
VC Tim Draper has revived his proposal to carve California into smaller parts - petethomas
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-abcarian-california-breakup-20180424-story.html
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ardit33
Not a terrible idea. NY should be split as well, maybe then the NYC subway
will be fixed. NYC metro area pays 11B more in taxes that takes back.
Basically subsidizing the rest of the state while we swelter in subways stuck
in tunnels, crappy service, and other nonsense. While there are people in
Upstate NY that think that NYC politics occupies the state's agenda too much.

I honestly believe the state would be better split.

[http://media.syracuse.com/state_impact/photo/2015/08/24/new-...](http://media.syracuse.com/state_impact/photo/2015/08/24/new-
amsterdamjpg-3013598832c71aa5.jpg)

[https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/joseph-e-
robac...](https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/joseph-e-
robach/splitting-new-york-state)

~~~
nontechdude1
I'm kind of sad it's come to the point where different regions of America
claim they're "subsidizing" other regions populated by other Americans.

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

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

~~~
ardit33
By 'subsiding', I mean other ares of the state get the funds, while the subway
(which most poor people in NYC take), get shafted. In real life that means a
poor person going to work gets fired because they are late again, as the
subway broke down yet again, and taking a taxi is too expensive/cost
prohibitive for them.

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

~~~
nontechdude1
the financial industry and poor people who happen to live in nyc are very,
very, very disparate things.

when you're the global headquarters for a globally important industries,
you're in a separate world from the problems around you. which is probably
best. note how the bay area housing crisis, although caused by tech firms, is
pretty handily ignored by people who helped cause it.

not all politics is local.

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

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

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

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

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

Interested in the counterpoints to all that.

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

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

"Interested in the counterpoints to all that."

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

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

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

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throwaway76524
Is there a government structure where three regions could operate autonomously
within a single state of a larger union?

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
ericb
> The senate is two votes per state...

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

~~~
telchar
I don't know, but I can only assume. Who else would want to split up
California and has a thing for busting unions?

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

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

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

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

