4 ms·
Rural areas are already heavily overrepresented in the american system. We certainly don't need to put the thumb on the scale further. The ultimate problem is
by paulmd 6y ago
Rural areas are already heavily overrepresented in the american system. We certainly don't need to put the thumb on the scale further.
The ultimate problem is that "the rest of the state" (for virtually all states) is empty, hardly anybody lives there, and letting a minority override the will of everybody else is tyranny of the minority.
Taken to the extreme, this is ultimately what killed South Africa and Rhodesia and other countries - a relatively small minority imposing their will on the majority, things getting worse and worse with no recourse for the people whose lives were actually affected until things boiled over.
At its core, this is ultimately an argument for anti-democratic principles.
- nitrogen 6y agoYou don't think the people who live somewhere should have a say in what happens there? Having city dwellers decide what happens in rural areas is the tyranny of imperialism.
- majormajor 6y agoSo it's better to have rural dwellers with an outsized voice in deciding what happens in city areas? You also are performing a convenient geographic sidestep where suddenly "where you live" isn't the country or even the state but is really only concerned with the local. So the rest of the people who live in the nation are diminished. Localism has led to lots of problems in American history, now we can add a shitshow of a Coronavirus response on top of the others. The party of localism tends to be gung-ho about that huge federal military operation... yet refuses a necessarily-similar intervention in a pandemic.
- nitrogen 6y agoYou paint the not-city with way too broad a brush, and nowhere did I say that people outside of cities should control the city. But you are literally advocating for subjugation without representation. The opposite of localism you describe is imperialism/colonialism.
- vmladenov 6y agoThat is an argument for federalism, not vote tally inequality.
- Paradox0 6y agoNo, it doesn't make sense that people should have greater voting power based on their location in the same polity. Your argument is equally valid in reverse -- there's no reason why rural dwellers should decide what happens in cities. Why should your vote count for more because I have more neighbors than you do?
- nightski 6y agoWhile city dwellers vote may be technically less powerful on a per capita basis, they make up for it in numbers. There are simply more of you with similar needs/wants. Not to mention far more money to achieve those needs and wants. In a city an individual's needs from his/her government are just less unique.
- defterGoose 6y ago| In a city an individual's needs from his/her government are just less unique So...rural snowflake status confirmed?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TomSwirly 6y agoYou seem to fundamentally misunderstand how voting should work. The idea is not "the rules should be set up so people like me get a bigger voice". It's _one person, one vote._ You don't get an extra vote because you're "unique". What? It strikes me that you basically want the voting system to be be biased to your advantage against a group of people you probably don't like very much. If this is true, it speaks extremely poorly of your sense of moral fairness.
- nightski 6y agoNo, I want both minority and majority voices heard. What I am saying is that city voices are strong. They get the majority of the funding and influence when it comes to politics, regardless of voting power on a per capita basis. The difference is you are arguing that rural citizens should get no say whatsoever. I care about everyone instead of only those living in a small geographic circle and understand that the needs of those living outside of that circle are unique from city dwellers themselves.
- paulmd 6y agoYou do have a say in what happens there, that's why there's local elections.
- majormajor 6y agoAn extra large irony here is that "left-leaning cities in right-leaning states" is much more common than the reverse, so what we often see in practice is rural state dwellers telling city dwellers in those states what to do. Look at the mask stuff for Atlanta vs Georgia from today, for instance. That's without skewing the strength of the vote, even! So, no, I'm far from convinced that we have to protect the poor rural folks from their fellow citizens.
- thehappypm 6y agoNo, it isn't. One person, one vote. If there are more farmers than city dwellers, the farmers have more say. If there are more city dwellers than farmers, the city dwellers have more say.
- TomSwirly 6y agoLet me get this straight. You think that some people should get effectively more votes, just because of where they live? And if these people don't get extra votes, it's "the tyranny of imperialism"?
- axaxs 6y agoIf you break this argument down, it gets really muddled. Let's pick a state - Kansas, nice and rectangle. Let's say it was empty, and 10 farmers moved in and divided it 10 ways. They are happy to themselves on their huge plots of land, doing their own thing. One farmer needs extra cash, so sells off a dozen acres. That dozen acres puts in a neighborhood of 20 houses. Now that 20 houses controls the entire state, effectively. They decide people shouldn't be able to own so much land, and owning more than 10 acres is illegal. Sure it's contrived, but you start to notice how it's not as simple as 'majority rules is best.'
- fzeroracer 6y agoIf you were to break down the argument even further, let's say Kansas had a farmer that owned 90% of the land. The remaining 10% of the land was shared between 1000 people. Why should that single farmer be allowed to control the entire state over the rest of the 1000 people?
- axaxs 6y agoI'm not making that argument, either. I guess I'm playing devil's advocate. I honestly don't think either scenario is correct, so what's the solution?
- sangnoir 6y agoYou're implicitly making that argument though - pitting raw number of people vs land owned as a measure of who gets more say.
- axaxs 6y agoI'm making the argument that one concentrated area should not control the fate of a much larger area. I'm not, however, asserting that the larger area should control the fate of the concentrated area, either.
- 6y ago
- dfee 6y agoI’m not sure the translation of your argument works. America is not Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). There is often something lost in this argument, which I think is a strength of the system, not a weakness. That is: the US Senate, which was the compromise, is a rejection of utilitarianism as the pinnacle of governing. You don’t want tyranny of the minority, and I don’t want tyranny of the majority, so let’s have a system of checks and balances that ensures (within limits) that we address both groups.