Goodbye, California? Tim Draper Proposes a 6-Way Split

Daniel_Stuckey writes that venture capitalist Tim Draper has mooted a plan "to split California into six separate states, he told Tech Crunch, with Silicon Valley emerging as the richest and most powerful of all. The mockery is already pouring in. Of course a rich tech guru wants Silicon Valley to get its own government, so it can be freed from the dusty laws and regulations of California 1.0. Of course a deep undercurrent of self-aggrandizing narcissism runs through the proposal — only one other state-to-be gets an actual name, (inexplicably, 'Jefferson') and the rest are lazily affixed with topographical descriptors: West, South, Central, and North California...Yes, in shaping his doctrine, Draper has conjured the perfect blend of Seasteading's offshore tech nirvana lawlessness, boilerplate Tea Party antiestablishmentarianism, and good ol' secessionist chutzpah."

Comments

That's the real make-up of California.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what? That's the real political make-up of California. The majority of Californians do identify as Republicans, and not as Democrats.

While they are extremely loud and prominent in the media, the left-leaning portion of Californian society is actually comparatively small relative to the entire populace of California. They are outnumbered, and basically isolated to the regions where academia, media or high-tech is big. The rest of the state is quite conservative, especially when you get into the large rural and mountainous expanses.

So the SV hipsters shouldn't cry about democracy working like democracy should, and granting them representation proportional to their population. They should accept that there are a lot of people who have very different views that are just as valid, if not more valid in many respects. If these hipsters end up outnumbered in the legislature, it's because they're outnumbered in society at large.