Exactly.
California has something like 6.5X the population of Wisconsin. But UC Berkeley’s undergrad program is not 6.5X the size of UW Madison’s, it is actually right around the same size. So you would need something like 6 or 7 UC undergrad campuses the size of UC Berkeley to reach proportionality with just Wisconsin’s Madison campus–and hey, look at that!
I think in substance, this means kids in California are not worse off than kids in Wisconsin when it comes to the availability of highly resourced public colleges. In fact, once might even suggest it is nice they may get some choice of campus (not always, but sometimes).
However, if it is important to you that you be able to say you got into the top-ranked, or maybe one of the two top-ranked colleges, in your state, then California is indeed not a great place for kids (or parents) who want to be able to say that.
And I don’t mean to be dismissive of anyone feeling that, but the path out is to realize that basically yes, you really do have more flagship-level campuses than just two. And in the long run, that is what is going to matter, the actual substance of where you go to college.