VC Tim Draper has revived his proposal to carve California into smaller parts

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-abcarian-california-breakup-20180424-story.html

by petethomas • 8 years ago

21 26 8 years ago

latimes.com

throwaway76524• 8 years ago

Is there a government structure where three regions could operate autonomously within a single state of a larger union?

evanlivingston• 8 years ago

Communalism

adventured• 8 years ago

Each US state consists of numerous counties, each typically with a city county seat.

California for example is broken into 58 counties. Oakland is the Alameda county seat.

To follow that premise somewhat, you'd try to give the three new giant regions more independence vs a traditional county. You'd be looking to create a new super-structure above county and below state; the super regions would govern over the counties within (or you'd abolish all the counties and just essentially create three counties in California). If you move to full autonomous (within the US Federal system), then you're really going to have to make them proper separate states or change to the status Puerto Rico has (unincorporated US territory).

csours• 8 years ago

Sure. States have a lot of power under the constitution - I'm sure a state could do something like that... but that's not the point of this effort. Tim Draper pretty clearly wants more Conservative Senators, which he thinks he would get by splitting CA into 3 pieces.

jerf2• 8 years ago

Honest questions for discussion: Assuming for the sake of argument that the current status quo is not an option, what would be the particular advantage you are seeking in creating such a structure rather than just having three states? (Obviously the status quo is an option, the default one in some sense, but since that probably dominates a rational conversation I'm discarding it to get somewhere interesting.)

Would it be advantageous for, say, Vermont and Rhode Island to create such a superstructure?

How would you address the question of redundancy? We've got a couple centuries now of the line between federal, state, and municipality to go off of, and since you're presumably not going to create more government powers through this mechanism, how do you propose redrawing the relevant powers in a way that makes sense?

yellowapple2• 8 years ago

In theory that'd be "counties", but quite a few California counties don't seem to think they have sufficient autonomy (hence this proposal, the Jefferson proposal, etc.).

jwilliams• 8 years ago

Oddly enough, I'm vaguely in favor of this -- but at the same time I don't think it should be implemented.

I've lived in a Unitary system (UK) through a bunch of different variations of a Federal system (NZ, Australia, Switzerland, USA, and even EU in a way) -- worth noticing Switzerland apparently was the inspiration for the Californian direct democracy.

Each really favors a different set of circumstances. It was shocking in Switzerland to be there for a few votes where people voted to very directly raise taxes. I couldn't imagine that in Australia.

Splitting up California has some appeal as a bar-room hypothetical -- but in some ways aggregating state powers might be better. e.g. Education, policing, infrastructure, is very, very, (very) fragmented. Many of these issues are because they are either directly or indirectly locally administered. I don't see this really reducing that fragmentation.

In fact -- I often wonder if the Bay Area would be better off as a combined municipality. Probably for issues like infrastructure, certainly.

Interested in the counterpoints to all that.

jerf2• 8 years ago

"Each really favors a different set of circumstances. It was shocking in Switzerland to be there for a few votes where people voted to very directly raise taxes."

You may also be interested to know that it is a routine occurrence in the US at the municipality level. While municipalities frequently have normal levels of taxes sufficient to sustain current infrastructure, if a new school or police building or other significant expenditure is required, the town will often vote for releasing a bond and raising the taxes to pay for it. At least where I live, such votes are almost done deals; those measures will typically pass with ~90% of the vote.

"Interested in the counterpoints to all that."

Well, in a pretty real sense, it's precisely the failure of the powers to successfully aggregate that is the driving force here, where "failure" is defined as successfully meeting all the relevant stakeholder's needs. If aggregating powers was awesome and fixed all the problems, nobody would be having this discussion in the first place.

ordinaryradical• 8 years ago

I think it's a logical failure to assume that large problems need sweeping change. That may work for startups but it's dangerous in governance. This impulse drives the pendulum effect in American politics and our current state of the executive branch is a case study in its risks.

ardit333• 8 years ago

Not a terrible idea. NY should be split as well, maybe then the NYC subway will be fixed. NYC metro area pays 11B more in taxes that takes back. Basically subsidizing the rest of the state while we swelter in subways stuck in tunnels, crappy service, and other nonsense. While there are people in Upstate NY that think that NYC politics occupies the state's agenda too much.

I honestly believe the state would be better split.

http://media.syracuse.com/state_impact/photo/2015/08/24/new-...

https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/joseph-e-robac...

diogenescynic• 8 years ago

Same thing in the Bay Area. We are 20% the state’s population but pay 40% of the taxes.

nontechdude13• 8 years ago

the rest of the state (and country) is paying bonds for the high speed rail project that is essentially a silicon valley commuter train

technofiend• 8 years ago

Repairing and upgrading subways would require local political wherewithal that NYC has not demonstrated so far. If Albany is truly draining fare money from MTA your rides might be cheaper but the changes wouldn't happen any faster. But is Albany really getting money from the NYC MTA? I'm skeptical.

ardit333• 8 years ago

Yes, the MTA is actually controlled by Albany and not NYC, which is crazy. More than 1.5B funding has been diverted in other things.

The MTA should be controlled by NYC and the counties that are near by, and affected by it. Albany is hundreds of miles away, plus most of upstate is so far, that might as well be a different state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

"They stripped a combined $1.5 billion from the M.T.A. by repeatedly diverting tax revenues earmarked for the subways and also by demanding large payments for financial advice, I.T. help and other services "

nontechdude13• 8 years ago

I'm kind of sad it's come to the point where different regions of America claim they're "subsidizing" other regions populated by other Americans.

I mean, I'm sick of "subsidizing" all the black people in the US; why can't we just kick them all out? (this was sarcasm)

Of course, there is no way for me to know whether or not the time difference between the US and Moscow is significant enough to prevent HackerNews IRA shifts from happening.

ardit333• 8 years ago

By 'subsiding', I mean other ares of the state get the funds, while the subway (which most poor people in NYC take), get shafted. In real life that means a poor person going to work gets fired because they are late again, as the subway broke down yet again, and taking a taxi is too expensive/cost prohibitive for them.

Yes, it affects most poor and middle class people in NYC. Remember, rich people probably use uber/limos/black-cars and don't have to mingle with the 'commoners' down there.

oska• 8 years ago

Incredibly patronising article. I hate this type of 'journalism'.

ericb2• 8 years ago

Interesting. Since the senate is one vote per state, what was California would go from 1 to 3 senators. If carved up in this manner, I wonder how the new states would vote?

telchar3• 8 years ago

The senate is two votes per state... though the ratio works out the same. Clearly the new states would vote more heavily Republican on average than California currently does, else he wouldn't be proposing this. I suspect the big win (for him) electorally would be peeling off votes in the Electoral College. The article mentions union-busting as another motive, which squares with the right-wing motivation.

ericb2• 8 years ago

The senate is two votes per state...

That's embarrassing that I forgot that. Is Tim Draper a republican?

yellowapple2• 8 years ago

I'm mildly in favor (or at least not outright opposed) to the similar "State of Jefferson" plan (counties north of Sacramento leave California and join some far-southern Oregon counties to create a new state), which seems to be more obviously supported within the affected counties.

matte_black2• 8 years ago

I’d love to see it broken up. Right now it’s just a guaranteed blue state for Democrats election after election, and many areas of California are getting poor representation. Since we’re currently in the process of shaking up a lot of things maybe it will finally happen.

telchar3• 8 years ago

We could also join together Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and maybe a few other plains states into a single state. They always vote together and most people can't tell them apart anyway, plus there's the efficiencies of reducing redundant government functions to think about. And the naked partisan interest is just gravy.

matte_black2• 8 years ago

Nah, keep them separate. Favor smaller pieces. Maybe split Florida into North and South.

VC Tim Draper has revived his proposal to carve California into smaller parts

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