manufacturing

California hit the wall? So I live in california and so not a newsom fan. I think his ideas cost us way too much. His taxes are killing us. So to list out a couple points -

1. The "Big Business" Exodus

The Paul Mitchell and Blue Diamond departures aren't isolated incidents; they are part of a trend where the "math" of staying in California no longer adds up for legacy companies.

• The Revenue Trap: California relies on the top 1% of earners for nearly half of its income tax. When a billionaire like John Paul DeJoria moves his HQ to Texas, it’s not just about the jobs—it’s a massive hit to the state's tax base.

   

• The Regulation Wall: Many companies leaving in 2026 cite the state’s aggressive new climate mandates and labor laws as the final straw. They feel the state is making it too expensive to simply exist.

2. The Oil Pipeline & Energy Crisis

There is a major showdown happening right now over the Las Flores pipeline system.

• The Probe: Just this week (February 4, 2026), federal investigators (DOJ and SEC) began demanding documents from Sable Offshore, the company trying to restart offshore oil pipelines near Santa Barbara.

   

• The Conflict: Newsom’s administration has been fighting to keep these lines closed to meet climate goals, while critics argue that shutting down local production just makes California more dependent on expensive foreign oil and drives up gas prices for regular people.

3. The High-Speed Rail "Burn"

The High-Speed Rail remains the ultimate symbol of government waste for many.

• The Money Pit: Despite being billions over budget and decades behind, the state is doubling down. Just last month (January 2026), they launched a new push to find private investors because the state can no longer afford to fund it alone.

• The Deficit Link: It is hard for the Governor to justify spending billions on a train through the Central Valley when he is simultaneously cutting healthcare benefits for immigrants and stripping funding from homelessness programs to plug a $3 billion to $18 billion deficit (depending on whose math you trust).

So i am wondering if Sheriff Chad Bianco ideas would not be good as well?

I myself find it quite conserning that some of these old business are leaving my suspect is high costs.

An Introduction. My name is Eric Stevens 

I want to be clear about who I am and why I am here.

I recently published my book, Evolution Mine: Genesis.
You can read it for free here:
https://nowweevolve.com/view-the-book

I made it free on purpose. The idea matters more than the money.

For the last 15 years, I have been working inside the systems most people only argue about from the outside. Global trade. Manufacturing. Supply chains. Policy. Commodities. Labor. Capital flow.

I helped Vietnam enter the World Trade Organization in 2007, ironically on my birthday. I have worked with governments, factories, military-adjacent systems, and private industry. I have seen how decisions made far from communities quietly reshape jobs, materials, and power at the local level.

Most of my life was spent in Los Angeles. I recently moved to Dallas, where the political and cultural polarization is impossible to ignore. The fights feel louder. The solutions feel thinner.

I am a father of six. I am married to an incredible Salvadoran woman. I am politically independent, not because I avoid responsibility, but because I do not believe any single ideology owns the truth.

What I am building is not a movement in the emotional sense. It is an economic one.

Our society talks about systems as if they are beliefs. They are not. Systems are built on inputs. Commodities. Materials. Energy. Logistics. Whoever controls those controls everything downstream.

That insight sits at the center of everything I do.

Through these platforms, I am working on one integrated effort:

Now We Evolve
https://nowweevolve.com

The Bioeconomy Foundation
https://thebioeconomyfoundation.org

American Fiber Group
https://theamericanfibergroup.com

Together, they focus on one question most debates avoid.

What happens if we change the materials the economy depends on?

Hemp and bamboo are not symbols. They are commodities. They grow locally. They scale horizontally. They support regional processing. They anchor manufacturing close to communities. They change money flow, job creation, and who holds power.

This work is not anti-capitalist or pro-corporate. It is pro-reality.

If you want different outcomes, you do not argue harder. You replace the inputs.

That is what I am here to discuss.
Not outrage. Not slogans.
Industrial math, material systems, and practical paths forward.

If that resonates, you are in the right place.

If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.

Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.

That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.

Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.

This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.

Real change begins when money moves differently.

Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.

My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.

This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.

If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.

Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.

What if Tariffs Are a Good Thing? I was surprised to find that this podcast made me wonder whether tariffs would actually be really good for the US economy and, more importantly, for midd-class American people.

With all the raging about how awful Trump is, it's been very hard to find any thoughtful analysis about which parts of his policies might actually be beneficial for Americans.

In this podcast, Ross Douthat (NYT) interviews Oren Cass, the Founder and Chief Economist at American Compass, a conservative think tank. Oren makes a really good case for the following:

• we've been living through a period of mostly-unchecked globalization
• because GDP has been rising, economists generally argue that globalization is good
• HOWEVER, Oren provides compelling reasons why GDP growth is not a sufficient indicator of the health of the economy.  He cites things like increasing income inequality and the overall reduction in purchasing power when you factor things like households now having to have two full-time incomes to buy the same basket of things

The opportunity that tariffs provide is to buffer globalization and proactively re-shape the American economy to be more self-reliant, more inclusive and more balanced (geographically, industry-wise, etc).  For example, Oren notes that globalization has been driving wealth toward tech & financial hubs, like NYC, Austin, San Francisco, while middle America has been largely stagnant. With more manufacturing, job distribution could be more equitably spread across the country.

What I liked most about this podcast were a few things:

• it provides a thoughtful challenge to the mainstream chatter that "tariffs are bad!" and "Trump is ruining our economy!"
• the basis for tariffs is actually to improve the well-being of middle Americans who are not participating in the white collar tech and financial services boom
• that it challenges the assumptions that an unfettered globalized world economy is what works best.  Maybe it isn't?