On December 20, 2013, the Business Insider reported that venture capitalist Tim Draper is trying to float an initiative in California that would split the state into 6 political entities. While Mr. Draper’s dream has little chance of being realized in the short term, his initiative is a pragmatic reaction to what is becoming increasingly clear: namely that California is too big and too diverse to govern effectively.

The reason for this is that California’s population is largely concentrated in 2 highly-urbanized enclaves. Life in these enclaves looks different than it does in more rural parts of the state. For example, environmental regulations that make sense to tech workers and academics in the Bay Area who worry (rightly or wrongly) about climate-change, rob good-paying manufacturing jobs from people in less populous and less affluent parts of the state. Whatever the merits or demerits of these regulations, the cost is borne by people outside of these urban enclaves who didn’t vote for them and lack the population and the political power to do anything about them. The recent vote in two Northern California counties to at least start looking at secession options is an indication that certain parts of the state don’t feel that they are being adequately represented. When your county could vote 100% for something and have it not mean anything, is there really any difference between this and simply having your right to vote formally revoked?

Representative democracy, at the time that this country was founded, was being tried in a country whose citizens had similar day-to-day life experiences, whatever else their individual political and economic interests might have been. Today, someone who lives in downtown San Francisco might as well be on a different planet from someone who lives in a small town in the Central Valley. What is more, those in one world tend not to mix with those in the other world, and so each group’s concerns appear illegitimate and ‘crazy’ to the other group (in an upcoming book, ‘I Want A Divorce-Why America Needs To Go Its’ Separate Ways’, I examine this on a national level). Another way to look at it is that 5 San Francisco Bay Area counties plus Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Bernadino, and Riverside counties account for 68% of the population in California. If you add in Sacramento County, the number rises to 72%. Also, I would point out that 22 of the 58 counties in California have populations less than 100,000.  The average person in one of the eleven ‘urban’ counties can’t really have much in common with the average person in one of the 22 ‘rural’ counties. What is more, the 22 ‘rural’ counties wouldn’t even likely have much impact if they voted 100% for something. In short, they have no voice.

The resolution for 6 Californias is a proposal that is attempting to address a real problem. It is questionable as to whether a state can be said to truly consist entirely of free citizens if people concentrated in one part of the territory can impose costs on those who live far away from them and differently from them, without the consent of those who will be made to bear the cost. While this state of affairs did not arise overnight and is not necessarily the fault of any individual politician, it is a problem and one that will eventually need to be addressed. Whether ‘6 Californias’ is the right solution or not is certainly debatable. However, proposals such as this one will continue to be brought up, until some sort of answer is found.