But in California companies can (apparently) still require you to chat with a real person online and thus still need to do everything synchronously, wait in a queue, and argue with them for several minutes before they will cancel the subscription.

Personally I think that any time you grant permission to anyone to bill you automatically on a recurring basis, you need to be able to revoke that permission. This ought to be a fundamental mechanism of personal banking that you ought to be able to manage on your bank account online. It's astonishing to me that your bank can't even tell you all the ongoing recurring payments that are permitted on your account (or if they do, it's an ad hoc implementation that tries to detect recurring payment amounts, vendor names, etc.)

Which is great for California, but what about everyone else?

I think that was the point of the comment.

Often times if you change your address to be a CA address, websites will suddenly reveal an online cancel option. I swapped my parents' NYT account to be my CA address and suddenly "click here to cancel" was displayed on the website.

While I agree it should be a default setting, it's a useful little trick.

Just be careful if the CA Franchise Tax Board ever gets wind of it, they'll come after you for 10% income tax for the rest of your life.

> Which is great for California, but what about everyone else?

Vote in the next election for people/party that are more consumer friendly than industry friendly.

For all its flaws, CA had some of the most consumer and employee friendly (such as no non compete) laws.

I feel the lack of non compete is one of the main reasons tech took off in CA. That and the weather. For as much as people say starting a business in CA is hard, and it can be. For tech it is so easy I can just quit my job and start my company.

> but what about everyone else?

Vote.