Venture capitalist Tim Draper submitted a proposal this weekend to transform California into several Golden States
The future state of Silicon Valley? (Proehl Studios/Corbis)
T
im Draper is a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist with an eye toward the future. The firm he co-founded, DFJ, has over $7 billion of capital commitments invested in companies like SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
On Friday, however, Draper revealed perhaps his boldest vision for the future yet: A proposal to split California into six different states.
TechCrunch reports that Draper submitted a plan to the California attorney general that would slice California into six horizontal statehoods: South California, West California, Central California, North California, and the bizarrely named Jefferson.
Rounding out the half dozen, of course, would be the state of Silicon Valley.
"It is about time California was properly represented with senators in Washington. Now our number of senators per person will be about average," Draper told TechCrunch in an email. What he's referring to, of course, is that each of America's 50 states has two senators — whether it's a sparsely populated state like Wyoming or a giant like California. And in Draper's plan, Silicon Valley would have two senators of its very own.
Silicon Valley exceptionalism is nothing new, of course. As Inc's Abigail Tracy points out, the growing worldview of the Valley as a harbinger of techno-libertarian values has already manifested in all sorts of far-flung ideas: PayPal's Peter Thiel envisions floating sea colonies free from government intervention, while former Facebooker and VC Chamath Palihapitiya once not-so-subtly implied that Silicon Valley "doesn't need a government."
While it is very, very unlikely that this plan will ever get within sniffing distance of becoming reality, you can't really blame Draper for trying. In fact, it may have less to do with the Valley viewing itself as a gleaming utopia and more to do with Draper's diminishing political influence: A decade ago Draper was widely held as President George W. Bush's go-to guy in Silicon Valley. Not anymore.
You can read Draper's proposal in its entirety here.
Chris Gayomali is the science and technology editor for TheWeek.com. Sometimes he writes about other stuff. His work has also appeared in TIME, Men's Journal, Esquire, and The Atlantic.
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