California has always been a state of golden dreams. What California will be in its bicentennial year of 2050 is subject to unpredictable conditions.

To see a future for California, look to its past.

Our state was the prize 175 years ago in an unjust war to extend slavery beyond the plantations of the South to the valleys of California. Fifty years later, those valleys were dominated by corporate agriculture and controlled by railroad interests. By 1950, the future of California was in the hands of real estate developers.

At the start of a new millennium in 2000, the dreamers still arrived. Developers kept turning square miles of farmland into tract home suburbia. Corporations came and went as new technologies boomed and sometimes busted, but overall, the momentum in the systems of industry, finance and labor that defined mid-century California had slowed.

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In 2025, the fractures in the state are increasingly visible. Californians see a place shorn of the myths of El Dorado and all the booms that followed and without the promise that there will always be enough clean air, abundant water, unspoiled nature, social mobility and endless growth.

What California will be in its bicentennial year of 2050 is subject to unpredictable conditions: The nation becomes ungovernable, the San Andreas rips, drought worsens in the Colorado River watershed and artificial-intelligence-driven technologies decimate the workforce.

Absent these shocks, continuities will dominate California’s tomorrows. Demographic trends since 1990 will persist. Californians will be older, with a median age of nearly 45, up from today’s 38. By 2036, nearly one-quarter of us will be over 65. Ethnic and political sorting will continue to send more Californians to red states and bring immigrants — in fewer numbers — to change the makeup of the political and civic organizations. By 2050,........

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