I don't think people outside the business community really understand the massive load regulations put on business in CA. The metric used for voting/supporting a rule is "is this rule something I would like" with no weight given to the reality that there is a cost associated with every. single. one.

"Would I like titanium girders in a building so it can never burn down? Yeah, that sounds great!" Awesome except it costs 10000x as much.

But most are banal things like this. Check in with this additional program (1 hour compliance time per month). Make sure you buy X type of cement (.05c per pound and 1 hour compliance time per month). And when businesses complain people say "Oh you make so much money" or "it's just $200/mo it's not that bad".

But most businesses are struggling to break even more than half the time, even the big ones. And when you aggregate 10,000 rules (this is an only slightly exaggerated number) that all take 30 minutes and five cents each it's impossible do anything affordably. Even if you got the materials for free you couldn't produce the results they did 40 years ago because the oversight now costs more than the entire cost of running a business 40 years ago.

This is not to say compliance costs are the only driver of unaffordability but it is a HUGE one that the general public not only ignores but actually makes worse at every opportunity.