Tim Draper Wants To Split California, Turn Silicon Valley Into Its Own State | Hacker News Reader

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

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76 pointsssclafani88 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

I can assure you that the rich will group themselves away from the poor. So, I repeat: If you can assure me the wealthy won't take advantage of the poor, then I'm fine. But you can't assure me that. It's going to end up like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oblongs

>>The series focuses on the antics of a family who live in a poor valley community and, as a result of pollution and radiation exposure, are all disabled or deformed. The pollution is the direct result of the lavish lifestyle of the rich community known as "The Hills", whose residents exploit and harm the valley residents with absolutely no regard for their safety or well-being.

Social commentary

Many reviewers and fans see the series as a commentary on social stratification. While the residents of the Hills live in wealth and economically dominate those in the Valley, there is no rallying cry for wealth redistribution or fairer working conditions.

If it makes you feel any better...

NONE of these nations would be bullies... because they would be unable to defend themselves. They would rely on some bigger, stronger ally to guarantee that other nations would not trample their sovereignty or, most importantly, their property rights.

I DO think that a bigger, stronger nation would dominate in the area that would be formerly known as California... I just don't think that stronger nation would be one of the new nations formed.

It would probably be the US actually.

So the rich of the new nations would not dominate the poor of the new nations...

It's far more likely that the US would dominate both.

Wait are you describing the US and it's current relationship to others countries?

I guess that makes sense. What is novel and slightly confusing about your viewpoint is that it involves the interaction between the size of a country, and the diversity of a country. Only large, diverse countries are a problem for you.

But there is still the issue of elites (remote or otherwise) imposing diversity on their citizens against their wishes. If this hadn't happened in the US, California wouldn't be so diverse in the first place.

You claim this is not such a problem with small countries, but exactly the same thing is happening in Europe.

Preferences of citizens instead of remote elites! What springs to my mind is the events of 1953, where a mere 9 remote elites ran roughshod over the preferences of millions of citizens. Also known as Brown v. Board of Education.

Federalism and the incorporation doctrine have been a powerful force for freedom and justice in the USA. Please let's not abandon it.

>The only reason California is so diverse is because of immigration

I hope you're including immigration from the Midwest, the South, the tons of immigration from the East Coast etc. in the immigration you want to restrict.

California used to be part of Mexico, so nothing from that border could be making California any more diverse.

For perspective, California was part of Mexico for all of 10 years, then went thru revolts and independence (republic) then US state. It was part of Spain for many years before that. Just like Louisiana was French before it was a territory and then state.

> For perspective, California was part of Mexico for all of 10 years

1821-1846 is 25 years.

Nominally, yes. Most of the latter part Mexico had little to no dominion (revolts, independence, etc.).

"The only reason California is so diverse is because of immigration"

Time was, California only had indigenous peoples.

Obviously, only programmers would be allowed to immigrate into SiliconValleyCountry, and only actors would be allowed into HollywoodLand.

> 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.

Why place the arbitrary line around a few million? It never made much sense to me to apply it to anything more than an individual.

Simply because the line has to be drawn somewhere, and a few million looks right when you squint at it. It might be higher for culturally homogenous societies, such as Japan or Norway. It might be lower for smaller groups.

The unfortunate reality is that, as social animals, other peoples behavior has a dramatic effect on us. Since I have met many people of good will who wish to live in dramatically different social configurations, my best solution is lots of small countries with varying social configurations.

If you're referring to "the governed" a group rather than an individual (which makes little sense to me, since consent is an individual phenomenon), I don't see why any particular numbers looks good if you squint at it. It seems logical that the smaller the group, the better, but then we get right back to the individual.

Yeah, we are gonna keep talking past each other, but here's my last shot...

Just trust me on this: there are people, good people, who don't think like you do. I think more like you than probably 95% of the people out there, and I might even want to live in the country that you and people with a like mind establish. But I'd have to see how it turned out, and I'd like to have the option to bail if it ends up not being my cup of tea.

The social environment that they live in matters intensely to a large subset of humans. That's OK, even if you aren't one of them. We have enough room on this huge continent for their kind and your kind, and even my kind.

I honestly don't understand much of that comment.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say balkanization is not the solution to the problem.

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.

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.

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_pr...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_Cali...

   Vermont from NY+NH

What? Vermont was its own sovereign state before joining the union.

"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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._West_Virginia

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.

Crowdsourcing new state flowers is at the forefront of my political concerns right now.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

Yeah, California only matters for primaries, and for fundraisers.

Hasn't California's primary been in like freaking June.

Oh it does not. If you're not a swing state or close to it, you are irrelevant. Really, this analysis could not be further off the mark.

> 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.

You mean, loses power because of the combination of its low number of electoral votes per voter and non-swing status, which makes it a very low priority in Presidential elections, as effort expended in California is low return on investment.

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?

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).

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?

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), 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 for an example.)

> 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.)

> You can argue that that design should be restored, but merely pointing out that it used to be that way is hardly an argument.

Its an argument that an error was made by breaking the design that the founders had put in place. The House is the people, the Senate is the States. The breakage sent us down the road of a weakened 10th amendment and increased centralized power. The 16th is no joy, and I have heard the starve the beast theory, but the 17th has taken away the regulatory stops needed to keep DC in control.

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.)

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

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.

I'll believe numbers for 2015-2017 when they arrive. What's the surplus for 2013?

It is on track to be about $851 million (the fiscal year ends June 30th)

If you do some accounting wizardry and forget about the unfunded pensions. Calling it in surplus doesn't tell the actual story.

> Would California's perpetual budget problems be better solved by localizing the resources of a state government to be more accessible?

California's "perpetual" budget problems were largely solved when the people of the State modified the State Constitution to take out the unusual requirement of a 2/3 supermajority to pass a budget.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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_Stat...

See also: 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.

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

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

Would you? Is the flag constitutionally required to match the number of states?

I did enjoy the thought experiment. It's just funny that it sounds similar to Gov. Rick Perry saying "Texas will secede"

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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_Sta...

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

Can someone please answer what problem is being solved here?

Hunger games ?

or "tim draper and i want your attention"

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