. The alternative is some form of left or right despotism.
It's interesting, but is there some conflation of regional restrictions with the state of California?
Example: cites automotive paint shop restrictions as the quintessential example of what you can't do in CA, and qualifies it with a specific Bay Area regulation.
Interesting website.
"Semiconductor Fabrication (7nm/5nm)
The main processor requires ultra-clean rooms, toxic gases (arsine, phosphine), and chemical etching. No new fabs have been built in CA in over a decade. Intel, TSMC, and Samsung all build elsewhere."
Phosphine is pretty nasty stuff. California was full of EPA Superfund sites when the government got stuck with cleaning up all the toxic waste. Politicians and voters went, "Eff that!" after manufacturers left the state, but left their barrels of shit behind.
And there’s still mercury contamination from the gold rush in San Jose.
Let's be honest: People have no problem polluting elsewhere as long as they can consume the final product without suffering the consequences. TFA isn't important to the people of California.
The site would be better if it linked to the actual regulation that prohibits each type of business instead of just making the claim “0 new factories of this type have been built”.
They lost me at "vacuum deposition - impossible" without justification. As far as processes go it's one of the safest (everything happens in a sealed vacuum chamber). Maybe the solvents used to clean prior to coating?
I wonder if there's a law+econ analysis of comparing the current framework (regulations and upfront permitting) vs having the regulations but then enforcement via combination of randomized gov't inspections and private lawsuits. The motivation would be to allow things to move faster while also requiring the same degree of compliance, but without the massive red tape upfront with administrators having no real incentive to approve projects or move fast. One obvious downside is that it effectively creates an economic incentive to try and skirt the law and/or find loopholes, but that arguably exists to the same degree in the existing system.
So no new car paint shops or oil refineries? I'm okay with that.
Oil refineries in particular are interesting because the sources for the blend of gasoline California requires[0] are either in CA itself or are few and far away. This means that gasoline prices are susceptible to greater supply shocks and so on. Many US regulations follow from California exercising its large market to induce companies to change their policies (electronic one-click cancel, CCPA, No Surprises in healthcare billing) but this one hasn't quite had the same effect.
One can hope that most Californians switch to BEVs from ICE vehicles before this becomes more of a constraint.
Gasoline usage externalities are poorly priced-in so the resulting increase in cost of gasoline here is probably overall a good thing. If we had appropriate carbon/sulphur/etc pricing on the outputs, I think it would be less justifiable since then the externalities would be priced in.
0: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65184
Paint VOCs sounds fine, until it's done at industrial scale, and it's also your neighbor, and also all the children in the neighborhood have asthma, and also healthcare is a lot more expensive...
This list isn't things you "cant do in california" but "polluting things you can't do in highly populated cities".
I'm not sure what the conclusion here is other than health is not important.
Most of this stuff could be done in compliance with the laws but it’s just cheaper to do it somewhere else where you allowed to vent poison in the air rather than having to filter it out.
Are they only banned in the cities, or are they banned in the state, which -- even in California, should have rural areas far enough away from cities to be tenable?
It's an interesting conundrum though, because in many cases, the cities could not exist without the things that are being banned in the cities. It's a curious goal of populations to centralize, then ostracize all the things that enabled that centralization
Everywhere in California that isn't a giant population center is growing food for the rest of the country, or is a mountain where these things can't be built anyway.
They're probably "not banned" only in the "basically lying" sense that they per rule won't approve you in certain cities and if you do happen to be rural the process is hostile and expensive enough that it's not worth it for the value such a facility would generate. That's how that sort of stuff is in my state.
That's the thing, often when people say stuff like "its banned" what they really mean is:
- the cost of mitigating the human health risk is too high - competitors in low-environmental regulation places don't pay for those costs - ongoing verification is expensive
I mean, let's face it, "self-regulation" of industries isn't really working that great. And for things that are health hazards that are basically borne by someone else, why should a local government make it easy to cheat and lie about this stuff?
The people arguing against this seem to assume that their right to have a business, make a profit, whatever, is a self-evident Good Thing, and rarely provide any additional arguments beyond "but the jobs". If they were at the VERY LEAST saying "we can make X safe" then maybe it'd be interesting. But as it is, the argument is basically asking us to mortgage the health and safety.
Are you okay with not using products that have an oil refinery in their supply chain?
I do not care to try to make things ethically fair for oil refineries. Call me a hypocrite, I do not care, as these companies similarly do not care. "Ya got me!", yup, moving on, I am still glad oil refineries are effectively banned.
I think if we consolidate those operations the better, and then we can improve an regulate legislative or as a market more easily than if everyone is spread all over.
If we consolidate them you wind up with the same situation we have for everything already. The big megacorps who's paid for experts and lawyers (and ability to donate to politics) to tell you why the river glowing is safe get to do what they want and the upstart who may challenge that bigCo to do better never gets off the ground. But I guess if the goal is simply to declare everything "fixed" because the government has agreed it's compliant then consolidation is fine.
Yeah I agree. Since Russia is mostly empty and they have a lot of oil, let's put all refineries there! (/s)
This is to show that there is more geopolitically than meets the eye.
Probably helpful to add why, otherwise this is just seems intended to trigger biases
Are other states building all this manufacturing/semiconductor capacity? I think it's an overall USA thing, we just don't do manufacturing anymore because it's cheaper to do it in another country.
Not sure what the point of the website is. To me it looks like a bad faith argument. The secular trend in the US has been to increase margins by moving manufacturing to other countries.
The tariffs are certainly not making it easier to manufacture domestically.
> Not sure what the point of the website is
I think it's just informative. I found it interesting at least. I formed my own conclusions from it.
Really? Since it’s lacking any comparison to other states and because many of these complaints single out metropolitan areas comparison to nationwide census of metro areas, what actual conclusions are you drawing that are valid?
Context matters a lot. We haven’t built a lot of mercury based hat felting shops lately in California. What conclusion do you draw from that?
I assume you're being a little obtuse. The comparison to wherever manufacturers phones and EVs is implicit. They are manufactured somewhere with looser environmental regulation than California, where they are purchased en masse. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
I saw complaints that amounted to “it’s more expensive to build out large industrial facilities in bay area than in Reno”
okay what’s different in Reno hmmm I could be like the website and try to imply it’s only environmental regulations… or I could acknowledge that land price and availability is drastically different and also labor costs…. But then that wouldn’t help my contrived argument that it’s all the pesky regulations.
Again, without apples to apples comparisons to other areas, wha are you actually able to conclude from the website other than stoking confirmation bias?
Half the states in the country are actively deregulating all of this stuff. Why not take your factories there? California is anyways too expensive.
This kinda makes me wanna move to CA. someone should take these list items and make a map of those fabs in the US so we can avoid moving near them.
My favorite banned in CA is the "off roster" handguns that the police can buy and sell to the people of CA at a markup.
A lot of these are stretches or remove nuance. I get the point they are trying to make, but it's a lot weaker than they think and undermined by their own "hero" example: painting cars in California
> A modern auto paint shop emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during primer, base coat, and clear coat application. The Bay Area AQMD makes permitting a new paint shop nearly impossible. This is THE classic example of what you can't do in CA.
Ah yes, the Bay Area, famously "all of California". And on top of that, the restrictions are mostly in highly populated areas.
How do the new manufacturing startups in the Bay Area and El Segundo deal with these limitations?
> California has outsourced its industrial base while still consuming the products.
America did that. If it was just California then they could import iPhone parts from Alabama, but they don't do that do they?
This site is limiting its focus to environmental permitting concerns, it seems. The problem is that one of the biggest barriers to manufacturing in the US is labor: cost and protections of various sorts.
Don't need to worry about those pesky people and their rights in other countries where people are in desperate need for, or are coerced into, working in these industries.
The claim that aluminum anodizing is "banned in California" because of the sulfuric acid waste it produces is patently absurd. There are no shortage of labs, factories, and more in California that use sulfuric acid, and they all figure out how to dispose of their waste without going "fuck it, YOLO it into the river".
I confess I don't know what to make of this. Without seeing the reasons why these are banned, what is the point? Would be like lamenting how you can't use asbestos. Sure, but is that necessarily a bad thing?
apparently you can use asbestos and they have been and will continue until 2030-ish. It's now in the wild in all kinds of unexpected places.
Yeah, I don't think that is generally viewed as a good thing, though? And I would not be surprised to learn California has some stricter rules on it. (Would honestly not be surprised to find out some of these "banned" items are due to asbestos level concerns.)
I don't want to make a mess in my yard but I don't care if your yard is a mess and I'll buy it
Why not invest in ways to make these processes more eco friendly?
Is this a lobbying initiative?
Surely the answer is not let's just allow to pillage, pollute and extort again to build a car, ship or phone.
I like clean air, and rivers. They are good for every being.
What about "Things banned in Texas"? or "Idaho"?
This has 70 upvotes within 30 minutes. This feels like an astroturf.
Ya a lot of people on this site are ideologically positioned in a way that required demonizing CA. I don’t have any skin in that game but it seems pretty clearly A Thing to me from the other side of the country.
A lot of people on this site do or used to live in CA. It is especially galling to have people who have never lived there tell those that have what it is like there. Especially people who have tried to build or run a business in CA.
The Silicon Valley founderati is chock-full of (right wing) libertarians. I can't tell if they were always that way, or are increasingly disgruntled by state-taxes the wealthier they get.
> This has 70 upvotes within 30 minutes. This feels like an astroturf.
Not really surprising given the audience, HN has an awful lot of neo-Technolibertarian types.
The kind who used to complain about government regulation of free speech, and now complain about anything that gets in the way of amassing massive amounts of capital at any social/environmental/political cost.
It's unfortunate that folks who complain incessantly about "facts not feelings" don't appear to be using their critical thinking skills here. But I guess it's not too surprising.
Lot of things could be added to this list. Good luck getting permission to start a hospital, or permission to mine/refine anything with a slightly messy process (e.g. rare earth metals). You can't build a new port. The California Coastal Commission won't let you open a new hotel anywhere on the water. You can't even keep a bar open late in San Francisco.
I just searched "new hospital opened in CA" on Google and see that there were two new hospitals opened in Irvine in December, half of a new hospital complex in Santa Clara opened in October, more being built and slated to open this year or next...
Now look up when those projects were started...I will wait.
But don't you get it? We're moving up the value chain to things only WE can do.
Got a new one. In California—the only place that matters in tech—all operating systems must implement age verification by Jan 1, 2027. Which means this is coming to a computer near you, worldwide.
Not in the free states they won’t.
California can do a lot to private companies, but the supremacy clause allows the federal government to do what it wants. If a business wants to engage in these illegal-in-California practices, they could partner with the federal government.
Edit: Now that I’m doing the research a partnership isn’t even needed, just a contract. Which makes sense, the feds cannot hire a private individual to do what would be illegal for them to do themselves… conversely, a company who is contracted to do federal business also enjoys supremacy by virtue of acting for the feds.
I love that "The Grandfathered In" section. Here's just one sample of a place that presumably this stupid website wants to keep up and running:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-04/chevron...
The guy who made this site is selling a $7k stove? Good luck with that, my dude.
honestly, you couldn't even build your own house.
The newest thing I've seen:
"compostable - except in CA"
Why? The microbes don't get along with sourdough starter bacteria?
Guess we can add free (from age verification) operating systems to that list now as well.
As a Californian:
1) They forgot to list Kid Rock (https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1969256868364095868)
2) Good, I'm glad this toxic shit is banned.
3) I wish people that constantly complained about California's regulations/taxes/politics would just quietly see their way out rather than obsessively whine about it. Enjoy Texas/Florida/wherever you go. We'll be ok without you.
They are: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/stat...
Is hosting a website in California banned? /s
https://check-host.net/ip-info?host=bannedincalifornia.org
They just really, really want to be European.
Just look at what they've done about rebuilding the Palisades, and the nonsense they've perpetrated, allowing people to live and build in places that are completely impossible to make safe to live because of incredibly stupid bureacratic policy conflicts. And then the staggering mismanagement of water resources, allowing huge tax breaks and claims on water rights to giant corporations, then completely taxing and running out farmers and landowners with legacy rights, making it impossible for them to live there.
At least if they drive everyone productive out of the state, the environment will be pristine.
It's like some insanely scaled up version of gentrification, but in the most aggressively, offensively stupid way possible. California is a tasteless joke.
> At least if they drive everyone productive out of the state, the environment will be pristine.
Most of what you said has been going on for >100 years. That's sure driven people out!
I don’t know, 39.5m with net growth might disagree with you. Are you living in California at present? If not, do any of the deregulation in laws where you are trouble you. If so, when do you plan on leaving and where to?
California is one of the only states in the union seeing a population decline year over year (while surrounding states are seeing population growth).
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/stat...
And that doesn't even take in to account the major businesses fleeing the state as well.
Now do economic growth?