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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.

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.