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I've always thought that the problem with America is too many states, which allows effective one-party states to develop. In Australia there's only six states,
by hugh3 16y ago
I've always thought that the problem with America is too many states, which allows effective one-party states to develop.
In Australia there's only six states, and they're all large and demographically diverse enough to be (in the American terminology) purple. That means that there's a regular cycle of kicking the bums out and installing the other set of bums every few election cycles, keeping things relatively healthy.
In the US, though, problems seem to develop when one party controls the legislature more or less indefinitely. In blue states this leads to slowly-collapsing economies where public-sector unions slowly suck increasing amounts of money out of the economy, and in perma-red states this leads to zany places where sodomy is theoretically illegal and you can't even buy a vibrator.
So what we really need to do is join California up with Nevada, Arizona, Idaho... maybe even as far as West Texas.
- omouse 16y agoWhat you've pointed out are problems with large governments in general. Australia still has a lot of problems and when you have larger states that means the law applies to more people. Even if the majority of people are in favour of a law, they're still forcing the minority to abide by their choices and that's pretty much mob rule. On the flip side, if there's fewer people voting in elections, a minority of voters can force the rest of the people in the state to be represented by some jerkoff politician.
- evgen 16y agoAustralia has about 2/3 the population of California, 2/3 the economy of California, is far less diverse than California and yet six seems a healthy number of sub-divisions for Australia while California should be merged in with other states? That makes no sense at all.