5 ms·

Tim Draper Wants To Split California, Turn Silicon Valley Into Its Own State

76 points by ssclafani 13y ago

kylelibra 13y ago
The reasons: 1. It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average. 2. Competition is good, monopolies are bad. This initiative encourages more competition and less monopolistic power. Like all competitive systems, costs will be lower and service will be better. 3. Each new state can start fresh. From a new crowd sourced state flower to a more relevant constitution. 4. Decisions can be more relevant to the population. The regulations in one new state are not appropriate for another. 5. Individuals can move between states more freely.
- joshdotsmith 13y ago
  Crowdsourcing new state flowers is at the forefront of my political concerns right now.
- alaskamiller 13y ago
  1. All senators now have diluted power. 2. Competition isn't always good. Sometimes competition overrides other values or incentives unfair tactics. 3. Disruption is painful and expensive. 4. More regulations, more laws, more systems. 5. Individuals will now have to show more papers to move about the country.
  - cylinder 13y ago
    Competition between states often leads to a race to the bottom. Corporations take advantage of this. Convince some idiots running one state to offer you non-sensical tax breaks and either take them and bleed the state dry in the name of "jobs," or use it as a bargaining chip to put political pressure on another state to offer a similar bargain.
- mbesto 13y ago
  The only real reason - money. I'm not going to attempt to debate this because will go off into a hundred different ways, but it's pretty clear the motivation is simply about money and nothing else. Note - I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with whether or not it's a good idea.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  > It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average. On the other hand, California gains an enormous amount of power every four years due to the huge number of electoral college votes it commands. No other single state has anything like California's 55 electoral votes; the next closest is Texas, which has just 38. In other words, California, all by itself, gets a candidate 20% of the way to the magic 270 votes needed to win the Presidency. This makes it very hard for any serious candidate to ignore or otherwise bypass. Splitting California up would dilute this power, allowing candidates to write off parts it more easily. It would be interesting to take the 2012 election results and map them to Draper's proposed new states to see how those "states" would have voted, had they existed then.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    > On the other hand, California gains an enormous amount of power every four years due to the huge number of electoral college votes it commands. Since it consistently goes blue, national campaigns use California for token speeches, mainly for fundraising purposes in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
    - smacktoward 13y ago
      That blue-ness is a relatively recent phenomenon, though. California went for Reagan in '80 and '84, and for Bush Sr. in '88. Bush Jr. lost it in 2000 and 2004, but he didn't get his doors blown off either; both Gore and Kerry came in at just around 53% of the vote. Given the demographic trends I think CA is likely to tilt blue in the immediate future, but it's not an immutable law of nature that it's a safe Democratic pickup.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      Yeah, California only matters for primaries, and for fundraisers.
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
- TwistedWeasel 13y ago
  I dont get why 5 is a reason. I can currently move freely all over California and the rest of the US. How would splitting California up make movement between these areas any more free?
  - lutorm 13y ago
    Presumably because if you don't like California, the other states are often far away. You can't just move across the border (unless you live in Tahoe).
- colanderman 13y ago
  Isn't the point of the Senate not to be proportional to people (like the House is, roughly)? Otherwise why have two distinct legislative bodies?
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    It is, but the original idea has already been distorted by two-plus centuries of evolution. The House, for instance, was originally supposed to be extremely close to the people; the first Representatives served districts that had just 30,000 people each. That's roughly the same number of people as live today in Butte, Montana, or Fairbanks, Alaska. A district small enough that everybody could know their Representative personally. As the country grew, though, the House chamber started to get crowded. In the first Congress, the House had all of 65 members; by the election of 1900, there were 386. And this had practical consequences -- all those people had to squeeze into one room. People started to worry that further growth would make it unmanageably large. So in 1911 Congress passed a law, the Apportionment Act of 1911 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911), that essentially waved a magic wand and said that from that point on the House would have exactly 435 members, and changes in population would be dealt with by shuffling seats from shrinking states to growing ones rather than by adding new seats. That's more or less the system we have today. The problem is that, as the country kept on growing, each of those 435 seats had to represent more and more people. Today each one contains something like 700,000 people. That's more people in one district than any of the original thirteen states had in their entire state. (Virginia, the largest state in 1790, had just 455,000 free citizens.) Which sort of demolished the idea that districts would be small enough for everyone to know their Representative -- today's House members are even more distant from their communities than the first Senators were. (Which is why there are occasionally calls to radically expand the size of the House; see http://www.democracyjournal.org/8/6587.php http://www.democracyjournal.org/8/6587.php for an example.)
- IbJacked 13y ago
  > 1. It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average. The Senators aren't supposed to represent the people, they are supposed to represent the State's interests (though that seems to have been forgotten). The people are represented by the Representatives, the number of which is proportional to population.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The Senators aren't supposed to represent the people Yes, they are. That's why they are directly elected. > they are supposed to represent the State's interests They were supposed to, originally. > (though that seems to have been forgotten) No, it was reconsidered and the design changed.
    - protomyth 13y ago
      No, historically the Senators are supposed to represent the governments of the states. The amendment screwed that up and we have seen all kinds of budget and regulatory bloat. Plus, the continued concentration of power in DC. It was a bad amendment and it should be repealed or modified.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > No, historically the Senators are supposed to represent the governments of the states. No, historically, the Senators were supposed to represent the governments of the states. You can argue that that design should be restored, but merely pointing out that it used to be that way is hardly an argument. > The amendment screwed that up and we have seen all kinds of budget and regulatory bloat. There's a very loose temporal association (in that the purported effect did happen after the purported cause, but not particularly closely after) with the rapid expansion of the national regulation, but not much other indication of causation; even among Constitutional amendments that were enacted in 1913, you'd have a stronger case for blaming the 16th amendment for that then the 17th (though, there's probably an even stronger argument that the 16th and 17th amendments were both effects of the same trend in nationalization that later led to the expansion of the national regulatory expansion than that either is really a strong contributor to it.)
warmwaffles 13y ago
This will never happen. Those in power will not allow it.
- jds375 13y ago
  Completely true. But it is an interesting thought experiment and provides some insight into our current system and some changes we may want to make.
  - alttab 13y ago
    We would have to change the American flag. Think about that for a second. There won't be citizen driven state changes in America, ever, without some form of revolt.
    - ghshephard 13y ago
      The American flag has changed 26 times since 1777, the most recently in 1960 when Hawaii's star was added. There are many challenges to breaking up California, "changing the American Flag" is one of the less significant changes.
    - frostmatthew 13y ago
      > We would have to change the American flag. We've changed the flag dozens of times in our history...there's plenty of reasons California won't be getting split into smaller states but this isn't one of them.
    - jacalata 13y ago
      Would you? Is the flag constitutionally required to match the number of states?
  - warmwaffles 13y ago
    I did enjoy the thought experiment. It's just funny that it sounds similar to Gov. Rick Perry saying "Texas will secede"
hydralist 13y ago
or "tim draper and i want your attention"
ChristianMarks 13y ago
"Competition is good, monopolies are bad" is a blanket statement about one mechanism of cooperative benefit, gain from trade in competitive markets, against another mechanism of cooperative benefit, namely economies of scale. It is not self evident at all that competition is always good: there are necessarily diminishing returns along all the dimensions of cooperative benefit, and they trade off against each other non-linearly. Risk pools benefit from economies of scale. Breaking up CA requires an analysis of the social services affected. This is much, much more involved than the proposal indicates.
heurist 13y ago
Maybe some of the US's underrepresented territories should get a shot at statehood first.
sciguy77 13y ago
While I think this idea is interesting I can't see it happening in our lifetimes.
carsongross 13y ago
I'll go you one further, Mr. Draper: California should be split up into six countries. The plain fact is that the notion of "consent of the governed" is preposterous in any culturally diverse environment of more than a few million people. Reasonable people wish to live differently, with different forms and amounts of government, religion, social norms, etc. So be it.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  The only reason California is so diverse is because of immigration, and so while what you say makes sense, it would change nothing in the long run unless it was accompanied by stricter immigration restrictions. Otherwise these 6 new countries would soon be just as diverse as California is now.
  - carsongross 13y ago
    Each new country, of course, would be able to set their immigration restrictions and loosely or as tightly as they wished. And, hey, this might actually reflect the preferences of their citizens rather than the preferences of some remote elites. It's crazy talk, I know.
    - smtddr 13y ago
      Yes, crazy and wrong. Let me tell you how this is going to go. A bunch of wealthy people, of limited diversity, will make their own country and exploit all the poorer ones. I would have no problem with your plan if you can assure me that the wealthier country doesn't bully, pollute, wage wars or otherwise compromise the people or natural resources the poorer countries nearby.
      - carsongross 13y ago
        Nah, sane and correct. Massive super-states: bulwarks of peace, clean living and respect for both the individual and their local cultural groups... Sure, man. Whatever. At least give it a chance in your brain: I know it doesn't fit the classic left/right divide, but would a continent of Switzerlands of varying cultures be that bad? Worse than todays USG?
tlrobinson 13y ago
See also: Jefferson (proposed Pacific state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st... edit: oh, Jefferson is actually the name of the proposed northern state.
johnpowell 13y ago
All of you that want to "disrupt" (I loathe that word) should just buy a boat and carry on without the rules and regulations. Uber could be a venture-funded startup and Transportation Network Company based in San Francisco, California that makes a mobile application that connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services on a boat.
rlt 13y ago
I, for one, am glad California has still has some less liberal areas to keep it in line.
- smtddr 13y ago
  Seriously. As left as I am, this is crazy talk. SV can't just be its own state. This Silicon-valley-arrogance is out of control. They think they have it all figured out and know better than generations of wisdom before them. What if everyone who didn't like a few things decides to just not co-operate and run off? So now SV is its own state. San Francisco is going to be part of this state and it already has gentrification-type issues. What if those people get mad and wanna make their own state too? A state where the non-techs can keep their apartments and not be displaced by techies. So, now where do the techies live?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
andresidhil 13y ago
Nice
shawnee_ 13y ago
Would California's perpetual budget problems be better solved by localizing the resources of a state government to be more accessible? Probably. Clearly California is (and has been for a long time) too big for its shoes, as evidenced by its complete idiocy when it comes to passing budgets that do what they're supposed to do. But, six states might be pushing things a bit. Economies of scale that can be had at a state level shouldn't be discounted entirely. It would be interesting to see what would happen with things like: - state income tax (WA, for example, has none); - sales tax (OR, for example, has none); - minimum wage; - driver's license expiration periods (AZ only makes you visit the DMV once every 12 years to get a new pic & check vision) - gambling laws (because Nevada's not quite close enough for some people); - fruit checkpoints at the state line(s); - all the case law RE: California Supreme Court rulings -- opening this up for new precedents would be madness
- Aloisius 13y ago
  Would California's perpetual budget problems be better solved California has a budget surplus. A pretty large one in fact: $5.6 billion surplus by June 2015, with annual surpluses reaching $8.3 billion by the 2016-17 budget year.
  - gojomo 13y ago
    I'll believe numbers for 2015-2017 when they arrive. What's the surplus for 2013?
    - Aloisius 13y ago
      It is on track to be about $851 million (the fiscal year ends June 30th)
  - protomyth 13y ago
    If you do some accounting wizardry and forget about the unfunded pensions. Calling it in surplus doesn't tell the actual story.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
rdl 13y ago
What federal approval would be needed for this? It would be interesting if California added some regional government level between state and county, then devolved almost all state power to that level, in advance of any formal breakup.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > What federal approval would be needed for this? Yes, by Congress. > It would be interesting if California added some regional government level between state and county, then devolved almost all state power to that level California has been progressively devolving state powers directly to counties for many years, constrained largely by things that are tied to federal funding streams that require a single state agency to be responsible for the federal funding and to perform certain functions with regard to the statewide program.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
Splitting CA into 2 different states (3 at most) would be more realistic but 6 is just over doing it. It feels like micro-fragmentation (see Europe). The author is terrible at selling the idea. Where's the data? Where's the maps showing political segregation and population? Why don't they talk about how CA has terrible public schools, a massive jail population, and inefficient public transportation? And how splitting it up into separate states would allow different and unique ideas to compete and be tried instead of one set of rules being forced on an entire state of 38 million people.
deleted 13y ago
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hristov 13y ago
Only his first point (about getting a fair number of senators) makes sense. Senate representation is a big problem for our country. Things have gotten to the point where many small states can flat out extort the US population as a whole. (Our terrible corn based ethanol legislation is an example of such extortion.) Unfortunately, I do not think splitting CA will get us more senators. I am pretty sure that additional states have to be approved on the federal level. And considering Washington, DC. still to this day does not have Senate representation, I really really doubt the federal government would allow California to have 10 more senators.
- r00fus 13y ago
  The small states aren't extorting the country, they simply act as the cheapest way to buy Senators for megacorps and rich interests, esp. now with Citizens United court ruling that money==speech. Why do you think Liz Cheney (with a relative toxic name-recognition but massive political pull and deep pockets) wants to compete against Enzi? Because it costs much less to nuke the state in advertising, and outright bribes than a big state like CA - and the senator of WY has just as much pull as the senator of CA or TX. There are only ~576k votes in all of WY and if she wins the Republican primary (even smaller than the electorate as a whole), she pretty much wins the race.
- prewett 13y ago
  The Senate representation is by design, so that large states cannot bully the small ones. Big states get more leverage in the House of Representatives and the smaller states are on equal footing with the larger states in the Senate. I think it is a good system. What would you have the small states do, anyway? The representatives are acting in the interest of their constituents, which is what they are supposed to do. How many corn-producing states are there? More than the 25 states needed for a majority in the Senate? Really? Even so, how did it get past the House? If the representatives of the populous extorted states can't see how the corn legislation is bad, maybe those other states need better representation. Maybe California even supported it, since they are all environmentally-conscious (even if not always well-informed). Or maybe it is not actually bad legislation: Wikipedia [1] seems to claim that ethanol in gasoline replaces a harmful chemical that was polluting groundwater, but that ethanol producers were having problems staying afloat in the Panic of 2008-9. The government was well-designed, please don't try to "fix" it. Instead, let's eliminate special interests buying harmful legislation, which is the real problem. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_Stat...
Aloisius 13y ago
As a 4th generation native, I've been hearing ideas such as these since I was a kid. I can't tell you how many times the idea of how easy it would be to secede from the rest of the US was brought up, but this new one seems to take the crazy a little more public. I'm a bit confused as to why in 30 years, anyone from "Silicon Valley" would give a damn about what those people from "West California" thought or why the Senators from West California would vote to get a new bridge in Silicon Valley for instance. This wouldn't create six Californias, it would dilute the power of California by breaking it up. Nor do I understand why the Federal government would allow such an obvious ploy to increase Senate representation. I'm actually kind of surprised, given the almost Texas-level pride (minus the Texas-sized ego) Californians can have for our state that Draper would propose such a thing.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Yes, these ideas are evergreen in California. The "Jefferson" one in particular comes up constantly. There's only a tiny problem: all of "Jefferson" would contain a tiny (fewer than a million) population, would have essentially no economy other than timber and tourism, and currently runs an ENORMOUS budget deficit when considered by itself because the negligible economic activity produced by the timber industry wouldn't even pay for filling the potholes in the 1000s of miles of highways in the region, much less for fixing the bridges and staffing the rural fire departments and whatnot. Of course the idea can't die because 1) rural poor people are particularly susceptible to "stabbed in the back" propaganda about how liberals are robbing them blind, and 2) incumbent timber owners are all too happy to peddle such propaganda because all they want is to clearcut the remainder of California's forests without interference from pesky laws.
beachstartup 13y ago
i have an intimate, decades-long knowledge of both northern and southern california, and let me tell you, they're basically the same thing. anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn't spent much time in both. the real differences run east-west, not north-south.
- gojomo 13y ago
  I think the proposed splits recognize this: of the 6, only the northernmost two are horizontal bands; the other frous are east-west splits. I have a hunch the LA-to-Orange-County split might be awkward, or the meshing of three states in the Contra Costa-Sacramento-San Joaquin area. And though Alameda and Contra Costa might be comfortable with SF-San Mateo-Santa Clara-Santa Cruz-Monterrey-San Benito, they'd hate being in a state called 'Silicon Valley.
vonskippy 13y ago
Just another whiny rich person trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
mike_herrera 13y ago
I dislike this solution. Draper's concerns mainly reference representation and regulation. Both of which can be achieved by (1) amending the CA and US Constitutions, and (2) delegating more power to the existing counties. The waste inherent to operating five additional state governments, just to circumvent the status quo, does not seem appropriate.
crazygringo 13y ago
Interesting, states have been created in the past via splitting. Maine out of Mass., both W. Va and Kentucky out of Virginia, and Vermont from NY+NH, according to Wikipedia. [1] "Any such creation [must] be approved by the legislature of the affected state(s), as well as the United States Congress." [1] Also according to Wikipedia, "Throughout the state's history, there have been more than 220 attempts to divide California into multiple states including at least 27 serious proposals." [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_pr... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_Cali...
- mmanfrin 13y ago
  Vermont from NY+NH What? Vermont was its own sovereign state before joining the union.
- bilbo0s 13y ago
  "Any such creation [must] be approved by the legislature of the affected state(s), as well as the United States Congress." Not strictly true. It certainly wasn't the case for the West Virginians.
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._West_Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._West_Virginia
scarmig 13y ago
I sort of like this idea, but in all honesty, I think the time for secessionist movements has passed. That's not a snarky comment about the Civil War--it just seems to me that the idea of having a sovereign state with a monopoly of force over some geographic terrain seems outmoded to me. China Mieville wrote a novel a couple years back, The City and the City, that is exactly the type of thing I want to see more of: pushing the boundaries of what we consider a plausible political entity. In it, there's one city but two governments that are both sovereign within its limits, and people choose to be part of one or another. I'm also reminded of the historical political mandalas of Southeast Asia--one city state might simultaneously be a client of two other states. Is either the future? Of course not. But my point is that our vision of what governments have to look like is sadly limited, and our myopia has caused us to see the Eurocentric romantic state nationalism of the past two centuries as the only way for a civilization to exist. Think bigger, folks! (Or smaller, as the case may be.)
MyNameIsMK 13y ago
Can someone please answer what problem is being solved here?
blackjack48 13y ago
I like the general idea, but the current proposal isn't going to get much support because it splits the Bay Area in half. Doing that fails to recognize that a significant portion of people commute from the North Bay into the city. Not to mention that numerous agencies have been established to coordinate planning and environmental efforts in the area (ABAG, MTC, BART, and BAAQMD to name a few.) I think the proposal would be stronger as a four-state solution: 1) a state similar to the proposed "Jefferson" state 2) the greater Bay Area/Monterey/Sacramento area 3) Central Valley & the south half of the Sierra Nevadas 4) SLO/SB/SoCal
dicemoose 13y ago
Question: If this were to actually pass in the State of California, would the only thing necessary after that be for the US Congress to accept six new states into the Union? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Four_of_the_United_States_Constitution#New_states_and_federal_property https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Four_of_the_United_Sta...
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > If this were to actually pass in the State of California, would the only thing necessary after that be for the US Congress to accept six new states into the Union? Probably not; even if the ballot measure passed it would still probably have to pass the state legislature: the US Constitution requires consent of the State Legislature (not just "the State") to form new states from the territory of existing states, and in other circumstances (the similar restriction regarding rules for choosing Presidential electors), ISTR that the federal courts have looked specifically to the Legislature.
shobhitverma 13y ago
Hunger games ?
nostromo 13y ago
This proposal is clever in that it greatly increases the (former) state's power in the senate, but does so by splitting the state's senators 50/50 between both parties. That would net republicans 2 more senators than they have today -- so if the state passes it, I imagine the republicans in congress might actually allow it to happen. This would change the dynamic for presidential elections dramatically (thanks to our byzantine way of selecting a president); pulling away several "secure" democratic votes to republicans. I believe republicans already have a electoral vote per capita advantage, as seen in the 2000 election. Also, a 55 star flag doesn't look so terrible: http://i.imgur.com/5yKPsUR.png http://i.imgur.com/5yKPsUR.png
protomyth 13y ago
The whole water management is going to be very interesting under such a plan. Might be good for agriculture and force a move to desalination plants.

76 points by ssclafani 13y ago

The reasons: 1. It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average. 2. Competition is good, monopolies are bad. This initiative encourages more competition and less monopolistic power. Like all competitive systems, costs will be lower and service will be better. 3. Each new state can start fresh. From a new crowd sourced state flower to a more relevant constitution. 4. Decisions can be more relevant to the population. The regulations in one new state are not appropriate for another. 5. Individuals can move between states more freely.

joshdotsmith 13y ago
Crowdsourcing new state flowers is at the forefront of my political concerns right now.
alaskamiller 13y ago
1. All senators now have diluted power. 2. Competition isn't always good. Sometimes competition overrides other values or incentives unfair tactics. 3. Disruption is painful and expensive. 4. More regulations, more laws, more systems. 5. Individuals will now have to show more papers to move about the country.
- cylinder 13y ago
  Competition between states often leads to a race to the bottom. Corporations take advantage of this. Convince some idiots running one state to offer you non-sensical tax breaks and either take them and bleed the state dry in the name of "jobs," or use it as a bargaining chip to put political pressure on another state to offer a similar bargain.
mbesto 13y ago
The only real reason - money. I'm not going to attempt to debate this because will go off into a hundred different ways, but it's pretty clear the motivation is simply about money and nothing else. Note - I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with whether or not it's a good idea.
smacktoward 13y ago
> It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average. On the other hand, California gains an enormous amount of power every four years due to the huge number of electoral college votes it commands. No other single state has anything like California's 55 electoral votes; the next closest is Texas, which has just 38. In other words, California, all by itself, gets a candidate 20% of the way to the magic 270 votes needed to win the Presidency. This makes it very hard for any serious candidate to ignore or otherwise bypass. Splitting California up would dilute this power, allowing candidates to write off parts it more easily. It would be interesting to take the 2012 election results and map them to Draper's proposed new states to see how those "states" would have voted, had they existed then.
- prostoalex 13y ago
  > On the other hand, California gains an enormous amount of power every four years due to the huge number of electoral college votes it commands. Since it consistently goes blue, national campaigns use California for token speeches, mainly for fundraising purposes in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    That blue-ness is a relatively recent phenomenon, though. California went for Reagan in '80 and '84, and for Bush Sr. in '88. Bush Jr. lost it in 2000 and 2004, but he didn't get his doors blown off either; both Gore and Kerry came in at just around 53% of the vote. Given the demographic trends I think CA is likely to tilt blue in the immediate future, but it's not an immutable law of nature that it's a safe Democratic pickup.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    Yeah, California only matters for primaries, and for fundraisers.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
TwistedWeasel 13y ago
I dont get why 5 is a reason. I can currently move freely all over California and the rest of the US. How would splitting California up make movement between these areas any more free?
- lutorm 13y ago
  Presumably because if you don't like California, the other states are often far away. You can't just move across the border (unless you live in Tahoe).
colanderman 13y ago
Isn't the point of the Senate not to be proportional to people (like the House is, roughly)? Otherwise why have two distinct legislative bodies?
- smacktoward 13y ago
  It is, but the original idea has already been distorted by two-plus centuries of evolution. The House, for instance, was originally supposed to be extremely close to the people; the first Representatives served districts that had just 30,000 people each. That's roughly the same number of people as live today in Butte, Montana, or Fairbanks, Alaska. A district small enough that everybody could know their Representative personally. As the country grew, though, the House chamber started to get crowded. In the first Congress, the House had all of 65 members; by the election of 1900, there were 386. And this had practical consequences -- all those people had to squeeze into one room. People started to worry that further growth would make it unmanageably large. So in 1911 Congress passed a law, the Apportionment Act of 1911 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_Act_of_1911), that essentially waved a magic wand and said that from that point on the House would have exactly 435 members, and changes in population would be dealt with by shuffling seats from shrinking states to growing ones rather than by adding new seats. That's more or less the system we have today. The problem is that, as the country kept on growing, each of those 435 seats had to represent more and more people. Today each one contains something like 700,000 people. That's more people in one district than any of the original thirteen states had in their entire state. (Virginia, the largest state in 1790, had just 455,000 free citizens.) Which sort of demolished the idea that districts would be small enough for everyone to know their Representative -- today's House members are even more distant from their communities than the first Senators were. (Which is why there are occasionally calls to radically expand the size of the House; see http://www.democracyjournal.org/8/6587.php http://www.democracyjournal.org/8/6587.php for an example.)
IbJacked 13y ago
> 1. It is about time California was properly represented with Senators in Washington. Now our number of Senators per person will be about average. The Senators aren't supposed to represent the people, they are supposed to represent the State's interests (though that seems to have been forgotten). The people are represented by the Representatives, the number of which is proportional to population.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The Senators aren't supposed to represent the people Yes, they are. That's why they are directly elected. > they are supposed to represent the State's interests They were supposed to, originally. > (though that seems to have been forgotten) No, it was reconsidered and the design changed.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    No, historically the Senators are supposed to represent the governments of the states. The amendment screwed that up and we have seen all kinds of budget and regulatory bloat. Plus, the continued concentration of power in DC. It was a bad amendment and it should be repealed or modified.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > No, historically the Senators are supposed to represent the governments of the states. No, historically, the Senators were supposed to represent the governments of the states. You can argue that that design should be restored, but merely pointing out that it used to be that way is hardly an argument. > The amendment screwed that up and we have seen all kinds of budget and regulatory bloat. There's a very loose temporal association (in that the purported effect did happen after the purported cause, but not particularly closely after) with the rapid expansion of the national regulation, but not much other indication of causation; even among Constitutional amendments that were enacted in 1913, you'd have a stronger case for blaming the 16th amendment for that then the 17th (though, there's probably an even stronger argument that the 16th and 17th amendments were both effects of the same trend in nationalization that later led to the expansion of the national regulatory expansion than that either is really a strong contributor to it.)

warmwaffles 13y ago

This will never happen. Those in power will not allow it.

jds375 13y ago
Completely true. But it is an interesting thought experiment and provides some insight into our current system and some changes we may want to make.
- alttab 13y ago
  We would have to change the American flag. Think about that for a second. There won't be citizen driven state changes in America, ever, without some form of revolt.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    The American flag has changed 26 times since 1777, the most recently in 1960 when Hawaii's star was added. There are many challenges to breaking up California, "changing the American Flag" is one of the less significant changes.
  - frostmatthew 13y ago
    > We would have to change the American flag. We've changed the flag dozens of times in our history...there's plenty of reasons California won't be getting split into smaller states but this isn't one of them.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    Would you? Is the flag constitutionally required to match the number of states?
- warmwaffles 13y ago
  I did enjoy the thought experiment. It's just funny that it sounds similar to Gov. Rick Perry saying "Texas will secede"

hydralist 13y ago

or "tim draper and i want your attention"

ChristianMarks 13y ago

"Competition is good, monopolies are bad" is a blanket statement about one mechanism of cooperative benefit, gain from trade in competitive markets, against another mechanism of cooperative benefit, namely economies of scale. It is not self evident at all that competition is always good: there are necessarily diminishing returns along all the dimensions of cooperative benefit, and they trade off against each other non-linearly. Risk pools benefit from economies of scale. Breaking up CA requires an analysis of the social services affected. This is much, much more involved than the proposal indicates.

heurist 13y ago

Maybe some of the US's underrepresented territories should get a shot at statehood first.

sciguy77 13y ago

While I think this idea is interesting I can't see it happening in our lifetimes.

carsongross 13y ago

I'll go you one further, Mr. Draper: California should be split up into six countries. The plain fact is that the notion of "consent of the governed" is preposterous in any culturally diverse environment of more than a few million people. Reasonable people wish to live differently, with different forms and amounts of government, religion, social norms, etc. So be it.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
The only reason California is so diverse is because of immigration, and so while what you say makes sense, it would change nothing in the long run unless it was accompanied by stricter immigration restrictions. Otherwise these 6 new countries would soon be just as diverse as California is now.
- carsongross 13y ago
  Each new country, of course, would be able to set their immigration restrictions and loosely or as tightly as they wished. And, hey, this might actually reflect the preferences of their citizens rather than the preferences of some remote elites. It's crazy talk, I know.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    Yes, crazy and wrong. Let me tell you how this is going to go. A bunch of wealthy people, of limited diversity, will make their own country and exploit all the poorer ones. I would have no problem with your plan if you can assure me that the wealthier country doesn't bully, pollute, wage wars or otherwise compromise the people or natural resources the poorer countries nearby.
    - carsongross 13y ago
      Nah, sane and correct. Massive super-states: bulwarks of peace, clean living and respect for both the individual and their local cultural groups... Sure, man. Whatever. At least give it a chance in your brain: I know it doesn't fit the classic left/right divide, but would a continent of Switzerlands of varying cultures be that bad? Worse than todays USG?

tlrobinson 13y ago

See also: Jefferson (proposed Pacific state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st... edit: oh, Jefferson is actually the name of the proposed northern state.

johnpowell 13y ago

All of you that want to "disrupt" (I loathe that word) should just buy a boat and carry on without the rules and regulations. Uber could be a venture-funded startup and Transportation Network Company based in San Francisco, California that makes a mobile application that connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services on a boat.

rlt 13y ago

I, for one, am glad California has still has some less liberal areas to keep it in line.

smtddr 13y ago
Seriously. As left as I am, this is crazy talk. SV can't just be its own state. This Silicon-valley-arrogance is out of control. They think they have it all figured out and know better than generations of wisdom before them. What if everyone who didn't like a few things decides to just not co-operate and run off? So now SV is its own state. San Francisco is going to be part of this state and it already has gentrification-type issues. What if those people get mad and wanna make their own state too? A state where the non-techs can keep their apartments and not be displaced by techies. So, now where do the techies live?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

andresidhil 13y ago

Nice

shawnee_ 13y ago

Would California's perpetual budget problems be better solved by localizing the resources of a state government to be more accessible? Probably. Clearly California is (and has been for a long time) too big for its shoes, as evidenced by its complete idiocy when it comes to passing budgets that do what they're supposed to do. But, six states might be pushing things a bit. Economies of scale that can be had at a state level shouldn't be discounted entirely. It would be interesting to see what would happen with things like: - state income tax (WA, for example, has none); - sales tax (OR, for example, has none); - minimum wage; - driver's license expiration periods (AZ only makes you visit the DMV once every 12 years to get a new pic & check vision) - gambling laws (because Nevada's not quite close enough for some people); - fruit checkpoints at the state line(s); - all the case law RE: California Supreme Court rulings -- opening this up for new precedents would be madness

Aloisius 13y ago
Would California's perpetual budget problems be better solved California has a budget surplus. A pretty large one in fact: $5.6 billion surplus by June 2015, with annual surpluses reaching $8.3 billion by the 2016-17 budget year.
- gojomo 13y ago
  I'll believe numbers for 2015-2017 when they arrive. What's the surplus for 2013?
  - Aloisius 13y ago
    It is on track to be about $851 million (the fiscal year ends June 30th)
- protomyth 13y ago
  If you do some accounting wizardry and forget about the unfunded pensions. Calling it in surplus doesn't tell the actual story.
dragonwriter 13y ago

rdl 13y ago

What federal approval would be needed for this? It would be interesting if California added some regional government level between state and county, then devolved almost all state power to that level, in advance of any formal breakup.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> What federal approval would be needed for this? Yes, by Congress. > It would be interesting if California added some regional government level between state and county, then devolved almost all state power to that level California has been progressively devolving state powers directly to counties for many years, constrained largely by things that are tied to federal funding streams that require a single state agency to be responsible for the federal funding and to perform certain functions with regard to the statewide program.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

Splitting CA into 2 different states (3 at most) would be more realistic but 6 is just over doing it. It feels like micro-fragmentation (see Europe). The author is terrible at selling the idea. Where's the data? Where's the maps showing political segregation and population? Why don't they talk about how CA has terrible public schools, a massive jail population, and inefficient public transportation? And how splitting it up into separate states would allow different and unique ideas to compete and be tried instead of one set of rules being forced on an entire state of 38 million people.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hristov 13y ago

Only his first point (about getting a fair number of senators) makes sense. Senate representation is a big problem for our country. Things have gotten to the point where many small states can flat out extort the US population as a whole. (Our terrible corn based ethanol legislation is an example of such extortion.) Unfortunately, I do not think splitting CA will get us more senators. I am pretty sure that additional states have to be approved on the federal level. And considering Washington, DC. still to this day does not have Senate representation, I really really doubt the federal government would allow California to have 10 more senators.

r00fus 13y ago
The small states aren't extorting the country, they simply act as the cheapest way to buy Senators for megacorps and rich interests, esp. now with Citizens United court ruling that money==speech. Why do you think Liz Cheney (with a relative toxic name-recognition but massive political pull and deep pockets) wants to compete against Enzi? Because it costs much less to nuke the state in advertising, and outright bribes than a big state like CA - and the senator of WY has just as much pull as the senator of CA or TX. There are only ~576k votes in all of WY and if she wins the Republican primary (even smaller than the electorate as a whole), she pretty much wins the race.
prewett 13y ago
The Senate representation is by design, so that large states cannot bully the small ones. Big states get more leverage in the House of Representatives and the smaller states are on equal footing with the larger states in the Senate. I think it is a good system. What would you have the small states do, anyway? The representatives are acting in the interest of their constituents, which is what they are supposed to do. How many corn-producing states are there? More than the 25 states needed for a majority in the Senate? Really? Even so, how did it get past the House? If the representatives of the populous extorted states can't see how the corn legislation is bad, maybe those other states need better representation. Maybe California even supported it, since they are all environmentally-conscious (even if not always well-informed). Or maybe it is not actually bad legislation: Wikipedia [1] seems to claim that ethanol in gasoline replaces a harmful chemical that was polluting groundwater, but that ethanol producers were having problems staying afloat in the Panic of 2008-9. The government was well-designed, please don't try to "fix" it. Instead, let's eliminate special interests buying harmful legislation, which is the real problem. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_Stat...

Aloisius 13y ago

As a 4th generation native, I've been hearing ideas such as these since I was a kid. I can't tell you how many times the idea of how easy it would be to secede from the rest of the US was brought up, but this new one seems to take the crazy a little more public. I'm a bit confused as to why in 30 years, anyone from "Silicon Valley" would give a damn about what those people from "West California" thought or why the Senators from West California would vote to get a new bridge in Silicon Valley for instance. This wouldn't create six Californias, it would dilute the power of California by breaking it up. Nor do I understand why the Federal government would allow such an obvious ploy to increase Senate representation. I'm actually kind of surprised, given the almost Texas-level pride (minus the Texas-sized ego) Californians can have for our state that Draper would propose such a thing.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
Yes, these ideas are evergreen in California. The "Jefferson" one in particular comes up constantly. There's only a tiny problem: all of "Jefferson" would contain a tiny (fewer than a million) population, would have essentially no economy other than timber and tourism, and currently runs an ENORMOUS budget deficit when considered by itself because the negligible economic activity produced by the timber industry wouldn't even pay for filling the potholes in the 1000s of miles of highways in the region, much less for fixing the bridges and staffing the rural fire departments and whatnot. Of course the idea can't die because 1) rural poor people are particularly susceptible to "stabbed in the back" propaganda about how liberals are robbing them blind, and 2) incumbent timber owners are all too happy to peddle such propaganda because all they want is to clearcut the remainder of California's forests without interference from pesky laws.

beachstartup 13y ago

i have an intimate, decades-long knowledge of both northern and southern california, and let me tell you, they're basically the same thing. anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn't spent much time in both. the real differences run east-west, not north-south.

gojomo 13y ago
I think the proposed splits recognize this: of the 6, only the northernmost two are horizontal bands; the other frous are east-west splits. I have a hunch the LA-to-Orange-County split might be awkward, or the meshing of three states in the Contra Costa-Sacramento-San Joaquin area. And though Alameda and Contra Costa might be comfortable with SF-San Mateo-Santa Clara-Santa Cruz-Monterrey-San Benito, they'd hate being in a state called 'Silicon Valley.

vonskippy 13y ago

Just another whiny rich person trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

mike_herrera 13y ago

I dislike this solution. Draper's concerns mainly reference representation and regulation. Both of which can be achieved by (1) amending the CA and US Constitutions, and (2) delegating more power to the existing counties. The waste inherent to operating five additional state governments, just to circumvent the status quo, does not seem appropriate.

crazygringo 13y ago

Interesting, states have been created in the past via splitting. Maine out of Mass., both W. Va and Kentucky out of Virginia, and Vermont from NY+NH, according to Wikipedia. [1] "Any such creation [must] be approved by the legislature of the affected state(s), as well as the United States Congress." [1] Also according to Wikipedia, "Throughout the state's history, there have been more than 220 attempts to divide California into multiple states including at least 27 serious proposals." [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_pr... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_Cali...

mmanfrin 13y ago
Vermont from NY+NH What? Vermont was its own sovereign state before joining the union.
bilbo0s 13y ago
"Any such creation [must] be approved by the legislature of the affected state(s), as well as the United States Congress." Not strictly true. It certainly wasn't the case for the West Virginians.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._West_Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._West_Virginia

scarmig 13y ago

I sort of like this idea, but in all honesty, I think the time for secessionist movements has passed. That's not a snarky comment about the Civil War--it just seems to me that the idea of having a sovereign state with a monopoly of force over some geographic terrain seems outmoded to me. China Mieville wrote a novel a couple years back, The City and the City, that is exactly the type of thing I want to see more of: pushing the boundaries of what we consider a plausible political entity. In it, there's one city but two governments that are both sovereign within its limits, and people choose to be part of one or another. I'm also reminded of the historical political mandalas of Southeast Asia--one city state might simultaneously be a client of two other states. Is either the future? Of course not. But my point is that our vision of what governments have to look like is sadly limited, and our myopia has caused us to see the Eurocentric romantic state nationalism of the past two centuries as the only way for a civilization to exist. Think bigger, folks! (Or smaller, as the case may be.)

MyNameIsMK 13y ago

Can someone please answer what problem is being solved here?

blackjack48 13y ago

I like the general idea, but the current proposal isn't going to get much support because it splits the Bay Area in half. Doing that fails to recognize that a significant portion of people commute from the North Bay into the city. Not to mention that numerous agencies have been established to coordinate planning and environmental efforts in the area (ABAG, MTC, BART, and BAAQMD to name a few.) I think the proposal would be stronger as a four-state solution: 1) a state similar to the proposed "Jefferson" state 2) the greater Bay Area/Monterey/Sacramento area 3) Central Valley & the south half of the Sierra Nevadas 4) SLO/SB/SoCal

dicemoose 13y ago

Question: If this were to actually pass in the State of California, would the only thing necessary after that be for the US Congress to accept six new states into the Union? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Four_of_the_United_States_Constitution#New_states_and_federal_property https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Four_of_the_United_Sta...

dragonwriter 13y ago
> If this were to actually pass in the State of California, would the only thing necessary after that be for the US Congress to accept six new states into the Union? Probably not; even if the ballot measure passed it would still probably have to pass the state legislature: the US Constitution requires consent of the State Legislature (not just "the State") to form new states from the territory of existing states, and in other circumstances (the similar restriction regarding rules for choosing Presidential electors), ISTR that the federal courts have looked specifically to the Legislature.

shobhitverma 13y ago

Hunger games ?

nostromo 13y ago

This proposal is clever in that it greatly increases the (former) state's power in the senate, but does so by splitting the state's senators 50/50 between both parties. That would net republicans 2 more senators than they have today -- so if the state passes it, I imagine the republicans in congress might actually allow it to happen. This would change the dynamic for presidential elections dramatically (thanks to our byzantine way of selecting a president); pulling away several "secure" democratic votes to republicans. I believe republicans already have a electoral vote per capita advantage, as seen in the 2000 election. Also, a 55 star flag doesn't look so terrible: http://i.imgur.com/5yKPsUR.png http://i.imgur.com/5yKPsUR.png

protomyth 13y ago

The whole water management is going to be very interesting under such a plan. Might be good for agriculture and force a move to desalination plants.