It's kind of silly California, 'we', Bay Area, are the best and greatest of all, you need us, bow before us. This sounds too one-sided and most likely, it's not that simple.

Anyway, except this reasoning, I'm very keen on the idea of city states, I'd like to try something like that, the city I live in is most likely the first thing I try to identify with, and it is perhaps the authority that affects my life the most (and I even can't vote in the city where I live now…).