[leoedin]

When it's between having almonds or the taps drying up, people will absolutely redefine water rights. Ultimately democracy is a numbers game, and there's far, far more people living in cities than there are farmers.

The speed of the response to Covid (initially...) was a good demonstration of how fast society can react when threatened with imminent danger. We went from "liberal democracies will never limit freedom of movement" to a broadly consensual "nobody can leave their house" in 2 weeks. How fast do you think the citizens of LA will change their mind about almond farming when their taps dry up?

[patrick451]

What we learned during covid is that propaganda has jaw dropping power and that a large fraction of the population is vulnerable to it. The citizens of LA will change their minds about almonds when the media tells them to.

[solardev]

The citizens of LA will blindly follow whichever tyrant is closest to their values, media or not. The media is far weaker than it's been in decades, and cults of personality amplified by marketing way more powerful.

[solardev]

But democracy isn't really about numbers, just power and propaganda. It's never been one person one vote. The urban rural divide has been going on for decades if not centuries, and still the rural areas have disproportionate power and the cities almost none (at the federal level). Various systems from the electoral college to campaign finance to the bilateral congress to the courts serve to purposely dilute the individual electoral power of each citizen,transferring power to political dynasties instead... to the point that what we have is way closer to a corrupt oligarchy than any meaningful sort of democracy.

Ultimately the citizens of LA don't have any meaningful political power outside of Sacramento. Water is a multi state thing and the urban dwellers have loud voices but no meaningful representation. They can yell all they want, but most of the country by area doesn't care about them. By population they should win every issue, but they haven't for decades because we don't actually have a democracy.