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Balance of power is not what motivated the Senate's existence. It is practically the definition of imbalance of power. The Senate was a Faustian bargain to make

Balance of power is not what motivated the Senate's existence. It is practically the definition of imbalance of power. The Senate was a Faustian bargain to make the Union possible at all.

blotter_paper 7y ago
> The Senate was a Faustian bargain to make the Union possible at all. ...because the lower-population states didn't want to be over-powered. Hence, a balance. If you wanna change the bargain, give the little guys a chance to leave.
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  Fair enough -- they sacrificed the balance of power among voters today, in order to achieve a balance of power among the states in the 1700s. God how I would love to change the bargain. I see zero path forward.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Don't know but Britain made fixes eventually to it's rotten borough problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832
JohnFen 7y ago
That's certainly a legitimate argument that could be had. Whatever the motivations, though, it seems like a reasonable (while certainly imperfect) balance to me. The Senate is the deliberative body of the state governments, the House is the deliberative body of the people. I think both are important in order to balance between governmental tyranny and the tyranny of the popular majority.
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  The people are the only thing the government should serve. The government should not split its time between serving them and serving itself. Tyranny of the majority is certainly a danger we should take measures against. Things like the Bill of Rights achieve some of that. But equating the smaller states with the minorities that need protection seems to me an unjustified leap of logic. The small states are largely controlled by giant extractive corporate ventures like agriculture or mining. Giving those states more power merely tilts the game further in favor of those already-powerful monied interests.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > The people are the only thing the government should serve. I agree, but I don't think this arrangement is counter to that. > The government should not split its time between serving them and serving itself. The thing is that "the government" is not a single body. Every state has its own separate government, which operates much like its own tiny nation. The federal government is nothing more than the states coordinating with each other. Having a deliberative body for the state governments themselves makes a great deal of sense to me in this context for a whole lot of reasons. Doing so is not "the government serving itself", it's each state government serving its population. That, in isolation, would be dangerous, though, so the Senate has to work with the House, which is the body for the people directly, not the states. We wouldn't want just the House in isolation, either, because that would also be dangerous.

Balance of power is not what motivated the Senate's existence. It is practically the definition of imbalance of power. The Senate was a Faustian bargain to make the Union possible at all.

blotter_paper 7y ago

> The Senate was a Faustian bargain to make the Union possible at all. ...because the lower-population states didn't want to be over-powered. Hence, a balance. If you wanna change the bargain, give the little guys a chance to leave.

Jeff_Brown 7y ago
Fair enough -- they sacrificed the balance of power among voters today, in order to achieve a balance of power among the states in the 1700s. God how I would love to change the bargain. I see zero path forward.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Don't know but Britain made fixes eventually to it's rotten borough problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832

JohnFen 7y ago

That's certainly a legitimate argument that could be had. Whatever the motivations, though, it seems like a reasonable (while certainly imperfect) balance to me. The Senate is the deliberative body of the state governments, the House is the deliberative body of the people. I think both are important in order to balance between governmental tyranny and the tyranny of the popular majority.

Jeff_Brown 7y ago
The people are the only thing the government should serve. The government should not split its time between serving them and serving itself. Tyranny of the majority is certainly a danger we should take measures against. Things like the Bill of Rights achieve some of that. But equating the smaller states with the minorities that need protection seems to me an unjustified leap of logic. The small states are largely controlled by giant extractive corporate ventures like agriculture or mining. Giving those states more power merely tilts the game further in favor of those already-powerful monied interests.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > The people are the only thing the government should serve. I agree, but I don't think this arrangement is counter to that. > The government should not split its time between serving them and serving itself. The thing is that "the government" is not a single body. Every state has its own separate government, which operates much like its own tiny nation. The federal government is nothing more than the states coordinating with each other. Having a deliberative body for the state governments themselves makes a great deal of sense to me in this context for a whole lot of reasons. Doing so is not "the government serving itself", it's each state government serving its population. That, in isolation, would be dangerous, though, so the Senate has to work with the House, which is the body for the people directly, not the states. We wouldn't want just the House in isolation, either, because that would also be dangerous.