I'd say it is the size of the population, far far too many people try to make it in Los Angeles without any specialized educations, so the car washers have 40 people that dry your windows, and the wait staff jobs are exponentially Orwellian. When I finally moved away, I was living over an hour away from Santa Monica, paying $4K a month for rent, and the entire neighborhood lights up every night like a gangsters' paradise. Street racing, graffiti everywhere, sidewalk food vendors everywhere, the local high school kids are covered in tattoos, including their faces. No thank you.