7 ms·

It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of so

It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity is something that should be considered. It's sad it won't be. The only consideration will be how they cut into profit and on those grounds they will be penalized. I realize this isn't the audience for this kind of comment, what with being a news site for a profit driven startup culture, but this profit driven culture we have is going to destroy so much before we even realize what we've lost.

mulmen 6y ago
I think that's an unfair take on the law. If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me. Why are the rest of us entitled to your creation?
- grawprog 6y ago
  There's a good modern day example we could look at. Reggae music. Jamaica lacks (or did) copyright laws. Because of this, music was reused over and over again. From the 1950's onwards, kids, poor people, anyone with technical knowhow could build a soundsystem, cobbled together from spare parts, get some records and play music. Eventually, many of those people went on to form recording studios and such. Because there was no laws against it, music was widely taken and reused amongst different studios, to the point where these same songs are still being remade today. Because of this, many, many people were lifted from poverty and were able to make careers from this, to the point where reggae has become a global phenomenon, primarily outside north america, where people are still taking these songs and making new versions of them. Over the years, because of this system, not just the original creators, but hundreds if not thousands of people have benefited, profited and bettered their lives because of music originally recorded in the 1950's and 60's by people, in many cases, long dead. Under the north american system, the copyright owner would have made millions of dollars, and entire genres of music would.never have been created in their current form. The value to humanity in that situation far outweighs the profit of the original creators.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    > Under the north american system, the copyright owner would have made millions of dollars, and entire genres of music would.never have been created in their current form. Not the most convincing conjecture when the "loser" in your comparison is one of the biggest music genre-creating powerhouses in the world and its music is rife with sampling, and the "winner" in your comparison is mainly known for a single genre of music.
    - currymj 6y ago
      many of those sampling heavy American music styles (hip-hop, much electronic music) were very directly and strongly influenced by Jamaican dub which grew out of reggae. I think the argument is reasonable that we don't get any of it, at least not in the forms we have now, without Jamaican music. DJ Kool Herc was Jamaican. on the other hand, it is definitely true that the American music industry with its strict copyright has not exactly been stagnant. but it is different.
  - dwild 6y ago
    I have an hard time understanding your point, are you saying that the ones that build music out of someone else music, couldn't have done something similar without building out someone else works? They couldn't either if they had to pay a small license fee to the original author? What made they come out of poverty? Their creation? Or their distribution? Because how you make it seems, the ones that came out of proverty aren't the creative ones... just like the good old copyright owner in America.... It's the ones that found something good and were able to sell it better. The only difference is that the creative one didn't have a choice but to forgo their ownership... just like in America though, which happens under economic pressure instead of by law, but at least, they can at least refuse that. > The value to humanity in that situation far outweighs the profit of the original creators. It does though if the original creator couldn't make money out of his original creation... Your premise depends on the fact that without the original creator, the subsequent creation wouldn't be worth it... You want to scrap what's worth it... for something that can't even exist without it.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  > If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me. Yeah, with the original physical thing you created with your own two hands. Not with a copy of some text or image in a file.
  - SyneRyder 6y ago
    A lot of couples out there would very much disagree that everyone should have access to the image files they created for each other.
    - einpoklum 6y ago
      You're conflating two orthogonal issues: Privacy and copyrights. If they posted their photo collection online for all to see, they can't expect people not to make a copy of some of the photos.
- dgb23 6y ago
  I think you make valid point and pose an interesting question. Your comment shouldn’t be downvoted. There isn’t an easy answer to this. On one side there are many cases where people give away powerful things for free, which has huge positive implications and on the other hand there I sympathize with the notion of wanting to reap benefits of their work. The underlying problem may be that you only profit if you demand or enforce it?
- Thorentis 6y ago
  If you create somethibg, you decide what happens to it. In the case of IP, this should mean you decide whether or not you want to release it/tell others about it. But an idea is not a physical object. Once you tell somebody else your idea, they can tell somebody else with no loss to yourself. It's like lighting a candle. If you create one, you do not have to share it with anybody. But once you do light somebody else's candle from your own, they are now free to light anybody else's without taking anything away from your candle. That's how ideas work. The only reason IP law exists, is because people have decided that profit might be lost if people share your idea with others. We are artificially stifling the spreading of ideas from person to person, because of profit. This is a tragedy.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > The only reason IP law exists, is because people have decided that profit might be lost if people share your idea with others. We are artificially stifling the spreading of ideas from person to person, because of profit. This is a tragedy. IP law exists so people share ideas, because they can do so while still being compensated. Otherwise they might keep them secret, not devote a lot of time and resources into developing them etc. "You spent a billion dollars to develop a medication for this type of cancer. Now everybody can manufacture it and you're down a billion dollars. Thanks for your generosity!" How often do you believe that will be said before people stop investing money into development?
- hnick 6y ago
  No man is an island. There are explicit influences in things that are created, but there are many implicit influences too. That thing that was created, could it have been made without this society or culture? Could it have been made in a different culture? Didn't we all contribute a little bit to it? So, while I do agree with your general point that people must have incentive to create and profit/control is one way to do that, my concern is that when things are locked up tight they die and our culture does not benefit from their creation. It would be easy to say that if they are forgotten then maybe they weren't of any use, but history of full of art and science that was not appreciated until much later. Or conversely, a creation that is a clear product of the zeitgeist could be very influential but if no one can use it, then waiting decades for rights to clear will render it useless. Imagine if cooking were invented today. Only one individual in the world would be allowed to make sausages without paying royalties.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    As Rayiner often points out, this argument applies even more powerfully to real property, which was usually expropriated coercively from its original owners.
    - hnick 6y ago
      I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too, but I don't think it's usually healthy to take things to the extreme. I prefer a middle ground and the original intent (at least as much as is commonly told) around copyright, trade secrets, and patents seemed to be a relatively healthy take on that even if it now needs an update. Depending which path you choose there's a trade-off between how much the creator gets and how much society gets, with varying degrees of control, protection, and communal ownership. The creator gets to choose, but they have a limited set of choices agreed upon by society, rather than individual agreements for every item we buy.
      - severine 6y ago
        > I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too I think this example might serve: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22250260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22250260
- timeinput 6y ago
  I think the root issue is the creator didn't entirely understand what they were giving away. Harper Collins and all publishers don't create content. They are a delivery platform. Unfortunately to use their delivery platform I have to give them exclusive rights to the content (it's even worse than face book and reddit where they merely claim right to use the content). In return they'll give you <10% of the profits of publishing the book. That seems like a terrible deal today. On top of that we're also talking about books where the author is dead. Why is anyone entitled to my creation isn't a valid question to ask of book publishers. They didn't create a thing.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    If it were such a terrible deal authors wouldn't take it, especially successful authors. They overwhelmingly do because it's absolutely more successful the vast, vast majority of the time in getting paid than any of the alternatives are.
Nightshaxx 6y ago
Without profit, people couldn't have created those things in the first place. Not because nessarily even they wouldn't have wanted to out of greed: if you can't feed your family at all with something it is less likely you will spend the amount of time on it that you would on something you can. Not to mention a lot of movies/books (Because of printing costs)/shows would just not have been possible without enough captial which comes from people who get said captial by making a profit.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  That is an argument for the existence of some ip laws, not that the current incarnation of them is the right one. But I would also draw your attention to the fashion industry. Before the 1980s logomania allowed for trademark law to be applied, there was basically zero IP protection on fashion... but it turns out it was a pretty robust industry anyway. As a society we've gotten pretty hooked on IP law, but I'm pretty convinced we'd all be a lot better off with MUCH much less.
- grawprog 6y ago
  I could list countless examples of things created without profit in mind just for the sheer joy of creation, I could list countless things where profit was not in mind, yet profit was generated, I could list countless things where things were created without profit as a motivation, those things never really generated profit, yet profit was generate later on future creations because of previous creations. Assuming everything is created with profit as a motive is fairly disingenuous. Look at the open software community just for a start. How many person-hours of labour has been put into those alone without profit ever coming into play as a motive? How much profit over how many people has been generated because of that work? Take say linux for example. What is the sheer number of people that have profited off of linux and the insane amount of overall profit generated vs. Linus, the 'original' creator of the kernel? Just to take one very small example. I'm guessing at least to start, and I may be wrong, but Linus probably isn't struggling financially, meanwhile just how many people now make a living off of linux existing? I imagine anyone would be hard pressed to actually calculate the amount of people that have profited off of linux being available freely, the actual amount of money made by literally everyone that's made money off it being created and distributed the way it has been, without profit being a sole motivator.
voxic11 6y ago
The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
- cure 6y ago
  > The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright. One can say a lot about copyright law, but saying it 'balances' many considerations is a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly. Copyright law pays lip service to a number of non-commercial interests, like archiving (up to a point). On the whole, it is strongly biased toward the interests of the big publishing industry that has managed, over the years, to greatly expand its scope and duration. Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    > Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years. This is broadly a myth. Most extensions of copyright globally have been about unification of duration, which tends to settle at the longest as any international treaties about anything do. Ultimately Germany and France were the biggest drivers of this globally, far more than works out of the US. Now that process and unification has broadly happened (at least for newer works) it's unlikely there will be any meaningful term extensions. It's not impossible that some works that receive lower protections might be equalised, or that there might be some mandatory collective schemes for works of completely unknown provenance, but even they seem unlikely. The truth is that a term extension for Steamboat doesn't really do much for Disney for the political capital required to obtain it. They still have the trademark effectively in perpetuity, Steamboat itself as a work generates no revenue, and there's no real risk to Mickey as a character as Disney likes to portray him nowadays anyway as it's materially different. Steamboat Willy is a massive red herring in terms of discussion of copyright policy.
- 6y ago
repiret 6y ago
I don’t think it’s a moral or cultural failure but a political one. A high level politician is successful by being able to convince large donors that they should govern, not by being able to convince the populace that they’re good an analyzing policy and laws to steer them to a better place. That, I believe, is the root of the current imbalance in copyright and patent law.
- timeinput 6y ago
  I think in a way there is a cultural failing. This feels like a problem some countries don't have. It's not uniquely US, but how big of a problem are large donors in the Netherlands, New Zealand, or Denmark?
  - repiret 6y ago
    Frankly I’m not especially familiar with politics outside of the US, but I think the US has two distinct disadvantages compared to a lot of other countries: 1. Being one of the first lintel democracies implemented, it got some things wrong. The electoral collage and that there’s a local optima in a two party system are the first two problems that come to mind and were avoided by many western democracies. 2. The US is really large - both in population and economy. The large population makes it hard to get enough consensus to make fundamental structural improvements (constitutional amendments), and it reduces the influence of an individual vote for any national office. The large economy means that a special interest can reap large economic rewards by steering policy in their favor, so they try really hard.
    - Reelin 6y ago
      I guess we're a bit off topic at this point but I think the only glaring structural issue is the winner takes all voting. > electoral collage I'd disagree that the US got this wrong; it made a lot of sense historically. These days it arguably introduces some unnecessary inefficiency into the process but I don't think that really matters in practice. The primary objection seems to be that it doesn't reflect the popular vote, but that's entirely by design and arguably the right thing to do. > two party system I agree with this but want to clarify that it's specifically first past the post due to winner takes all voting that causes this. It badly needs to be fixed but why would party politicians directly vote against their own career interests like that? Separately, political parties themselves were argued against when the country was founded but sadly they were allowed. I'd note that most (all?) western countries also got this part wrong (IMO). > The large population makes it hard to get enough consensus to make fundamental structural improvements This is intentional. AFAIU, the US political system was specifically designed to be resistant to change in order to avoid the failures of previous republics. > reduces the influence of an individual vote for any national office Things were hypothetically (AFAIU) supposed to be done at the state level (think EU) but the interstate commerce clause ended up doing wonders for that.

mulmen 6y ago

I think that's an unfair take on the law. If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me. Why are the rest of us entitled to your creation?

grawprog 6y ago
There's a good modern day example we could look at. Reggae music. Jamaica lacks (or did) copyright laws. Because of this, music was reused over and over again. From the 1950's onwards, kids, poor people, anyone with technical knowhow could build a soundsystem, cobbled together from spare parts, get some records and play music. Eventually, many of those people went on to form recording studios and such. Because there was no laws against it, music was widely taken and reused amongst different studios, to the point where these same songs are still being remade today. Because of this, many, many people were lifted from poverty and were able to make careers from this, to the point where reggae has become a global phenomenon, primarily outside north america, where people are still taking these songs and making new versions of them. Over the years, because of this system, not just the original creators, but hundreds if not thousands of people have benefited, profited and bettered their lives because of music originally recorded in the 1950's and 60's by people, in many cases, long dead. Under the north american system, the copyright owner would have made millions of dollars, and entire genres of music would.never have been created in their current form. The value to humanity in that situation far outweighs the profit of the original creators.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  > Under the north american system, the copyright owner would have made millions of dollars, and entire genres of music would.never have been created in their current form. Not the most convincing conjecture when the "loser" in your comparison is one of the biggest music genre-creating powerhouses in the world and its music is rife with sampling, and the "winner" in your comparison is mainly known for a single genre of music.
  - currymj 6y ago
    many of those sampling heavy American music styles (hip-hop, much electronic music) were very directly and strongly influenced by Jamaican dub which grew out of reggae. I think the argument is reasonable that we don't get any of it, at least not in the forms we have now, without Jamaican music. DJ Kool Herc was Jamaican. on the other hand, it is definitely true that the American music industry with its strict copyright has not exactly been stagnant. but it is different.
- dwild 6y ago
  I have an hard time understanding your point, are you saying that the ones that build music out of someone else music, couldn't have done something similar without building out someone else works? They couldn't either if they had to pay a small license fee to the original author? What made they come out of poverty? Their creation? Or their distribution? Because how you make it seems, the ones that came out of proverty aren't the creative ones... just like the good old copyright owner in America.... It's the ones that found something good and were able to sell it better. The only difference is that the creative one didn't have a choice but to forgo their ownership... just like in America though, which happens under economic pressure instead of by law, but at least, they can at least refuse that. > The value to humanity in that situation far outweighs the profit of the original creators. It does though if the original creator couldn't make money out of his original creation... Your premise depends on the fact that without the original creator, the subsequent creation wouldn't be worth it... You want to scrap what's worth it... for something that can't even exist without it.
einpoklum 6y ago
> If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me. Yeah, with the original physical thing you created with your own two hands. Not with a copy of some text or image in a file.
- SyneRyder 6y ago
  A lot of couples out there would very much disagree that everyone should have access to the image files they created for each other.
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    You're conflating two orthogonal issues: Privacy and copyrights. If they posted their photo collection online for all to see, they can't expect people not to make a copy of some of the photos.
dgb23 6y ago
I think you make valid point and pose an interesting question. Your comment shouldn’t be downvoted. There isn’t an easy answer to this. On one side there are many cases where people give away powerful things for free, which has huge positive implications and on the other hand there I sympathize with the notion of wanting to reap benefits of their work. The underlying problem may be that you only profit if you demand or enforce it?
Thorentis 6y ago
If you create somethibg, you decide what happens to it. In the case of IP, this should mean you decide whether or not you want to release it/tell others about it. But an idea is not a physical object. Once you tell somebody else your idea, they can tell somebody else with no loss to yourself. It's like lighting a candle. If you create one, you do not have to share it with anybody. But once you do light somebody else's candle from your own, they are now free to light anybody else's without taking anything away from your candle. That's how ideas work. The only reason IP law exists, is because people have decided that profit might be lost if people share your idea with others. We are artificially stifling the spreading of ideas from person to person, because of profit. This is a tragedy.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > The only reason IP law exists, is because people have decided that profit might be lost if people share your idea with others. We are artificially stifling the spreading of ideas from person to person, because of profit. This is a tragedy. IP law exists so people share ideas, because they can do so while still being compensated. Otherwise they might keep them secret, not devote a lot of time and resources into developing them etc. "You spent a billion dollars to develop a medication for this type of cancer. Now everybody can manufacture it and you're down a billion dollars. Thanks for your generosity!" How often do you believe that will be said before people stop investing money into development?
hnick 6y ago
No man is an island. There are explicit influences in things that are created, but there are many implicit influences too. That thing that was created, could it have been made without this society or culture? Could it have been made in a different culture? Didn't we all contribute a little bit to it? So, while I do agree with your general point that people must have incentive to create and profit/control is one way to do that, my concern is that when things are locked up tight they die and our culture does not benefit from their creation. It would be easy to say that if they are forgotten then maybe they weren't of any use, but history of full of art and science that was not appreciated until much later. Or conversely, a creation that is a clear product of the zeitgeist could be very influential but if no one can use it, then waiting decades for rights to clear will render it useless. Imagine if cooking were invented today. Only one individual in the world would be allowed to make sausages without paying royalties.
- tptacek 6y ago
  As Rayiner often points out, this argument applies even more powerfully to real property, which was usually expropriated coercively from its original owners.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too, but I don't think it's usually healthy to take things to the extreme. I prefer a middle ground and the original intent (at least as much as is commonly told) around copyright, trade secrets, and patents seemed to be a relatively healthy take on that even if it now needs an update. Depending which path you choose there's a trade-off between how much the creator gets and how much society gets, with varying degrees of control, protection, and communal ownership. The creator gets to choose, but they have a limited set of choices agreed upon by society, rather than individual agreements for every item we buy.
    - severine 6y ago
      > I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too I think this example might serve: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22250260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22250260
timeinput 6y ago
I think the root issue is the creator didn't entirely understand what they were giving away. Harper Collins and all publishers don't create content. They are a delivery platform. Unfortunately to use their delivery platform I have to give them exclusive rights to the content (it's even worse than face book and reddit where they merely claim right to use the content). In return they'll give you <10% of the profits of publishing the book. That seems like a terrible deal today. On top of that we're also talking about books where the author is dead. Why is anyone entitled to my creation isn't a valid question to ask of book publishers. They didn't create a thing.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  If it were such a terrible deal authors wouldn't take it, especially successful authors. They overwhelmingly do because it's absolutely more successful the vast, vast majority of the time in getting paid than any of the alternatives are.

Nightshaxx 6y ago

Without profit, people couldn't have created those things in the first place. Not because nessarily even they wouldn't have wanted to out of greed: if you can't feed your family at all with something it is less likely you will spend the amount of time on it that you would on something you can. Not to mention a lot of movies/books (Because of printing costs)/shows would just not have been possible without enough captial which comes from people who get said captial by making a profit.

kennywinker 6y ago
That is an argument for the existence of some ip laws, not that the current incarnation of them is the right one. But I would also draw your attention to the fashion industry. Before the 1980s logomania allowed for trademark law to be applied, there was basically zero IP protection on fashion... but it turns out it was a pretty robust industry anyway. As a society we've gotten pretty hooked on IP law, but I'm pretty convinced we'd all be a lot better off with MUCH much less.
grawprog 6y ago
I could list countless examples of things created without profit in mind just for the sheer joy of creation, I could list countless things where profit was not in mind, yet profit was generated, I could list countless things where things were created without profit as a motivation, those things never really generated profit, yet profit was generate later on future creations because of previous creations. Assuming everything is created with profit as a motive is fairly disingenuous. Look at the open software community just for a start. How many person-hours of labour has been put into those alone without profit ever coming into play as a motive? How much profit over how many people has been generated because of that work? Take say linux for example. What is the sheer number of people that have profited off of linux and the insane amount of overall profit generated vs. Linus, the 'original' creator of the kernel? Just to take one very small example. I'm guessing at least to start, and I may be wrong, but Linus probably isn't struggling financially, meanwhile just how many people now make a living off of linux existing? I imagine anyone would be hard pressed to actually calculate the amount of people that have profited off of linux being available freely, the actual amount of money made by literally everyone that's made money off it being created and distributed the way it has been, without profit being a sole motivator.

voxic11 6y ago

The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

cure 6y ago
> The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright. One can say a lot about copyright law, but saying it 'balances' many considerations is a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly. Copyright law pays lip service to a number of non-commercial interests, like archiving (up to a point). On the whole, it is strongly biased toward the interests of the big publishing industry that has managed, over the years, to greatly expand its scope and duration. Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  > Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years. This is broadly a myth. Most extensions of copyright globally have been about unification of duration, which tends to settle at the longest as any international treaties about anything do. Ultimately Germany and France were the biggest drivers of this globally, far more than works out of the US. Now that process and unification has broadly happened (at least for newer works) it's unlikely there will be any meaningful term extensions. It's not impossible that some works that receive lower protections might be equalised, or that there might be some mandatory collective schemes for works of completely unknown provenance, but even they seem unlikely. The truth is that a term extension for Steamboat doesn't really do much for Disney for the political capital required to obtain it. They still have the trademark effectively in perpetuity, Steamboat itself as a work generates no revenue, and there's no real risk to Mickey as a character as Disney likes to portray him nowadays anyway as it's materially different. Steamboat Willy is a massive red herring in terms of discussion of copyright policy.
6y ago

repiret 6y ago

I don’t think it’s a moral or cultural failure but a political one. A high level politician is successful by being able to convince large donors that they should govern, not by being able to convince the populace that they’re good an analyzing policy and laws to steer them to a better place. That, I believe, is the root of the current imbalance in copyright and patent law.

timeinput 6y ago
I think in a way there is a cultural failing. This feels like a problem some countries don't have. It's not uniquely US, but how big of a problem are large donors in the Netherlands, New Zealand, or Denmark?
- repiret 6y ago
  Frankly I’m not especially familiar with politics outside of the US, but I think the US has two distinct disadvantages compared to a lot of other countries: 1. Being one of the first lintel democracies implemented, it got some things wrong. The electoral collage and that there’s a local optima in a two party system are the first two problems that come to mind and were avoided by many western democracies. 2. The US is really large - both in population and economy. The large population makes it hard to get enough consensus to make fundamental structural improvements (constitutional amendments), and it reduces the influence of an individual vote for any national office. The large economy means that a special interest can reap large economic rewards by steering policy in their favor, so they try really hard.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    I guess we're a bit off topic at this point but I think the only glaring structural issue is the winner takes all voting. > electoral collage I'd disagree that the US got this wrong; it made a lot of sense historically. These days it arguably introduces some unnecessary inefficiency into the process but I don't think that really matters in practice. The primary objection seems to be that it doesn't reflect the popular vote, but that's entirely by design and arguably the right thing to do. > two party system I agree with this but want to clarify that it's specifically first past the post due to winner takes all voting that causes this. It badly needs to be fixed but why would party politicians directly vote against their own career interests like that? Separately, political parties themselves were argued against when the country was founded but sadly they were allowed. I'd note that most (all?) western countries also got this part wrong (IMO). > The large population makes it hard to get enough consensus to make fundamental structural improvements This is intentional. AFAIU, the US political system was specifically designed to be resistant to change in order to avoid the failures of previous republics. > reduces the influence of an individual vote for any national office Things were hypothetically (AFAIU) supposed to be done at the state level (think EU) but the interstate commerce clause ended up doing wonders for that.