this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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I may be misremembering, but I believe the way things were originally designed was that the Senate was supposed to represent the states, not the people. The house represented the people. That's why the Senate has equal representation (because the states were meant to have equal say), and the house proportionate to population.
That is correct. The state legislatures generally (if not always) picked the senators, but due to huge state corruption, it was almost always political qui pro quo, and some states even going full terms without selecting sla sentaor. This led to the 17th amendment (which you'll here rednecks and/or white supremacists asposing, because states' rights.)
Edit to add: Wikipedia knows it better than I do.
Appreciate the extra details and the link!
This is correct, and this part of the system works fine. What should have happened though is a population break point where a state has to break up if they exceed a certain population. CA should be at least 3 states. New York needs a split as well, probably a few others. There is no way a state can serve its population well when the population is measured in the tens of millions.
I agree in theory, but big cities are where things get muddy.
When a single city (e.g. New York City, population ~8 million just to use the biggest example) has a population larger than entire states, how do you "split" the state of New York? If the city itself, excluding any of the surrounding "metro area", was its own state, it would be the 13th most populous in the US and also the smallest by area.
Do we carve up each of the boroughs as a separate state, and give New York City 10 senators? It would be more proportional representation for the people of NYC, but also their close proximity and interdependence would very much align their priorities and make them a formidable voting bloc. And even then, you could still fit 4 Vermonts worth of people into Brooklyn alone. How much would we need to cut to make it equitable? Or do we work the other way as well and tell Vermont it no longer gets to be its own state because there aren't enough people?
For states like California, which still have large cities but not quite to the extreme of New York, how do we divide things fairly? Do we take a ruler and cut it into neat thirds, trying to leave some cities as the nucleus of each new state? Or do we end up with the state of California (area mostly unchanged), the state of Los Angeles, and the state of The Bay Area?
Are we bringing back city-states? We already have city-counties.
I like city-states, they're my favorite part of fantasy novels.
Recipe for outright disaster as duplication of shit gets way out of control. We have too much already.
Exactly. Eliminate the Senate, and you have Panem: An urban Capitol district unilaterally controlling the rural satellite districts.
I'll add, it's incredibly dumb that the house is capped at 435 seats. There just is no way 435 people can represent the entirety of the nations population. Given advances in communication technology, there's also no reason to keep it there. They really should be increasing the size of the house dramatically and no longer have a cap. The size of the house should grow, or shrink, with the size of the population.
No you don't, because the House still favors small rural states after we froze the number.
If the House was proportional there'd be like 150 more representatives.
You take the population the smallest state because everyone gets at least 1, Wyoming at 580k, divide by population, 335 million.
And you get 578 Representatives.
Currently we have 435.
Leading to someone in Wyoming having like 9 times the House representation compared to a person in Cali if I'm remembering that right.
That is only partially accurate. Mathematically, the ideal congressional district will have 761,169 people.
States smaller than x=761,169 are overrepresented. Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska are the only states that meet this criteria. Wyoming has 584,057 people for its at-large district. Wyoming residents have about 1.3 times the house representation as a person in California.
You also need to consider that Single-district states between 761,170 and 1,522,338 (2x) are underrepresented. They have more than enough people for a single district, but not quite enough people to warrant a second district. These are North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware. South Dakota has 919,318 people. A South Dakota resident has 0.83 the representation in the house that a California resident has.
Similarly, 2-district states smaller than 1,522,338 are are overrepresented. These are Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, and Rhode Island.
2-district states larger than 1,522,338 are underrepresented. These are Idaho and West Virginia.
The way the math works out, the larger the state, the less the deviation between actual and optimal representation. Interestingly, California is slightly overrepresented relative to the ideal district size.
Trying to fix our original system of government and update it for modern day iis like trying to turn a race horse into a Formula 1 racecar...
If you spend enough money and take enough time you could conceivably say you did it.
But why the fuck wouldn't you just switch to a racecar when the racehorse couldn't run anymore?
Why put the horse thru all that when you're going to have to spend all that time with a freak combination as your only mode of transportation?
In this analogy it's not just weeks or months, we're talking decades and generations. Arguably centuries.
Hell, the first time universal healthcare was part of a presidential platform was Teddy Roosevelt literally a century ago.
We were born in the time of the geriatric racehorse pulling the racecar like a cart, and we need to decide if we're gonna keep going for slow change, or just get it over with.
Cuz damn near anything we could be doing right now would give us better results. Especially since our parents are in the driver's seat of the racecar since they can't walk on their own and keep slamming the brakes because they have dementia and think it's funny.
Replying here again to take the discussion a different direction... What if instead of each representative casting a single vote, they instead acted as a proxy, and cast one vote for each member of the district they represent? The Wyoming representative at large would cast 584,057 votes on every issue in the house. The Delaware representative would cast 989,948 votes. Vermont, 643,077 votes in the house.
Democracy is government by consent of the governed. That means if you want to govern Wyoming and Montana, you have to get a majority of Wyoming and Montana residents to agree to your plan. And if every decision is going to be made by California, regardless of their local opposition, why the hell would they agree to be unilaterally ruled from afar? Why wouldn't they maintain their own sovereignty and independence from you, and govern themselves?
California certainly has no problem establishing laws for itself that the rest of the country broadly reject.
The vast majority of human history disagrees...
Hell, modern events disagree, like 35% of the country voted for trump, most Americans disagree with their plans, it's just the only other option was still pretty shitty
The vast majority of human history involved dictatorial regimes imposing their will on the unwilling. Democracy is a fairly recent development.
You certainly can establish a government without the consent of the governed, but you cannot reasonably describe such a government as "democratic".
And modern events are apparently still similar...
But this?
Oh shit...
We're close...
Would you consider that more "republican"?
Not at all. A government where the senate is eliminated, and California is free to impose itself against the will of Wyoming and Montana would be "populist" at best, and there are much more fitting terms. Not Democratic; Not a Republic. Eliminate the Senate, and you have Panem.
Populism is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Democracy is what keeps the sheep off the ballot.
Right, like "democracy".
Where the direction is chosen by what theajority of people want.
Currently we have a system where a minority of the people tell the rest what to do...
What is the form of government of the fictional nation of Panem?
I would not describe Panem as a democracy, as the satellite districts have no effective voice in their own governance. Panem is missing anything resembling a Senate. There is no means for the satellite districts to limit or reject the imposition of the capitol district.
You are confusing "Populism" for "Democracy". The two are not the same. Populism is the idea that political power flows from the majority. Democracy is the idea that political power flows from the people. The difference is subtle, but significant to the issue at hand.
Where the people are not in agreement on a particular direction, populism says that if 50%+1 want to go left, everyone goes left. Democracy is the idea that we collectively take both paths.
That is absolutely false. California is free to establish law for Californians, regardless of what Montana has to say about it. California doesn't have to listen to Montana.
They have to listen to federal law and each person in Montana has way more federal representation thru the electoral college for president, Senate because every state gets two, and House because the number of seats are frozen.
Both chambers and the Oval they have more representation.
How is that not the minority telling the majority what to do?
Like, this has to be working even a little right?
There's no shred of doubt in there?
Because buddy, I got doubts on how much I'm gonna be able to help you understand, I can't make this any simpler. So hopefully you needed just that one comment.
The urban states greatly outnumber the rural states in the house, and California has fewer than the optimal persons per congressional district, meaning they are slightly overrepresented. The fact that 52 > 1 tells me that Montanans are not dictating policy to California.
I understand what you're trying to say, but the fact is that even if Montana were able to build a coalition of the 26 smallest states, they would not be able to enact law without support from several of the larger states. Especially if California opposed the measure.
The numbers can't really be interpreted that way. The best one could say about those who didn't vote at all is that they had no preference for the outcome.