On the other side of the coin though, I lived in California for the first 10 years of my adult life. And when I moved out I kept getting surprised how shitty the laws are everywhere else about everything other than guns.

Example, my landlord tried to jack my rent 25% and I immediately thought "Ah HA, got you fucker, that's illegal, you can only raise it 10% total or 5% plus the percentage change in the cost of living for the year, whichever is lower!" I knew that by heart, I thought tenants had protections like that everywhere. Nope. Also tenant security deposit laws are so clear in CA, they don't let landlords get away with shit.

Or the rude awakening I had at work when I found out my PTO days don't roll over year to year. Or mandatory meal breaks at jobs. Or overtime being calculated daily not weekly. I thought workers had protections like that everywhere. Nope.

I just kept running into worse food safety laws, bad toxic chemical disposal laws, no lemon laws for cars, no free school lunch for kids, air for tires at gas stations isn't free with a gas purchase, payday loan rates aren't capped, people can smoke cigarettes on you wherever they want, you can't buy liquor in anything but a government store (that one is more of a weird Virginia specific thing but still...insane), and on and on and on. I still get surprised sometimes.

I think it's less that Californians are so great and that's why they have these laws and more that the douchiest people from every state move to California. So there are so many assholes in California that they got fed up and made laws against asshole behavior.

It's a lot harder to be an asshole in California. I miss that.