When permission replaces property rights, the California Dream becomes a dream deferred.
For over a century, California stood as a frontier of first resort for the ambitious, attracting those eager to escape old-world constraints in exchange for a promise of radical autonomy. This California Dream was not a byproduct of luck; it was forged by a Gold Rush mentality that enshrined risk-taking as a prerequisite for success. This unique acceptance of failure sank roots early in the state’s consciousness, fueling a risk culture that welcomed entrepreneurs from around the globe. Supported by a strategic Pacific Rim location and fertile lands, this environment allowed innovators to transform California into a global powerhouse for agriculture, entertainment, and technology.
However, modern political policies have effectively inverted these historical strengths, transforming a once-nimble sanctuary into a restrictive regulatory state. Today, the potential of California’s residents is stifled by chronic mismanagement of resources (e.g., water, energy, forestry, etc.) and a growing suite of anti-growth mandates that discourage the very expansion that made the state what it is. By favoring stakeholder vetoes over fundamental property rights, California has shifted from a can-do culture of progress to one of managed stagnation. The success that once defined the state’s risk culture is now increasingly met with punitive tax proposals and labor regulations hostile to achievement.
The latest victim of this shift is California Forever. Founded in 2017 by Jan Sramek, the project aimed to address California’s chronic housing shortage by building a walkable city from scratch for 400,000 residents. Backed by Silicon Valley billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen, it represents a modern attempt to reclaim the state’s building legacy. Yet, after spending approximately $1 billion, the project has made little tangible progress.
The developer’s attempt to expedite the project via a ballot initiative was scrapped in 2024, and the original residential vision has been supplanted by shipbuilding. This rebranding was both a nod to the SHIPS Act and a strategic choice to follow a development path of less resistance. By expanding the vision to include the Solano Shipyard, the project was transformed into a more palatable political sell. The residential buildout is still part of the plan but will be stretched out over four decades.
One critic blames what he calls California’s regulatory gauntlet for the on-again, off-again nature of this project. There is no doubt that vast building regulations, zoning codes, and environmental regulations place a drag on development. Certainly, the regulatory environment has contributed to Governor Newsom’s failure to make good on his 2017 campaign pledge to build 3.5 million new housing units. But what motivates and sustains this gauntlet?
At the core of this inertia is a philosophical pivot from a system of generally respected property rights to one of permissioned development. The legal right to use one’s land has been replaced by a requirement to obtain universal consensus before a single shovel hits the dirt. Under such a protocol, the default state of any new project is illegal until it is granted a series of discretionary blessings from an array of government agencies.
This system has effectively institutionalized the stakeholder veto. Unlike traditional regulations, which rely upon clear standards, California’s discretionary review process grants enormous power to any organized interest—from local NIMBY groups to economic competitors—to stall a project indefinitely. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been famously weaponized as a legal tool to force delays. We see the absurdity of this veto power when CEQA is used to block affordable housing for homeless veterans or delay bicycle lanes for years. In this permission paradigm, environmental considerations are subordinated to the political leverage the law provides.
What further sustains this gauntlet is a disturbing animosity toward wealth. In the eyes of many modern regulators and activists, a multi-hundred-billion-dollar project like California Forever isn’t seen as a solution to a housing crisis, but as a hostile takeover by an elite class. This sentiment transforms the regulatory process into a form of political penance, where developers are expected to negotiate away their project’s viability in exchange for the permission to exist. The California Forever principals thought they could charm their way through a ballot measure with promises of jobs, homes, and downtown revitalization. They misjudged a contemporary mindset that views their very presence as a threat.
As if to further discourage the wealthy from investing, or reinvesting, in California, the largest public sector union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is now advocating for a wealth tax. The proposed one-time, five percent tax on net worth is aimed at the state’s billionaires—i.e., the wealthiest and most successful residents. If Californians are to flourish, they should be thankful to today’s billionaires and welcome the billionaire-hopefuls. Where would the state be without the innovation and capital that built Apple, Google, and Microsoft? Envious stakeholders argue California made these companies rich, but the reverse is true: technology innovators made California rich. Now is not the time to throttle these innovators’ ability to express their productive vision, whether it is for a new company or for a new city.
And while recent 2025 and 2026 reforms—such as AB 130 and SB79—mitigate some of the regulatory traps for urban infill and moderately sized projects, they offer little relief for the ambitious, large-scale growth that once defined the state. For projects like California Forever, the gauntlet remains as formidable as ever, proving that in modern California, the greatest barrier to building the future is a culture that has learned to sabotage its own progress.
For a century, the greatest cities in the world—New York, Chicago, and San Francisco itself—were built not by town hall gatherings, but by developers with a vision. These cities were built largely without permission, and certainly without the paralyzing theater of town hall vetoes or tedious environmental reviews.
If California is to be anything more than a museum of its own past, it must stop treating earned wealth with suspicion and start seeing it as the fuel for human thriving. Until we restore the fundamental right to develop legally owned land without groveling for permission, the California Dream will remain a dream deferred. So long as we need approvals to develop our legally owned land, California will stagnate.
This article originally appeared on the California Policy Center website.