Lessons from California: The perils of extreme democracy

Size isn't the only difference - the US is far more diverse.

Compare Sweden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden with LA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Los_Angeles .

Sweden is about as diverse as Wisconsin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison,_Wisconsin#Demographics .

Is that burden in dollars-per-capita or burden in percentage-of-GDP? Since California has a higher GDP per capita than most states you could both be right.

* Note that though the ranking of 19th does factor in our larger economy, it doesn't account for the reality that more highly advanced economies require a better trained and more specialized bureaucracy. So just as we shouldn't be surprised when Sweden has a better compensated civil service than Namibia, all things being equal we should expect for California government to account for a larger portion of the economy than Mississippi's or Oklahoma's*

Sweden vs Namibia ain't exactly California vs Oklahoma. In particular, Oklahoma's state government provides pretty much exactly the same services as California's... it just provides them much cheaper.

The point remains, I think, that it's fairly disingenuous when folks (almost always folks whose own personal ox is unlikely to be gored in this case) suggest that Prop 19 is responsible for the California budget woes. California's state government is rolling in money, it's just that they're incredibly bad at spending it.

In Australia there's only six states, and they're all large and demographically diverse enough to be (in the American terminology) purple. That means that there's a regular cycle of kicking the bums out and installing the other set of bums every few election cycles, keeping things relatively healthy.

In the US, though, problems seem to develop when one party controls the legislature more or less indefinitely. In blue states this leads to slowly-collapsing economies where public-sector unions slowly suck increasing amounts of money out of the economy, and in perma-red states this leads to zany places where sodomy is theoretically illegal and you can't even buy a vibrator.

So what we really need to do is join California up with Nevada, Arizona, Idaho... maybe even as far as West Texas.

I think the real problem is that there's still a state government. The people who know how to balance the budget best and know what needs/wants they need to fulfill are the people in local communities and counties. Give them more power to deal with the budget and make the state government a council of delegates from each of those counties and you won't have much of a problem anymore.

Indeed, in their guise of “Publius” in the “Federalist Papers”, Madison and Hamilton warn against the dangerous “passions” of the mob and the threat of “minority factions” (ie, special interests) seizing the democratic process.

They wanted a republic where representatives were accountable to their constitutients. That doesn't happen anymore. Too often do representatives ignore the ideas and opinions of their constituents. A representative should be asking his constiuents wtf to do instead of being completely autonomous (except on election day). The minority factions are the representatives themselves which is why it's very important to keep any and all direct democracy actions.

Initiatives should be far harder to introduce. They should be shorter and simpler, so that voters can actually understand them. They should state what they cost, and where that money is to come from. And, if successful, initiatives must be subject to amendment by the legislature.

So give less voice to the people who actually make up the state. Shorter and simpler because people are dumb? Why not make them longer with more arguments to support them, or have them written in 2-3 different ways as a counter to any biased/emotionally-heavy language?

The initiatives are voted on on a state-level. It's difficult to estimate costs on something like that and it's difficult to say where the money will come from. I guess it's a good idea though because then the marijuana legalization initiative could say "this will cost $0, and will earn us $X".

They shouldn't be subject to amendment by the legislature. They should be subject to amendment by the citizens. That might curb any special interest group bullshit.