@djc States are the very worst level of government from a democratic perspective. Do you know who your state reps / senators are? The public pays some attention to the national, and some attention to the local, but the state belongs only to funded, motivated interests. 1/

@djc You can argue that time to show up at meetings is a bad way to allocate influence (I actually have mixed feelings about that one, showing up is a relatively egalitarian way to allocate influence), but how influence is allocated at the state level is much worse. 2/

@djc YIMBYs misguide themselves I think by taking a thing great in a specific case (we can circumvent the busybodies at the state level if we are well funded and organized, which we are!) without thinking through how it generalizes (funded and organized interests can run roughshod of individuals by operating at a level and scale inaccessible and foreign to them, less widely understood and democratically accountable even then the Federal government). 3/

@djc If it was up to me, the state level would not exist at all. We would elect national level officials (there's one national center to which we all pay attention), and local officials (we have a place where we are meaningfully enfranchised and can participate in democratic decisionmaking). The state level is a place for mischief. /fin

@djc (i'd also want to reform away elections for dog catchers and school board members and judges and all of that. meaningful democratic attention is a scarce resource. you don't get "more democracy" by creating an unaccountable blizzard of electeds to whom or information about whom most citizens have no access.)

@djc fair enough. obviously face time doesn’t scale, even at a local level, although given the small minority that would bother to want it, it might be less hopeless than it seems. it’s not face time in particular that has me grumpy. towards you, it was writing off local government as laughable or illegitimate. towards my candidate, it was not providing any meaningful means of rich interaction and feedback at the level where it’s most precious and plausible. 1/

@djc literally the only contact info this candidate provides are forms where you can donate, volunteer, acquire lawn signs, or merch, and a physical address to which we are directed to address checks. (i’m going to mail off my post, with no check included, to that address.) /fin

@djc ( i actually do think face time, actual human-level knowing of people, is pretty indispensable to democracy, and want to see reforms that mean we actually would know our representatives https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9069.html )