One of the great things of modern life is that we are rich enough and diverse enough that some people can spend their entire lives studying incredibly narrow fields. E.O. Wilson of sociobiology fame, spent most of his career studying ants. Its pretty incredible that a man can be funded--well-funded, to travel the world and study one species of insect.

One of the bad things about modern life is that people can spend their entire lives studying ants.

Its no accident that modern democracy arose from the intellectual ideals of the renaissance, with its emphasis on mastering many different skills. The renaissance man spoke several languages, played music, wrote literature, pursued science, business and agriculture. They understood art, economics and humanity in a way that the "geniuses" of modern government are profoundly ignorant of. Show me anyone in government with the range of knowledge and skills that someone like Ben Franklin had. The renaissance ideal allowed its practioners to sort the essential from the merely important.

Rick Newcombe of Creator's Syndicate is moving his business out of Los Angeles--out of California. The reasons are all too typical.

Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city's decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.

Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings -- only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.

We work with hundreds of outside agents, consultants, independent contractors and support services -- many of whom pay taxes to the city of Los Angeles. This spurs a job-creating ripple effect on the city's economy. Yet I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city's taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs.

Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.

If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs -- and taxpayers -- to another city.

As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?

California's bureaucrats aren't mean-spirited trolls, they are simply the result of the liberal-left's extremely narrow education aspirations. We have a President who is publicly elevating careers in "non-profit" enterprises, with the strong implication being that profit is somehow immoral and hurtful to society.

None of this is new--Democrats have been destroying economies since I was a lad. The Northeast was in the post-war era, the source of nearly all the industrial activity in the world. It is now a region mired in more or less permanent recession, filled with hundreds of thousands of acres of rusting infrastructure, high unemployment, depressed real estate values and depressed people.

Now California, the economic wunderkind of the western world, is sinking beneath the waves, so obviously bankrupt that they won't even accept their own IOUs in trade for state fees and services.

It would be easy to say that a "Democrat hath done this", and while it would be true, it would blind us to the real problem, which is a culture that produces idiot savants. You simply can't appoint a PhD in ethnic studies to run anything or you inevitably end up with a banana republic.