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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

You see, that idiocy did not originate with the lawmakers of California, it originated with the people, who are, bar none, the most gullible people on the planet.

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While this might be tongue-in-cheek, one big issue is that it's hard for millions of busy people to fully inform themselves on the minutiae of complicated ballot initiatives in their spare time. There are huge opportunities for information asymmetry via spending boatloads of dollars, which is why many propositions ultimately come down to "special interest X wants to see if they can pay their way to overturning/passing some law."

Agreed. I'd add that perhaps "the system" is not optimized for the people.

For example, perhaps the people of towns/cities should be able to vote on things "closer to home" for themselves (like property taxes and zoning), leaving things involving multiple localities (like water rights) for the state.

Hmmm. Perhaps this is true, but in my experience the ballot propositions in San Francisco (where I live) are almost as inscrutable as the state-level ones. I'd much prefer to elect local officials that align with my own views so that they can spend time and effort on my behalf figuring out what the right thing is to do.

You mean, people are the most gullible people on the planet.

I doubt California has a higher percentage of gullibles, but it certainly has more people in total.

Really it’s just an issue that the voters are able to change the state constitution with a simple majority in an off year election and there are no checks on this power. The legislature, executive or judicial powers of the state cannot overturn such a policy, and you can write in an exception like prop 13 to make it so that you need a 67% majority to overturn a result passed by a 50.1% majority. It’s really just an example of why checks and balances matter.

> Really it’s just an issue that the voters are able to change the state constitution with a simple majority in an off year election and there are no checks on this power.

There actually is a check, and it is the higher requirement required for a Constitutional revision rather than a mere amendment.

Indeed. The proposition system is the cause of a lot of people's complaints about California's over-regulation. Direct democracy sounds good in practice, but these days pretty much every proposition is written by a special interest group who just want to protect their special interest.

> direct democracy sounds good in practice, but these days pretty much every proposition is written by a special interest group

I think a key part of direct democracy is to make it as local as possible. It's my understanding that Switzerland has cantons averaging 350k people that have their own constitutions, taxes, schools, health care, even treaties with other countries. These are often further divided into municipalities. People might be able to vote on things several times a year. People can vote to cancel laws they don't like. Lots more info here [0]

California has almost 40 million people. That might be too big to qualify as "direct"

[0] https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli...

If it's a law then the people who made it are law makers, aren't they?

California allows citizens to put laws directly into the state constitution. You propose the law, get signatures to put it on the ballot, and then if 50%+1 vote for it, it becomes part of the constitution.

So if you want to be pedantic, they are laws made by unelected lawmakers.

The people elected the laws - they are the law makers. Each of the people is 'elected' simply by being a citizen.

That’s not how any of that works.

How do you think it works?

Representatives who vote on laws are called law makers. If the people are voting on laws as well then they’re law makers as well aren’t they?

And you say they’re unelected? Well they don’t need to be elected, they’re citizens in their own right.

No, people who are elected to make laws are called lawmakers. No one elected the citizens of California who are voting on the propositions.

Are you claiming that California people are the most gullible?

I’d like a citation. Many other US states believe there was widespread voter fraud in 2020. Or that the vaccine implants a chip.

These believed lies seem like evidence of greater gullibility than belief that “consumer protection” laws protect consumers.

It may be that the gullibility has been propagating in the time domain, so people everywhere are just dumber than ever, but it just seems to me that before I moved to California I has never met anyone who thought 5G was a way to activate a government mind-control weapon, or that you could benefit from a "juice cleanse".

Why not just compare caricatures and get this over with?

Extremes in both blue and red states are equally stupid. Average iq doesn't differ between states. Education level does, but as any techy knows, that's an overrated proxy for intelligence.

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