COMPANIES FLEEING CALIFORNIA

 Tesla joins a formidable list of high-tech companies fleeing bad government and relocating to Texas, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Oracle Corp. McKesson Corp., and expansions of Apple, Google and Facebook. There is a new name for the trend: “Techsodus.”

Musk will be the first to admit that insults are hardly the tipping point for a CEO deciding to relocate to another state. The best reason is summed up by a relocation specialist cashing in on the trend: “California’s regulatory environment is the most costly, complex and uncertain in the nation,” Joseph Vranich recently said. And it’s gotten worse.

The laws have become so confusing and so complex that California has earned the dubious distinction as rated among the top “judicial hellholes” in the nation, according to CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine. It has reached a point to where the lawmakers fail to understand what’s in the laws -- all 10,000s of new pages.