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Due to things like the electoral college, gerrymandering, vote suppression tactics, and senate representation to name just few, the US is not very democratic. N

Due to things like the electoral college, gerrymandering, vote suppression tactics, and senate representation to name just few, the US is not very democratic. Nor can these be fixed under current conditions because of the above list.

giantg2 4y ago
There's a strong argument for senate representation being a feature, not a bug. After all, it's a democratic republic of a union of separate states.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  There's also a strong argument to be made for citizens to get equal representation when it comes to the crafting of laws that affect them.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    They do. The people get equal representation under the house. The states get equal representation under the senate. This is a feature to control populist movements as well as protect states' interests (which are also composed by the people, but this separate ensures that the culture of one set of state will not be imposed over the other set).
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
      The senate does not give people equal representation - regardless of the motivation for having it, this is objectively true. You can say that you like a system that has this feature for states or it has certain other benefits and so on, but you can't say that it is equal representation because it is not.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        As I said, the house gives people equal representation. A bill will not become law without passing the with through representation of the house. The only limit is that some things the house wants won't pass because the states don't agree. If you truly want equal representation, then we have to go the direct democracy route since you will not have equal numbers of people under each representative. You also need to get rid of appointments by the executive (including rule making agencies), closed primaries, and provide universal voting including for felons and non-citizens. So what is this argument for equal representation across the board? I don't see any benefit other than if you want populist movements to succeed based on the whims of the day and potentially at the expense of the minority rights (even more so than today). The main point here is that state representation was necessary in order to create the country, and is likely necessary for the country to continue. I don't see any argument that supercedes this so far.
        Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
        I understand how it works, and you agree that the senate does not provide equal representation for people, only the states. I'm not suggesting that the numbers for each representative be exactly the same because that's not achievable in practice. What I am saying is that the current system is much less democratic than it could be if either there was no senate or it had proportional representation. You may think that would lead to chaos, but I disagree.
        giantg2 4y ago
        It wouldn't lead to chaos. It could lead to states leaving the union if the senate were dissolved. It's happened in the past when states didn't want to be trampled and the divide seems large today. But what is the objective benefit to removing the senate? The argument I'm hearing is just that it could be more democratic, but there are many changes that could make things more democratic. Some things are about fairness, like gerrymandering. But I don't see any benefit to removing the senate.
        4y ago
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      > The people get equal representation under the house. The states get equal representation under the senate. Neither of these things are actually true in practice.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        Elaborate, please.
        stormbrew 4y ago
        A person in Wyoming doesn't have equal representation in the house as a person in California, by quite a large margin. The house is not representative in practice. As I said in another branch of this conversation, the use of the filibuster on nearly all bills of any significance (budgets and confirmations aside) in the Senate (and the chilling effect it's had on even bringing other bills to the floor) means that states are not represented equally either. The most obstructionist states have substantially more legislative power than the ones that want to actually pass bills. This is obviously more abstract, but it's pretty clear that in practice states are not equal in the senate.
        giantg2 4y ago
        The other states also have the power to filibuster things they don't like. This is feature not a bug. We want to fail open (liberty). The way to do that is placing safeguards that make it harder to pass laws, as they are generally imposing restrictions. The passage of any law will negatively affect some minority, the point is to make that group small and avoid straight partisanship via a modest supermajority. Yes, there are some outliers and discrepancy in the number a representative represents. It probably should be adjusted.
        stormbrew 4y ago
        It's a feature to a point. I hope it's uncontroversial that, say, blocking a bill to ban slavery is not "failing open," for example, and the persistent effort to prevent slavery from being banned led to many failures in liberty? When your main bulwark is making it hard to pass bills, all you've really done is make it so that the status quo is powerful. The status quo is not, by default, freedom.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  Senate representation is one thing. Requiring a supermajority to pass anything in an already unrepresentative house is just ridiculous, and absolutely does diminish the quality of "democracy" the US has. Especially considering the US house isn't particularly representative either, due to a combination of an absurdly low representative cap and gerrymandering. The US is certainly more democratic than it was at its founding, when neither the president nor the Senate were entirely directly elected at all, but it's not even close to as democratic as most Americans appear to believe it is.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I assume you're just talking about the filibuster. What about the other super majority votes like ratifying treaties? Also, they could use budget reconciliation to pass a few things to bypass the filibuster. I think many Americans have been calling it a democracy for shorthand and people forget that it's an adjective for "republic".
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      Imo, "it's not a democracy it's a republic" is a pretty empty statement, because there are no pure democracies (and they are likely to be completely impractical anyways). It seems to be a weird meme among Americans that hints at some kind of exceptionalism, but has very little in the way of practical implications. For the most part, everyone in the world means approximately the same thing an American does when they say democracy ("a representative constitutional democracy, probably with some degree of regional federalism and bicameralism"). The US neither resembles a pure democracy or the republic the founders created at this point anyways, so it doesn't really matter. These terms are pretty fluid. Pure democracy is basically never the goal anyways. It's not a bad thing for a system of government to be not entirely democratic, there do have to be checks on pure majoritarianism somehow, but the particulars of the US' democratic lacks seem to be both worse than most Americans imagine them to be, and also far more vestigial if not accidental than they ought to be (many were really there to help uphold slavery and/or prevent reconstruction from fully succeeding). At this point, the net effect of the US' democratic failings is to create a tyranny of the minority, which can hardly be considered a better failure mode than a tyranny of the majority.
jdgoesmarching 4y ago
No you don’t understand, being more democratic in the abstract is more important than actual rights being stripped away or retaining the bare minimum environmental regulations on companies that are destroying the planet. It’s sad how the flimsiest well-actuallys carry so much weight around here. Anyone making arguments around recent decisions being democratic has their head buried in the sand about how blatantly undemocratic the US has been since its inception.
- refurb 4y ago
  That’s a silly statement. The process is what makes a country democratic. Creating laws out of thin air and not through the proper processes is the opposite of democratic.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    Processes were followed and have been for generations. SCOTUS is just flipping the table over now for the benefit of biggest polluting industries, not the citizens, country, or the rule of law.
    - refurb 4y ago
      I mean it clearly wasn’t followed, the legislature was trying to do a run around the right process (explicitly giving the EPA the powers). This ruling is the right one.
      - jdgoesmarching 4y ago
        It’s only “clear” for people who accept paper-thin legal logic from a court with an obvious agenda. It’s only clear if you’re willing to slide down the slippery slope of the court stripping authority from all federal agencies they don’t like with the logic that the legislature needs to codify every email sent by an agency. If you don’t like the EPA just say so, but please stop pretending like the Supreme Court is some real arbiter of logic and constitutionality. It has always been (even during liberal courts) an unelected political institution that justifies huge legislative changes with high-minded philosophical hand waving. Occasionally they throw in civil rights decisions for good PR with their aligned base, but even that’s on the chopping block with the current court.

giantg2 4y ago

There's a strong argument for senate representation being a feature, not a bug. After all, it's a democratic republic of a union of separate states.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
There's also a strong argument to be made for citizens to get equal representation when it comes to the crafting of laws that affect them.
- giantg2 4y ago
  They do. The people get equal representation under the house. The states get equal representation under the senate. This is a feature to control populist movements as well as protect states' interests (which are also composed by the people, but this separate ensures that the culture of one set of state will not be imposed over the other set).
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    The senate does not give people equal representation - regardless of the motivation for having it, this is objectively true. You can say that you like a system that has this feature for states or it has certain other benefits and so on, but you can't say that it is equal representation because it is not.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      As I said, the house gives people equal representation. A bill will not become law without passing the with through representation of the house. The only limit is that some things the house wants won't pass because the states don't agree. If you truly want equal representation, then we have to go the direct democracy route since you will not have equal numbers of people under each representative. You also need to get rid of appointments by the executive (including rule making agencies), closed primaries, and provide universal voting including for felons and non-citizens. So what is this argument for equal representation across the board? I don't see any benefit other than if you want populist movements to succeed based on the whims of the day and potentially at the expense of the minority rights (even more so than today). The main point here is that state representation was necessary in order to create the country, and is likely necessary for the country to continue. I don't see any argument that supercedes this so far.
      - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
        I understand how it works, and you agree that the senate does not provide equal representation for people, only the states. I'm not suggesting that the numbers for each representative be exactly the same because that's not achievable in practice. What I am saying is that the current system is much less democratic than it could be if either there was no senate or it had proportional representation. You may think that would lead to chaos, but I disagree.
        giantg2 4y ago
        It wouldn't lead to chaos. It could lead to states leaving the union if the senate were dissolved. It's happened in the past when states didn't want to be trampled and the divide seems large today. But what is the objective benefit to removing the senate? The argument I'm hearing is just that it could be more democratic, but there are many changes that could make things more democratic. Some things are about fairness, like gerrymandering. But I don't see any benefit to removing the senate.
        4y ago
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    > The people get equal representation under the house. The states get equal representation under the senate. Neither of these things are actually true in practice.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Elaborate, please.
      - stormbrew 4y ago
        A person in Wyoming doesn't have equal representation in the house as a person in California, by quite a large margin. The house is not representative in practice. As I said in another branch of this conversation, the use of the filibuster on nearly all bills of any significance (budgets and confirmations aside) in the Senate (and the chilling effect it's had on even bringing other bills to the floor) means that states are not represented equally either. The most obstructionist states have substantially more legislative power than the ones that want to actually pass bills. This is obviously more abstract, but it's pretty clear that in practice states are not equal in the senate.
        giantg2 4y ago
        The other states also have the power to filibuster things they don't like. This is feature not a bug. We want to fail open (liberty). The way to do that is placing safeguards that make it harder to pass laws, as they are generally imposing restrictions. The passage of any law will negatively affect some minority, the point is to make that group small and avoid straight partisanship via a modest supermajority. Yes, there are some outliers and discrepancy in the number a representative represents. It probably should be adjusted.
        stormbrew 4y ago
        It's a feature to a point. I hope it's uncontroversial that, say, blocking a bill to ban slavery is not "failing open," for example, and the persistent effort to prevent slavery from being banned led to many failures in liberty? When your main bulwark is making it hard to pass bills, all you've really done is make it so that the status quo is powerful. The status quo is not, by default, freedom.
stormbrew 4y ago
Senate representation is one thing. Requiring a supermajority to pass anything in an already unrepresentative house is just ridiculous, and absolutely does diminish the quality of "democracy" the US has. Especially considering the US house isn't particularly representative either, due to a combination of an absurdly low representative cap and gerrymandering. The US is certainly more democratic than it was at its founding, when neither the president nor the Senate were entirely directly elected at all, but it's not even close to as democratic as most Americans appear to believe it is.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I assume you're just talking about the filibuster. What about the other super majority votes like ratifying treaties? Also, they could use budget reconciliation to pass a few things to bypass the filibuster. I think many Americans have been calling it a democracy for shorthand and people forget that it's an adjective for "republic".
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    Imo, "it's not a democracy it's a republic" is a pretty empty statement, because there are no pure democracies (and they are likely to be completely impractical anyways). It seems to be a weird meme among Americans that hints at some kind of exceptionalism, but has very little in the way of practical implications. For the most part, everyone in the world means approximately the same thing an American does when they say democracy ("a representative constitutional democracy, probably with some degree of regional federalism and bicameralism"). The US neither resembles a pure democracy or the republic the founders created at this point anyways, so it doesn't really matter. These terms are pretty fluid. Pure democracy is basically never the goal anyways. It's not a bad thing for a system of government to be not entirely democratic, there do have to be checks on pure majoritarianism somehow, but the particulars of the US' democratic lacks seem to be both worse than most Americans imagine them to be, and also far more vestigial if not accidental than they ought to be (many were really there to help uphold slavery and/or prevent reconstruction from fully succeeding). At this point, the net effect of the US' democratic failings is to create a tyranny of the minority, which can hardly be considered a better failure mode than a tyranny of the majority.

jdgoesmarching 4y ago

No you don’t understand, being more democratic in the abstract is more important than actual rights being stripped away or retaining the bare minimum environmental regulations on companies that are destroying the planet. It’s sad how the flimsiest well-actuallys carry so much weight around here. Anyone making arguments around recent decisions being democratic has their head buried in the sand about how blatantly undemocratic the US has been since its inception.

refurb 4y ago
That’s a silly statement. The process is what makes a country democratic. Creating laws out of thin air and not through the proper processes is the opposite of democratic.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  Processes were followed and have been for generations. SCOTUS is just flipping the table over now for the benefit of biggest polluting industries, not the citizens, country, or the rule of law.
  - refurb 4y ago
    I mean it clearly wasn’t followed, the legislature was trying to do a run around the right process (explicitly giving the EPA the powers). This ruling is the right one.
    - jdgoesmarching 4y ago
      It’s only “clear” for people who accept paper-thin legal logic from a court with an obvious agenda. It’s only clear if you’re willing to slide down the slippery slope of the court stripping authority from all federal agencies they don’t like with the logic that the legislature needs to codify every email sent by an agency. If you don’t like the EPA just say so, but please stop pretending like the Supreme Court is some real arbiter of logic and constitutionality. It has always been (even during liberal courts) an unelected political institution that justifies huge legislative changes with high-minded philosophical hand waving. Occasionally they throw in civil rights decisions for good PR with their aligned base, but even that’s on the chopping block with the current court.