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Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and then restrict the republic through a constitution. I

Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and then restrict the republic through a constitution. If Democrats were losing out to big numbers, they would pro-republic and Republicans would be pro-democracy. But, one of the best explanations for why founding fathers built the system the way they did is this[1], by late Justice Scalia. The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) - House represents the population - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). - The fundamental idea is that any bill must be agreed upon by: a. The will of the people not just in short term (house), but in mid-term (presidency) and long term (senate) also. When UK wanted out of EU, the remainers believed that they should have a revote because they didn't believe that people voted with full information. Of course, years later a second proxy vote through general elections made the intent clear, but in the US we will not go for a bill to be passed unless its not just what we voted for in the past 2 years, but also what we voted for in past 4 and 6 years. b. The will of fifty states, and territories and not just by a few populous states. In contrast, EU's policy making is all a decision of France and Germany. EU is more 'democratic' than US, but also far more fragile. American Democratic Republic system is a part of experiment of 'Union of Unions'. It's a balance between the different sides. If you make the union too weak, it will fail to hold itself up. Like Articles of Confederation was a failure because it was too weak, pre-Civil War US also turned out to be a union not strong enough. League of Nations wasn't strong enough. But if you make it too strong, then individual states will start walking out because they don't find their interests represented (like UK voting for Brexit from EU). 1. https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0 https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0

mc32 4y ago
I totally agree with this view and the "problem" is people want their way _NOW_. They don't have the patience nor want to understand that the other side has the political majority at this time. And when the majority becomes a minority opinion, they also cannot handle that change very well. Today's bare-knuckle politics sure does not help moderate the peaks.
- jandrese 4y ago
  On the other hand you shouldn't be surprised when people are angry at you when you tell them "hold on, we are going to fix this problem in the future" when they have been waiting for literally their entire lifetime and nobody seems to want to do anything about it. "This problem will be inconvenient for me to solve, so please wait until I die of old age before you solve it, thank you for your patience."
  - mc32 4y ago
    Sure, that's human nature. One cannot satisfy everyone simultaneously short of having them live in simulated environments.
jandrese 4y ago
States already tried to walk out once, and it didn't go so well. A fundamental problem of catering to minority opinions is that if a minority shrinks it tends to become more and more strident to the point where it can no longer compromise, but they still maintain power due to the way the system is set up. This leads to highly polarized and dysfunctional political systems. Plus, if there is a danger that a minority might feel disenfranchised and want to leave, what happens when a majority feels the same way?
bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
The phrase “founding fathers” is gross and embarrassing as an American. They weren’t deities and they didn’t happen to invent the ultimate possible government for all time. We’re using computers to talk about stuff they literally wrote on animal skins with bird feathers! They rode horses to go visit other states, we have global fiber optic networks. Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  > Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now. Which is why the government system they created allows us to update the constitution. Which we have done. Many times. At least give specific reasons for why you think we should abandon the political philosophy that has underpinned our government for almost 250 years rather than vague references to technological changes.
  - bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
    Sure. Why send a handful of representatives from each state to Washington? With horses somebody needed to physically go. Now we can all watch C-SPAN. If we can vote for American Idol we can vote on laws. Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. It never did before but now it does. Of course I don’t want to have to study every law and decide how to vote, that would be a full time job. So I’ll pick a representative and add my vote to the weight of theirs. But I can change my representative any time, even on a vote by vote basis, and obviously they don’t have to be from my state. There are all kinds of better way of doing things that are possible now that nobody has gotten around to trying.
    - splintercell 4y ago
      > Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. I feel like you made zero effort to understand the point I tried to make. Founding fathers may have been from a different time, but they absolutely weren't wrong about democracy not being a solution. They studied numerous constitutions written during the antiquities and correctly concluded that for a large geographical nation like the US, democracy cannot work. That part does not change just because we have super fast communication lines and computers today.
paulmd 4y ago
> The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: > - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President > - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) > - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) > - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) > - House represents the population > - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) > - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). I feel like a lot of people fail to consider whether this is a good thing. Like social studies classes always present this as an unvarnished good - "checks and balances, the bedrock of our system". But a system really should be designed to build consensus to action - there should always be someone in the driver's seat, even if it's not someone I agree with. Letting the rudder flap in the breeze until 100% of people can agree on something is not an inherently desirable outcome, because that almost never happens! And yes, some people would say that's a good thing too, that we should bias towards doing nothing instead of doing something, but... that's not really a viable model indefinitely. The world is now based around exponential growth in economic output, exponential growth in technology, and we are preferring political systems optimized for an O(1) constant-state world where there's 100 years between the cotton gin and the internal combustion engine. Especially in times of crisis that bias towards doing nothing is a really bad thing... consider the case of the Polish Sejm and how the goal of "excessive consensus" basically crippled the country and allowed their enemies to manipulate the system to create disruption and then exploit the deadlock for political gain. https://www.britannica.com/place/Poland/The-17th-century-crisis https://www.britannica.com/place/Poland/The-17th-century-cri... Everyone agrees 100% isn't the right number, but then, what is? is 75% the right number? 60%? Simple majority? How big a consensus has ever existed in the modern political sphere, short of 9/11-style world-changing events? A 60% popular vote is considered a landslide, but if the system requires a 75% popular vote to achieve a 60% senatorial/house majority, the number is effectively 75% and actually achieving consensus really isn't possible in that system. The American system's focus on checks-and-balances really is excessive - it's not a good thing for a system to be unable to reach consensus. It worked for a while as long as the "gentleman's agreement" held but now we are seeing people exercising political maximalism, "hardball" so to speak, and with those participants the actual rules of the system no longer result in consensus We can then optimize around the "what if we flop back and forth between parties" problem separately but - requiring 100% consensus between all dimensionalities of society to do anything is not really the solution for that. This idea that "deadlock between branches is a positive design goal" is fundamentally not how the rest of the world approaches this. After all, in parliamentary systems the PM is the leader of the party/coalition that controls parliament. That's a good system, it builds a government that has a consensus towards action and goals! Producing deadlock between branches of government isn't a desirable outcome in itself. And that, if you phrase it as such, is an inherent rejection of the American ideal of "checks and balances" in the sense you outline it here ("to require massive consensus across all dimensionalities of society via multiple branches and political compartments each favoring a dimensionality"). Yes, absolutely they still have a constitution and judicial branch to protect people, but they don't design the system around deadlocks between arms of the government being a design goal. And it still doesn't lead to "laws completely flip every time power changes" or the other supposedly negative outcomes from consensus-oriented systems.

mc32 4y ago

I totally agree with this view and the "problem" is people want their way _NOW_. They don't have the patience nor want to understand that the other side has the political majority at this time. And when the majority becomes a minority opinion, they also cannot handle that change very well. Today's bare-knuckle politics sure does not help moderate the peaks.

jandrese 4y ago
On the other hand you shouldn't be surprised when people are angry at you when you tell them "hold on, we are going to fix this problem in the future" when they have been waiting for literally their entire lifetime and nobody seems to want to do anything about it. "This problem will be inconvenient for me to solve, so please wait until I die of old age before you solve it, thank you for your patience."
- mc32 4y ago
  Sure, that's human nature. One cannot satisfy everyone simultaneously short of having them live in simulated environments.

jandrese 4y ago

States already tried to walk out once, and it didn't go so well. A fundamental problem of catering to minority opinions is that if a minority shrinks it tends to become more and more strident to the point where it can no longer compromise, but they still maintain power due to the way the system is set up. This leads to highly polarized and dysfunctional political systems. Plus, if there is a danger that a minority might feel disenfranchised and want to leave, what happens when a majority feels the same way?

bluesnowmonkey 4y ago

The phrase “founding fathers” is gross and embarrassing as an American. They weren’t deities and they didn’t happen to invent the ultimate possible government for all time. We’re using computers to talk about stuff they literally wrote on animal skins with bird feathers! They rode horses to go visit other states, we have global fiber optic networks. Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now.

wilsonnb3 4y ago
> Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now. Which is why the government system they created allows us to update the constitution. Which we have done. Many times. At least give specific reasons for why you think we should abandon the political philosophy that has underpinned our government for almost 250 years rather than vague references to technological changes.
- bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
  Sure. Why send a handful of representatives from each state to Washington? With horses somebody needed to physically go. Now we can all watch C-SPAN. If we can vote for American Idol we can vote on laws. Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. It never did before but now it does. Of course I don’t want to have to study every law and decide how to vote, that would be a full time job. So I’ll pick a representative and add my vote to the weight of theirs. But I can change my representative any time, even on a vote by vote basis, and obviously they don’t have to be from my state. There are all kinds of better way of doing things that are possible now that nobody has gotten around to trying.
  - splintercell 4y ago
    > Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. I feel like you made zero effort to understand the point I tried to make. Founding fathers may have been from a different time, but they absolutely weren't wrong about democracy not being a solution. They studied numerous constitutions written during the antiquities and correctly concluded that for a large geographical nation like the US, democracy cannot work. That part does not change just because we have super fast communication lines and computers today.

paulmd 4y ago

> The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: > - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President > - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) > - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) > - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) > - House represents the population > - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) > - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). I feel like a lot of people fail to consider whether this is a good thing. Like social studies classes always present this as an unvarnished good - "checks and balances, the bedrock of our system". But a system really should be designed to build consensus to action - there should always be someone in the driver's seat, even if it's not someone I agree with. Letting the rudder flap in the breeze until 100% of people can agree on something is not an inherently desirable outcome, because that almost never happens! And yes, some people would say that's a good thing too, that we should bias towards doing nothing instead of doing something, but... that's not really a viable model indefinitely. The world is now based around exponential growth in economic output, exponential growth in technology, and we are preferring political systems optimized for an O(1) constant-state world where there's 100 years between the cotton gin and the internal combustion engine. Especially in times of crisis that bias towards doing nothing is a really bad thing... consider the case of the Polish Sejm and how the goal of "excessive consensus" basically crippled the country and allowed their enemies to manipulate the system to create disruption and then exploit the deadlock for political gain. https://www.britannica.com/place/Poland/The-17th-century-crisis https://www.britannica.com/place/Poland/The-17th-century-cri... Everyone agrees 100% isn't the right number, but then, what is? is 75% the right number? 60%? Simple majority? How big a consensus has ever existed in the modern political sphere, short of 9/11-style world-changing events? A 60% popular vote is considered a landslide, but if the system requires a 75% popular vote to achieve a 60% senatorial/house majority, the number is effectively 75% and actually achieving consensus really isn't possible in that system. The American system's focus on checks-and-balances really is excessive - it's not a good thing for a system to be unable to reach consensus. It worked for a while as long as the "gentleman's agreement" held but now we are seeing people exercising political maximalism, "hardball" so to speak, and with those participants the actual rules of the system no longer result in consensus We can then optimize around the "what if we flop back and forth between parties" problem separately but - requiring 100% consensus between all dimensionalities of society to do anything is not really the solution for that. This idea that "deadlock between branches is a positive design goal" is fundamentally not how the rest of the world approaches this. After all, in parliamentary systems the PM is the leader of the party/coalition that controls parliament. That's a good system, it builds a government that has a consensus towards action and goals! Producing deadlock between branches of government isn't a desirable outcome in itself. And that, if you phrase it as such, is an inherent rejection of the American ideal of "checks and balances" in the sense you outline it here ("to require massive consensus across all dimensionalities of society via multiple branches and political compartments each favoring a dimensionality"). Yes, absolutely they still have a constitution and judicial branch to protect people, but they don't design the system around deadlocks between arms of the government being a design goal. And it still doesn't lead to "laws completely flip every time power changes" or the other supposedly negative outcomes from consensus-oriented systems.