FROM A TENT CITY IN SAN FRANCISCO

IT TOOK OFF with a gold rush. It could end in a rush to the exit.

“Some of California resembles a refugee camp,” says Diane Amnestee of street charity What the Fuck’s Happening? “You know there’s a growing problem of illegal Americans crossing into Mexico, looking for a better life. No one talks about it. Instead, they bang on about Mexicans and others coming her. There might be a few Mexicans but most of the Latinos are from far away, and they don’t know what the Mexicans know.”

“Think of North Korea, only without the order,” says Roosevelt Deel, a wealthy lawyer who has a small pro-bono office in San Diego arranging residency visas for Americans moving to Central and South America. “Yeah, parts of California make Pol Pot’s Cambodia seem attractive. And the idiots responsible can’t even get the Communism right. In some spots it’s more wretched than anyone in Pyongyang would tolerate. I don’t know where it ends. I’m relying on Artificial Intelligence.”

“It’s okay if you’re rich,” says Patricia Method, a part-time actress and charity worker, who lives under a bridge. “It’s even okay if you’re a useless drug-addled bum. In fact it’s quite good for you. It’s the rest of us, the ordinary Joe and Josephine Six Packs, we’re the ones suffering.”