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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

This has been an interesting battle in terms of civil governance. Basically Uber & Lyft threatened to put the initiative they wrote, on the ballot if the legislature passed AB5, which they did.

Uber and Lyft are now doing everything they can to get it to pass which will set up its own court fight.

Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special interests who can spend enough to put bespoke laws into effect and make bespoke changes to the state constitution?

California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done, and so the "work" of writing laws has also fallen to special interests. This has never been more clear than the last 4 years where California has had a single party in both houses, and a Governor and still cannot legislate anything that special interests oppose.

I don't know what the "solution" would be but it does not feel like it is serving the people of California well (as someone who lives here).

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> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special interests who can spend enough to put bespoke laws into effect and make bespoke changes to the state constitution?

Neither.

It's the people, who, after all the spending choose both the legislature and the governor, and choose the results ofinitiatives and referenda, and who have, on making all those choices, time and again defied the balance of spending.

> California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done, and so the "work" of writing laws has also fallen to special interests.

Special interests have proposed and drafted laws and offered them up to the legislature since long before term limits, legislators (both before and after term limits) do draft their own a decide which, wherever they originate, to support, either as written or with amendments. And while term limits as implemented in CA do overall moderately weaken the elected legislators compared to unelected interests (professional staff as well as lobbying groups), it's a fairly modest effect; the median legislator is probably about as strong as before, but no one builds up the kind of institutional power that someone like Willie Brown had.

> This has never been more clear than the last 4 years where California has had a single party in both houses, and a Governor and still cannot legislate anything that special interests oppose.

This is obviously untrue in the literal sense, as most legislation has special interests both supporting and opposing and plenty has passed in the last four years.

If you mean it in some non-literal sense, then I can't fathom exactly what that might be.

No kidding. Did op forget that it's actual people who are voting on these referendums?

California allows any coalition to initiate referendums and bring the vote to the people, if that's not democratic, I don't know what is.

Edit: And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.

> And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.

On top of this, voters don’t even need to digest political advertisements. The state sends a booklet that describes all the proposition, the pro position, rebuttals to the pro position, the con position and rebuttals to the con position, plus how much money was spent from each side, plus who made those contributions. All there, in black and white, in your mailbox.

Unpopular opinion, but I think we're giving a little too much credit to the average voter. There are a lot of low-information voters out there who don't pour through the booklets and published rebuttals and rebuttals to the rebuttals. Media saturation works. It doesn't always work, and you can always go back and find exceptions, even some very high profile ones, but if it didn't work in general, we wouldn't see so much money pouring into political advertisements. There's a reason we track and measure campaigns by counting dollars spent.

> but if it didn't work in general, we wouldn't see so much money pouring into political advertisements.

We might, because professional political strategists (who advise campaigns on what works) tend also to be involved in the firms that do this work, and direct their clients to spend money with entities in which they have a financial interest. It is an industry which is absolutely rife with the kinds of conflicts of interest that wouldn't be tolerated for long elsewhere.

And its also an industry where people very often fail upward due to connections rather than succeeding on their track record.

I’m one of those schmucks who thinks the solution to ignorance and misinformation is education, and that there should always be more options for voters, not fewer. It’s not about credit to the voters, it’s about making sure the avenues for change are always open. That’s one thing I love about California — it’s a fucking mess, we have no one to blame but ourselves, and there’s always someone trying to do something about it. Compare this to the Texas style of democracy — legislature meets only ever other year and if you don’t like something you can get out - I’ll take the California way.

You don't solve this problem by ditching direct democracy in favor of representative one, though. The end result is that people still vote for populists, who are either clueless and quickly run things into the ground, or are pandering sociopaths. The "philosopher representatives" has been shown to be as much of a sham as philosopher kings.

There is an old sailor's joke about who do you believe when the sailor on the deck says, "there is no land in sight" and the one in the crow's nest says "land off the starboard bow."

The wisdom in the joke is that both are correct from their own point of view but as a matter of trust, you want to go with the point of view with the person who has a better view of the bigger picture.

Representative forms of government have always relied on the chosen representative spending their time and energy to understand an issue and its relative merits and, with the understanding of what the people who elected them value, choosing the right path. They are "in the crow's nest" in this scenario.

Imagine a hospital scenario where the doctor announces your symptoms over the public address system and then all of the other patients in the hospital vote on your course of treatment. And the patients are voting while treatment company representatives walk around and tell misleading stories about how effective their particular drug or therapy is in treating what ever ailment has just been announced over the PA.

Of course in theory you choose your doctor based on the fact that they spent 12 years studying for their certification in medicine and perhaps their experience in treating cases like yours. You don't go to the hospital to hear what the other patients think you should do.

But even in this ridiculous scenario, the other patients can be sincere in their desire that you get better, and so will passionately advocate for vendor X's treatment if they believe that vendor X has the best treatment.

And as a result, your care stops being about finding the right treatment to a disease or condition, and becomes convincing the largest number of patients that an answer could be the right answer.

From my perspective, living as I do in California for many years, my perspective is that I don't think the people of California are well served by this state of affairs.

I think state wide referendums are bad because (and only because) people won't educate themselves and vote the way they "believe" as determined by their "gut feeling" as opposed to real research. I actually trust politicians more to make laws like these.

There are different representative forms of government, and their priorities are correspondingly different. What you describe is more or less the basis on which US was organized back in the day. However, by the time the West Coast states were being settled and granted statehood, there was a pushback against elitism in government, and more interest in direct democracy. Which is why those states ended up with extensive provisions for referendums written into their constitutions. If the citizens of California decide that it's not in their interest to govern themselves directly, they can always amend the constitution to remove those provisions.

Just because "the majority" want it doesn't make it a good thing. That's why there is a Constitution (in the USA) and courts to protect various minority from the over-reaching majority. If I make a few bucks on the side working for uber in the evenings does that mean they should give me an insurance policy and retirement plan?

How do you think it should have played out? Laws were passed, special interests didn't like it and now there's a court battle. And immediately you say nothing can get passed that special interests oppose.

California has the curve ball of the proposition system. Its not that hard to make it to the ballot with anything. It can be a little silly but it is what it is.

How is this a term limits issue? What would you like to have seen?

>California has the curve ball of the proposition system.

That is where special interest is most heavily felt. This court ruling is mostly meaningless. There is a proposition on the ballot that directly addresses this employment/independent contractor issue. It would supersede the legislature and make it nearly impossible for the legislature to repeal or amend the law. The prop also happens to have the most expensive campaign in history behind it. Something like 90-95% of the money came in on the Yes side and it is almost exclusively coming from Uber, Lyft, and similar companies.

Basically these companies didn't get what they wanted in the legislature. They didn't get what they wanted in court. So they are trying to buy it from the public. They are hoping we aren't motivated enough to educate ourselves on the issue and will instead just vote Yes because all the campaigning is telling us to do so.

On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically; kind of its own special interest if you will. We saw how quickly they started carving out exceptions once the original bill was passed and comedians couldn’t perform, and journalists started getting let go. Why not just pass the bill and call it the “Uber and Lyft must pay their drivers like employees and let them act like independent contractors too” bill? Because that’s really what it is.

Uber and Lyft will no doubt relocate and cease operations in California altogether if they can’t get around this. I guess the pandemic is a good time to do that since so many workers are remote, but there is no doubt in my mind that’s going to happen. The bill that was passed is an existential crises for them. The business model was intended for people to make some part time money. Like selling stuff on Etsy. It cant support paying drivers like they are salaried workers. Not many of them at least. It’s all around bad.

When states and the feds start regulating companies like this, it’s a prime example of the failures of our governments to provide for the people.

Yet many drivers do this full time. Why should ride share companies be excluded from worker protections that apply to other companies? Could Amazon convert to a gig-economy for warehouse workers where you sign up via an app?

There are certainly some folks who drive just a few hours a week and the companies like to highlight that by releasing stats like “% of drivers drive less then 5 hours”. I think “% of driver time by drivers over 35h/week” would paint a different picture and show just how much they rely on full time drivers.

Many people sell stuff on eBay as their full time job too. I don't find this line of reasoning compelling if you want to single out Uber and Lyft specifically. What is the amount of hours they should work to not be "employees"? 5? Ok Uber and Lyft can limit the hours you drive to 5. Is that fine then?

I'd actually say though that what you identified (gig worker for Amazon warehouses) might be desirable if we had many "benefits" divorced from your employer, like the 401k, health care, etc. What if I could work my salaried job, and then sign up to go work a shift at the warehouse?

A few points.

It's not just benefits that employees receive, it's also taxes paid on employees. Moving benefits out of employment is a good idea, but if that happened, the taxes to fund these services would come from employers again. So Uber would still be more or less leeching off of society by not paying its share of social funds

Secondly, the discussion of hours, while potentially having some philosophical merit, isn't especially material in the scheme of things. Uber can't survive with everyone driving fewer than x hours. A lot of their comp structure tries to incentive people to drive as much as possible, with nonlinear increasing rewards for those who drive the most. Their business is built on network effects. If there's fewer drivers, then it costs more, so fewer people ride, so fewer people want to drive, and the more expensive it is the keep the driver population thriving. The idea behind surge pricing is that you create flash incentives to get drivers out there when demand is high. If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line.

It's a lot easier to get a driver doing 5 hours to do 8 hours instead, than it is to get two drivers to do 4 hours. Labor has switching costs for the drivers.

Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it.

> If there's a cap on hours, you've now got a competing interest which says there's an incentive to NOT work while the market isn't surging- because you might cost yourself greater earnings down the line.

Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either). The point isn't to move goal posts around a set number of hours, the point is to illustrate that is exactly what you're advocating for.

> Ok so then Uber would just be paying taxes from the sale of the rides. I'm kind of confused as to why that would be an issue. But happy to hear more about it.

Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax, because the former is directly tied to the number of people the org is supporting in the United States and the latter is not. The classification of employee vs. contractor is still salient. It's still a good idea nonetheless.

> Ok so then is the cap 8 hours? 10? Is it 7? It seems to me that you're inventing more problems to solve a different problem than is worthwhile. You can have more drivers doing less hours, if the economics of it work (and neither of us know whether or not it does, and ironically enough I doubt the State of California does either).

I don't think there's any philosophical merit to claiming someone working 7+ hours a day is not a full time worker. We may not know the exact economics, but we do know they're not great. Uber loses billions per year, and pays substantial money to deal with high driver turnover. A mixed system makes it worse.

> Odds are good that if health insurance benefits are pushed out of employers, you're going to see it funded by a tax on top of wages, not a corporate income tax...

Sure, but there are ways to fix that. I'm not really a big fan of corporate taxes just because they seem to always either find a way around it, or they just raise prices. It's hard to escape.

> I don't think there's any philosophical merit to claiming someone working 7+ hours a day is not a full time worker. We may not know the exact economics, but we do know they're not great. Uber loses billions per year, and pays substantial money to deal with high driver turnover. A mixed system makes it worse.

I think the issue here is the definition of full-time work is not enough. It has to include other things, like having to physically go to a place of employment, work hours that you're told to work, etc. Should AirBnB have to employee hosts? Why is it different? You can't make the hours argument, because there are plenty of Uber drivers that don't drive "full time" and plenty of AirBnB hosts that run AirBnB full time. It also messes with any other sort of gig work, hence why the state had to go back and carve out all these exceptions - which is in my opinion usually an indicator of a bad or poorly thought out law.

Here's the actual issue. These gig workers, or contractors, or whatever you want to call them need benefits (healthcare etc.) that the government isn't paying for. The government needs to pay for that by raising taxes and/or lowering costs, etc. The way to do that isn't to make Uber and Lyft leave California and leave those workers without any sort of income. Even if it was right to do so morally (and I doubt that it is), it's wrong to do so practically. To me as I've stated previously, this looks like a government failure, not a failure of Uber and Lyft.

> The classification of employee vs. contractor is still salient.

This entirely depends on how the tax is written. Independent contractors already pay "more" for social security to cover the taxes that the employer would normally pay. I suspect that the law would be written such that the total healthcare tax placed on an individual is the same regardless of if they are W4 or 1099.

cannot reply to the below so doing so here

> Sure, but there are ways to fix that. I'm not really a big fan of corporate taxes just because they seem to always either find a way around it, or they just raise prices. It's hard to escape.

There's no way around payroll taxes for employees. The ones they elude are corporate income taxes. If they have to raise prices to cover the cost of insuring drivers, or paying their share of social funds, then good. Because if they don't, its the public that bears the costs.

> I think the issue here is the definition of full-time work is not enough. It has to include other things, like having to physically go to a place of employment, work hours that you're told to work, etc.

There is more to it. What you're arguing for is an escape rule if hours are too low, that supercedes all of the other logic.

> Here's the actual issue. These gig workers, or contractors, or whatever you want to call them need benefits (healthcare etc.) that the government isn't paying for.

No, the government (the public) is paying for it, because Uber and Lyft aren't.

> The government needs to pay for that by raising taxes and/or lowering costs, etc. The way to do that isn't to make Uber and Lyft leave California and leave those workers without any sort of income.

The government needs to do that by raising taxes on Uber and Lyft, which is largely the point of making these people of employees. Is there a middle of the road version where uber just pays the proportion costs that drivers earn pro rated to the hours they work? Yeah, maybe, but that's likely not viable either. Uber is already in the red because their business model is bad.

If we imagined them paying their fair share, would you support an explicit subsidy to help keep them in business in CA? God I hope not.

It's complicated, really. Some drivers drive like 80+ hours a week. If they become employees, they will not be able to.

And i think it's OK. There is a reason why professional truck drivers must not drive longer than specified amount of time without taking breaks. Work safety regulations are usually written in blood.

But the work is fundamentally different. You can work 80 hours in retail for example. With Uber drivers it's not "drive down long stretch of road without a break for 8 hours".

"Less repetitive/boring" != "less mentally taxing".

Sure, but that also doesn't mean you can't work just fine doing 80 hours/week in some jobs and not be fine working 80 hours/week in others.

No one should be doing 80 hours a week, that's 12 hours each day without weekends + commute (1 hour) + 8 hours sleep, 2 hours for eating and you have 1 hour left for the "all the other things". And thats if you don't have children. If you do you already spending more than 24 hours a day.

Uber drivers are, well, drivers. I wouldn't trust somebody working 80-hour schedule (with everything that implies about their quality of rest, or lack thereof) to be regularly driving a car in public. That's just accidents waiting to happen.

They will be able to if Uber wants to offer unlimited overtime to their new employees. So it's up to the boss to forbid it, not employee classification.

> On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically; kind of its own special interest if you will.

And it's not like California just decided to target those two companies for fun. Labor unions lobbied Lorena Gonzalez to get AB5 passed so that they could have more dues paying members. So there's a clear special interest responsible for AB5.

> On the other hand, California also created a bill that targets two companies specifically

No, it didn't.

AB5 codified a court decision with much broader impact than to those two companies, and in doing so exempted a few other impacted industries from it, leaving more than those two companies, and more than the industry they are in, still affected (whether you count the bill and the court case together, such that the impact is those not exempted, or separately, so that it is those exempted.)

>special interests didn't like it

Almost no one liked it, least of all those supposedly benefitting from it.

So.. they shouldn't have voted for it?

AB5 was a law passed in the legislature, not a public referendum

Yeah my only issue with how this played out is that the proposition on the ballot written by Uber/Lyft gives ride-share companies a specific exemption, rather than just repeal AB5 for everybody. I would be a lot more forgiving towards they're lobbying effort if it was focused on fixing a bad law rather than just helping themselves only.

It's designed so when the law makers give up on AB5 they have to admit it was the wrong move rather than letting the ballot proposition let them escape blame.

At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical leftist, I'm struggling to see how more of the blame can be on term limits, and not just a side-effect of our current version of democracy under capitalism.

Simply put, if I had 100B, and there was outside force threatening my business I would certainly invest to protect myself - this includes mundane things like investing in security and outside threats like regulation. I just don't know you would design a government that is protected against an outside player pouring hundreds of millions of dollars in order to change the laws. If anything I think an official who decided to get in bed with special interest groups is far more prepared to outspend any opponent, and is the safer option for special interests groups.

I think, in the future, we will see more Facebook era startups get smarter and smarter on playing politics. Airbnb originally failed miserably in their political game, but I think as time goes on SV will only get better at influencing California & global politics.

I've been looking for my copy of the LA Times article on this and have yet to find it. So allow me to recount from my not necessarily trusty memory.

During an investigation of the impact of term limits on the California the times talked with former "long term" members of both the Assembly and the Senate. In that discussion the people who had served for longer terms felt that you needed the time to understand what made a law "good" versus what made a law "bad." Examples of good and bad were things like it would not be found to be unconstitutional, or its interpretation would be clear to judges who were ruling on it. Things like that. Bad laws are ones that are ambiguous to the point of being unenforceable or are overturned at the first challenge. There was also some discussion of "wisdom" in terms of knowing what things would benefit most from change vs changing things that are easier but less durable.

They found that the time clock on legislators terms made them more eager for "easy wins" rather than tacking complex problems. This was especially true of legislators who were hoping to jump into national politics. So while a legislator had the freedom to introduce a bill to solve a tough problem many times over a long career, each time taking into account the feedback from others over how it was crafted, term limited legislators felt they could not "waste time" on something that they would not be able to see through in the amount of time remaining to them.

And while legislators have always had staffs that would help in the development and drafting of legislation, in terms of likely being able to get the legislation over the finish line, laws that came from special interests with the promise of providing "good press" to support it are seen as a better bet.

By the same token, I am not a California Legislator, nor have I been one (although I have considered putting my name in the running to develop some experiential learning there). As a result I cannot know for certain how much I read about the process is biased in a way that someone who was part of the process would easily spot.

Whether or not what I've read about the process is accurate, it is still an area that I am interested in and I find the "dual" between the legislature and initiative writers interesting in its own right.

>They found that the time clock on legislators terms made them more eager for "easy wins" rather than tacking complex problems. This was especially true of legislators who were hoping to jump into national politics.

Ah that actually makes a lot of sense to me. I did not actually consider that when you mentioned experience - a newer politician certainly has more pressure to put points on the board and it follows that they may introduce "buggy" laws.

> a newer politician certainly has more pressure to put points on the board and it follows that they may introduce "buggy" laws.

cf new developers who are under pressure to get commits into the codebase and will end up making mistakes as a consequence.

Is a term limit of, say, 10 years, enough time to "get the feel for good laws"?

Often this feel is based on past mistakes made. In this case a mistake would be a well intended law overturned by the courts.

Intuitively I feel like mistakes would be repeated on a longer time scale. So someone who remembers what we did 15 years ago would say “let’s not waste time on this, it hasn’t worked in the past”.

You can still learn with 10 year term limits but then you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes every 10 years.

> you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes every 10 years

That assumes 1) that every term expires at the same time, and 2) no-one ever documents anything...

I'm guessing you're not in a support position.

2.a) no one ever reads the documentation.

> democracy under capitalism

Left wing systems also have powerful special interests.

Hopefully more accountable though.

History doesn't lend much hope for that.

What do you mean by "left wing systems"? And do they wield power through any other means than capitalism?

In America, at least, I do not see any significantly powerful, economically left, political structures.

> What do you mean by "left wing systems"?

Non-capitalist ones.

> And do they wield power through any other means than capitalism?

Sure. For an obvious example, see public sector unions. For another, NASA. The public school system. In the news lately are the police interests. The military. Organized religion.

They wield considerable political power via controlling large voting blocks.

Other means historically used are military power. The end of the Roman republic is an obvious example, but the historical examples are endless. (Even in the US, George Washington was offered a military dictatorship, but turned it down.)

None of these are capitalist, and all are present in non-capitalist systems. The idea that under non-capitalism there wouldn't be powerful special interests is hopelessly untrue.

Wielding political power by virtue of being a large number of voters is literally what democracy is.

Unless you somehow think these people are somehow deluded or being manipulated or simply wrong because they do not agree with your political views, the ideal of democracy must be to have as large a part of the population as possible involved in politics and voting as possible.

They do, but without such extreme concentration of wealth, they're not so powerful when it comes to public discourse.

(Note that we're talking specifically about democracy, regardless of the economic system.)

The public labor unions in Washington are as powerful as they get, as it is very hard to get elected without their endorsement.

Labor unions (and any other similar member-driven organizations) become powerful by concentrating people, not money. And more people translating to more political power is the quintessence of democracy.

Anything can be a special interest group with the right framing.

Rich individuals can act just as you’ve described. Groups of workers can get together and get bills passed specifically for their special interest to the detriment of the country as a whole. Etc.

The specific issue I was pointing out is that rich individuals are far more able to quickly move the needle in acting politically, and this problem only gets worse as inequality grows. For example, in this situation drivers are also a special interest group, however, drivers are unable to spend millions in facebook ads, tv ads and lobbyists to fight for their issue.

If your political opponent can drown your message out, then it becomes an imperative for you to also raise money and/or find a wealthy benefactor to argue your own ideas. You end up with a system that the only ideas that are seriously considered are ones that can raise enough money to not be drowned out. I don't think we are there today in our current politics but I think it's worth thinking about as it's not clear to me that government will remain impervious to this type of influence.

> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?"

The same people vote on the proposition who vote for the government. I don't like the things California tends to vote for but it is nothing short of enlightened to allow people a mechanism to directly overrule the legislature.

If the people don't like the government's labour law, who are the government to object? I can't for the life of me see why the people can't choose how they work. It is the one thing I think they are qualified to comment on.

No... it's not this simple.

The mechanism for overriding a government existing is one thing, but making it so easy to trigger for the most random things left and right is quite another. I'm not sure if you've seen the CA ballots, but casting an informed vote is quite arduous for the average person, partly due to the nuances involved in the topics (experts who've spent their lives studying these topics can easily disagree on some of them), and partly due to the sheer number of things people need to vote on. You easily need to forego days' worth of income (hope you have disposable income to spare!) to do anything resembling a reasonable amount of research to cast something that can be called an informed vote.

Even ignoring the fact that many people don't have the time, energy, or means of sufficiently informing themselves to decide nuanced public policy issues, what they do cannot be overridden by the legislature (except for the few issues that specify otherwise). Which is fine for the fraction of people who want that, but for everybody else who doesn't think their opinion is the last word on an issue and understands unexpected problems might come up later, there's no way for them to vote "I'm in favor of this policy but only if the legislature can override it (say) after N years". Or to vote "I think the legislature should decide this and not my fellow citizens, because I honestly have no clue and I think the issue is just too complicated to let random people decide." Just imagine if the FDA approved drugs by popular vote...

Really, it defeats how the system is supposed to work. The entire point of electing officials you trust is so they can find experts they can trust and rely on their opinions for making informed decisions. So you don't have to spend your time deciding random things, both to save your time (don't forget it's literally your representative's job to legislate, and not yours), and because you (and me, and most people) probably don't know nearly enough about many issues. It's especially counterproductive to have to vote with people you agree and trust but to be forced to do that in a way that prevents them from being able to improve it down the road. The last thing you should want to do to someone you like and trust is to bypass them in the decision-making progress!

Ultimately, there is certainly wisdom in letting people override their government, but CA's implementation of this idea has left a lot to be desired by its own population.

> casting an informed vote is quite arduous for the average person

This argument always comes up when discussing direct democracy or similar ideas, but it completely collapses under even the most basic scrutiny!

Direct voting is strictly better than delegated voting, because you can always ... wait for it ... delegate your vote! You don’t care enough about the issue to educate yourself? Simply cast the vote for the option your government/party/favourite expert recommends! After all, you already trust them (otherwise you wouldn’t have voted for them), so by “delegating” your vote to them, is equivalent to not having the popular vote in the first place!

> This argument always comes up when discussing direct democracy or similar ideas, but it completely collapses under even the most basic scrutiny!

> Direct voting s strictly better than delegated voting, because you can always ... wait for it ... delegate your vote! You don’t care enough about the issue to educate yourself? Simply cast the vote for the option your government/party/favourite expert recommends! After all, you already trust them (otherwise you wouldn’t have voted for them), so by “delegating” your vote to them, is equivalent to not having the popular vote in the first place!

No, it very much stands up to "the most basic scrutiny". What it does not stand up to is a premature reply to an imagined argument that lacks a full understanding of the actual argument I was making. As I explained above: you might be in favor of an idea your party has, but you might also not want to bypass the legislature and lock the entire state into that decision. And you might not want your fellow citizens to lock you into a decision on that topic either. You might want to try out an idea but let the legislature improve things in the future. Or you might want to override the legislature temporarily, but allow them to change things after a few years have passed. You do not have this kind of flexibility with the current system. Voting with your party in favor of a measure bypassing and overriding your legislature is not the same thing as letting your party make that same decision in the legislature. It is far, far more risky and it ties the legislature's hands in the future.

There are also those who think the certain issues might deserve to be handled by a bipartisan legislature after a long period of consultation with experts, and not by a hasty party-line vote (or by popular vote). Though I guess the fact that this isn't even considered a possibility is itself rather telling.

Finally, the notion that anyone who hasn't sufficiently educated themselves on each topic to feel comfortable making a decision on it somehow "does not care enough" is a really juvenile way to look at this. As I (also) explained in my comment above, these issues can be complicated, with nontrivial, non-obvious implications. Experts (people who "care enough to educate themselves" on complicated topics) easily spend their entire careers working on some of these topics. And on top of that, many citizens simply cannot afford (financially or otherwise) to spend the days/weeks/months required to fully get to the bottom of each issue. That you prefer to regard everyone who doesn't come to complete confidence on every issue as lazy/ignorant/etc. does not make them so.

P.S. Your attempt at a trivial solution ("basic scrutiny"?) itself fails to account for the fact that people from the same party you like can appear on both sides of an issue. And it's also possible for your favorite party/representative not to have even made an endorsement.

In a system like this, parties would look very different - instead of "big tents" that promote groupthink long term, you'd have multiple small, often single-issue parties. And similarly, voters would pick different parties to represent them on different issues.

Too complicated? It's basically the same as splitting the ballot, and that used to be the norm rather than exception in much of American politics.

It's difficult to informatively delegate your vote with all the entirely false mailers and advertisements bombarding people every election. The numbers of voters who vote flippantly, or vote on false premises, have never been quantified, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were significant given the amount of times the electorate has directly voted against their own self interest (like banning subway construction in LA from the 90s to the 2010s, and paying for it now with higher construction costs three decades later).

Actually, that's an interesting UX idea "[ ] Let my selected representative vote for me on all unmarked propositions". Vote on the ones you have insight on, leave the rest.

My elderly parents and all their neighbors got blanketed with mailers that showed am elderly couple on the cover and stated prop 22 was going stop senior citizens from getting their meds delivered to them. The is pure evil and totally legal to misrepresent the issues by pulling on voter's heartstrings. My parents were duped and they will win with these slimey deceitful tactics.

Any such argument is an argument against democracy.

Which I think is a fair debate, but it’s a different debate than the one above (which is about keeping, yet improving democracy).

To be fair only "workers" and employees should be able to vote on employment law then, no students no pensioners.

This is why employment law needs to be take away from the states - have one federally defined set of laws - stops a race to the bottom.

Yea until the same problems just get applied everywhere instead of in one state only.

I prefer keeping many things at the state level. It’s much more difficult to be involved in government when you’re trying to vote in a pool of 350,000,000 people with different interests. Democracies lose effectiveness as population increases.

So if a US state did something like Ireland and Holland do and help big companies dodge taxes - you'd be fine with that?

There is a good argument (for the good of the country as a whole) that sales tax should be harmonised.

As I said, I prefer keeping many things at the state level, not necessarily all things. What you're describing here might be a good example of something that should be or continue to be regulated at the federal level, but keep in mind that we do have "tax dodging" scenarios to this day if you move to different states with different rules. (you can also apply this globally as well, tax havens, etc.)

Over time I've become more interested in the loose confederation of states and decentralization of power over consolidation of power at the hands of the federal government. I think the US has too large of a population with an increasing amount of differences to really effectively govern. If parents want to teach kids that the earth was created 6,000 years ago in their state, who am I to say otherwise? Vote with your feet and $$. If I don't like how California handles businesses like Uber and Lyft, same thing. At least at the state level though you right now have some reasonable measure of involvement. I can email my state representative and actually get a response. My federal one? Not a chance.

The problem is that the Federal Govt. takes too many taxes and can enforce federal laws or states don't get funding.

In order for states to take back power they need the income.

>This is why employment law needs to be take away from the states - have one federally defined set of laws - stops a race to the bottom.

It's not that hard to imagine a world where Chester Cheeto wins in a landslide, the Republicans get a healthy majority in congress and the Kochs convince them to repeal most existing federal labor law.

Will you be clamoring for federal labor and employment law then?

Sure, there might be 40-something states with lower cost of doing business than CA. But is that status quo really worse than one where the federal government both controls employment law and guts it? If CA really is doing it right then surely the people working menial jobs will be better off, have more income, spend more income and their economy will grow, the rules will be a net-positive overall and other states will adopt similar ones.

Agreed. "It should be a national issue!" presumes a particular set of policies are enacted, enacted effectively, and enacted fairly.

One could certainly be overly optimistic about that happening. Best case, it makes "a federal issue" out of something at a time when political divisiveness is already at intolerable levels. At least now Alabama and California can disappointedly shake their damn heads at one another instead of being engaged in active opposition.

minimum wage should be set at the state level, or even lower

Why do you think that? its stops states playing beggar my neighbour is one good argument against doing this.

10 dollars in Nebraska will get your further than 10 in Cali. 10 dollars in Oxnard will get you much further than 10 in SF

I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

The fear of rocking the boat effects anyone that, well, will live longer. Whether you are looking for continued perks/bribes in office, a cushy lobbying job after, or simply don't want to make enemies before your political next move, the perverse incentives are still there.

Perhaps a better thing to do would be to let the populace force votes on a daily basis (with queuing / anti DOS measures, of course), so the representatives have to go on the record one way or another, and can't hide behind inaction.

Yay & Nay votes aren't the only job of legislators. They're often responsible for writing good legislation too -- something that's arguably difficult to do if you're new to the job, so the task (largely) falls back to special interests to "help" with the process.

By way of example: Literature. It's easy to read a good book; it's much harder to write one without lots & lots of practice.

Even when the outside interests don't write the legislation, it's the staff and not actually politicians that too: politicians are basically constantly in meetings / at events and have no time for such work. :|

Nothing prevents the staff from being retained from when legislator to the next.

And that's partly how you end up with what many people would perceive as a "shadow government" -- obviously a group of people are writing the laws, and most likely they're experienced in doing so, but who _are_ they? And who are they accountable to?

Kind of like the bureaucratic equivalent of external consultants coming into a private company.

You’ve just the Civil Service.

British series "Yes, Minister" / "Yes, Prime Minister" immediately come to mind.

> Even when the outside interests don't write the legislation, it's the staff and not actually politicians that too: politicians are basically constantly in meetings / at events and have no time for such work.

That's a little bit true but mostly misleading. As with any office with professional staff, most of the work of a legislative office is done by the staff, not the head of the office, true. OTOH, that doesn't mean the the skill, knowledge, and understanding of the head of the office is irrelevant, as the head directs the staff strategically, reviews, inquires, refines, and redirects work, etc.

> Nothing prevents the staff from being retained from when legislator to the next.

The new legislators not having the skill to select appropriate staff might, but a bigger problem isn't that the staff aren't retained but that they usually are; the less skilled the legislators are, the more the professional staff (who probably are shuttling back and forth between working for legislators and working for interest groups) do not only the detail work, but also control the agenda, and the less which faces the electorate sends to fill the nominally most important seats actually matter.

That's a better argument, but also note that's it's a preventable mistake of legislatures not to rehire and therefore force the conflict of interest revolving door issue.

Also note that this sort of negligence is happening today despite a lack of fedral congressional term limits: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/05/24/vital-stats... . I can't find a source but I believe there is a similar issue with the per-congressperson researcher appropriations.

So while perhaps less turnover helps make for stabler staffing jobs, it's not a cure-all. Ultimately the balance between Expertise and Democracy is a difficult one that we need to do a better job at (usually having not enough of both!) with or without term limits.

Many legislators come to the job with previous experience serving at the county or city level. Once they have are elected at the state level they can serve for up to 12 years. To me, that seems like a reasonable balance between giving them enough time to gain experience while not allowing them to stay in office forever and amass the power and corruption that led to the passage of term limits (proposition 140) in the first place.

The academic literature is overwhelming support of the argument that legislative term limits have zero value. They only lead to inexperienced, ineffective legislators.

It would be nice to have a citation or two from said academic literature.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reason...

It's not academic literature, it's an op-ed piece. And every one of the 5 reasons can be challenged.

Especially the "less choice" one.

I actually think the argument about committee chairing is a bit more credible than what's been said in this thread. Stability definitely can help nurture depth more than a parade of different positions.

Policy stability overall is valuable, but staggered terms can provide for continuity of policy without changes that are too rapid.

Agree with the other comment, cite this overwhelming academic literature.

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

What? Take this to it's logical conclusion and imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays.

And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"? If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by someone with an ulterior motive that's playing a game much longer than your term limits.

> Imagine term limits of 1 day. No one would be making sound decisions with those yeas and nays.

I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point.

> And why would they always be 50 / 50 and "cancel out"?

I'm not talking about a vote split additive cancel out. I'm talking about how in `(termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)` the `termLimit` factors cancel out.

> If you know nothing about a fairly complex topic, it's easy to be mislead, especially by someone with an ulterior motive that's playing a game much longer than your term limits.

Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something. They have plenty time to study the role before (c.f. the stereotypical centrist-psychopath politician planning from elementary school), and plenty of their career to be judged on their actions after.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of factors that reinforce the status quo, but I still haven't heard a decent argument term limits aren't obviously among them one way or the other.

Not the person you are replying to, but I think the point they are trying to make is that the less experience a politician has, the more likely they are to believe what they are told by someone with an agenda who is trying to influence them, e.g. special interests. So the lack of experience doesn't cancel out for yea and nay when it comes to any given vote, because special interests will be lobbying mostly for one of the two, and thus the lack of experience (i.e. resistance to influence by having your own knowledge of the area) can tip the balance.

HN is full of dilettantes that are skeptical of every article they read here. Why would freshman politicians commit the faux pas of being gullible --- we can even ignore the actual veracity of wait they are told --- when they can be cynical skeptics too?

>I have no idea what terms limits of 1 day would do; it's not obvious to me. Please argue your point.

Not the GP, but I think the point is fairly simple to express. If you took office tomorrow, and had a term of one day, and there was a vote on a legislative item, how much could you possibly learn about the issue in the time prior to that vote? Short term limits mean that it's harder for legislators to really understand the more complex issues since by the time they do, if they ever do, they are likely to be forced out by the term limit. Additionally, they probably won't be effective at getting any legislation passed until they understand how to work with the system.

Another way to look at it, is how long would it take you to become effective if you switched careers tomorrow? What if you had a maximum time you could spend in that career? How long would you spend being less effective because you are still learning how to do the job? How long would you have to work at a professional or expert level?

If we assume legislators only need a few weeks or months to get up to speed, then term limits of 6-8 years don't matter. If we assume it takes a few years to become effective, then we're hobbling our legislators for close to half the maximum time they can be on office. It's slightly ameliorated by the fact they can seek another office in a different branch, but that doesn't eliminate the problem, they're still going to have to learn a lot (assuming what you learn as a legislator is what interest groups are important at that level, who of your fellow legislators are good at what, etc). Though the fact that everyone is in the same boat and there can't be some institutionalized personnel that are very good at certain things for others to rely on makes it worse.

Having no term limits has problems too, but the short term limits in CA and it's affect on institutionalized legislative knowledge and capability has been talked about for decades at this point.

> how much could you possibly learn about the issue in the time prior to that vote?

Again, the votes might be new, but the issues are not. There's plenty to learn about them before getting the job

> Additionally, they probably won't be effective at getting any legislation passed until they understand how to work with the system.

Again, "the system" hinges on authority of the other lawmakers. Lobbies and other non-democratic operators obviously exert a lot of power, but that takes the form of playing sides against each other. Term limits makes all of the legislator factinos played against each other weaker.

> Another way to look at it, is how long would it take you to become effective if you switched careers tomorrow?

I don't think being a politician is unskilled labor! But the skill lies in campaigning and bargaining, not voting. Unlike politician on politician vote struggles, politician on public campaigning doesn't out. Maybe this results in voter apathy and therefore blander/weaker bills but this is a complex second order effect.

I'm not even trying to defend term limits to you all here, just arguing that these arguments against them are as simplistic as the older arguments for them.

> If we assume legislators only need a few weeks or months to get up to speed, then term limits of 6-8 years don't matter. If we assume it takes a few years to become effective, then we're hobbling our legislators for close to half the maximum time they can be on office.

I'm perfectly willing to say they get more powerful and more skilled over the years. So the big first order effect of term limits is not on the absolute power of the legislature, but the relative power of new vs old politicians.

> (termLimit * nFor) / (termLimit * nAgainst)

How is that supposed to be an accurate model of the effects of term limits?

Fine, make it more complex:

> (f(termLimit) * nFor) / (f(termLimit) * nAgainst)

Same result. Unless you think that one side of vote is distinctly affected by term limits?

> Again you seem to be imagining legislators are dead at the end of the term and born at the beginning or something.

Term limits have the effect of putting the experienced legislators in the employ of special interests - because that is the only way 'up'. The time in office becomes a portfolio for said special interest jobs, turning legislators "against the [poor] people".

Yes! Finally someone in this thread has a coherent argument against term limits. Thank you.

(I do wait for the Empire-Strike-Back-Style sequel to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to dramatize what everyone else is saying...)

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

Your analysis seems to think that legislation is just pushing "yay" or "nay" buttons, and that discussion of experience simply is about people having the skill to find the correct button. (Though inexperience there wouldn't cancel out, either, even with a 50/50 split in intended votes, it would lead to reduced predictability.)

Legislators do more than push "yay" and "nay" buttons on packages that are assembled completely outside of their control, though.

I do think they do plenty more than "yay" or "nay", but the lack of courage among our legislatures is evidenced in both the California legislature and Congress, so I'm less inclined to think term limits is the relevant issue

In California I think the huge dominance of the landowning class is more pertinent.

Really, I want a non-FPTP parliamentary system. Politics should officially be a "team sport" as it is in practice, and should be a battle of ideologies not personalities. Coincidentally, these means (to me at least) that not having term limits is way less of potential problem, and so I would be against having them.

That would be an accurate analysis if this was, for example, random noise in a system. But inexperience is not random, and cannot be said to "cancel out" in any meaningful way.

> I've never understood this argument. Potential "yay" and "nay" votes are both term-limited, so the "inexperience" should cancel out?

There are no term limits on C-level executives in deep-pocketed corporations and special interests. The term limits are on the legislators they buy. It's like a subscription model: you need to renew every few years to keep the gravy flowing.

This is the argument for term limits, BTW: Incumbuants are terrified of their next campaign (which is a every 2 years threat for representatives in the House, btw.) whereas more term limits means more brazen lame ducks.

Then again, lame ducks need a job afterword so it's a bad augment too.

My conclusions is that term limits seam mostly for show, with muddle benefits and disadvantages. Perhaps the real policy move is term limits + enough UBI that the lame ducks are truly safe no matter what.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition is a neat idea which is like term limits but on steroids: you're as suddenly on the job as you are suddenly off it. I think this example, with the heightened stakes / wider Overton window, makes for the more interesting debate.

Inexperience should "cancel out"? This mental model of how legislature is developed and then passed is probably the silliest I've ever heard. You should be more discerning of your thought processes.

Legislatures and Governors are merely instruments and people should be in charge. Having lived in many countries I would rather live in a country where Uber and Lift can add something to ballot rather than where they secretly bribe Governor or Legislators.

Both Uber and Lyft are California companies with billions of dollars in investment and thousands of employees, if they are facing an existential crisis I would at least give them a fair chance. California's hare brained policy to push some virtue signaling measure down the throats of Uber and Lyft is not good for gig economy, riders and innovations. Self driving cars would put all this theater to rest for good hopefully.

I think a relevant question is whether California should be legislating these things at all.

Look for example at prop 23 (a doctor must be present for dialysis). There's a clear interest group here (dialysis clinics are in existential crisis) but if you look at a bigger picture, you may see why it might not be economically feasible for clinics in less densely populated areas to hire full time doctors, considering the associated costs and even just the general supply of doctors.

In that light, does it make sense to try to pass blanket regulation that can have wildly different outcomes depending on hyperlocal factors such as population density? I recently watched a debate between a couple of right leaning folks and they talked about how the left tends to lean towards trying to generalize universally, and this seems like a pathological example where such an approach might not make sense, compared to hyperlocal municipality-driven regulation, or even no regulation at all.

But rideshare employment regulation is not a California issue, it's a _global_ issue. California wasn't first to GDPR, yet it's the home of internet advertising. Sales tax laws for online commerce had to come from the Supreme Court.

California (courts) might be able to leave a mark in the Sidecar vs Uber suit on the issue of Uber using dynamic pricing to uncut rivals for marketshare: https://www.law.com/therecorder/2020/04/24/uber-has-trouble-...

Uber got away with greyballing and other price espionage in New York and outright medical record theft in India. Have those legislatures been successful against Uber?

I do not fully understand this, but isn’t this the story at the federal level as well?

Nope, the federal level has no term limits. Dianne Feinstein has been a Senator for 30 years.

Even without term limits, laws are written by industry at the federal level (if they are ever written, some years we are just lucky to pass a budget at the federal level).

It's a very small minority that thinks drivers are properly classified as employees. The drivers themselves certainly do not think so. Drivers literally do not have to work.

Recent polling suggests that you're wrong, and support for Prop 22 is roughly even with opposition.

https://sfist.com/2020/10/06/uber-and-lyfts-prop-22-measure-...

California's problem is precisely that it is a one party state. Even a few decades ago, California was not the one party state it is today. Having multiple candidates with meaningful differences on the ballot automatically lowers the ability of special interests to rule the state because it is difficult to be supported by people on completely different sides of the aisle.

The proposition that made California the way it is is the one that meant that the primaries are non-partisan and the final race is between the two top contenders. This means that special interests in California need only present their cause through the lens of leftism and they will automatically find sympathetic candidates in the top two, no matter who those are. Contrast this with a partisan primary system. In that system, on the final ballot, it would be difficult for special interests to formulate an argument appealing to both candidates.

EDIT: for some reason, I am downvoted but there is little engagement or actual refutation of what I'm saying. If you're going to downvote, at least say something. Otherwise, it makes it seem like the one-party state's propaganda arm is awake and working.

Don’t you have ranked or proportional voting? Even with ranked voting people could choose from different democrat legislators (a Sanders vs a Biden) but be confident republican won’t get in with a plurality.

But that's what I'm saying.. when the candidates are so similar that certain interest groups always get their way (for example biden and sanders agree on oil, unlike republicans and sanders), then certain special interests become privileged

> This means that special interests in California need only present their cause through the lens of leftism and they will automatically find sympathetic candidates in the top two, no matter who those are.

The fact that no sane Republican candidates seem to exist in California is not the fault of the jungle primaries.

The lack of sane California Republicans is the fault of a Republican primary electorate that views things like "Actually running the government" as a mortal sin.

Lets see some California Republicans replace Nunes with a Republican with a couple brain cells to rub together and then we can talk about the faults in the jungle primary system.

Until then, you may want to start looking for faults by looking in the mirror.

> The proposition that made California the way it is is the one that meant that the primaries are non-partisan and the final race is between the two top contenders.

No, it's not.

It's not even a proposition. It's that the California Republican Party tries to campaign like it's Kansas, that keeps them hovering right at the border of the level where Democrats have a 2/3 supermajority in both houses plus control of the statewide offices.

> This means that special interests in California need only present their cause through the lens of leftism and they will automatically find sympathetic candidates in the top two,

It's actually pretty rare that the jungle primary provides same party candidates (and it's never, IIRC, done “Democrat plus leftist third party”), so, no, that wouldn't be true even if the California Democratic Party was reliably leftist, which it decidedly is not, see, e.g., Dianne Feinstein.

> Contrast this with a partisan primary system. In that system, on the final ballot, it would be difficult for special interests to formulate an argument appealing to both candidates.

It's actually not, you just craft it around the local district not left-right ideology.

> for some reason, I am downvoted but there is little engagement or actual refutation of what I'm saying. If you're going to downvote, at least say something.

Downvoting is saying that something isn't a productive addition to the conversation, engaging is saying that even if it is wrong, it is. There's really no good reason to engage when downvoting, or vice versa, they serve opposing purposes.

You have basically said that the republicans are simply bad in the state because they “campaign like it’s Kansas,” which is ridiculous because candidates are always local. That type of dismissiveness of an entire party is exactly the issue.

> You have basically said that the republicans are simply bad in the state because they “campaign like it’s Kansas,” which is ridiculous because candidates are always local.

The state party officials (and party aligned interest groups) have a big impact on candidate grooming, funding, selection, and messaging, and the influence they exert results in campaigns that are ineffective in much of the state. And it wasn't always that way, and it didn't because of the jungle primary change (Schwarzenegger was an exception to it, but not because he was before the jungle primary, but because he came through a route entirely outside of the party system, despite being a party member; the effect had already set in, though it wasn't yet as deep as it is now.)

> That type of dismissiveness of an entire party is exactly the issue.

You are confusing cause and effect.

You are making this out to be a political argument which it is not. The point is when all levels of government align under one party, which has leaders, it becomes more like a dictatorship. I don’t care how bad you personally consider the Republican party, there are those who consider Democrats the same way. That polar mindset is the problem. It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be and many people often agree with various positions on both sides, but when one side becomes to strong you are forced to essentially agree with all positions of that dominant side.

> You are making this out to be a political argument which it is not.

No, I'm not. I'm making it out to be a factual argument about the causes of the present political situation, which it very much is.

You seem to be unable to separate evaluation of the factual causes and effects of political situation with moral evaluation of the involved actors.

> The point is when all levels of government align under one party, which has leaders, it becomes more like a dictatorship.

Not really, especially with the jungle primary system which limits the ability of party leaders to control candidate selection in districts where the other major party fails to maintain competitiveness, and especially not where the people retain the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall, and entities outside the dominant party (including, but not limited to, the second place party) are able to bring issues directly to the people through those avenues against the desires of the dominant party.

> I don’t care how bad you personally consider the Republican party, there are those who consider Democrats the same way

I have said a word (in this thread) about how bad I consider the Republican Party, only how poorly chosen their recent electoral strategy has been for the realities of the State. There's other states (and, though to a far lesser extent, other times in not-too-distant California history) where I would say the same broad kind of things (with different details about the problem) about the Democrats.

> but when one side becomes to strong you are forced to essentially agree with all positions of that dominant side.

Maybe, in some abstract sense, but not on any concrete sense that actually has any bearing on the actual situation in California.

The way you are trying to dissect bits and pieces of this and not the point itself is proof enough of your bias here. You are literally splitting sentences in half and debating them separately. Really, you are even trying to debate an undisputed point of “bad” and go on to explain how wrong that is and that it is republicans “poorly chosen..etc.” Again that partisan politics has nothing to do with the point. What are are arguing is already obvious because republicans are losing and thus yes obviously they had a bad strategy. If a football team lost a game literally everyone could say they had a bad strategy or the other team has a good. The problem and point of what we are saying is what RESULTS from that occurring not a discussion on how it occurred.

> The problem and point of what we are saying is what RESULTS from that occurring not a discussion on how it occurred.

Explanations of both the cause and the results have been offered, and I have given arguments on both of those points, which you have responded to with irrelevancies as to arguments you imagine I might want to make about how good or bad the Republicans are (and then, bizarrely, having raised that imaginary argument, complained that I reacted to it and described it as misplaced and said it was an "undisputed point" that I was "trying to debate", when literally the reverse was true: it was a point I never made that you were trying to debate.)

This is ridiculous. California's gop is broadly successful as most of the states land is republican by far. And at the state level that's what matters. Plus it's only a few years ago that california had a gop governor. You can say lots of schwarzenegger but he didn't campaign like it's Kansas.

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