Leaving California — a state where 11.2% of the U.S. population lives and 37% of the welfare recipients reside — on paper was an easy decision, but with my entire family there, it was actually one of the most difficult decisions my wife and I have ever made.
We were both born and raised in Southern California. Our parents, siblings, grandparents, and everyone we loved was within a 45 minute drive. Weekly trips to grandma’s house for the kids, plenty of date-night babysitters and, of course, the weekend BBQ’s or birthday parties with loved ones. Most of our friends had children right around the same time, so life on a personal level was quite pleasant in California.
The more I’ve thought about potential solutions to the gigantic mess we have found ourselves in as a species, the more I have come to believe we need to break apart into a vast multitude of city-states. The revolutionary concept of America in the first place was this idea of “self-governance,” something we do not posses an iota of in this day and age. As was noted recently in an 
