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Ireland has at least one representative per 30K people [0] and that works reasonably well. At least you can usually meet and speak in person with your represent

Ireland has at least one representative per 30K people [0] and that works reasonably well. At least you can usually meet and speak in person with your representative in the run up to an election. Of course the flip side is you probably get a lot more 'parish-pump politics'. Candidates looking after their one tiny constituency to the detriment of the country as a whole. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann#Number_of_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_%C3%89ireann#Number_...

bzbarsky 10y ago
Ireland has a population of ~6.5 million. At 30k/representative, that gives ~216 representatives. In practice, not all the people in Ireland vote (e.g. some are children), so you get 150-160 representatives per your citation. The US has ~200 million registered voters [1] and the number actually eligible to vote is somewhat higher than that. But if we go with the 200 million number, at 100k/representative you get 2000 representatives. That's a lot more unwieldy than 150-160 in terms of actually getting anything done. Yes, you can meet with your representative and all, but that representative may have no effect on pretty much anything in practice. I'm not saying "435" is some sort of magic number that is obviously the right number of representatives, of course. But it's not obvious to me that 2000 is better. [1] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-voters-are-in-america-2016-229993 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-vo...
- stevesearer 10y ago
  Good points - A debate on whether or not being represented should be sacrificed for the sake of expediency and getting things done is an important one to have. From my perspective, getting less done could be a feature of such a system rather than a bug. Perhaps the federal government would focus on large problems in need of a countrywide consensus with smaller things bouncing back to the states?
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    Getting less done is a feature of the US system as initially set up, sure. I feel that there are less pleasant failure modes of a too-big legislature than just gridlock leading to _less_ getting done: 1) "Everyone always votes the party line" as opposed to "nothing gets done", because there are too many things being introduced and no time to think about any of them. This already happens to some extent, but in general this seems like a problem that should get worse as the legislature gets bigger. 2) Confusion and chaos in the legislature leading to it having no power and the executive grabbing all the power for itself instead. Yes, I realize those are somewhat mutually exclusive.

bzbarsky 10y ago

Ireland has a population of ~6.5 million. At 30k/representative, that gives ~216 representatives. In practice, not all the people in Ireland vote (e.g. some are children), so you get 150-160 representatives per your citation. The US has ~200 million registered voters [1] and the number actually eligible to vote is somewhat higher than that. But if we go with the 200 million number, at 100k/representative you get 2000 representatives. That's a lot more unwieldy than 150-160 in terms of actually getting anything done. Yes, you can meet with your representative and all, but that representative may have no effect on pretty much anything in practice. I'm not saying "435" is some sort of magic number that is obviously the right number of representatives, of course. But it's not obvious to me that 2000 is better. [1] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-voters-are-in-america-2016-229993 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-vo...

stevesearer 10y ago
Good points - A debate on whether or not being represented should be sacrificed for the sake of expediency and getting things done is an important one to have. From my perspective, getting less done could be a feature of such a system rather than a bug. Perhaps the federal government would focus on large problems in need of a countrywide consensus with smaller things bouncing back to the states?
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  Getting less done is a feature of the US system as initially set up, sure. I feel that there are less pleasant failure modes of a too-big legislature than just gridlock leading to _less_ getting done: 1) "Everyone always votes the party line" as opposed to "nothing gets done", because there are too many things being introduced and no time to think about any of them. This already happens to some extent, but in general this seems like a problem that should get worse as the legislature gets bigger. 2) Confusion and chaos in the legislature leading to it having no power and the executive grabbing all the power for itself instead. Yes, I realize those are somewhat mutually exclusive.