Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

I mean I gave an example in Oregon but you seem to have skipped it.

That's not an example of what you're saying. It appears to be in ongoing discussions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On a more local level, how many regulations are voted on by people in cities, but will inevitably affect rural people? Or heck, any people who did not want those regulations?

What level are you talking about? I mean, what locality spans city and rural areas? These are great hypothetical situations, but you gotta put real examples behind them to show that there is some conspiracy about oppressing people living in rural areas. Even at a state level, due to the nature of districting, urban areas don't have any more representation in state legislatures.

As you can see you have several states that have always voted for the same party for decades.

You're now changing your argument from urban-rural to D-R?

View on HN

Not GP, but recent things off the top of my head: California's law to end single family zoning. Gun laws in most blue states. Washington's comprehensive sex ed law.

It's not really urban-rural or D-R as such. It's more "people who don't even live in your town are dictating how to run it".

Like the recent ruling with abortion: it made it not a federal concern. That's it. Why do people in California care so much about what e.g. Alabama is doing now? Do they get upset about abortion laws in Poland too?

Higher levels of government are needed to prevent conflicts (e.g. to deal with someone in Colorado polluting the river and screwing over everyone in Utah), but they end up getting used to enforce social norms. It would be better if we could push more regulation down to the county/municipal level. People wouldn't need to be so polarized because they could just agree to disagree, and live somewhere with like-minded people.

Want to live somewhere where there's strict credentials for teachers? Cool. Want to live somewhere where the lady down the street that homeschools her kids can also teach yours? Cool. It's a big country. There's room for everyone.

California's law to end single family zoning

Not sure how this fits in. It only had 25% nay votes in the assembly and 17.5% nay votes in the senate. Some nay votes came from a D from SF and someone form Huntington Beach, so the vote really wasn't on party or urban-rural lines. I also wonder how genuine you're being when you say a measure that gives someone more freedom (to build what they want on their property) is someone telling you how to live your life.

Gun laws in most blue states.

I'm not really sure laws what you mean. We have to recognize that nationwide, 63% of adults are dissatisfied with our current gun laws. In light of this, we have the SCOTUS striking down gun laws that most people want. This doesn't appear to be the win you think it is. https://news.gallup.com/poll/470588/dissatisfaction-gun-laws...

Washington's comprehensive sex ed law

I'm not sure what to say when you think direct democracy is bad with regards to state measures.

Like the recent ruling with abortion: it made it not a federal concern. That's it. Why do people in California care so much about what e.g. Alabama is doing now?

Well, this specific issue aside, this current trend of conservatives trying to legislate from the SCOTUS (people appointed for a lifetime) is largely undemocratic. If you don't want people who don't even live in your town dictating how to run it, you should be very opposed to SCOTUS doing just that, since they basically answer to no one.

You're really missing the point here. The entire point being made is that what the voters at the level of a state or the entire nation is irrelevant because it shouldn't be their decision to vote on.

Even if 75% of California residents want to ban single family zoning, if 75% of residents in Redding want to keep it in Redding, why should people in San Diego have any more than 0% influence on that decision? People 600 miles away should have exactly zero input into something like that.

It's not about whether the decisions being made are good. It's about who gets to make them/how broadly they apply. China could have the greatest ideas in the world, but it doesn't make sense to "democratically" vote with equal representation between US and Chinese citizens on what free speech laws in the US should be. They have 4x the population and nothing in common. Such a "democracy" would be a farce.

> Even if 75% of California residents want to ban single family zoning, if 75% of residents in Redding want to keep it in Redding, why should people in San Diego have any more than 0% influence on that decision?

Because Redding isn't an independent, self-supporting, sovereign entity, its an administrative subdivision of California whose existence as an entity and powers of government are delegated to it by the people of the State of California through the Constitution and laws of said State (in part directly, and in part indirectly through, e.g., Shasta County, a similar but higher-level subdivision within which Redding is nested), and which is funded in no small part by distribution of taxes set and collected by and from the State of California as a whole.

No one is discussing the legality of such things. The discussion is whether things like that are just. That's why e.g. eastern Oregon has a secession movement. The west side of the state can legally tell the east side to do what they want. The east side does not feel that being in a shared democracy with the west side is working.

> No one is discussing the legality of such things. The discussion is whether things like that are just.

That's what I was discussing, too.

If there was a Redding-separatist movement, we could discuss whether Reading separatism is just and whether that changes the justice of decision-making arrangements, but the justice of decision-making authority within the current context is not independent of the structure of that context aside from the particular decision-making question being examined, and where “Redding” fits into that structure.

(This is also a separate question from the justice of particular decisions; like it can be just for the people of California at large to be the decisive decision-making authority, and still be unjust for them to make a particular decision. But that wasn't the question.)

There is a secessionist movement in NorCal[0], but as has been said before:

> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The bar for injustice is quite a bit lower than secession-inducing. If you have broad agreement in place X that they would like to live one way, and agreement among places Y and Z (who have never even been to X and would be entirely unaffected by what X does for the decision at hand) that X should live another way, then I assert Y and Z imposing their will on X is unjust, regardless of how democratic the decision was, or whether some generations-old political structure says Y and Z can do that. The people of Y and Z should recognize that they shouldn't do that.

[0] https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...

>You're now changing your argument from urban-rural to D-R?

This tells me you missed the argument i was making.

The point isn't a specific urban-rural or Dem-Rep, it's the underlying concept of not having agency over what rules you.

The more powers you grant the state, the less powers you have, and the greater these issue become and the more important acquiring political power becomes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com