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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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Senators shouldn't represent people anyways. They should represent state governments like they were supposed to.

In a world where government is representative of the constituents, these are effectively the same thing.

And California should split into multiple states if it wants better representation in the senate

Yeah, it's a stupid system that would reward behavior like this.

But they'd be dumb to do so because they get far more government control of the country by just having their state legislature act like a mini-national government and pass a bunch of regulations. Corporations/manufacturers are basically forced to comply because of the size of the California market. I'm unsympathetic to these complaints. On paper they have less representation, in reality they have an outsized influence.

They don't have to, it's just that simple market dynamics and efficiency of scale generally means making just version X is better than making X and Y unless there's serious demand for deviation. Now there is enough demand spread across the other states that if consumers in the rest of the US really cared, many companies would do a version Y for them. A state like Texas or Florida could easily do some form of anti-regulation too if they really wanted.

Issue is, the consumers often don't actually care that much and sometimes even like it. Texas and Florida don't enact such opposite regulation laws because they don't really want that or care much to begin with.

In a world where government is representative of the constituents, these are effectively the same thing.

In that world Mao Zedong as supreme ruler is the same thing as democracy.

There obvious differences between direct democracy and representative democracy. Senate was supposed to be two layers removed from direct democracy, house and president just one layer.


I know why California regulations impact the whole US. If California was 1/50th of the US market it probably wouldn't be worth it. They are instead about 15% of the US economy. Which is enough that manufacturers will change to their requirements.

I'd be fine with Texas and Florida splitting up as states as well. New York should split. Virginia should split. Probably a few others.