The people's will

California is an experiment in extreme democracy gone wrong, says Andreas Kluth. But reform could make it a model for others

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Readers' comments



AFColonel you are the one full of shit, elderly people were in fact taxed out of their homes. It happened to the mother of my girlfriend back in the late 1960's. It probably wasn't a common occurance but it definately did happen.

Mervyn Sullivan

There is no doubt about what is driving the Californian economy into the ground... environmentalism and insane regulations that are strangling businesses and/or driving them out of the state. The Californian political mindset of the last decade, in particular, can be blamed. What is even more concerning is that Californian politicians have been so engrossed in themselves and their whacky policies, they've lost all sense of reality regarding the impact their insane policies are having on the state.!

I am red-green colour blind. The graphic art in this article is a fantastic improvement: it's the difference between moonlight and sunlight! Please adopt it for all you articles.


It's quite true that the initiative process has run amok, but this has less to do with the perils of direct democracy than with the capture of the process by moneyed special interests.
When I was in Sacramento, anyone -- a business lobby or do-good organization, whoever -- could call one of a half-dozen "signature brokers" and get a quote for getting their proposition on the ballot. Signatures would be collected by itinerant gangs of college students at so much per; each gang would have to have a state-resident "gang boss" to make them legal. Once a prop was on the ballot, it was may the best ad campaign win.
So the initiative process, one of the paragons of the Progressive movement circa 1910, has been corrupted, like so much else in U.S. governance. I'm not sure anyone wants to abolish it or something like it entirely--that would solve the problem by cutting off an arm. But reforming or restraining it is a tough issue, perhaps suitable for the talked-of "rewrite the California state constitutional convention" of which your author seems unaware.


It makes no sense to claim that California represents "democracy gone wrong". To the extent that California represents democracy, it is doing what a democracy does -- aggregating the opinions of its citizens and making decisions accordingly. In hindsight, many of those decisions look less than optimal, but that is reality.

And, given the size of California's economy, and the wealth that that represents, California is far, far from unrecoverable. It is reasonable to assume that the next decade (or two, or three) will see many of California's problems resolved in some way or another. And since it is in very few people's interest to resolve those problems by creating chaos and destruction, I can safely say that many of today's problems are going to be resolved. And, those problems are going to be resolved democratically. What more could you ask for?

af colonel

To Mao is full of shit You falsely state: Of course the author won't go into the the biggest reason Prop 13 was passed: seniors losing thier homes to the tax collector after having thier property tax increased hundreds of percent in a year... is a blatant lie.None of that ever happened, except in your mind. My parents owned several homes since the 1940's all over California and that never happened to them, and I have the property tax receipts going back to 1944.
Howard Jarvis and his neo con's fabricated all that crap. The bottom line was, that they did not want to contribute to the education of California's youth, since in their reasoning seniors did not have kids, and therefore blah blah blah selfishism espoused by Ayn Rand and the morons at the Chicago school of economics.
But look where it got California: It is Californicated with the help of selfish bastards like Jarvis, Reagan and You, people who ignore the greater good,spread misinformation like Hitlers propaganda minister did, and refuse to accept the consequences. Enjoy the ride. California will not recover in your lifetime.

Mrs. Market

Well, we ARE in a mess here in Cali and certainly a good portion of it can be ascribed to a ridiculous number of Props every election time (at least once every two years, and sometimes twice).

Perhaps the Props (and direct democracy) are only partially responsible for our current problems, but as a Cali voter I am growing tired of the confusing Prop titles and descriptions in each ballot, only to find that once we do pass a particular Prop, it is then challenged for years in the courts until it is over-ruled. What's the point?

Another issue, at least over the past 10 to 20 years has been the power of the public employee unions (of which The Paternalist makes no mention).

And, lastly, our state does have a reputation of allowing for "moochers" to come on in and join the party, no entry fee!

These latter two components combined with the Prop problem add up to One Big Problem, best captured in a quote commonly (but perhaps mistakenly) ascribed to 18th Century Scots philosopher Alexander Tytler: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."

And that is pretty much what we have done in California: we discovered how to wreck out state and have proceeded to do just that.

In the words of Pogo: We have met the enemy, and it is us.

California Voice

Take care when blaming Prop. 13 for part of California's woes. When a house is sold the taxes are revised to the current market value (the sales price). I have heard that, on average, houses are resold every five years. Since 1978, when Prop. 13 was passed, most houses have adjusted upward to pay on current market value.


If Warren Buffet wants to pay extra property tax, all he has to do is ask the county to reassess his property at fair market value. The County Tax Collector will be MORE than happy to do so.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that Buffet has done enough remodels and construction work there that his home SHOULD be reassessed: how many square feet is his home now compared to when he bought it? If there is any more square footage, then it's supposed to be reassessed at market value. If Warren Buffet didn't report his reassessment-triggering upgrades, then he is a TAX CHEAT!


Of course the author won't go into the the biggest reason Prop 13 was passed: seniors losing thier homes to the tax collector after having thier property tax increased hundreds of percent in a year, with public employees being able to pick up the stolen property just by paying off the tax lien. Those same public employees want to get rid of Prop 13 so that they can go back to doing it (public employees STILL have first rights to tax-confiscated properties).


Even with its dysfunctional state, would still rather live here then Texas. No other state has the ability to reinvent itself like California.

Stephen Morris

The Paternalist decides to run a series on Democracy, and from the very outset it starts by saying: “Now, what are the very worst stories we can dig up on Democracy? OK. Let’s make that the focus and title of our series.”

Have you no shame?

Why focus on California (in the past three decades) as your principal example of Democracy?

To begin with, California is not fully democratic. It is forced to operate under the savagely non-democratic US federal constitution. That has, amongst other things, created two parties of ambitious politicians committed to wielding power – at both state and federal level – with all the disastrous consequences such government entails.

Moreover, as you yourself acknowledge, “Direct democracy in California is thus an aberration.” It doesn’t have provisions for super-majorities (as in cantonal Switzerland). But that is surely an argument that California is too big, not too democratic, and therefore a poor example.

Why did you not choose Switzerland as your principal example, and work from there? As you yourself acknowledge: “Switzerland is still the gold standard”.

And why did you not give equal attention to the other 27 US states which have partial Democracy in one form or another?

Indeed, why did you not focus on California itself – over its entire history since the right of initiative was introduced in 1911. It has, after all, been one of the most prosperous and progressive societies of all time. And its problems today are largely the problems of success – handling the vast numbers of people who have poured in (from other US states, from across the Mexican border, and from overseas) - not the problems of Democracy.

Looking at California over a century of its partial Democracy, one might conclude it had the best system in the US!

But that wouldn’t fit well with The Paternalist’s agenda.

It would have been just as (il)logical for you to write a series about (so-called) “representative” government and devote most of it to the debacle that is the US federal government.

But let us focus on the illogicality of your arguments. Because there is one argument in favour of Democracy that is logically impregnable:

The People haven’t voted to abolish it,

even though it is a straightforward matter to call a referendum for that purpose.

In California itself it is not for want of trying. Since the right of initiative was introduced, there have been three such attempts, and all have failed or been withdrawn in the face of imminent defeat.

By what logical principle are The Paternalist’s preferences privileged over those of the people concerned?

In logical terms the arguments you have presented are “is-ought” fallacies. You have presented facts (many of them tendentious) and purported to draw “ought” conclusions from them. But you cannot make an “ought” from an “is”. Other people examining the same facts may conclude that Democracy is the best form of government.

And simply declaring your own preferences to be superior is a fallacy of petitio principii: a belief in the superiority of your own preference is itself a preference, which begs the original question of why it should be regarded as superior.

So why not couch the problem in other terms:

Who is to decide the form of government?

The only way of answering that question without privileging some people a priori (which would invite the recursive question “Who decided to privilege them?”) is to allow all people to decide in a way that does not privilege any.

It is the only method that does not require the doing of something that is logically impossible to do (i.e. identifying a priori privileged individuals).

Such a system requires that:

a) all votes be given equal weight;

b) the options voted on are not pre-vetted by a privileged group; and

c) the order in which options are eliminated is not determined by a privileged group.

The only mechanism satisfying those requirements is an initiative-and-referendum system.

Moreover, as a matter of historical record, we observe that:

a) in most jurisdictions the People have never had the freedom to choose their system of government thus;

b) where they do, they have voted almost invariably to adopt Democracy to the greatest extent made available to them; and

c) where they have Democracy they do not vote to abolish it.

That is not to say that any model of Democracy is the “right” form of government or the “best” form of government. Such assessments would be subjective.

But it is the form of government that people choose when they are given the chance, and hold on to once they get it.

So, here is a challenge for The Paternalist. Give your readers a logically coherent answer to the following question:

“Why have people elsewhere not been given the freedom to choose the system of government they prefer for their country?”


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