Carving Up The Golden State
To the left is a graphic representation of the most recent proposal to balkanize California to gather media attention upon submission for ballot consideration, this one floated by venture capitalist Tim Draper. I’m guilty of the same sort of political woolgathering in my own thought experiments, so I can’t particularly condemn the notion of wondering about whether several smaller states might not be better than the one big one we’ve got.
As an aside: Draper’s proposed names for the proposed new states are not very good, in my opinion. Calling the northernmost state “Jefferson” acknowledges a cultural undercurrent there, which I’m not sure is strong enough to justify a state name, and there are some folks in what is today Oregon who also think they’re in what should be the state of Jefferson and they might not like former Californians poaching their state’s name. All the same, it’s an okay name. But from there, the proposed names of “West California” (depicted in red) and “Silicon Valley” (depicted in silver) are neither accurately descriptive nor imaginative.
This sort of thing is not new in California. As early as 1859, proposals have been floated to split the state at the thirty-sixth parallel, with the 1859 proposal actually reported out of the state Legislature, only to be ignored by a Congress distracted by the impending Civil War.
So many of these kinds of ideas and proposals that get floated around are really almost overtly (and usually short-sightedly) partisan ways for people to express frustration with “us and them” thinking, giving vent to the impulse that if only those other people with all their bad ideas would somehow go away, what we’d have left over, with mostly other people who think like us, would be a great place to live. Only, not so much upon further consideration.
Draper points out that more states would mean more Senators representing the area in Washington. That’s an advantage, I suppose. I’m not sure how significant an advantage it is.
how water is distributed around California, the less I see that the state can be broken up at all for that reason alone. Yes, there are theoretical things that might happen to preserve something resembling the status quo distribution of water, but especially if there were somehow to be a fragmentation, the new states would almost certainly not be able to agree on an equitable distribution of water and money. We’ve simply grown too interdependent upon the existing intrastate infrastructure to break up now. And for better or worse, we’re creating new and ridiculously expensive infrastructure for the future.
The more I learn aboutAllocation of tax dollars, distribution of things like prisons and universities, and infrastructure like roads and the water distribution network, wind up trumping the idea that if only I can isolate “my California” from the rest of the slobs with grizzly bear and Half Dome holograms on their driver’s licenses, I can have the kind of state government that I would like best and to hell with the rest of all y’alls. And doing it from an armchair on a computer, especially with an eye towards culling out problems one would rather other people confront, seems doomed to create more problems than could possibly be solved.
Just as one example: including the three Eastern Sierra counties in with a state consisting mainly of the central valley areas does not, in my opinion, make sense on any level — and not just because through hook and crook, that area has become a major watershed irrigating and sustaining the city of Los Angeles. And it’s likely that were we to ask the folks in Inyo and Mono Counties, they would almost certainly indicate that they would prefer not to be in the same state as Los Angeles, whether or not they’d thought through the extent to which Los Angeles tax dollars support their area (and to which Los Angeles’ water needs provides local employment). It’s physically closer but logistically much more difficult to get from Bishop to Fresno than it is to get from Bishop to Los Angeles, because of the steepness and seasonal unreliability of roads traversing the Sierra Nevadas. For better or worse, those rural parts of the state are married to geographically distant and culturally urban Los Angeles. And as in many other sorts of divorces, the costs involved in the separation would leave both parties worse off than they were before.
The temptation to rely on simple geography — mountain ridges, parallels of latitude, or even watershed boundaries* — ignores the other, more powerful realities that the larger economy, logistical realities of existing infrastructure, and the need to maintain and update that infrastructure, imposes on us collectively. It’s tough enough to keep it all together as it is. Losing the pool of economic power that the state as a whole enjoys could easily make it well nigh impossible for the smaller successor states to each do it on their own.
Better to learn and practice the admittedly difficult art of living together.
* If we’re going to redistribute political authority along lines of watersheds, then we might wind up with states that look very strange indeed, even compared to, say, Mr. Draper’s recent proposal. It’s more than kind of silly at this point.
Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.
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If we’re talking about songs about inter-/intra-state animosity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1mJDdPyluMReport
Well, true. But I assumed the Pavement song was referencing Cali specifically. The CA population’s pretty close to 40 mil.
WAIT – AoL were on the “My So-Called Life” soundtrack?! Who knew?
I’m looking at the track listing, and…it’s not bad.Report
I wasn’t critiquing, I just wanted to post some AoL.
It was certainly a good show for music. If I recall, Buffalo Tom was on My So Called Life. I think they were playing a club and Jordan was going to see them.Report
Hmmm, although in 1992, it was only about 31 mil. So maybe I leapt to an unwarranted conclusion. But we always assumed it was the rallying cry of Northern Californians.Report
Quick internet searches suggest that you were/are correct.Report
We now return this comment section to something less randomly-tangential to Burt’s characteristically-thoughtful post.
(Sorry Burt!)Report
Not a problem at all, dudes. It’s a silly subject, IMO, so a little silliness in response is entirely appropriate.Report
Ya know, if you are gonna play Pavement in regards to California, it needs to be the 7″ version of “Summer Babe” talking about a houseboat on the Delta!Report
Well, if breaking up is hard to do, and we’re all in this together – how about a merge with Nevada and Arizona? What’s so overidingly great about the status quo that it needs to be preserved?Report
Assuming a split did happen, wouldn’t water needs just become a question of one state paying a fee to another (if it was an issue at all)? I can’t imagine it would even be an issue unless the population near the water source expanded so much that downstream users were going dry.
Water rights in the US boggle the mind at times.Report
That’s one plausible way it might get worked out. There are others. But there’s also nothing to stop the new states from simply refusing to do business with one another, and given that the leaders of these states would have orchestrated the split off from one another precisely because as co-citizens of California, they did not get along — and particularly not getting along because of water rights — it is also plausible to imagine a well-watered but financially impoverished State of Jefferson telling a wealthy but parched State of Los Angeles to kiss its northern ass.Report
Then LA is the city that suddenly figures out a way to very cheaply turn seawater into freshwater.Report
$2,000 per acre foot does not equal cheaply.Report
i support the slit Sacramento is massively corrupt and abuse to the people in the north, its time to give us our freedom to live as we choose not how you in the south feel we should liveReport
http://youtu.be/MMnRZXz51WEReport
Every state I’ve ever lived in has had some intrastate tensions or some credible historical or geographic argument for splitting. California is the only state I can think of that would ever actually pull the trigger, though. I dunno, I don’t live there, but the sentiment for a North/South split seems high. No state is ever going to split unless there’s a state-sized population in both parts (sorry, North Colorado). Texas is big enough, and has the option of doing it, but they seem too happy being Texas.Report
Oh, I should add a note about land mass. NY State might be very happy getting rid of NY City, and they’d both have a large population, but NYC just doesn’t have the square miles. I can’t give a rational explanation why, but the phsyical size matters. I think DC’s chance of statehood is also hampered by its geographical size.Report
Are Rhode Island and Delaware large enough, or just historical aberrations?
If we were carving up unallocated territory on the east coast today, we probably wouldn’t bother to create Delaware at all, what with Maryland already existing.
But I’m also pretty sure that even if Rhode Island were a part of Greater Massachusetts, Bostonians still would never go there.Report
Alta California will never split from its lower section.
Well, maybe not.Report
As a NorCal resident I can attest to the sense of “who are those people down there” feeling. But I do think you are right, and not just from the water perspective. The only real solution I can see would be to take the large urban areas and make them semi-autonomous zones. This could work in other states such as NY and IL that have area’s that are fairly different from the rest of the state, with different solutions to major problems.Report
Since I’m never actually going to get around to writing guest posts on either the Colorado River, or the State Water Project, or the Central Valley Project I’m just going to put this link here and encourage people to recognize that certain marriages just cannot be sundered.Report
Draper points out that more states would mean more Senators representing the area in Washington. That’s an advantage, I suppose. I’m not sure how significant an advantage it is.
Seriously, if you’re going to play games for increased political power, this is the wrong game to play. Think bigger — an independent California, along with most of the rest of the American West. GDP would be fourth in the world, just ahead of Germany (per-capita GDP would be significantly better than Germany’s). The 11-state contiguous West is a net federal tax donor to the rest of the US. More local control of the federally-held public lands — note that the Western Governors Association has begun to discuss a regional air tanker fleet for fighting forest fires funded by the states, because it looks more and more like Congress is going to effectively defund that federal capability in the future. The “natural” dividing line is down the middle of the emptying Great Plains — the US portion of the Western Interconnect power grid would be an excellent starting point.
It takes a long-term plan — for example, it’s important to convince the East that letting the West go is a good idea — but it’s as doable, I think, as splitting California in six.Report
I think it’s more likely that California could become it’s own country than that it could be split into smaller state-lets. As a nation, it would be something like the sixth or seventh largest economy in the world, if I remember correctly. A sixth of the country’s population lives there.
Don’t splinter, secede.Report
Oops! I see Michael had the same idea.Report
I’m sure the US govt. would let all that money, resources and coastline go without an armed struggle.Report
Since Western secession is my retirement hobby (and yes, I know how crazy that sounds)… One of the key things that has to be accomplished is to convince the East (or non-West, if you prefer) that they would be better off without having to govern the West. That’s a long-term project, but there are several trends that I think make it more feasible as time goes by. Think 25-50 years.Report
If this is correct, 3 of the 5 busiest ports in the US are in CA.
I just don’t see letting those go any time soon as realistic, barring cataclysmic changes that so weaken the central Federal govt. that they’d have to swallow it.
http://listosaur.com/miscellaneous/top-10-busiest-ports-in-the-united-states.html
And that’s to say nothing of the other resources. Given CA’s centrality to the software industry, the US govt would consider it a national security disaster to let CA go its own way.
Sorry, never gonna happen. Not without war or supervolcano or comet strike or something.Report
Er, asteroid strike. Though a good-sized comet could be bad too, per Tunguska (IIRC they lean towards a comet as cause now).Report
I don’t really think California is going to secede, but it’s even more unlikely that California will be split up into smaller entities so that the Red parts of the state can escape all those ungodly liberals.
Still, if you’re going to dream, dream big. California uber alles.Report
Draper’s proposal looks like the opposite to me: split off his California (“Silicon Valley”) from those hicks in the inland areas and those icky gauche Angelenos to the south. “Inland” to him is San Benito County.Report
Let’s be honest. This was a proposal by an asshole tech millionaire (I’d say glibertarian, but to be fair, it’s entirely possible this guy didn’t give money to Ron Paul in the past) to make sure none of “his” money went to any poor Latino kids in Los Angeles, white redneck farmers in Bakersfield, or well, anybody in San Diego.
Even conservatives who I read thought the counties being included in each “state” was silly.Report
Feel free to go to http://www.opensecrets.org
He donated to two people, one of the two people twice. Guess who they are!Report
If the western eleven did secede, you’d want to split California up several ways anyway.Report
Splitting up Californian would become more important in a WSA, I mean. Otherwise Cali would have waytoo much influence.Report