this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Don’t forget they were also terrified of democracy. The Senate is one of the most comically anti-democratic institutions ever concocted. Wyoming has as much power as California. I mean it beggars belief that anyone but a complete imbecile could agree to something like that.
It's not democratic from a person level, but it is more democratic from a state level. At the time they hadn't quite figured out if they wanted to be a country or a collection of states that sometimes work together.
Democracy is a system of government whose power is vested by the people (“demos”). Notice that the Senate does not legislate on behalf of people. Instead, it represents the interests of arbitrary often unpopulated land masses. It is as stupid as it sounds and the exact opposite of democracy.
One of the main arguments by Senate proponents during the US founding was that democracy was unacceptable. “Government by the people for the people? What gives these people the right…” etcetera. If you want quotes I’ll dig them up, but that’s the vibe.
No. In fact, two democracies have never gone to war with each other. Why would they?
Ah, redistribution of wealth and moral progress, terrifying. In case it’s not obvious from these pathetic quotes, John Adams was a moron.
Guess I should have said, it's not democratic it's Republican. And the question being what should legislature represent. I'm curious how the EU works as a governing body, is there proportional representation? Or does each county get an equal vote. Sorry for my ignorance.
Also yeah John Adams is a bit of a baffoon there.
The EU uses the 'd'Hondt method' which is a mathematical formula for proportional representation systems.
This is the opposite of the US senate.
It’s important to note that there’s no distinction between a democracy and a republic: a republic just is a type of (representative) democracy.
The United States is a republic, true, but there are aspects of our government that are undemocratic and vulnerable to corruption. The Senate is one of these aspects. The Supreme Court is another, so is the electoral college, and the influence of money, and the enormous power of the chief executive.
The first two political parties were formed around that very debate.
Too bad Jefferson didn't rap.
Just had that fever.
For an united states sort of setup having one level of government representing the states particularly makes sense to me. EU has a similar setup (but much more complicated) and a suggestion that it'd just be based on popular vote would cause a civil war.
The EU has a representative setup, which is democratic. Nothing like the US Senate, which is designed to rob people of representation.
Again, governments justify their existence by serving people, full stop, not arbitrary land masses. What’s next, a tertiary chamber of Congress for corporations?
I'm just saying Council of the European Union and European Council vs. European Parliament is same sort of separation between "popular vote" and member state governments and the reasoning is similar. There's been a lot of discussion about how singular states can stop the will of the rest of the EU and so on. Taking away that veto is a real hot button issue.
Ostensibly the states should represent people, that is specifically their state's people. Whereas congress and president should be more about the whole federation, as I've understood it. How well that works, well, that's another matter.
Ireland has something a bit like that:
"Most members of the Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (parliament) of Ireland, are elected as part of vocational panels nominated partly by current Oireachtas members and partly by vocational and special interest associations. The Seanad also includes two university constituencies. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_and_Commercial_Panel
If a federal government that levies taxes and enacts laws affecting individual citizens represents “states” in a manner disproportional to the population, the result is undemocratic.
This is a normative fact.
You can’t argue that giving some citizens hundreds of times the voting power over others is somehow democratic. Or is a person in California and Texas worth less than someone living in Alaska or Delaware? Why do they get less say in how they are taxed?
1 person, 1 vote.
You are thinking of democracy as a binary thing instead of as a sliding scale. Not to mention you can have democratic form of government that isn't very democratic or representative in actuality.
Federations often have that sort of two tiered setup where there's general population vote and a level where each state can represent themselves as the states. The idea makes sense when you think of it as a federation of separate and equal units, with the state tier you make sure every state is equally represented. Otherwise they might not want to be part of the whole federation. Of course it can be horribly uneven when you consider the populations. But that's not too different from EU, where amount of MEPs differs but council seats and number of commissioners stays the same. Both Germany with 83 million people and Malta with 0,5 million people have the same number of council seats, commissars and both have veto rights. Unsurprisingly it's a topic that sometimes gets heated, but like i said, without it there'd be outrage because everyone would be worried of core big countries deciding everything. Many countries would probably fuck right off from the Union.
I think there's been some misunderstanding here. None of this is some value take from me or me arguing for or against something. I haven't at least consciously given much of an opinion on this, I've just described the reasoning behind the system and how it makes sense to me from the member state perspective.
Democracy is not binary. That is why democratic scholars consider the United States to be what’s called “a flawed democracy.”
And the Senate is one of those flaws.
That’s the problem. California and Wyoming are separate, but they are not equal! (Arguably they’re not even separate.) Wyoming has 1/40th the population. One person in Wyoming has the same voting power as 40 Californians to determine their own laws and taxes. That’s reminiscent of taxation without representation. For all practical purposes, the people of California have been disenfranchised by the US government.
Lastly, how Ireland, or Star Wars, or anyone else organizes their federal system has no bearing on whether the US Senate is in fact anti-democratic. 92% of the countries in the world are not full democracies.
Yes. It just seemed like you considered it as democratic/not democratic, instead of a scale where you could have such a thing as flawed democracy. I might've just misinterpreted your words.
I guess they could've made the original system such that US Senate accounted for population, but it would've been hard to get smaller states to join. It's the reason why we in EU have the equal status.
It was just an aside I was hoping you'd find interesting.
True, I know we don’t disagree on the fundamentals. And you make a good point about how some governing bodies like the UN aren’t proportional in their representation. Although to be fair, the UN doesn’t levy taxes or directly interfere in the lives of citizens.
I suppose we could reform the US Senate to be more proportional by adding some seats so people living in populous states aren’t locked out of Federal decision-making.
The founding fathers were correct. A pure democracy is also known as mob rule. Anytime you can get 51% to agree with you, you can do whatever you like.
If 51% vote to take the homes of black people, that's decided and done.
Which is why modern democracies are all some form of representative democracy. Which in theory is supposed to act as a sort of check and balance on the system.
I'm not following your argument, though I am slightly drunk. The disproportionate representation that's the focus of the post means that less than 51% of the populace could wield the levers of power in the Senate. That's minority rule, which is even worse than mob rule.
I get that mob rule is bad, and that we need checks in place to curb the possibility of abuses of power, but I see that as necessitating laws for super majorities and ranked choice or other ways of ensuring less extreme representatives getting into power.