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Good piece. I'd tend to argue more for mild vetocracies/Madisonian political systems with multiple checks & balances when we're constructing actual governments.

Good piece. I'd tend to argue more for mild vetocracies/Madisonian political systems with multiple checks & balances when we're constructing actual governments. Many people heavily involved in politics ("intense policy demanders", I've heard them called) are just moderately insane overall, so I'm pretty interested in blocking bad ideas and rapid change. I'm kind of small c conservative that way. (I agree the US Senate should have a supermajority voting requirement, etc.) One thing that makes some vetocracies illegitimate, however, is that a small group of people wield far outsized power relative to their numbers. This is the objection to say a tiny group of wealthy, usually elderly people who can block new housing construction based on complaints about 'neighborhood character'. I'm fine with actual gridlock some issues where the US is genuinely divided, but I object to a tiny tiny minority with outsized power. Contrary to popular belief, James Madison was actually against too much minority power and had a few rants in the Federalist Papers about how democratic systems should be majority rule-only

kelseyfrog 5y ago
> One thing that makes some vetocracies illegitimate, however, is that a small group of people wield far outsized power relative to their numbers. >I agree the US Senate should have a supermajority voting requirement You might be looking at things differently, but to me there is a lot of friction between these two statements. The US Senate is the perfect example of a small group of people who wield outsized power relative to their numbers[1]. The small group of people are the small[2] state electors. The combination of rigid state boundaries, fixed representation, and population migration are necessary and sufficient conditions to power imbalance. Redistricting states, proportional representation, or serfdom are the antidotes[3]. In my mind this is the preeminent issue of our time. It is strife with dilemmas which culminate in an inability to make any meaningful structural change. The problem with these situations is that absent a viable legal path toward change, extra-legal change is an inevitable result[4]. 1. https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/senate-power-imbalance-tilts-toward-least-populous-states https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/senate-power-imbalance-t... 2. In population. 3. With obvious pros and cons and palatability. 4. See all revolutions ever.
clairity 5y ago
an axis is literally dichotomizing, and dichotomies don't aid understanding of complex, dynamic systems because of the numerous chaotic (i.e., higher order) drivers of phenomena within the system. dichotomies provide faux-understanding, allowing the speaker to feel esteem for knowing about the dichotomy, not the underlying system of which s/he speaks. it is literally bullshit. i'll repeat that the only useful dichotomy when talking about political systems (practically tautologically) is that between the powerful and the powerless. left/right, liberal/conservative, even bulldozer/vetocrat are all distractions on this fundamental characteristic of political systems. it's especially important that when we voters consider elections and policy positions, we do it based on a critical reasoning of the issues at hand, not a political affiliation or chosen dichotomous self-identification.
- Ajedi32 5y ago
  I actually appreciate the introduction of additional axis into the discussion, as I feel it helps cure that sort of dichotomic, tribalistic thinking. No model is perfect, but better to have a dozen different arbitrary dimensions of ideological spectra than just one. It's certainly a better model of reality than the strict left/right dichotomy that dominates modern political discourse.
  - clairity 5y ago
    for personal edification and rumination, sure, having more perspectives tends to lead to more breadth and depth of thought. but when it comes to mediopolitical rhetoric, make no mistake, it’s about railroading thought down one of two rigidly constructed alleys. it’s this latter discourse where dichotomous thinking is much more prevalent and insidious.
inglor_cz 5y ago
One of the problems with supermajorities is that you give greater weight to status quo. With supermajorities required, few countries would ever get rid of slavery or the death penalty, give voting rights to women etc. A lot of the grandfathered defaults aren't worth a supermajority to overturn.
- hash872 5y ago
  Not sure you picked the best examples there- both of these things required a Constitutional amendment, aka had to pass both houses by a 2/3rds vote, then be voted in by three quarters of the states. That's like the definition of a supermajority, so pretty much the opposite of your point. To be fair, it was much easier to pass the 13th Amendment when the rebelling states didn't get a vote in the matter :) To your broader point- radical change can just as equally be bad as good, so it should require more than a bare majority. (Personally I think the US Senate should require 55 votes for cloture, not 60). Some pretty radical stuff could have been passed in 2017-2018 if we just used a majority in both houses. I think with the current level of political fanaticism in the US, making it a bit difficult to pass laws is a wise choice
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    The 13th amendment required a civil war to overcome the need for a supermajority, so I think it's a pretty good example. Women's suffrage required World War 1, which up-ended society and opened up a lot of positions of power (or just ordinary factory positions) to women who had not previously had access.
    - hash872 5y ago
      The 13th Amendment came after a civil war had started- Lincoln didn't run on ending slavery in 1860. Also a number of Western US states (and some British colonies) started allowing women to vote decades before WW1- Wyoming in 1869, for instance. (An argument for federalism! We saw the same thing with gay rights & marijuana legalization here more recently). Another argument against his point is that the European & North American democracies eventually ended slavery and enfranchised women, all roughly around the same point. I don't think political systems can really hold back needed large-scale changes that are a bit of an historical inevitability. Still, federalism is good to allow some states/provinces to be ahead of the curve and provide a good example
helen___keller 5y ago
> This is the objection to say a tiny group of wealthy, usually elderly people who can block new housing construction based on complaints about 'neighborhood character'. Where I live, it’s not a small wealthy group blocking new construction, it’s that the region is already as built out as is legal in most places, and updates to municipal zoning is a supermajority vote so it almost never happens. Most construction happens via petitioning the zoning board for a variance
civilized 5y ago
> Many people heavily involved in politics ("intense policy demanders", I've heard them called) are just moderately insane overall, so I'm pretty interested in blocking bad ideas and rapid change. I won't deny it's frustrating that some things are so impossible in our system, but I also won't deny the schadenfreude I feel when the zealots of today's fashionable nonsense ideologies can't get their way because the system requires so much consensus: "No, the rules aren't great, but they're good enough. Sorry, you don't get to play tyrant-visionary in this lifetime. Better luck next life!"
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  Plenty of countries that have simple majoritarian systems, even on what the USA would consider constitutional issues haven't fallen to tyranny.
  - hash872 5y ago
    Yes but they also tend to have multiple political parties knitted together in a fragile consensus too, so marshalling large-scale changes across all of the parties is pretty challenging. A coalition partner can always not just say no, but back out of the coalition! The more I study political science, the more I find that the US and the parliamentary systems actually have more in common than people think
stormbrew 5y ago
> (I agree the US Senate should have a supermajority voting requirement, etc.) The senate is inherently anti-majoritarian, in that it half of all senators can represent vastly more than half of all citizens. When you pile on a legislative super-majority it just becomes absurd. At a 60 vote requirement, something like 25% of the population potentially holds veto power over the other 75%. That ain't mild.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  It is not a 25% population requirement, its a 5% one, that is, you only need 5% of voters to vote for your party in senate seats effective hold onto a majority proof veto. The senate is fundamentally an anti-democratic rule-by-minority institution that represents land area over top of human beings. Its as serious as a problem some other democracies and polities have faced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs In the UK it almost caused a revolution, because it allowed the wealthy and corrupt to hold onto power, while denying representation to new cities with huge population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm_of_the_Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm_of_the_Polish%E2%80%93Lit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto In the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth every senator held veto power, in practice this meant that an insane amount of corruption occurred (including senators being bought off by foreign nations), and it totally neutered their power as a state to fend of military rivals, and eventually ended up with the nation conquered. The senate is in desperate need of reform, and is a key part of why democracy is failing in the USA.
  - d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    Democracy is failing because we have two sides that have fundamentally different ideas for what our nation should be. Do we want high individual economic mobility (up and down) or do we want want to bring everyone up/down to a common level?
    - stormbrew 5y ago

kelseyfrog 5y ago

> One thing that makes some vetocracies illegitimate, however, is that a small group of people wield far outsized power relative to their numbers. >I agree the US Senate should have a supermajority voting requirement You might be looking at things differently, but to me there is a lot of friction between these two statements. The US Senate is the perfect example of a small group of people who wield outsized power relative to their numbers[1]. The small group of people are the small[2] state electors. The combination of rigid state boundaries, fixed representation, and population migration are necessary and sufficient conditions to power imbalance. Redistricting states, proportional representation, or serfdom are the antidotes[3]. In my mind this is the preeminent issue of our time. It is strife with dilemmas which culminate in an inability to make any meaningful structural change. The problem with these situations is that absent a viable legal path toward change, extra-legal change is an inevitable result[4]. 1. https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/senate-power-imbalance-tilts-toward-least-populous-states https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/senate-power-imbalance-t... 2. In population. 3. With obvious pros and cons and palatability. 4. See all revolutions ever.

clairity 5y ago

an axis is literally dichotomizing, and dichotomies don't aid understanding of complex, dynamic systems because of the numerous chaotic (i.e., higher order) drivers of phenomena within the system. dichotomies provide faux-understanding, allowing the speaker to feel esteem for knowing about the dichotomy, not the underlying system of which s/he speaks. it is literally bullshit. i'll repeat that the only useful dichotomy when talking about political systems (practically tautologically) is that between the powerful and the powerless. left/right, liberal/conservative, even bulldozer/vetocrat are all distractions on this fundamental characteristic of political systems. it's especially important that when we voters consider elections and policy positions, we do it based on a critical reasoning of the issues at hand, not a political affiliation or chosen dichotomous self-identification.

Ajedi32 5y ago
I actually appreciate the introduction of additional axis into the discussion, as I feel it helps cure that sort of dichotomic, tribalistic thinking. No model is perfect, but better to have a dozen different arbitrary dimensions of ideological spectra than just one. It's certainly a better model of reality than the strict left/right dichotomy that dominates modern political discourse.
- clairity 5y ago
  for personal edification and rumination, sure, having more perspectives tends to lead to more breadth and depth of thought. but when it comes to mediopolitical rhetoric, make no mistake, it’s about railroading thought down one of two rigidly constructed alleys. it’s this latter discourse where dichotomous thinking is much more prevalent and insidious.

inglor_cz 5y ago

One of the problems with supermajorities is that you give greater weight to status quo. With supermajorities required, few countries would ever get rid of slavery or the death penalty, give voting rights to women etc. A lot of the grandfathered defaults aren't worth a supermajority to overturn.

hash872 5y ago
Not sure you picked the best examples there- both of these things required a Constitutional amendment, aka had to pass both houses by a 2/3rds vote, then be voted in by three quarters of the states. That's like the definition of a supermajority, so pretty much the opposite of your point. To be fair, it was much easier to pass the 13th Amendment when the rebelling states didn't get a vote in the matter :) To your broader point- radical change can just as equally be bad as good, so it should require more than a bare majority. (Personally I think the US Senate should require 55 votes for cloture, not 60). Some pretty radical stuff could have been passed in 2017-2018 if we just used a majority in both houses. I think with the current level of political fanaticism in the US, making it a bit difficult to pass laws is a wise choice
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  The 13th amendment required a civil war to overcome the need for a supermajority, so I think it's a pretty good example. Women's suffrage required World War 1, which up-ended society and opened up a lot of positions of power (or just ordinary factory positions) to women who had not previously had access.
  - hash872 5y ago
    The 13th Amendment came after a civil war had started- Lincoln didn't run on ending slavery in 1860. Also a number of Western US states (and some British colonies) started allowing women to vote decades before WW1- Wyoming in 1869, for instance. (An argument for federalism! We saw the same thing with gay rights & marijuana legalization here more recently). Another argument against his point is that the European & North American democracies eventually ended slavery and enfranchised women, all roughly around the same point. I don't think political systems can really hold back needed large-scale changes that are a bit of an historical inevitability. Still, federalism is good to allow some states/provinces to be ahead of the curve and provide a good example

helen___keller 5y ago

> This is the objection to say a tiny group of wealthy, usually elderly people who can block new housing construction based on complaints about 'neighborhood character'. Where I live, it’s not a small wealthy group blocking new construction, it’s that the region is already as built out as is legal in most places, and updates to municipal zoning is a supermajority vote so it almost never happens. Most construction happens via petitioning the zoning board for a variance

civilized 5y ago

> Many people heavily involved in politics ("intense policy demanders", I've heard them called) are just moderately insane overall, so I'm pretty interested in blocking bad ideas and rapid change. I won't deny it's frustrating that some things are so impossible in our system, but I also won't deny the schadenfreude I feel when the zealots of today's fashionable nonsense ideologies can't get their way because the system requires so much consensus: "No, the rules aren't great, but they're good enough. Sorry, you don't get to play tyrant-visionary in this lifetime. Better luck next life!"

throwaway2048 5y ago
Plenty of countries that have simple majoritarian systems, even on what the USA would consider constitutional issues haven't fallen to tyranny.
- hash872 5y ago
  Yes but they also tend to have multiple political parties knitted together in a fragile consensus too, so marshalling large-scale changes across all of the parties is pretty challenging. A coalition partner can always not just say no, but back out of the coalition! The more I study political science, the more I find that the US and the parliamentary systems actually have more in common than people think

stormbrew 5y ago

> (I agree the US Senate should have a supermajority voting requirement, etc.) The senate is inherently anti-majoritarian, in that it half of all senators can represent vastly more than half of all citizens. When you pile on a legislative super-majority it just becomes absurd. At a 60 vote requirement, something like 25% of the population potentially holds veto power over the other 75%. That ain't mild.

throwaway2048 5y ago
It is not a 25% population requirement, its a 5% one, that is, you only need 5% of voters to vote for your party in senate seats effective hold onto a majority proof veto. The senate is fundamentally an anti-democratic rule-by-minority institution that represents land area over top of human beings. Its as serious as a problem some other democracies and polities have faced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs In the UK it almost caused a revolution, because it allowed the wealthy and corrupt to hold onto power, while denying representation to new cities with huge population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm_of_the_Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm_of_the_Polish%E2%80%93Lit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto In the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth every senator held veto power, in practice this meant that an insane amount of corruption occurred (including senators being bought off by foreign nations), and it totally neutered their power as a state to fend of military rivals, and eventually ended up with the nation conquered. The senate is in desperate need of reform, and is a key part of why democracy is failing in the USA.
- d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
  Democracy is failing because we have two sides that have fundamentally different ideas for what our nation should be. Do we want high individual economic mobility (up and down) or do we want want to bring everyone up/down to a common level?
  - stormbrew 5y ago