So, question. I'm not really connected in to how things happen in California, but have any of the major tech groups calling for change thrown money into fixing the water and power issues?
Eh, it's not really the job of tech companies or individual philanthropists to fix the water infrastructure or the electrical grid.
Why would it not be? Having the money and the ability to solve the problems that you yourself are complaining about while also being able to turn a profit seems like a no-brainer.
Investing in infrastructure like that isn't going to hurt them and will ingratiate them with the people.
So, question. I'm not really connected in to how things happen in California, but have any of the major tech groups calling for change thrown money into fixing the water and power issues?
Eh, it's not really the job of tech companies or individual philanthropists to fix the water infrastructure or the electrical grid.
Why would it not be? Having the money and the ability to solve the problems that you yourself are complaining about while also being able to turn a profit seems like a no-brainer.
Investing in infrastructure like that isn't going to hurt them and will ingratiate them with the people.
It's not an infrastructure problem, really. It's an overuse problem. And again, it doesn't really affect the tech industry. What's happening is that pockets of farmland are not being delivered their customary heavily subsidized water because there isn't enough to go around. The occasional small farming town is getting caught up in it. But the cities? Especially the big cities? It'll get way too expensive to grow a lot of crops long before the population centers really start feeling the pinch, because agriculture uses 80% of the water to produce 2% of the GDP.
Ultimately, there's plenty of water for the population to grow enormously, and simultaneously maintain our position as by far the most productive farming state.
There just isn't enough water to continue our current wasteful practices. Like, each almond requires 1.1 gallons of H2O. Not each bag, each individual nut. And we grow all of the US production and ~80% of the world supply. We grow bales and bales of alfalfa that just gets shipped to China and Japan as cattle feed, because it's cheaper to truck it to Long Beach and send it over the Pacific than it is to truck it north to the Central Valley where the cows are. We have dozens and dozens of golf courses in the desert. We don't monitor groundwater use (which is fucking insane).
But Silicon Valley is not suffering. And they aren't going to be able to solve the problem (that they don't have to deal with).
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Also try imagining a world where the US is utterly dependent on importing sufficient food from other countries in order to feed its population properly.
It is a situation you do not ever want to be in if you're a major power.
Thing is, even if the water savings is trivial. There's a huge fucking difference between using that water to grow agricultural goods in a desert and growing fucking grass for lawns and golf courses in a fucking desert. The former at least serves the purpose of providing useful resources to people, the latter is just fucking stupidity for the sake of shitty vanity. Also no matter how small those saving are, that is still water being saved. That also makes it less likely that rationing or scarcity results in a farm going under (sure that might require letting the grass die on every golf course in California) and reducing the total amount that has to be acquired by other means, when there isn't enough.
Edit: also as point out above. California seems to be getting the same misconception as Texas. Both states aren't made up geographically of nothing but deserts. In fact both are rather diverse when it comes to geography.
also pointed out below, the water issue isn't unique to California and its kind of important that simply moving where stuff is grown, is not an option (some plants are really fucking picky about their environment, plus it would be nice to not have to pit food production against keeping around a conservation location either).
I'm sure we could grow enough food for ourselves somewhere that is not a desert.
We turned a lot of middle america into desert for a while trying to farm out as much land as possible. Not that that has to be the alternative, but global warming is being felt by agriculture centers across the US. Reservoirs and lakes running out are more than a California problem. There's also the problem with climate sensitive plants that can't just be uprooted and grown wherever.
If we don't get on an actual terraforming solution it's not going to be good, and it wont matter where we relocate farms to.
So, question. I'm not really connected in to how things happen in California, but have any of the major tech groups calling for change thrown money into fixing the water and power issues?
Eh, it's not really the job of tech companies or individual philanthropists to fix the water infrastructure or the electrical grid.
It's also not their job to render the state asunder.
But if one of them chooses to stick his dick in politics, is it too much to ask that he work on something useful?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The majority of the state is not a desert, and in fact much of it was wetlands before the levee was put in place.
Socal is not California
The most productive agricultural communities in California (and, for that matter, the US) are in the San Joaquin and Central Valleys. The biomes around Stockton, Modesto, Fresno, Visalia are naturally chaparral - arid semi-deserts that naturally get less than 12" of rainfall per year.
If it weren't for manmade irrigation, most of this region would not be capable of growing crops, and what would be left couldn't grow the quantity and variety that we do now.
Or, to put it visually:
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
Question from an ignorant European. Is Governance in California (and US States generally) State and County level only? Is there no regional level? Because US States can be pretty big and diverse. It seems like that would be a gap in effective governance.
Honestly I don't quite understand why everyone considers this idea to be so crazy.
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
E: nevermind, wrong.
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
Would smaller states not be a good idea then, in this context?
Theoretically. But that's like saying 'Wouldn't it be better to decentralise federal authority in favour of "states rights"?' Something that was tried and failed before the Constitution was ratified.
Plus, breaking states in to smaller (or even larger) groups would require a constant redrawing to maintain a more-or-less even balance regarding population distribution. Which, even if only done for ever census result, would still cause quite a few years of chaos as people resettle amongst themselves. And if you don't redraw the lines, then eventually you end up again where we are now or you still get a bunch of uber-powerful city-states that have disproportionate power at the federal level.
It may be imperfect, especially compared to other countries, but in reality, the biggest problem is not that some states have larger populations and greater influence. It's that a whole branch of government is unwilling or unable to get anything done at all. It used to work and now it doesn't. But it wasn't how it was organised that caused that to happen.
The thing to remember is that the US is not a single government divided into states for convenience of administration. It is a collection of mostly independent states which have formed a union. And Smasher is not quite correct, states have the authority over anything not reserved for the federal government, or specifically denied them by the constitution. The state is the basic building block of the US government, and there are vast differences in how each one operates, and they negotiate with each other as equals, not just as divisions of a larger unit. I'm from Georgia, and there are ongoing fights with neighboring states about how to use river water, I can't imagine the headaches cali would have if they split up.
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
Well gridlock doesn't have anything to do with the size of states per se, but it does have everything to do with structural/institutional factors, particularly the election system.
I'm guess what I'm ultimately asking do administrative/bureaucratic structures acknowledge differences within States. Do States divide themselves up into different regions for implementing policies? Does Federal policymaking distinguish between different areas within States? Or does it hand over resources to the State, which hands over resources to its Counties/Cities?
For example, a lot of what the EU does in terms of structural funds etc is distributed upon a regional basis, not to Member States, and these "regions" aren't traditional regions (not all Member States have administrative districts/provinces/regions/states, but most do) but rather based on economic/social data specifically for governance purposes. So less well off areas in ostensibly wealthy Member States get a fair shake.
Well gridlock doesn't have anything to do with the size of states per se, but it does have everything to do with structural/institutional factors, particularly the election system.
I'm guess what I'm ultimately asking do administrative/bureaucratic structures acknowledge differences within States. Do States divide themselves up into different regions for implementing policies? Does Federal policymaking distinguish between different areas within States? Or does it hand over resources to the State, which hands over resources to its Counties/Cities?
For example, a lot of what the EU does in terms of structural funds etc is distributed upon a regional basis, not to Member States, and these "regions" aren't traditional regions (not all Member States have administrative districts/provinces/regions/states, but most do) but rather based on economic/social data specifically for governance purposes. So less well off areas in ostensibly wealthy Member States get a fair shake.
It varies pretty widely from thing to thing. Some things are just money handed to the states (healthcare), others are directly administered by the government at the local level (postal service).
Well gridlock doesn't have anything to do with the size of states per se, but it does have everything to do with structural/institutional factors, particularly the election system.
I'm guess what I'm ultimately asking do administrative/bureaucratic structures acknowledge differences within States. Do States divide themselves up into different regions for implementing policies? Does Federal policymaking distinguish between different areas within States? Or does it hand over resources to the State, which hands over resources to its Counties/Cities?
For example, a lot of what the EU does in terms of structural funds etc is distributed upon a regional basis, not to Member States, and these "regions" aren't traditional regions (not all Member States have administrative districts/provinces/regions/states, but most do) but rather based on economic/social data specifically for governance purposes. So less well off areas in ostensibly wealthy Member States get a fair shake.
I think the closest thing to this concept in my experience is the "county". The county is the level of division that sits between a state and a city.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
The picture I am getting is
EU
Intergovernmental/Supranational
National Traditional Region/District/State (in most, but not all Member States) AND EU Administrative Regions
Local
US
Federal
State Nothing?
County
It seems like large States and the Federal government should be doing something like this.
Maybe some of the larger counties, particularly to the west, could be thought of regional equivalents, but the average county size seems fairly equivalent in scale to European "counties" of which you will find multiple in a region.
Just fascinating that a level of Government that is considered of core and growing importance in Europe just doesn't exist in the US.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
EU
Intergovernmental/Supranational
National Traditional Region/District/State (in most, but not all Member States) AND EU Administrative Regions
Local
US
Federal
State Nothing?
County
It seems like large States and the Federal government should be doing something like this.
Maybe some of the larger counties, particularly to the west, could be thought of regional equivalents, but the average county size seems fairly equivalent in scale to European "counties" of which you will find multiple in a region.
Just fascinating that a level of Government that is considered of core and growing importance in Europe just doesn't exist in the US.
EU
Intergovernmental/Supranational
National Traditional Region/District/State (in most, but not all Member States) AND EU Administrative Regions
Local
US
Federal
State Nothing?
County
It seems like large States and the Federal government should be doing something like this.
Maybe some of the larger counties, particularly to the west, could be thought of regional equivalents, but the average county size seems fairly equivalent in scale to European "counties" of which you will find multiple in a region.
Just fascinating that a level of Government that is considered of core and growing importance in Europe just doesn't exist in the US.
We have regional bureaucracies that are similar in size and division to EU NUTS-2, but only for specific purposes. For example, water is allocated between the various counties of the Central Valley by a regional water board. Another example, many metropolitan areas have a public transit joint powers board that covers multiple cities and counties.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Question from an ignorant European. Is Governance in California (and US States generally) State and County level only? Is there no regional level? Because US States can be pretty big and diverse. It seems like that would be a gap in effective governance.
Honestly I don't quite understand why everyone considers this idea to be so crazy.
County and City governance derive from State* authority. States* have the authority to do anything explicitly granted to them by the Constitution. Anything that is neither explicitly granted by nor denied to either State* or Federal government by the Constitution is up for debate by the Supreme Court and/or Congress and/or the Presidency.
* In the context of US politics, State(s) refers to the 50 US States (equivalent to Provinces in some other countries). There are no levels of governance between State and Federal governance, which to answer your question means there are no "regional" levels of governance.
This may just be differing theories of government but I always remember being told that states have any power NOT explicitly withheld for the Federal government. It's why incorporation of amendments is a big deal because it isn't automatic that states have to abide by them. Which fits in the traditional view of states as independent actors that form this union mostly for self protection.
Granted, the reasons for states having so much power grows smaller every day since the logistical issues that would have required such an arrangement keep becoming less important.
You're comparing a massive collection of countries gathered together in an attempt to standardise a whole mess of things...to a single country that, however imperfectly, already does that. You're just presuming that an extra layer of government needs to be added.
Anyway, what this thread is about is how a bunch of selfish, ignorant people think that splitting a state into smaller bits just for tax purposes, would make things work better. Whether in California or the nation, adding a layer of government, especially when it isn't needed, will simply make the current problems bigger.
And the last thing the US needs is organised regional power blocs. It tends not to end well.
TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
We should split Texas into like
ten states
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wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
Well, the difference is obviously because of historical and scale reasons. But from a good governance/administration standpoint they have every reason to exist. Unless US States are homogeneous.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Well, the difference is obviously because of historical and scale reasons. But from a good governance/administration standpoint they have every reason to exist. Unless US States are homogeneous.
The US States are essentially your regional equivalents
I can see the benefit of districts larger than the county level but smaller than the state level.
I think a cleaner way to do it would be larger counties. County boundaries that made sense when most people traveled on horseback or by foot don't really make sense in an era of hypercommutes, businesses that routinely serve three counties, and water that is pumped for hundreds of miles.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I can see the benefit of districts larger than the county level but smaller than the state level.
I think a cleaner way to do it would be larger counties. County boundaries that made sense when most people traveled on horseback or by foot don't really make sense in an era of hypercommutes, businesses that routinely serve three counties, and water that is pumped for hundreds of miles.
I was going to argue with this idea but then I realized we probably have very different experiences so I looked at a California County map.
I will also point out that whether or not it might have been better, at the outset, to divide the California territory into more, smaller states has no bearing on whether it's a good idea now. In much the same way that you don't say, "Huh, we should have subdivided this land into more, smaller properties before we sold them off to individual landowners," and then proceed to chop everybody's house in two.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Also, taking regional differences into consideration is a good idea that would make a lot of sense, level of government or not.
So most states make a half-hearted attempt so they can say they tried, but don't really want to make the effort.
EU
Intergovernmental/Supranational
National Traditional Region/District/State (in most, but not all Member States) AND EU Administrative Regions
Local
US
Federal
State
County Municipal
It seems like large States and the Federal government should be doing something like this.
Maybe some of the larger counties, particularly to the west, could be thought of regional equivalents, but the average county size seems fairly equivalent in scale to European "counties" of which you will find multiple in a region.
Just fascinating that a level of Government that is considered of core and growing importance in Europe just doesn't exist in the US.
That last part is the US equivalent of Local. Small town councils and the like. Its just that the US is so large and the various states are so different that Municipal and County tend to overlap and blend a lot more then in the EU. Los Angeles is a city, but its so large that its also a county and several of its suburbs are so large that they are counties in their own right. Then there are places like Compton, that used to be a distinct town from LA back in the day, but LA has since grown to reach Compton entirely. Compton is still a municipality in LA county, separate legally from the City of LA, but geographically a part of the City of LA proper.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
That last part is the US equivalent of Local. Small town councils and the like. Its just that the US is so large and the various states are so different that Municipal and County tend to overlap and blend a lot more then in the EU. Los Angeles is a city, but its so large that its also a county and several of its suburbs are so large that they are counties in their own right. Then there are places like Compton, that used to be a distinct town from LA back in the day, but LA has since grown to reach Compton entirely. Compton is still a municipality in LA county, separate legally from the City of LA, but geographically a part of the City of LA proper.
Which made trying to understand some rappers quite difficult for me as a kid. I figured Compton was just a neighbourhood but then people refer to it as a city but then say they're also from LA. And it gets more and more confusing with people freely mixing neighbourhoods with cities so I just gave up on trying to understand it.
But LA is stupid huge. LA County is a quarter of the size of my entire country. And it has more than half of the population.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
But if there wasn't a drought going on there would be plenty of water. 4 years ago water use was higher, and the reservoirs were full.
Its a lot easier (and smart anyway) for someone in San Francisco to stop washing their car and flushing the toilet when they urinate than it is for a farmer to switch from strawberries to apples. Everyone needs to cut back, not just farms who are at least doing something useful with the water.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
You can't take a purely GDP position on farming or agriculture. When you compare it to the costs of high-technology fields then yes the resource cost is higher, yes the GDP yield is lower, and no none of that matters because people can't eat software!
Nobody is going to starve to death if we grow less alfalfa. Nobody is going to starve to death if we rip up some almond trees. Nobody will go naked if we grow a bit less cotton. Strawberries require 4x the water as apples per acre, switching some fields from one to the other (as many of those acres were recently switched in the other direction) won't be the end of the world.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.
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I'll see myself out.
Why would it not be? Having the money and the ability to solve the problems that you yourself are complaining about while also being able to turn a profit seems like a no-brainer.
Investing in infrastructure like that isn't going to hurt them and will ingratiate them with the people.
Ultimately, there's plenty of water for the population to grow enormously, and simultaneously maintain our position as by far the most productive farming state.
There just isn't enough water to continue our current wasteful practices. Like, each almond requires 1.1 gallons of H2O. Not each bag, each individual nut. And we grow all of the US production and ~80% of the world supply. We grow bales and bales of alfalfa that just gets shipped to China and Japan as cattle feed, because it's cheaper to truck it to Long Beach and send it over the Pacific than it is to truck it north to the Central Valley where the cows are. We have dozens and dozens of golf courses in the desert. We don't monitor groundwater use (which is fucking insane).
But Silicon Valley is not suffering. And they aren't going to be able to solve the problem (that they don't have to deal with).
Also try imagining a world where the US is utterly dependent on importing sufficient food from other countries in order to feed its population properly.
It is a situation you do not ever want to be in if you're a major power.
Socal is not California
Edit: also as point out above. California seems to be getting the same misconception as Texas. Both states aren't made up geographically of nothing but deserts. In fact both are rather diverse when it comes to geography.
also pointed out below, the water issue isn't unique to California and its kind of important that simply moving where stuff is grown, is not an option (some plants are really fucking picky about their environment, plus it would be nice to not have to pit food production against keeping around a conservation location either).
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
We turned a lot of middle america into desert for a while trying to farm out as much land as possible. Not that that has to be the alternative, but global warming is being felt by agriculture centers across the US. Reservoirs and lakes running out are more than a California problem. There's also the problem with climate sensitive plants that can't just be uprooted and grown wherever.
If we don't get on an actual terraforming solution it's not going to be good, and it wont matter where we relocate farms to.
It's also not their job to render the state asunder.
But if one of them chooses to stick his dick in politics, is it too much to ask that he work on something useful?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The most productive agricultural communities in California (and, for that matter, the US) are in the San Joaquin and Central Valleys. The biomes around Stockton, Modesto, Fresno, Visalia are naturally chaparral - arid semi-deserts that naturally get less than 12" of rainfall per year.
If it weren't for manmade irrigation, most of this region would not be capable of growing crops, and what would be left couldn't grow the quantity and variety that we do now.
Or, to put it visually:
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Honestly I don't quite understand why everyone considers this idea to be so crazy.
Plus, breaking states in to smaller (or even larger) groups would require a constant redrawing to maintain a more-or-less even balance regarding population distribution. Which, even if only done for ever census result, would still cause quite a few years of chaos as people resettle amongst themselves. And if you don't redraw the lines, then eventually you end up again where we are now or you still get a bunch of uber-powerful city-states that have disproportionate power at the federal level.
It may be imperfect, especially compared to other countries, but in reality, the biggest problem is not that some states have larger populations and greater influence. It's that a whole branch of government is unwilling or unable to get anything done at all. It used to work and now it doesn't. But it wasn't how it was organised that caused that to happen.
I'm guess what I'm ultimately asking do administrative/bureaucratic structures acknowledge differences within States. Do States divide themselves up into different regions for implementing policies? Does Federal policymaking distinguish between different areas within States? Or does it hand over resources to the State, which hands over resources to its Counties/Cities?
For example, a lot of what the EU does in terms of structural funds etc is distributed upon a regional basis, not to Member States, and these "regions" aren't traditional regions (not all Member States have administrative districts/provinces/regions/states, but most do) but rather based on economic/social data specifically for governance purposes. So less well off areas in ostensibly wealthy Member States get a fair shake.
It varies pretty widely from thing to thing. Some things are just money handed to the states (healthcare), others are directly administered by the government at the local level (postal service).
I think the closest thing to this concept in my experience is the "county". The county is the level of division that sits between a state and a city.
EU
Intergovernmental/Supranational
National
Traditional Region/District/State (in most, but not all Member States) AND EU Administrative Regions
Local
US
Federal
State
Nothing?
County
It seems like large States and the Federal government should be doing something like this.
Maybe some of the larger counties, particularly to the west, could be thought of regional equivalents, but the average county size seems fairly equivalent in scale to European "counties" of which you will find multiple in a region.
Just fascinating that a level of Government that is considered of core and growing importance in Europe just doesn't exist in the US.
There wouldn't be any reason for them.
We have regional bureaucracies that are similar in size and division to EU NUTS-2, but only for specific purposes. For example, water is allocated between the various counties of the Central Valley by a regional water board. Another example, many metropolitan areas have a public transit joint powers board that covers multiple cities and counties.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This may just be differing theories of government but I always remember being told that states have any power NOT explicitly withheld for the Federal government. It's why incorporation of amendments is a big deal because it isn't automatic that states have to abide by them. Which fits in the traditional view of states as independent actors that form this union mostly for self protection.
Granted, the reasons for states having so much power grows smaller every day since the logistical issues that would have required such an arrangement keep becoming less important.
Anyway, what this thread is about is how a bunch of selfish, ignorant people think that splitting a state into smaller bits just for tax purposes, would make things work better. Whether in California or the nation, adding a layer of government, especially when it isn't needed, will simply make the current problems bigger.
And the last thing the US needs is organised regional power blocs. It tends not to end well.
ten states
The US States are essentially your regional equivalents
I think a cleaner way to do it would be larger counties. County boundaries that made sense when most people traveled on horseback or by foot don't really make sense in an era of hypercommutes, businesses that routinely serve three counties, and water that is pumped for hundreds of miles.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I was going to argue with this idea but then I realized we probably have very different experiences so I looked at a California County map.
Woa.
So most states make a half-hearted attempt so they can say they tried, but don't really want to make the effort.
That last part is the US equivalent of Local. Small town councils and the like. Its just that the US is so large and the various states are so different that Municipal and County tend to overlap and blend a lot more then in the EU. Los Angeles is a city, but its so large that its also a county and several of its suburbs are so large that they are counties in their own right. Then there are places like Compton, that used to be a distinct town from LA back in the day, but LA has since grown to reach Compton entirely. Compton is still a municipality in LA county, separate legally from the City of LA, but geographically a part of the City of LA proper.
Which made trying to understand some rappers quite difficult for me as a kid. I figured Compton was just a neighbourhood but then people refer to it as a city but then say they're also from LA. And it gets more and more confusing with people freely mixing neighbourhoods with cities so I just gave up on trying to understand it.
But LA is stupid huge. LA County is a quarter of the size of my entire country. And it has more than half of the population.
If every city in CA got down to the per capita use of Spain, for example, we'd save a significant amount of water. But we'd still be in a drought. We'd still be pulling up almond trees and letting alfalfa fields dry out, just not quite as much. At the end of this, we'll be eating more pork and chicken and less beef, because they require a small fraction of the water that beef does to get the same amount of meat. Or we'll eat less meat overall, since of course vegetables are dramatically more water efficient than even chicken. People won't die.
There physically isn't enough water being wasted by the cities to keep the farmers growing the thirstiest crops they can find on some of the driest land in the country. If they hadn't been getting massively subsidized (or free!) water for the last century, they would've had to be efficient and careful in their water use.
But if there wasn't a drought going on there would be plenty of water. 4 years ago water use was higher, and the reservoirs were full.
Its a lot easier (and smart anyway) for someone in San Francisco to stop washing their car and flushing the toilet when they urinate than it is for a farmer to switch from strawberries to apples. Everyone needs to cut back, not just farms who are at least doing something useful with the water.
California does not exist in a vacuum. The workers and farmers will be severely put out by being forced to grow less, the economic impact of being forced to leave the fields fallow is something that will have far reaching consequences. It still wouldn't solve the problem either. The fact is that the natural sources of water are scarce, and unless we can come up with larger scale man-made sources then the entire SouthWest will continue to have water shortages and a steadily decreasing fresh water supply in general. This is something that we have to deal with, and cutting off the farmers isn't going to improve the ecological situation.
You're suggesting cutting off the largest users in order to preserve resources for the largest number of people, instead of actually fixing the problem. It's last-ditch, survivalist theory instead of the kind of innovative thinking that has been the hallmark of mankind's rise and spread as the pre-eminent species on the planet.
Hence the state of Galt's Gulch Silicon Valley.
Conversely, asking the cities to cut back, while generally a good idea, isn't gonna actually solve anything.
That region is either gonna have to either change it's lifestyle or change it's environment more.