Steve Hilton unveils bold economic plan to stop spread of socialism in California

Steve Hilton wants to freeze a decade of California's regulatory apparatus to let the state build again, and the fact that this counts as "bold" tells you everything about how far off the rails Sacramento has gone. A ten-year moratorium on stringent rules just to get housing and infrastructure moving isn't radical. It's an admission that the normal process of building anything in California has become so slow and litigated that only a shock to the system can restart it.

What's striking is how obviously the plan reads as a direct response to lived experience rather than ideology. Anyone who has tried to get a housing project permitted in a California city knows the drill: years of review, environmental challenges that have nothing to do with the environment, fees stacked on fees. Hilton is betting that voters are tired enough of watching rents climb and construction stall that they'll accept a decade of regulatory suspension as the price of actually having somewhere to live.

The "socialism" framing is the part that will get all the attention, and maybe it's overstated as a label. But the underlying diagnosis, that California's governing class has built a system where good intentions produce scarcity, isn't wrong. Scarcity of housing, scarcity of energy projects, scarcity of anything that requires a permit. Calling that socialism might be a stretch. Calling it dysfunction that acts like socialism in its effects is fair.

Whether this survives contact with California's courts and coastal commissions is another question entirely. Ten years is a long time for a plan like this to hold together against the state's legal machinery. But at least someone running for governor is treating the housing crisis like an emergency instead of a talking point, and that alone sets Hilton apart from most of the field.