Two wolves and one sheep can also have a vote about what's for dinner and the outcome be democratic.

I don't know why people in San Diego or NorCal should have a vote about what happens with respect to zoning in Palo Alto or Mountain View. Why not let people in Butte, Montana put in their vote as well?

Because housing availability seriously impacts economic and social mobility. It's hard to work one's way out of poverty as it is. It's even harder when the cities with the Lion's share of the jobs hardly build any housing and cause rents to skyrocket as a result.

> I don't know why people in San Diego or NorCal should have a vote about what happens with respect to zoning in Palo Alto or Mountain View. Why not let people in Butte, Montana put in their vote as well?

I'd be totally okay with nation wide housing policies (and I have lived in one of those cities you mentioned, and I currently live in Silicon Valley so I'd be impacted by this change). I think poor housing policies are big drivers of economic immobility, and people everywhere in the country are affected by it. Someone in Montana may not live in San Francisco, but if they have to turn down a job in SF due to insane rents then they are impacted by SF's housing policies. Consequently, if there was a push to ban nativist policies like rent control, proposition 13, or other barriers in the housing market nation wide I would both think it is fair and I'd support it.

Your last sentence struck an interesting chord of agreement-and-disagreement with me. I also oppose rent control and ill-considered tax controls like Prop13, because I think the downsides for communities far exceed the upsides in both cases.

That means I would consistently vote against them in my own community, but I still support the rights of people in other communities to make choices different than my own. If they prefer the outcomes under rent control or Prop-13 type initiatives, who am I to say that they're wrong for their own community? Of course I can have an opinion that they're wrong, but I'd rather not force them to comply with my opinion over their own and their neighbors'.

Side note: the reason I don't live in Silicon Valley right now is that when I went interviewing out there and had job offers from two companies at a healthy increase over my then-salary, neither would allow me to afford to purchase a comparable level of housing and lifestyle to what I have out here. That was in 1998 or 1999.

It's because these housing shortages are paid for by everyone who doesn't live in the jurisdiction and cannot vote for them, so there's a perverse incentive for incumbents to treat shortages as free money that comes from nowhere.

It's not unlike upper atmosphere pollution, as if every local community were able to have their own policy on it. The cost of pollution is paid for by no one in particular but principally other people far away. Each community's individual impact is tiny and easy to deny, but they all tend to choose the same thing which has a greater collective impact. Aren't their rights to choose more important than any cost to society, without question?

Clean air, clean rivers/oceans, controlled CO2/GHG, banning leaded gasoline for highway use, and similar items I think of as different in a critical way than zoning or local housing shortages. There's no amount of money (or other resource) that an individual can expend to buy clean oceans, air, or lower GHG. There are no practical alternatives.

There is an amount of money that an individual can spend to buy a house in Palo Alto. That amount of money might be higher than some people would prefer or elect, or (in many cases) even be able to spend, but there are practical alternatives in any case (to include living in other communities).

In a case where no practical alternatives exist, I agree there's a much greater cause for collective input and decision-making (to include at a global scale in many cases, as these aren't even a state or nation-state level of issue, though it's the states and nation-states that enact policies and laws to implement/enforce collectively-agreed treaties on some of these topics).

Where practical alternatives exist, I find the most local government level to be the most desirable one to make the decisions that disproportionately affect the people who live there over people who don't live there but might like to.

Americans are Constitutionally entitled to the equal protection of the laws everywhere in America. Cities are not sovereign nations. They don't get to control migration or treat natives preferentially.

While it's nice to govern as locally as possible as a matter of general principle, when cities are hoarding wealth and opportunity and dumping the downside on the larger community, the larger community is right to reconsider the limits of the authority it delegated. Part of what it means to be in the State of California (or the United States of America) is accepting migration from, and influence by, others in that category.

Does Broadmoor have a right to override Daly City? Or Piedmont, Oakland? Both are donut holes within larger cities. Rich neighborhoods protecting their interests against those of the community. Local governments in CA are convoluted and corrupt. Have a committee of experts draw the lines based on actual geography and common sense, and then we can let them decide what is right for their own “communities”

"CA is also a democracy, so it's just one democratic outcome overriding a different democratic outcome."

So, then, is the United States.

Would someone like to bet me that there is nearly 1:1 mapping between (people who think CA should undermine local control over housing) and (people who think CA should exert local control over marijuana policy) ?

Of course that's true. Now defend the principle, and benefits, of local control in some spheres where it's convenient but not in other spheres where it is not.

It has to be a balance. Throughout history, different levels of governments have stepped in to correct an injustice. The Civil Rights Act was one example; California not enforcing certain immigration rules is another example, in the other direction.

It doesn't matter whether the decision is coming from a democratic government above or a democratic government below; what matters is doing the right thing.