Tim Draper’s idea for six Californias is so crazy it just won’t work.

Tim Draper is richer than you and me. Tim Draper is probably richer than the richest person in Pebble Beach or Carmel or Big Sur. He’s a venture capitalist. He pioneered the concept of e-mail viral marketing and he made a fortune from it. He’s invested in Skype and Hotmail (remember when that was all there was?) and the peer-to-peer lending site Prosper and dozens of other companies.

In Silicon Valley-speak, he’s an A-list investor in a marquis firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

He’s also at least a little bit crazy. Search YouTube for “Tim Draper shows his appreciation for woman” and you’ll get the picture – Draper, while accepting an award, takes off his clothes and talks about all the women entrepreneurs he’s helped.

Draper is the guy behind the latest iteration of an idea to carve California into pieces, in this case, six separate states. The Golden State would become Golden States. Draper’s approximation of the new Californias would be the state of Jefferson (featuring Redding and Chico); North California (with Sacramento and Santa Rosa); West California (think Los Angeles and Long Beach); Central California (Fresno and Bakersfield); and South California (with San Diego and Anaheim).

And then there’s us. We, gentle readers, will be living in the state of Silicon Valley. It’s long been the dream of a lot of North County and Salinas politicians to be more like Silicon Valley, so here we go: The state of Silicon Valley would span from the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge all the way south to Monterey County and a little bit beyond. The new state would have a population of 6.6 million and the highest per capita income in the nation at $62,288. By comparison, Central California would have 4.2 million people and a per capita income of $33,510, the lowest in the country.

Draper thinks California, as is, is too big, too difficult and too disparate to govern.

“We have the farmers in the Central Valley and the entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley and we have the Hollywood group and the military suppliers down in Southern California,” he said during a recent Fox News segment, “and they have separate interests and separate needs and it’s very difficult for one group in Sacramento to serve those needs.”

(That was in response to a question, “Is this another example of wealthy tech people being tone deaf to the rest of the state?” To which he said, “This is for the rest of the state. The whole point is for the rest of the state to have better governance that’s more local.”)

Draper’s spent $5.2 million of his own money so far collecting 1.3 million signatures with an eye on getting the six Californias initiative qualified for the 2016 ballot. He started turning in those signatures to various county registrars of voters July 15.

For more, I spoke to Roger Salazar, spokesman for Six Californias, as the campaign is called.

“Part of this is the desire to start a conversation,” Salazar says. “Different parts of the state have felt neglected by state government. But it’s an interesting concept and there’s no question that it’s going to take a while for people to wrap their heads around. That’s why we pushed it off to November 2016.”

As for the fact that the plan would create the state with the lowest and highest per capita incomes in the country, Salazar says those numbers exist as reality now.

“The Central Valley is very poor, even Salinas is very poor. People are saying you create the poorest states in the country, but that’s what they are now,” Salazar says. “But with six states, with competition for resources and jobs with their own needs in mind, they would be more competitive.”

If Salinas and Monterey decide they don’t belong in Silicon Valley, they can petition to move to another state, Salazar says.

If this passes (and that’s a huge if), it would take approval of the U.S. Congress to actually happen. Then there are the inevitable lawsuits. And given the glacial speed at which either our state or federal governmentsc accomplish anything, the chances are better that an actual Silicon Valley company will choose Monterey County to call home.

MARY DUAN Is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com or follow her at twitter.com/maryrduan