And surely the 5 people who own almost all the mainstream news conglomerates aren't trying to sway the public by pushing opinions disguised as news. I'm sure MSM has no sway over public opinion, since all their journalistic programs are of the highest ethical, non-biased caliber, where every reporter fully researches and investigates topics themselves, like good ol' gumshoes, and makes sure to present all the relevant viewpoints of all sides of an issue...using non-biased, neutral tones, taboot. /s
Texas is technically not an apples to apples comparison to California. Yes, Texas is the most important red state while California is the most important blue state. But the most important geography in politics is not in states but rather population density.
People in cities tend to be democrats whereas those in rural areas tend to be republicans. The largest republican municipality is Oklahoma City which isn't that urban. The Phoenix metro area is also slightly red leaning and that's not very densely populated.
If you look at a map of Illinois, for example, even though the state still went for Biden, most of the counties were collected by Trump.
> When Communists talk about "communism", what they mean is rule by the Communist Party.
Lol what? When we communists talk about communism, what we mean is literally communism: key property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. I like some of your ideas, but you just distort so much whatever you touch. Dude, if only you'd be more grounded, balanced and objective. We lost such a thinker to ideological fanaticism.
This is a pretty short sighted from someone I’ve come to respect for seeing the bigger picture. This problem isn’t limited simply to Democrats in California.
Oh bless your heart. You can’t see sides or history either. On the other piece: Texas, Florida, Idaho, large portions of the south have been that way a long time too. California is a valid complaint however it’s dishonest to pretend or ignore that republicans don’t have legacy control of states voting preferences.
In any case, notice that people are fleeing Blue states for places like Texas and Florida, and the Eastern Oregon counties want to join Idaho to avoid being dominated by the crazies in Portland.
Not to the extent of California? That’s inaccurate. Review the % of republicans elected (and the lack of real competition) in the states referenced.
To your other point… I’m live in Idaho. That East Oregon joining Idaho thing you’re leaning into was around long before the issues of this thread bloomed.
I’m not pro dem or republican however this thread of balaji’s simply doesn’t paint a full picture. He also stands to potentially join the white staff and/or be an appointee to a high level govt. position in lieu of a Trump win. It’s simply not honest and seems to be politically motivated which wasn’t something that was so transparent when I started paying attention to Balaji.
Regions such as Central California, Orange County, and the Simi areas (around Los Angeles, where I reside) mostly favor conservative politicians. The LA mayoral contest between Karen Bass and Rick Caruso was closely contested a few years ago. While I largely concur with your points and believe one party monopoly is bad for democracy, the data you have selected appears to demonstrate a certain degree of bias.
Don't think so. The Cali peeps learned from the Chicago Democratic Machine which has become the Illinois Combine (see John Kass definition). Cali is run by Democrats and bureaucrats (apparatchiks in the old Soviet system) and Republicans have to sit at the kids table in the other room.
Dude, I was such a huge fan of yours after hearing your interviews with Tim. But (and I say this as a fan) you have gone off the deep end. If you had attacked gerrymandering and political engineering in general I would march into battle with you arm-in-arm. Instead you succumbed to your bias, cherry picking facts (and a little bit of fantasy) to write an unhinged, slanted political rant. My city is one of those blue cities in a red state you referenced allowing "blues (to) have significant political power within red territory, but not vice versa". After we elected a Democrat to congress, our state legislature promptly gerrymandered the district and ensured a republican won the next election (bestowing us with spectacle of Nancy Mace). Where is your rage? I'm not enthrall with either party, I want real competition at the ballot box every time I vote. You had the opportunity to use your considerable intellect and influence to take on the real problem. Instead you squandered your shot and influence with a political hatchet job.
Exactly. Conveniently omitted from the article was the fact that Texas (offered as a "better" approach from a red state due to the existence of the liberal enclave of Austin) Republicans literally have a party platform designed to prevent a Democrat from winning statewide office: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/
Countless red states have been forced into consent decrees for their systematic violations of the Voting Rights Act, violations that will no longer be subject to the type of consent decrees that have historically been in place thanks to a 2023 decision from a (yes, Republican controlled) Supreme Court. We've seen an explosion in the number of attempts to limit voting rights, primarily in Republican controlled states:
While implementation of federal voting rights legislation remains impossible due to opposition from Congressional Republicans, efforts are underway at the state level to enact state versions of laws like the Voting Rights Act to protect voting rights. Look at the states that have done so or have proposals under consideration.
Six states that have enacted such laws: California, Connecticut, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington.
Five states with such laws under consideration: Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Jersey.
3) That said, I don't think the two sides are equal right now, and neither do Americans as a whole — 1M+ people[a] have been voting with their feet against California alone, leaving blue states for red.
4) And that's the point of this piece: California isn't a democracy, as it doesn't have competitive elections. Citizens can't vote in red candidates, so they have to leave for red states. Democracy gets restored at the level of migration, not election.
5) However, I think you can do much better than even red governance, which is better than blue but still far from optimal.
We need more than two choices for hundreds of millions of people. The subsequent post on cryptodemocracy will discuss how we might move from a two party system to an N-city system.
[a]: 2021: "In the last decade, 1.3 million more people left California than came in from other states. And, it’s accelerating. Half a million people have left for other states in the last two years alone."
California blossomed as this developed. It was and is the greed of those the Republicans represent that is driving people out. It is not possible to live a normal life in the state. We do not need more Republican representation, we need a party further left to compete with the centrists and corporatists. This needs to lead to employee ownership and appropriate compensation for the successes these folk are continuing to win both in the state and globally.
Pot is legal in Cali and Chris must be using a ton of it. Name a large metropolitan city in California run by Republicans. LA? SF? SD? Berkely? Oakland? Sacramento? San Jose? Santa Barbara? What about counties?
Sacramento with 400k+ population is definitely controlled by the Rs. San Diego was until recently. One must ask why that shift took place, especially so close to the border. There are a number of smaller counties in the the eastern and northern parts of the state that are R controlled.
From wiki: "Darrell Steven Steinberg (born October 15, 1959) is an American politician and attorney who is the 56th mayor of Sacramento, California since December 2016. He was elected to be mayor on June 7, 2016 (avoiding a runoff). Before that, he was California Senate President pro Tempore and the leader of the majority party in the California State Senate from 2008 to 2014."
My mistake. Bakersfield with a population over 400k is republican controlled. Sacramento has over 500k and is Dem controlled. Specifics aside, Balaji's screed is highly biased by any objective standard. And BTW--I'm completely an independent, although I lived in NYC in the 1970s and saw who Trump is--and he hasn't changed. He left 1000s out of jobs and bankrupted many of his contractors while declaring BKs for what, six of his companies? His reputation was and still is that he cannot keep his word yet people are voting for him on his promises. And what's frightening is he makes as many flubs as Biden but he's powerful in his presentation while Biden appears to be the bumbling old dude he is. I won't vote for either and I will not aggrandize Red over Blue nor Blue over Red. They both have strengths and weaknesses. The weakness in this country IMO is hwo so few people can or are willing to think critically with nuance, rather than blunt simplistic binary thinking. 335 million people and this is the best we can do?
I’m not a fan of Trump either, and I agree with your general sentiments, but your case that Bakersfield is Republican controlled isn’t super strong. The mayor can only vote in the event of a tie and there are 7 council members who do vote.
One slight correction. California is a gerrymandered one party state not dissimilar from the Middle Ages when we had Lords, Dukes, Earls and other noblemen taking taxes from their serfs. They bowed to their king/queen and only owed him/her their allegiance when they wanted to fight a war.
1) I actually agree with you on this. Both Democrats and Republicans are moving away from democracy towards one-party states. And I wrote about one-party red governance before, eg here: https://x.com/balajis/status/1711301185494482969
2) That said, even if neither red nor blue states have competitive multiparty *elections*, I do think red is outcompeting blue today at the level of citizen *migrations*[a]. But ultimately we need more than two choices for millions of people, and that's what the next post is about.
The state government of Florida has been controlled by Republicans exclusively for decades. You can point at blue cities all you want - they are increasingly powerless in this state.
In the past few years, the red legislature banned those cities from creating their own laws regarding rent control. They banned them from implementing mandatory safety breaks for workers in the summer heat. Hell, they even just prevented these cities from posting any Pride lighting displays on bridges. Why is their freedom of speech being denied them? Ironically, it is all done in the name of “Freedom Summer.”
Governor DeSantis has suspended multiple elected officials of their positions (Monique Worrell and Andrew Warren) simply because he disliked their views and the way they chose to carry out their duties. He dislikes the fact that places like New College might teach things that contradict his narratives, so he guts their boards, replaces them with people he owes political favors to, and re-allocates their funding to his donor base.
He attempted the same thing against Disney, one of the largest job centers in the state. Wielding the state’s power against them and creating a board of unelected officials that he owed political favors to. Yet because they’re not a precious tech company, you’re more than willing to overlook those particular transgressions, even though it’s exactly what you claim to hate when done on other locales.
People like you and Elon Musk can’t stand that California and the DoJ/FTC are cracking down on the tech monopoly’s iron hold over people’s lives and minds. The same monopoly that has made you rich beyond all imagination. So you present biased views against the people you dislike, give only cursory lip service to places like Florida and Texas, and act like this is a balanced view. It is not.
There is no doubt that there are things Governors like Newsom and recently Hochul are doing that are expressly against people's interests. They do these things because they are beholden to their political donors. Just like the Republican party (DeSantis, Abbott, Trump) is beholden to theirs. They also act in direct conflict with people's interests. That's the real problem here. Rich people like you buying political favor through the form of donations and SuperPACs from whichever side is more conveniently aligned. Certain elements of the left have figured out the damage being done by certain areas of tech, they are cracking down, and the people in tech don't like it. So they speak out and write biased, intentionally misleading articles like this one.
1) First, I agree that Republicans are building one-party red states, as I've actually written about before (https://x.com/balajis/status/1711301185494482969). I think they are doing this partly in response to Democrats building one-party blue states. But regardless, both red and blue have rejected democracy *within* their states in the sense of competitive multiparty elections.
2) Democrats are rejecting democracy in practice while claiming they're for it in principle, while Republicans are increasingly just saying they want republics rather than democracies. What it equates to is that "blue democracy" = rule by Democrats and "red republic" = rule by Republicans.
3) So, where is there room for democratic choice? There's the federal election. But that's going to be so contentious this year that I doubt both sides will be happy with the outcome.
4) What that leaves is democracy as *migration* rather than election. More than a million people have chosen to leave California for red states, which means they're voting with their feet against blue governance.
5) Nevertheless, if you really want blue governance, sure, you can move there. At a theoretical level I'm glad that choice exists. In practice many people are stuck in blue states even though they wanted Bloomberg Democrats rather than BLM Democrats.
6) I'd also note that I do not believe red states are the apex of governance on the planet. They are recruiting from blue states, but in many ways countries like the UAE, Singapore, and Estonia are better managed. There are also innovations from East Asia and even now Latin America (Bukele's anti-crime program) and India (eg UPI) that red states could learn from.
So: both parties are building one-party states, but Democrats are the ones claiming to be "for democracy", and that isn't what they're for.
1) Their cities (and often bureaucrats and professionals) are still blue
2) A lot of the things you cite would be invalidated by the federal government and the courts. For instance, no Red State governor could institute Bukele style crime policy, it would get overridden by the Feds and the Courts. Bukele himself basically had to become a quasi dictator and neuter the Supreme Court there.
You have to remember that Blue Staters are very concerned with imposing their will on Red Staters, in the name of the "downtrodden vulnerable minorities" that reside there.
The worry of course is that if immigration continues we will no longer have competitive federal elections, and then even the reddest states will have the blue model completely forced on them by the feds.
Florida was recently competitive. DeSantis won in 2018 by 0.4%. The reason it's a Red State now is that the Republicans have done a fantastic job of running the state, everyone likes them, and people are moving to Florida by the droves.
California hasn't been competitive in forever. Everybody agrees it's a shithole and people are moving out by the millions. They hold on despite being total failures because the Mexicans they imported want welfare and vote blue to get it, like a bunch of zombie voters.
California's net population loss in the most recent year (2023) was 91,000. I know your trusted fake news sources like to promote the myth that people are leaving the state in droves, but it's utter bullshit (unfortunately, because we're still crowded AF and could stand to lose a ton of people).
And, please, "everybody agrees it's a shithole" and "highest real estate prices in the country" are not compatible realities. One of those statements is true, and it ain't yours....
This is easy. California wasn't always a shithole. A couple of decades ago it was Reagan Country and a functional state. It had one of the worlds greatest post WWII booms and created immense wealth and valuable institutions.
The shitholeness came later, and parasitically exists on consuming that which was built up before the current leadership was in charge. If you've got a home and a community and a career you've spent 20 years building up you don't just up and throw it all away to start over even when things are shit. The transaction costs of a move are high. So people do it a little at a time when opportunities arise. When COVID gave people work from home and they could disentangle their job from living in California they did, and the pattern existed long before that.
I think of the state like the capital of some declining empire. There is still a lot of built up wealth, people still "make it" sometimes, and everything is expensive. But things are getting worse all the time and everyone seems to understand that things are worse than they ought to be and the leadership and institutional trends suck.
Do you live here? Because you seem to speak very confidently about what “everyone” here thinks, and your comments do not resonate with me or anyone I know. While things can be better, there isn’t a place in the US (or the world) where that isn’t the case.
Nonsense. I live in Orlando, a city that has sent Anna Eskamani to the state house for multiple terms. She's every bit as progressive as AOC.
I've sat here and watched as other state reps or senators like Carlos Guillermo Smith have been subjected to partisan re-districting and gerrymandering as the Republican-controlled legislature re-draws boundaries and carves rural areas of counties like Volusia and Osceola into the mix to get their preferred results. If they weren't cheating the maps so badly this state would be much closer to purple in its electoral mix than it currently is.
The democratic patron system is impressive. They're so good at doing real politics. Unlike Republicans that pay lipservice to some incoherent set of ideals.
It is still a democracy if a blue person is chosen to govern a place where most people are blue. That means the person governing is aligned with the people they are governing which is the ideal. That this happens at the state level where there are open borders is even more ideal, as people can move to places that are better aligned with their values and “vote with their feet” as you say. If there were open borders between countries, even more, as people could leave communist regimes for more democratic ones if they choose. I agree however that in a state where most people are blue or red, the choice shouldn’t be between a blue vs. red candidate. It should be between varying shades of blue, or varying shades of red (like a primary election). Then each place would be even more democratic, choosing the right blue person rather than the only one.
1) Yes, this is the direction I think we end up going, where migration is the mechanism rather than election.
2) It is however quite different from Democrat party rhetoric about democracy. Once we recognize that both parties are moving towards one-party states, and that this federal election will likely be inconclusive, we have a better mental model for what's coming. Namely, migration over election as the primary mechanism for democratic voice.
Yes I tend to agree. As I’ve written before, if countries have to compete for citizens, it will be in their best interest to become really good places to live and the bad places to live would depopulate. As you say, migration would become the voting mechanism!
In a country with a just government, a proper constitutional republic, politicians and government employees can only respond to the initiation of force or fraud.
They can not threaten it or initiate it. And they are not empowered to do anything else, regardless of the will of the majority. So there isn’t a need for parties, “blue” or “red”. Citizens periodically elect whomever they think is best to protect life, liberty, and property.
This article is a good example of why the Founding Fathers did not want America to be a democracy. In fact, that word isn’t found in the DOI or the Constitution.
There are many different definitions of democracy, but perhaps the most fundamental is "the consent of the governed." I do think that's worth preserving, and even strengthening. For example, there are ways to implement democratic principles where you get *both* individual choice and social consensus. See for example Tiebout sorting:
I’ve read more and now understand your position. It’s a good argument for decentralized government. If the proper purpose of government is to protect property rights, then over time, decentralized government will trend toward that ideal.
I’m very curious about alternatives to democracy. It’s become somewhat of an entrenched value but I don’t think the only options available to us are democracy or autocracy.
I'm writing a longer piece on this, but I think the next step is cryptodemocracy.
That means an Internet First re-implementation of democracy. The same technology we use to securely send one Bitcoin can be used to securely send one vote. We assume many existing geographic borders have been either (a) busted by mass immigration or (b) artificially imposed by imperialism or (c) both. So instead of relying on existing geographical divisions of people into states, we allow for opt-in ideological self-sorting of people into networks. And they vote onchain for their leaders, starting with digital governance and extending into the physical world.
There are actually already many precedents for this from Estonian internet voting to DAO voting to even billions of upvotes per day on social media. But more on this soon.
A democratic republic, a strong constitution that distributes power to protect unalienable human rights. It's a actually a bulwark against the tyranny of the majority and demagogues alike.
This structure largely died in the United States in the 20th century and we're suffering the consequences today.
And surely the 5 people who own almost all the mainstream news conglomerates aren't trying to sway the public by pushing opinions disguised as news. I'm sure MSM has no sway over public opinion, since all their journalistic programs are of the highest ethical, non-biased caliber, where every reporter fully researches and investigates topics themselves, like good ol' gumshoes, and makes sure to present all the relevant viewpoints of all sides of an issue...using non-biased, neutral tones, taboot. /s
Texas is technically not an apples to apples comparison to California. Yes, Texas is the most important red state while California is the most important blue state. But the most important geography in politics is not in states but rather population density.
People in cities tend to be democrats whereas those in rural areas tend to be republicans. The largest republican municipality is Oklahoma City which isn't that urban. The Phoenix metro area is also slightly red leaning and that's not very densely populated.
If you look at a map of Illinois, for example, even though the state still went for Biden, most of the counties were collected by Trump.
> When Communists talk about "communism", what they mean is rule by the Communist Party.
Lol what? When we communists talk about communism, what we mean is literally communism: key property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. I like some of your ideas, but you just distort so much whatever you touch. Dude, if only you'd be more grounded, balanced and objective. We lost such a thinker to ideological fanaticism.
A state can be a democracy and elect candidates you don’t like.
Do North Carolina next.
Does North Carolina have shit on its streets?
This is a pretty short sighted from someone I’ve come to respect for seeing the bigger picture. This problem isn’t limited simply to Democrats in California.
Did Thiel put you up to this? 🤔🤷🏻♂️🤭
I actually agree Republicans are also building one-party states and wrote about that before too (https://x.com/balajis/status/1711301185494482969).
See here for more:
https://open.substack.com/pub/balajis/p/california-is-not-a-democracy?r=2974h&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=58908759
> This problem isn’t limited simply to Democrats in California.
Correct, it also applies to Democrats in other Blue states.
Oh bless your heart. You can’t see sides or history either. On the other piece: Texas, Florida, Idaho, large portions of the south have been that way a long time too. California is a valid complaint however it’s dishonest to pretend or ignore that republicans don’t have legacy control of states voting preferences.
Not to the extend as California.
In any case, notice that people are fleeing Blue states for places like Texas and Florida, and the Eastern Oregon counties want to join Idaho to avoid being dominated by the crazies in Portland.
Not to the extent of California? That’s inaccurate. Review the % of republicans elected (and the lack of real competition) in the states referenced.
To your other point… I’m live in Idaho. That East Oregon joining Idaho thing you’re leaning into was around long before the issues of this thread bloomed.
I’m not pro dem or republican however this thread of balaji’s simply doesn’t paint a full picture. He also stands to potentially join the white staff and/or be an appointee to a high level govt. position in lieu of a Trump win. It’s simply not honest and seems to be politically motivated which wasn’t something that was so transparent when I started paying attention to Balaji.
Regions such as Central California, Orange County, and the Simi areas (around Los Angeles, where I reside) mostly favor conservative politicians. The LA mayoral contest between Karen Bass and Rick Caruso was closely contested a few years ago. While I largely concur with your points and believe one party monopoly is bad for democracy, the data you have selected appears to demonstrate a certain degree of bias.
Don't think so. The Cali peeps learned from the Chicago Democratic Machine which has become the Illinois Combine (see John Kass definition). Cali is run by Democrats and bureaucrats (apparatchiks in the old Soviet system) and Republicans have to sit at the kids table in the other room.
Dude, I was such a huge fan of yours after hearing your interviews with Tim. But (and I say this as a fan) you have gone off the deep end. If you had attacked gerrymandering and political engineering in general I would march into battle with you arm-in-arm. Instead you succumbed to your bias, cherry picking facts (and a little bit of fantasy) to write an unhinged, slanted political rant. My city is one of those blue cities in a red state you referenced allowing "blues (to) have significant political power within red territory, but not vice versa". After we elected a Democrat to congress, our state legislature promptly gerrymandered the district and ensured a republican won the next election (bestowing us with spectacle of Nancy Mace). Where is your rage? I'm not enthrall with either party, I want real competition at the ballot box every time I vote. You had the opportunity to use your considerable intellect and influence to take on the real problem. Instead you squandered your shot and influence with a political hatchet job.
Exactly. Conveniently omitted from the article was the fact that Texas (offered as a "better" approach from a red state due to the existence of the liberal enclave of Austin) Republicans literally have a party platform designed to prevent a Democrat from winning statewide office: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/
And Texas doesn't stop there. How about limiting polling places in majority Democrat districts? https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/01/harris-county-elections-texas-oversight-law/
Countless red states have been forced into consent decrees for their systematic violations of the Voting Rights Act, violations that will no longer be subject to the type of consent decrees that have historically been in place thanks to a 2023 decision from a (yes, Republican controlled) Supreme Court. We've seen an explosion in the number of attempts to limit voting rights, primarily in Republican controlled states:
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/who-counts/see-which-states-are-expanding-or-restricting-voting-rights/
While implementation of federal voting rights legislation remains impossible due to opposition from Congressional Republicans, efforts are underway at the state level to enact state versions of laws like the Voting Rights Act to protect voting rights. Look at the states that have done so or have proposals under consideration.
Six states that have enacted such laws: California, Connecticut, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington.
Five states with such laws under consideration: Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Jersey.
See any common thread among those states?
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-protection-of-voting-rights-requires-state-action/
Yet the author chooses to present California as some bellwether for anti-democratic governance. A political hatchet job, indeed.
We may not actually be that far off.
1) First, I am against gerrymandering and political engineering in general.
2) Second, as per thread above, I've actually written about one-party red states before (https://open.substack.com/pub/balajis/p/california-is-not-a-democracy).
3) That said, I don't think the two sides are equal right now, and neither do Americans as a whole — 1M+ people[a] have been voting with their feet against California alone, leaving blue states for red.
4) And that's the point of this piece: California isn't a democracy, as it doesn't have competitive elections. Citizens can't vote in red candidates, so they have to leave for red states. Democracy gets restored at the level of migration, not election.
5) However, I think you can do much better than even red governance, which is better than blue but still far from optimal.
We need more than two choices for hundreds of millions of people. The subsequent post on cryptodemocracy will discuss how we might move from a two party system to an N-city system.
[a]: 2021: "In the last decade, 1.3 million more people left California than came in from other states. And, it’s accelerating. Half a million people have left for other states in the last two years alone."
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-denying-the-california-exodus/
California blossomed as this developed. It was and is the greed of those the Republicans represent that is driving people out. It is not possible to live a normal life in the state. We do not need more Republican representation, we need a party further left to compete with the centrists and corporatists. This needs to lead to employee ownership and appropriate compensation for the successes these folk are continuing to win both in the state and globally.
> It was and is the greed of those the Republicans represent that is driving people out.
Funny how people only started being driven out once Democrats took control of California, and how they're mostly moving to red states.
Pot is legal in Cali and Chris must be using a ton of it. Name a large metropolitan city in California run by Republicans. LA? SF? SD? Berkely? Oakland? Sacramento? San Jose? Santa Barbara? What about counties?
Sacramento with 400k+ population is definitely controlled by the Rs. San Diego was until recently. One must ask why that shift took place, especially so close to the border. There are a number of smaller counties in the the eastern and northern parts of the state that are R controlled.
From wiki: "Darrell Steven Steinberg (born October 15, 1959) is an American politician and attorney who is the 56th mayor of Sacramento, California since December 2016. He was elected to be mayor on June 7, 2016 (avoiding a runoff). Before that, he was California Senate President pro Tempore and the leader of the majority party in the California State Senate from 2008 to 2014."
My mistake. Bakersfield with a population over 400k is republican controlled. Sacramento has over 500k and is Dem controlled. Specifics aside, Balaji's screed is highly biased by any objective standard. And BTW--I'm completely an independent, although I lived in NYC in the 1970s and saw who Trump is--and he hasn't changed. He left 1000s out of jobs and bankrupted many of his contractors while declaring BKs for what, six of his companies? His reputation was and still is that he cannot keep his word yet people are voting for him on his promises. And what's frightening is he makes as many flubs as Biden but he's powerful in his presentation while Biden appears to be the bumbling old dude he is. I won't vote for either and I will not aggrandize Red over Blue nor Blue over Red. They both have strengths and weaknesses. The weakness in this country IMO is hwo so few people can or are willing to think critically with nuance, rather than blunt simplistic binary thinking. 335 million people and this is the best we can do?
I’m not a fan of Trump either, and I agree with your general sentiments, but your case that Bakersfield is Republican controlled isn’t super strong. The mayor can only vote in the event of a tie and there are 7 council members who do vote.
The voting members of the council are split: 3Rs, 3Ds, and 1 Independent. So if the Ds can sway the Independent, those 4 votes make law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakersfield_City_Council
One slight correction. California is a gerrymandered one party state not dissimilar from the Middle Ages when we had Lords, Dukes, Earls and other noblemen taking taxes from their serfs. They bowed to their king/queen and only owed him/her their allegiance when they wanted to fight a war.
Wait. I thought governments and land sovereignty were myths because we're all just electrons in the cloud living in the dreams of DAOs now.
Great, now do Alabama, Idaho and the many other GOP "non-democracy" states.
1) I actually agree with you on this. Both Democrats and Republicans are moving away from democracy towards one-party states. And I wrote about one-party red governance before, eg here: https://x.com/balajis/status/1711301185494482969
2) That said, even if neither red nor blue states have competitive multiparty *elections*, I do think red is outcompeting blue today at the level of citizen *migrations*[a]. But ultimately we need more than two choices for millions of people, and that's what the next post is about.
[a]: 2021: "In the last decade, 1.3 million more people left California than came in from other states. And, it’s accelerating. Half a million people have left for other states in the last two years alone." https://www.dailybreeze.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-denying-the-california-exodus/
The state government of Florida has been controlled by Republicans exclusively for decades. You can point at blue cities all you want - they are increasingly powerless in this state.
In the past few years, the red legislature banned those cities from creating their own laws regarding rent control. They banned them from implementing mandatory safety breaks for workers in the summer heat. Hell, they even just prevented these cities from posting any Pride lighting displays on bridges. Why is their freedom of speech being denied them? Ironically, it is all done in the name of “Freedom Summer.”
Governor DeSantis has suspended multiple elected officials of their positions (Monique Worrell and Andrew Warren) simply because he disliked their views and the way they chose to carry out their duties. He dislikes the fact that places like New College might teach things that contradict his narratives, so he guts their boards, replaces them with people he owes political favors to, and re-allocates their funding to his donor base.
He attempted the same thing against Disney, one of the largest job centers in the state. Wielding the state’s power against them and creating a board of unelected officials that he owed political favors to. Yet because they’re not a precious tech company, you’re more than willing to overlook those particular transgressions, even though it’s exactly what you claim to hate when done on other locales.
People like you and Elon Musk can’t stand that California and the DoJ/FTC are cracking down on the tech monopoly’s iron hold over people’s lives and minds. The same monopoly that has made you rich beyond all imagination. So you present biased views against the people you dislike, give only cursory lip service to places like Florida and Texas, and act like this is a balanced view. It is not.
There is no doubt that there are things Governors like Newsom and recently Hochul are doing that are expressly against people's interests. They do these things because they are beholden to their political donors. Just like the Republican party (DeSantis, Abbott, Trump) is beholden to theirs. They also act in direct conflict with people's interests. That's the real problem here. Rich people like you buying political favor through the form of donations and SuperPACs from whichever side is more conveniently aligned. Certain elements of the left have figured out the damage being done by certain areas of tech, they are cracking down, and the people in tech don't like it. So they speak out and write biased, intentionally misleading articles like this one.
Let's see if we can meet halfway.
1) First, I agree that Republicans are building one-party red states, as I've actually written about before (https://x.com/balajis/status/1711301185494482969). I think they are doing this partly in response to Democrats building one-party blue states. But regardless, both red and blue have rejected democracy *within* their states in the sense of competitive multiparty elections.
2) Democrats are rejecting democracy in practice while claiming they're for it in principle, while Republicans are increasingly just saying they want republics rather than democracies. What it equates to is that "blue democracy" = rule by Democrats and "red republic" = rule by Republicans.
3) So, where is there room for democratic choice? There's the federal election. But that's going to be so contentious this year that I doubt both sides will be happy with the outcome.
4) What that leaves is democracy as *migration* rather than election. More than a million people have chosen to leave California for red states, which means they're voting with their feet against blue governance.
5) Nevertheless, if you really want blue governance, sure, you can move there. At a theoretical level I'm glad that choice exists. In practice many people are stuck in blue states even though they wanted Bloomberg Democrats rather than BLM Democrats.
6) I'd also note that I do not believe red states are the apex of governance on the planet. They are recruiting from blue states, but in many ways countries like the UAE, Singapore, and Estonia are better managed. There are also innovations from East Asia and even now Latin America (Bukele's anti-crime program) and India (eg UPI) that red states could learn from.
So: both parties are building one-party states, but Democrats are the ones claiming to be "for democracy", and that isn't what they're for.
One problem Red States have is that:
1) Their cities (and often bureaucrats and professionals) are still blue
2) A lot of the things you cite would be invalidated by the federal government and the courts. For instance, no Red State governor could institute Bukele style crime policy, it would get overridden by the Feds and the Courts. Bukele himself basically had to become a quasi dictator and neuter the Supreme Court there.
You have to remember that Blue Staters are very concerned with imposing their will on Red Staters, in the name of the "downtrodden vulnerable minorities" that reside there.
The worry of course is that if immigration continues we will no longer have competitive federal elections, and then even the reddest states will have the blue model completely forced on them by the feds.
Florida was recently competitive. DeSantis won in 2018 by 0.4%. The reason it's a Red State now is that the Republicans have done a fantastic job of running the state, everyone likes them, and people are moving to Florida by the droves.
California hasn't been competitive in forever. Everybody agrees it's a shithole and people are moving out by the millions. They hold on despite being total failures because the Mexicans they imported want welfare and vote blue to get it, like a bunch of zombie voters.
California's net population loss in the most recent year (2023) was 91,000. I know your trusted fake news sources like to promote the myth that people are leaving the state in droves, but it's utter bullshit (unfortunately, because we're still crowded AF and could stand to lose a ton of people).
And, please, "everybody agrees it's a shithole" and "highest real estate prices in the country" are not compatible realities. One of those statements is true, and it ain't yours....
"everybody agrees it's a shithole"
"highest real estate prices in the country"
This is easy. California wasn't always a shithole. A couple of decades ago it was Reagan Country and a functional state. It had one of the worlds greatest post WWII booms and created immense wealth and valuable institutions.
The shitholeness came later, and parasitically exists on consuming that which was built up before the current leadership was in charge. If you've got a home and a community and a career you've spent 20 years building up you don't just up and throw it all away to start over even when things are shit. The transaction costs of a move are high. So people do it a little at a time when opportunities arise. When COVID gave people work from home and they could disentangle their job from living in California they did, and the pattern existed long before that.
I think of the state like the capital of some declining empire. There is still a lot of built up wealth, people still "make it" sometimes, and everything is expensive. But things are getting worse all the time and everyone seems to understand that things are worse than they ought to be and the leadership and institutional trends suck.
Do you live here? Because you seem to speak very confidently about what “everyone” here thinks, and your comments do not resonate with me or anyone I know. While things can be better, there isn’t a place in the US (or the world) where that isn’t the case.
I lived in NY, which went through a similar process and also has a large domestic out migration pattern.
My nephew lives in California and has the same gripes that all the statistics indicate he would have.
Um, Florida's blue areas are voting red. They like the policies.
Nonsense. I live in Orlando, a city that has sent Anna Eskamani to the state house for multiple terms. She's every bit as progressive as AOC.
I've sat here and watched as other state reps or senators like Carlos Guillermo Smith have been subjected to partisan re-districting and gerrymandering as the Republican-controlled legislature re-draws boundaries and carves rural areas of counties like Volusia and Osceola into the mix to get their preferred results. If they weren't cheating the maps so badly this state would be much closer to purple in its electoral mix than it currently is.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/2022_Florida_gubernatorial_election_results_map_by_county.svg/2560px-2022_Florida_gubernatorial_election_results_map_by_county.svg.png
Why is Miami red?
Why is California blue?
The democratic patron system is impressive. They're so good at doing real politics. Unlike Republicans that pay lipservice to some incoherent set of ideals.
It is still a democracy if a blue person is chosen to govern a place where most people are blue. That means the person governing is aligned with the people they are governing which is the ideal. That this happens at the state level where there are open borders is even more ideal, as people can move to places that are better aligned with their values and “vote with their feet” as you say. If there were open borders between countries, even more, as people could leave communist regimes for more democratic ones if they choose. I agree however that in a state where most people are blue or red, the choice shouldn’t be between a blue vs. red candidate. It should be between varying shades of blue, or varying shades of red (like a primary election). Then each place would be even more democratic, choosing the right blue person rather than the only one.
1) Yes, this is the direction I think we end up going, where migration is the mechanism rather than election.
2) It is however quite different from Democrat party rhetoric about democracy. Once we recognize that both parties are moving towards one-party states, and that this federal election will likely be inconclusive, we have a better mental model for what's coming. Namely, migration over election as the primary mechanism for democratic voice.
Yes I tend to agree. As I’ve written before, if countries have to compete for citizens, it will be in their best interest to become really good places to live and the bad places to live would depopulate. As you say, migration would become the voting mechanism!
https://www.elysian.press/p/how-could-country-capitalism-work
California has a bunch of zombie voters. Basically non-white welfare parasites who will vote blue for welfare even if the governance sucks.
It's the "will of the people", but it sucks.
Democracy is for self sufficient middle class people who have some sense of civic virtue and fair play.
that is not "the ideal" at most is baseline minimum, though sus is less than that even :P
In a country with a just government, a proper constitutional republic, politicians and government employees can only respond to the initiation of force or fraud.
They can not threaten it or initiate it. And they are not empowered to do anything else, regardless of the will of the majority. So there isn’t a need for parties, “blue” or “red”. Citizens periodically elect whomever they think is best to protect life, liberty, and property.
This article is a good example of why the Founding Fathers did not want America to be a democracy. In fact, that word isn’t found in the DOI or the Constitution.
There are many different definitions of democracy, but perhaps the most fundamental is "the consent of the governed." I do think that's worth preserving, and even strengthening. For example, there are ways to implement democratic principles where you get *both* individual choice and social consensus. See for example Tiebout sorting:
https://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/LGrant/ref_cards_full/Topic_referenceSheet_tiebout_sorting.pdf
I’ve read more and now understand your position. It’s a good argument for decentralized government. If the proper purpose of government is to protect property rights, then over time, decentralized government will trend toward that ideal.
The first question that needs to be agreed on is: What is the proper purpose of government?
Occam and I think it is to protect property rights.
I’m very curious about alternatives to democracy. It’s become somewhat of an entrenched value but I don’t think the only options available to us are democracy or autocracy.
I'm writing a longer piece on this, but I think the next step is cryptodemocracy.
That means an Internet First re-implementation of democracy. The same technology we use to securely send one Bitcoin can be used to securely send one vote. We assume many existing geographic borders have been either (a) busted by mass immigration or (b) artificially imposed by imperialism or (c) both. So instead of relying on existing geographical divisions of people into states, we allow for opt-in ideological self-sorting of people into networks. And they vote onchain for their leaders, starting with digital governance and extending into the physical world.
There are actually already many precedents for this from Estonian internet voting to DAO voting to even billions of upvotes per day on social media. But more on this soon.
A democratic republic, a strong constitution that distributes power to protect unalienable human rights. It's a actually a bulwark against the tyranny of the majority and demagogues alike.
This structure largely died in the United States in the 20th century and we're suffering the consequences today.
It started to be chipped away under Woodrow Wilson, and virulently and violently attacked under FDR.