The Million Petty Annoyances of California’s Regulatory State
The litany of reasons California is broken is well documented. The highest cost of living and the highest taxes. The highest percentages of homeless people and people living in poverty. Unaffordable homes and unaffordable rent. High crime and failing schools. A hostile business climate and record migration out of state as people and businesses flee.
But not often enough are we reminded of the countless small things that have gone wrong. Small things that add up to a big problem: a state legislature that is out of touch with the people it represents; a state legislature that, for all practical purposes, holds its constituents in contempt; a state legislature that is doing everything in its power to make life difficult.
Just a few days ago, the latest in this long train of abuses arrived. No more plastic bags. Although 2026 is still a few weeks away, this grocery store has already converted to paper only—heavy, fragile paper bags with handles that tear off under the slightest stress. Everything was double-bagged just to lower the probability of catastrophic failure of the handles.
The problems with this are more than the inconvenience of having to pay 20 cents for every double-bagged bag full of groceries. With plastic bags, you could loop their handles around your fingers and carry several of them securely in one hand. Try that with a paper bag. And there are no uses after the first use for a paper bag. Shall we use paper bags for cat litter? Trash can liners? Maybe, but they won’t work very well. And storing them uses up space fast.
So what’s the advantage? Are we saving oil? Certainly not much. And if savings are what we’re after, why did they ever force us in 2014 to stop using ultra-thin plastic bags in favor of “reusable” bags that nobody reuses for groceries, yet have 10-15 times as much plastic in them per bag? Funny how the plastic industry rolled over on that one. “Please don’t regulate us” morphed into “Never mind, we’ll split with the state that dime we’re charging now per bag.” Corporation wins. State wins. Misanthropic regulations abuse the rest of us.
Now the plastic bags are gone. But the dime per paper bag? That stays.
Does this law reduce the “footprint” of plastic? Yes. Marginally. Meanwhile, it increases the footprint of paper bags, which are actually worse for the environment. And maybe that’s the biggest problem here: California’s corporate special interests, their lobbyists, and their fanatic green marionettes are all too ready to force “solutions” onto the public before the technology has caught up.
Are there bags that look like plastic bags and work like plastic bags—convenient to use and durable—but aren’t made of plastic? That’s certainly possible, but could we wait? No, of course not. We had to let the special interests consolidate their power and profit, while the usual crowd of useful fanatics beat their chests and crow about how they’re saving the planet. What would we do without them to rescue us all?
When taken to such extremes, these laws have little to do with the environment. It’s about control. It’s about money. It’s a shakedown.
Last weekend I had to refill the gas tank in my rototiller. Could I just uncap my gasoline can and fill it up? That would be too easy. The State of California mandates “automatic sealing nozzles” on five-gallon gasoline cans. Have you ever tried to fill the tank of a small engine tool with gasoline out of one of these overdesigned, utterly dysfunctional cans? To save time, you’re better off removing the entire nozzle assembly, as if you’re at the gas station refilling your can from the pump, and then pouring from the nearly two-inch diameter opening in your partially disassembled gasoline can into a funnel you have inserted in the tank of, in this case, a rototiller. It’s messy and time-consuming. And that’s just another example of the idiocy our supposed representatives force us to endure.
Do you want to install new windows on your house? Not cutting a new window where there once was a wall. No. Just replace an existing old window with a new one. Guess what: you need a permit. You have to submit plans to the city or county bureaucracy. Are you kidding?
Read this summary of the steps you have to take to get a window replaced in a California home:
Step-by-step procedure for replacing old windows with new ones without changing the opening size (most common, fewer forms).
Gather the required documents and use the online portal to submit the application.
Plans: Drawings showing window location, size, and framing (if structural changes).
Window Specs: Manufacturer cut sheets, energy efficiency ratings.
Title 24 Compliance: Documentation showing energy efficiency.
Contractor Info: License details if using a contractor.
Lead Paint Info: If your home was built before 1978, be prepared for lead-safe work requirements and paperwork.
Create an online account with the county and submit your application and documents electronically.
Plan Review: County staff will review for code compliance (Structural, Life Safety, Energy, etc.). You’ll be notified of any needed corrections.
Permit Issuance & Inspection: Once approved, pay fees and get your permit. Schedule required inspections through the portal as work progresses.
The same goes for all of these and more: ceiling fans, patio covers, carports, water heaters, retaining walls, landscape irrigation, and shower or tub replacements. What percent of people doing these jobs get these permits? How many? I’m waiting. How many? Who was that Russian who said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime”? Welcome to California.
Let’s be clear. The time it takes to fulfill all these steps is often greater than the amount of time that it takes to do the actual work. In many cases, the expense for the excessive designs and disclosures and fees also adds up to more than the actual labor and materials.
This petty tyranny extends to almost everything in California. Do you have a pool? Better put a permanent fence around the entire pool and alarms on any doors that open into that enclosure, or you have not complied. Do you have a gate into your pool enclosure? It has to be “self-closing,” or you did not comply. Make sure the enclosure’s fencing is at least 60 inches high (60 inches! five feet!). Is there a latch on your self-closing gate? Better make sure it is at least 54 inches off the ground, and no plants are allowed, not even in planters, within five feet of the enclosure. New pools even have to have “an approved cover.” Because that’s safe! I’ll never forget the time I saw a grown man, overwhelmed with grief, carrying his soaking wet dead dog into the waiting room at a local veterinary hospital. The poor animal got trapped under their pool cover.
It’s not just bags and buildings where the long arm of California’s regulatory state interferes with your life and induces honest citizens to reluctantly become petty criminals. It also tempts honest contractors who just want to do good work for a fair price, instead of charging three times as much, to spend more than half their time on “compliance.” We aren’t talking about new homes or major remodels, where obviously some regulations are called for, although nothing like what the California legislature has done to basically kill the home building industry. We’re talking about windows. Who do you trust more? The guy with good references who will just replace your window with no fuss? Or the guy who wants to charge you triple and jump through every regulatory hoop? And why should any of us—vendor or customer—have to be put in such a tough position? Get it done efficiently and be a crook, or take three times as long and pay three times as much and be a sucker?
Consider the new law governing kitchen waste. Residents are now required to save their kitchen waste—oops, their “organics”—and discard it in their green waste containers, along with grass cuttings and leaves. Don’t bag it up and put it in the trash, because that increases the quantity of methane that comes out of landfills. Never mind that landfills are still going to emit methane, with or without kitchen scraps, or that methane rapidly degrades in the atmosphere, or that its alleged impact on the global climate is based on theories still wide open to debate, or that even if you are desperately concerned about methane emissions, there are far more cost-effective and less intrusive ways to capture it.
Some of these laws are literally unbelievable, but they’re all too real. According to a thoroughly house-broken reporter for the Sacramento Bee, the potential fine of up to $5,000—five thousand dollars—for someone who, say, repeatedly fails to put their empty pizza box in the right container, “speaks to the seriousness of the matter.” This is pure corruption, meant to enrich public sector unions who get to staff up to implement these laws, and sold to brainwashed “environmentalist” advocates, many of them masquerading as objective journalists who actually think they’re helping the good guys.
California’s intrusive laws are far too numerous to catalog. They are selectively enforced, for the simple reason that the quantity of violations in this supposedly enlightened state numbers in the hundreds of millions. And if you have a business open to the public? Then you may expect the intrusive government regulations to multiply by orders of magnitude. No wonder so many people are leaving, heartbroken that they and their children live in a place where the government is doing everything it can to drive them out. A government that has made the state they love a state they can’t stand to live in anymore.
California’s policymakers aren’t technically criminals—or at least not all of them are. But what they’re doing to the people who live here is a crime. A crime that is split into so many thousands of petty offenses that it is sometimes hard for us to realize how truly monstrous it has become.
https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/10/the-million-petty-annoyances-of-californias-regulatory-state/
