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by bcrosby95 1276 days ago
Many states have referendum style systems, such as California.

Heck, a county voted to split from California. That won't happen though.

1 comments

And those systems have created some massive problems. Prop 13 is one of the worst laws in the country, but the state is unable to fix it.
Actually, Prop 13 has millions of proponents and polls suggest that most are appear to be fully aware of the consequences.

https://projects.scpr.org/prop-13/history/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+popular+is+prop+13+in+ca...

Obviously if people didn't support it then it would be repealed. That doesn't make it a good law. It is directly responsible for the housing affordability crisis in california. That's good for homeowners so they won't repeal it, but it's very bad for the state and everyone else. Which is the whole point here, direct democracy leads to 51% of the population shafting the other 49%.
> That's good for homeowners so they won't repeal it, but it's very bad for the state and everyone else.

Homeowners are a big part of the state. "everyone else" must be a small minority. If you think it is a big enough part of the population, feel free to bring a prop to repeal prop 13. My bet is that any attempt to repeal it will lose in a landslide based on what happened in 2020[1] when they attempted a partial repeal.

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_15,_Tax_on_Co...

> Which is the whole point here, direct democracy leads to 51% of the population shafting the other 49%.

Notice that prop 15 lost by 4%... It is not good for the state as a whole, but it is good for the 52% of the voters that own a home. So now 48% of the state and everyone that wants to move to california is fucked because 9 million people want their home value to keep increasing. They've effectively voted in a law that requires non homeowners to pay homeowners $500 a year and burn another $500 due to lost economic efficiency. Is that good for homeowners? I guess, but it's certainly bad for the state.

If 52% of people in alabama wanted to bring back slavery does that make it the right thing to do?

> Notice that prop 15 lost by 4%

And it targeted only commercial and industrial properties, with proceeds going to education and local govt funding. That is, as sympathetic setup as it could be. It didn't touch any residential homes, neither primary nor secondary nor rentals. And it still lost.

> it is good for the 52% of the voters that own a home

It seems you didn't read what prop 15 was about. If it included homes, the vote against it would have been much higher than 52%.