THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, November 16, 2020 |A
OPINION
Austin, TexasI
love California, but I had to
leave. I grew up in Fremont,
attended Stanford, and have
spent most of my adult life in
the San Francisco Bay Area,
founding technology companies like
Palantir and Addepar and investing
in many others. In 2011 I founded
8VC, a venture-capital firm that to-
day manages more than $3.6 billion
in committed capital. Few top ven-
ture capitalists consider living any-
where other than California and a
handful of global financial centers,
but I am moving myself and dozens
of my 8VC colleagues to a new land
of opportunity: Texas.
The harsh truth is that California
has fallen into disrepair. Bad policies
discourage business and innovation,
stifle opportunity and make life in
major cities ugly and unpleasant.
Forty years ago my parents came
to California because you could ac-
complish anything in the Golden
State. Government policy facilitated
the entrepreneurial spirit. Dreamers
and doers could thrive. The burst of
activity in tech, finance, medicine,
energy and many other industries
lasted for decades. But now a state
like Texas provides these opportu-
nities without the problems and
baggage California has accumu-
lated. Let me mention a few per-
sonal examples:- Public safety. Ill-conceived
criminal-justice reforms and radical
district attorneys are taking a toll
on urban life. Three of my col-
leagues’ wives have been harassed
and chased by derelicts in San Fran-
cisco’s streets, which are littered
with needles and human waste. My
wife is afraid to walk around the
city with our young daughters. Po-
lice often don’t even respond to ha-
rassment and property crime, which
has surged; San Francisco’s prop-
erty-crime rate is now the nation’s
highest.
California, Love It and Leave It
- Electricity.The wildfire smoke
that has blanketed California cities
is one thing. But power outages,
which left us stressed about spoiling
breast milk for our daughter, are the
direct result of California govern-
ment incompetence. Last year the
state had 25,000 blackouts, and this
year has been even worse. The elec-
tricity turns on and off, as in Third
World countries. Meanwhile, Texas
has its own energy grid, with a plen-
tiful and diverse supply. It’s nice to
turn on the lights whenever we
want.- Responsiveness.In the early
days of the pandemic in March, 8VC
entreated the mayor of San Fran-
cisco and city staff to clarify rules to
allow our critical employees to work
on accelerating Covid-19 testing and
the development of therapeutics.
The city didn’t deign to respond.
Government officials in Texas, by
contrast, care about business. They
return calls.- Housing.California’s restrictive
zoning laws make it nearly impossi-
ble for many essential low- and mid-
dle-income workers to live any-
where near major cities. In Texas,
permissive zoning allows every
member of our staff to live close to
work and spend time with friends
and family instead of enduring gru-
eling commutes.
That’s not all. The California gov-
ernment is beholden to public-em-
ployee unions and spending is out of
control. A broken environmental re-
view process means it takes a de-
cade of paying lawyers to build any-
thing. Legislation makes it
impossible for businesses to hire
contractors without an exemption—
granted by friends in the legislature,
as with the music industry, or won
by spending hundreds of millions on
a referendum, as gig-economy com-
panies with drivers just did. This
isn’t how business is done in devel-
oped countries.
Politics in the state is in many
ways closed off to different ideas.
We grew weary of California’s intol-
erant far left, which would rather
demonize opponents than discuss
honest differences of opinion.
I will continue investing in Silicon
Valley startups and fighting to help
the state. I’m optimistic that over
the long run, California can return to
the values that once made it the dy-
namic center of global technology
entrepreneurship. But until priorities
change, the state will keep losing its
top builders and creators.
In 2000 or 2010, it made sense to
build in San Francisco. That’s where
all the talent was, but not anymore.
Except for a few concentrated parts
of advanced biotech and software in-
frastructure technology, talented
people are building top technology
firms all over the country. This dis-
aggregation of talent will spread
prosperity across the U.S. Some of
my most prolific entrepreneurial
friends from California have moved
with us here to Texas. Others have
left for Miami, Nashville, Las Vegas
and other great American cities. Six
of our portfolio companies are al-
ready based in Austin and employ
hundreds of people.
Our investments follow the talent.
We’re betting that the future of
America is going to be built in the
middle of the country, in places with
good government and a reasonable
cost of living. In other words, places
like Texas.
My firm has a motto: “The world
is broken, let’s fix it.” We invest in
technologies and people who will
transform major industries and im-
prove the lives of millions. It’s tragic
that California is no longer hospita-
ble to that mission, but beautiful
that Texas is. Our job as entrepre-
neurs and investors is to build the
future, and I know of no better place
to do so than Texas.Mr. Lonsdale is a general partner
at the venture-capital firm 8VC.By Joe LonsdaleCHAD CROWEBad policy has made the
state unlivable, so I moved
my family and my venture-
capital firm to Texas.Let the
Transition
Proceed
By Charles Lipson
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It’s Now Up to Governors to Slow the Spread
T
he latest U.S. Covid surge isn’t
confined to certain regions like
the ones in the spring and
summer. It’s hitting the whole nation
hard. Hospitalizations reached
70,000 this week, with more than
13,000 patients in intensive-care
units. Health systems in communities
like Minot, N.D., and El Paso, Texas,
are overburdened, and others may be
in the same position soon if gover-
nors don’t work quickly and across
state lines to slow the spread.
In previous waves, health-care
workers from less-affected areas
were deployed to New York and the
South. It isn’t possible to send an
army of health-care personnel into
hot zones when the entire country is
a hot zone. Another 15% of the U.S.
population could be infected by the
end of January, on top of the 15% that
has already been infected. The ge-
netic epidemiologist Trevor Bedford
estimates that such a course could
result in about 200,000 more deaths,
assuming an improved infection fatal-
ity rate of about 0.45%.
The Covid response has been a
joint effort, with the federal govern-
ment working to support states
overseeing their own local mitiga-
tion efforts. But the White House is
changing hands during the most
critical point of the pandemic, and
it’s a particularly important time for
leadership from governors, mayors
and county administrators. State
and local actions, supported by im-
proved treatments, can help build a
bridge to vaccinations and more
widespread immunity in 2021.
Americans are understandably tired
of Covid, but accepting temporary
restrictions now will help prevent
even more painful personal and eco-
nomic disruptions.
A patchwork of local policies
won’t be potent enough. People
move across borders and bring the
virus. Governors and local leaders
should first reinforce steps knownto be effective: wearing a quality
mask, avoiding gatherings and main-
taining social distance, especially in-
doors. Halloween gatherings con-
tributed to the current spread, and
Thanksgiving will be no different
without more vigilance. At least
while infections are widespread and
surging, governors and local leaders
should mandate the use of masks
and impose clear and consistent
plans to restrict gatherings. They
should remind people to avoid large
groups at Thanksgiving and stay
home if possible.
This doesn’t mean broad lock-
downs. State and local leaders can
tie restrictions to expected hospital
strain, tailored to hot spots and not
necessarily the entire state. Restric-
tions can focus on known sources of
spread, such as bars and nightclubs.
Congress should help by support-
ing affected businesses with another
round of paycheck protection. A pri-
ority should be helping schools that
are open, especially elementary
schools, where the risk of infection
is lower and the benefits of in-class
instruction are considerable.
Governors should also work with
local leaders to use new counter-measures that have only recently be-
come available. This includes a valu-
able new treatment: monoclonal
antibodies, man-made versions of
naturally occurring ones that neu-
tralize the virus. But these drugs are
challenging to administer, requiring
special sites for infusions and publiceducation. People in high-risk
groups with symptoms should get
tested and treated before their con-
dition deteriorates. Governors need
to get the message out that Covid is
now a treatable condition at the
early stages, and work with local
leaders to ensure that access to anti-
bodies is available, especially in un-
derserved communities.
Rapid testing is also more widely
available, which allows for better de-
tection of outbreaks in settings
where people must be together, suchas assisted-living facilities, essential
workplaces and schools. With so
much coronavirus spread through
people without symptoms, especially
younger people, it’s now possible to
consider using these tests routinely
as one more tool. Governors can
work together to develop a consis-
tent national screening protocol for
containing outbreaks.
Winter was always going to be
the hardest time with the virus, but
coordinated state and local leader-
ship can make it more manageable.
Many governors have taken aggres-
sive steps to slow the spread, but
states that don’t act quickly put the
entire nation at risk.Dr. Gottlieb is a resident fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute
and was commissioner of the Food
and Drug Administration, 2017-19.
Dr. McClellan is the director of the
Duke-Margolis Center for Health Pol-
icy at Duke University and was FDA
commissioner, 2002-04. Dr. Gottlieb
serves on the boards of Pfizer and Il-
lumina and Dr. McClellan on the
boards of Johnson and Johnson and
Cigna; each company is involved in
aspects of the Covid response.By Scott Gottlieb
And Mark McClellanStates should coordinate
their efforts and close bars
and nightclubs—or risk
expensive lockdowns later.T
he more divisive our politics,
the more important it is to re-
spect the fundamentals of con-
stitutional democracy. Two tenets
are critical: elections in which legal
votes are counted honestly and the
peaceful transition of power. It is ap-
propriate to pose legal challenges to
an election’s integrity, but not to im-
pede the transition.
Two weeks after Election Day,
President Trump’s team hasn’t pre-
sented compelling evidence against
Joe Biden’s victory. They are assem-
bling that evidence and Mr. Trump
says he sees a path to victory, but
there is no reason to delay the pro-
cedures for transferring power to a
potential Biden administration.
The main reason to facilitate the
transition is to show that amid deep
political division, we can rely on
constitutional norms, procedures
and institutions. The Trump cam-
paign has every right to litigate evi-
dence of fraud, malfeasance or error.
We should care about that evidence,
even if it doesn’t change the out-
come, because it undermines the
honest elections on which democ-
racy depends. Anyone who corrupts
them should face serious prison
time. It’s far more serious than brib-
ing your kid’s way into college.
Mr. Trump and his supporters
have every reason to ridicule the
Democrats’ hypocrisy about the
peaceful transition of power. The
Obama administration lied to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, spied on Mr. Trump’s candi-
dacy and transition, and desperately
tried to cover its tracks. The Demo-
cratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s
campaign commissioned the false
Steele dossier and funneled it into a
receptive Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation, launching a series of investi-
gations that hobbled the Trump
presidency. Barack Obama’s adminis-
tration launched a baseless crusade
against Mr. Trump’s national secu-
rity adviser, Mike Flynn, for making
a perfectly legitimate phone call to
Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
Holdover officials from the Obama
administration did all they could to
impede the new administration, in-
cluding leaks of classified informa-
tion about its actions.
It is an outrage that, four years
later, we haven’t had a full account-
ing of this malfeasance. This delay is
all the more noxious because the
party that engineered these abuses
is now returning to power. It is rea-
sonable to fear that if Democrats re-
take control of the Justice Depart-
ment, they will be less than zealous
in pursuing these crimes.
But the Democrats’ corruption of
the last transition doesn’t justify the
Republicans’ corrupting this one.
With the country so angry, divided
and suspicious, it is vital that the in-
cumbent administration do every-
thing it can to assist the potential
winners in case they prevail, as
seems likely. While the Trump cam-
paign presents its evidence in court
and watches the recount in Georgia,
it should give the Biden transition
team the office space it needs, begin
briefing its national security team,
and provide assistance to ensure a
smooth handover. This demonstra-
tion of good faith is less a legal re-
quirement than a constitutional
norm. Reasserting it now would
strengthen our strained public insti-
tutions. They need it more than ever.
Mr. Lipson is a professor emeritus
of Political Science at the University
of Chicago, where he founded the
Program on International Politics,
Economics and Security.
Trump’s legal challenges
are legitimate, but the
country needs to be ready
if they’re unsuccessful.
Does the ACLU Want to Ban My Book?
I
never thought book banning
would be respectable in America,
much less that I’d be the target,
but here we are. Last Thursday Tar-
get stopped selling my book, “Irre-
versible Damage: The Transgender
Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” in
response to two Twitter complaints.
One read: “In 2016, @Target, you
released a statement affirming your
support for transgender customers.
@AskTarget why you’re selling a
book notorious for its harmful rheto-
ric against us. Historically, harmful
products have been pulled from this
shelf, and this should be, too.”
The other: “I think the transcom-
munity deserves a response from
@AskTarget @Target as to why
they’re selling this book about ‘the
transgender epidemic sweeping the
country.’ ”
That’s a caricature of my view. I
think mature adults should have the
freedom to undergo medical transi-
tion. But teenagers are another mat-
ter. Social contagions exist, and teen
girls are particularly susceptible to
them. The book takes a hard look at
whether the sudden spike in trans-
gender identification among teen
girls is yet another social contagion
to befall girls who, in another era,
might have fallen prey to anorexia or
bulimia.
Many transgender adults, includ-
ing some I interviewed for the book,
agree that teen girls are undergoing
medical transition too fast with too
little oversight. Others disagree and
have written books. Amid a sea of
material unskeptically promotingmedical transition for teenage girls,
there’s one book that investigates
this phenomenon and urges caution.
That is the book the activists seek to
suppress.
“Abigail Shrier’s book is a danger-
ous polemic with a goal of making
people not trans,” Chase Strangio,
the American Civil Liberties Union’s
deputy director for transgender jus-
tice, tweeted Friday. “I think of all
the times & ways I was told my
transness wasn’t real & the daily toll
it takes. We have to fight these ideas
which are leading to the criminaliza-
tion of trans life again.” Then: “Stop-
ping the circulation of this book and
these ideas is 100% a hill I will die
on.”You read that right: Some in to-
day’s ACLU favor book banning.
Grace Lavery, a professor of English
at the University of California, Berke-
ley, went further, tweeting: “I DO en-
courage followers to steal Abigail
Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.”
This is where leftist extremism,
encouraged by cowardly corpora-
tions, leads. The market—that is,
readers—should determine what
booksellers carry. My book was con-
sistently No. 1 in several categories
on Amazon based on sales. But the
online giant, under pressure from ex-tremists, refused to allow my pub-
lisher to advertise “Irreversible Dam-
age” on the site.
At a time when independent book-
stores are nearly extinct, chain book-
stores are endangered, and Ameri-
cans’ movement outside their homes
is constrained by a pandemic, a
handful of online retailers have out-
size influence over the ideas to
which we have access. And those
ideas are being winnowed in one di-
rection.
Robin DiAngelo’s book, “White
Fragility,” which falsely accuses mil-
lions of Americans of being inalter-
ably racist, is for sale at Target.com,
no matter how many Americans it
might offend. It should be. The no-
tion that civil society required a mar-
ketplace of ideas was something lib-
erals once believed—especially those
who worked at the ACLU, or taught
at Berkeley.
In response to media attention
and customer complaints, Target re-
versed itself; my book is again for
sale. But other books will be quietly
suppressed. In an America where the
left has achieved dominance of cul-
tural institutions and adopted a ty-
rannical opposition to other ideas,
where social media extends its reach,
and where books are distributed by a
handful of retailers—a book burning
doesn’t even require a populist up-
rising. It takes only one online ex-
tremist or two to make a book disap-
pear. And when that happens, don’t
look to the ACLU to defend you.Ms. Shrier is author of “Irrevers-
ible Damage: The Transgender Craze
Seducing Our Daughters.”By Abigail ShrierTarget stopped selling it
in response to two Twitter
complaints. A professor
even wants to burn it.