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The filibuster guarantees minority rule, in the Senate.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yamtaddle 4y ago
Yes, but it also means that the minority is less effective when it gains an electoral majority and takes 'hold of the gavel. That makes it harder for them to, say, change things to further entrench minority rule—which is real problem in several state-level governments.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  This sounds like a positive because it makes sure the support backing actually enacted policies is not balanced on a knife edge.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    This might be true, if the policies advanced by legislators more-closely reflected what voters want. Instead, we have a bunch of very-popular reforms that never get done for a variety of reasons, but the one-two punch of the two-party system and the Senate filibuster are a big part of why. Though, personally, I'd say our system naturally stabilizing at two parties is the bigger of those two problems—it's the core reason why major legislative bodies in the US can end up maintaining or advancing laws and policy that differ sharply from what a large majority of voters want, session after session. Unfortunately, fixing that would require a bunch of legislators or a bunch of states to vote against their own interests. So, probably not gonna happen, ever.
filibustedbyD 4y ago
This is why the civil rights act was never passed, and schools in the US are still segregated to this day, because Sen Byrd (D) filibustered
fwungy 4y ago
The founders designed a system that was slow to act on purpose. They did not want a strong federal government. Given how difficult it is to predict policy outcomes this is probably a good idea. Even if a collection of policies are good on the individual level there is no way to figure out if the interaction will be net positive, nor if the cost of remedy reverses the calculus.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  But now we have a strong federal government that can't agree enough to keep up with the needs of it's citizens. The worst possible outcome, IMO.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Or perhaps the predictable outcome?
- carom 4y ago
  The problem now is that the government is large and it is nearly impossible to shed the cruft that has accumulated.
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    Nothing ever gets shed or revised. The stale regulatory agencies are captured, corrupted, and stale/weak. OSHA has no teeth (they are just a nuisance to the scofflaws) FTC is underpowered EPA needs shut down FDA is on record for enabling very harmful medical devices I remember something about Boeing colluding with regulators to put people in harms way. I could hop on a search engine and dig up a tome-worth of completely unacceptable shit from the last 40 yrs in this regard.
    - rnk 4y ago
      We'd be so much better if there were no environmental rules, wouldn't we? Medical regulation, who needs it?
gopalv 4y ago
> minority rule, in the Senate If you look away from the senators and consider the people the senators represent, it was intended to be even without the filibuster. But what should be truly opposed is the cowardly way in which the filibuster is done today. You should make 41 people vote against the bill, on record with their names, then go back to their constituents and explain why they did it in a town hall sometime soon. Right now a senator can rely on the fact that their re-election is five years away when killing a bill which is supported by their constituents. 41 of them cannot assume they have years for the public to forget their vote on this particular thing (like hurting small businesses by inaction too).
- overboard2 4y ago
  The one person performing a filibuster is presumably doing so very much on record, complete with soundbites.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    That's not the kind anyone means anymore, at least when it comes up in relation to the US Senate. They generally don't actually filibuster, they place a procedural hold that requires 60 members to agree to override it.
    - lumost 4y ago
      This is where the insanity really started. It used to require 8-20 senators to physically filibuster to actually kill a bill. On a major bill, the small number of senators also risked reputational harm from the sound bites of them reading their phone books. Now anyone can start a filibuster, it largely goes unrecorded - and pressure for party unity prevents it from being killed.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        So it sounds like it's an even smaller minority rule now?
abirch 4y ago
The Senate enables minority rule due to state size as well. Unfortunately we're hostages of the past
- pc86 4y ago
  The Senate doesn't represent people, it represents States. The Representation is exactly equal, as intended: 1 State == 2 Senators.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    No one is questioning that it is working as designed. That something is working as designed is not an endorsement if the design is bad.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Right, there are two failure modes in the US governmental system, basically: 1) Things the founders got wrong on purpose. We've fixed a bunch of these, by e.g. broadening the franchise and ending chattel slavery with that whole Civil War thing. The way our Senate is composed is arguably an un-fixed one of these—it's that way on purpose, but it's, you know, bad. 2) Things they got wrong by accident. These are usually cases where politicking, application of game theory, and bad actors in general conspire to make things work differently than they were intended. This is stuff like the system stabilizing at two viable political parties, and the way the electoral college has worked in-practice almost from day one (but not the way the electoral college favors low-population states, because that part was on purpose, so would go under point 1 if we're regarding it as an error)
      - pc86 4y ago
        You're conflating something being bad by definition, in an inexcusable fashion, with simply not liking it. There's nothing inherently bad about the upper chamber of a bicameral legislature being explicitly not designed to represent individual people in a perfectly proportional manner. As originally designed, the US is not a nation with a strong central federal government that happens to be made up up 50 weak states and a handful of territories and districts. It's 50 strong states who happen to be united under one central but relatively weak federal government. In that context, having States represented equally, without regard to their populations, makes complete and total sense. Completely by chance, that happens to indirectly overrepresent people you disagree with. That's unfortunate (depending on your ideology), but it certainly doesn't make the entire system broken or bad.
adamsb6 4y ago
A supermajority threshold requirement is not minority rule. It's supermajority rule. Minority rule would be if 40% of the Senate could pass laws at will.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pyuser583 4y ago
It guarantees the federal government had a strong bias towards inaction.
prepend 4y ago
The filibuster decreases the rate of change.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Yes, but it also means that the minority is less effective when it gains an electoral majority and takes 'hold of the gavel. That makes it harder for them to, say, change things to further entrench minority rule—which is real problem in several state-level governments.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
This sounds like a positive because it makes sure the support backing actually enacted policies is not balanced on a knife edge.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  This might be true, if the policies advanced by legislators more-closely reflected what voters want. Instead, we have a bunch of very-popular reforms that never get done for a variety of reasons, but the one-two punch of the two-party system and the Senate filibuster are a big part of why. Though, personally, I'd say our system naturally stabilizing at two parties is the bigger of those two problems—it's the core reason why major legislative bodies in the US can end up maintaining or advancing laws and policy that differ sharply from what a large majority of voters want, session after session. Unfortunately, fixing that would require a bunch of legislators or a bunch of states to vote against their own interests. So, probably not gonna happen, ever.

filibustedbyD 4y ago

This is why the civil rights act was never passed, and schools in the US are still segregated to this day, because Sen Byrd (D) filibustered

fwungy 4y ago

The founders designed a system that was slow to act on purpose. They did not want a strong federal government. Given how difficult it is to predict policy outcomes this is probably a good idea. Even if a collection of policies are good on the individual level there is no way to figure out if the interaction will be net positive, nor if the cost of remedy reverses the calculus.

candiddevmike 4y ago
But now we have a strong federal government that can't agree enough to keep up with the needs of it's citizens. The worst possible outcome, IMO.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Or perhaps the predictable outcome?
carom 4y ago
The problem now is that the government is large and it is nearly impossible to shed the cruft that has accumulated.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Nothing ever gets shed or revised. The stale regulatory agencies are captured, corrupted, and stale/weak. OSHA has no teeth (they are just a nuisance to the scofflaws) FTC is underpowered EPA needs shut down FDA is on record for enabling very harmful medical devices I remember something about Boeing colluding with regulators to put people in harms way. I could hop on a search engine and dig up a tome-worth of completely unacceptable shit from the last 40 yrs in this regard.
  - rnk 4y ago
    We'd be so much better if there were no environmental rules, wouldn't we? Medical regulation, who needs it?

gopalv 4y ago

> minority rule, in the Senate If you look away from the senators and consider the people the senators represent, it was intended to be even without the filibuster. But what should be truly opposed is the cowardly way in which the filibuster is done today. You should make 41 people vote against the bill, on record with their names, then go back to their constituents and explain why they did it in a town hall sometime soon. Right now a senator can rely on the fact that their re-election is five years away when killing a bill which is supported by their constituents. 41 of them cannot assume they have years for the public to forget their vote on this particular thing (like hurting small businesses by inaction too).

overboard2 4y ago
The one person performing a filibuster is presumably doing so very much on record, complete with soundbites.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  That's not the kind anyone means anymore, at least when it comes up in relation to the US Senate. They generally don't actually filibuster, they place a procedural hold that requires 60 members to agree to override it.
  - lumost 4y ago
    This is where the insanity really started. It used to require 8-20 senators to physically filibuster to actually kill a bill. On a major bill, the small number of senators also risked reputational harm from the sound bites of them reading their phone books. Now anyone can start a filibuster, it largely goes unrecorded - and pressure for party unity prevents it from being killed.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      So it sounds like it's an even smaller minority rule now?

abirch 4y ago

The Senate enables minority rule due to state size as well. Unfortunately we're hostages of the past

pc86 4y ago
The Senate doesn't represent people, it represents States. The Representation is exactly equal, as intended: 1 State == 2 Senators.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  No one is questioning that it is working as designed. That something is working as designed is not an endorsement if the design is bad.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Right, there are two failure modes in the US governmental system, basically: 1) Things the founders got wrong on purpose. We've fixed a bunch of these, by e.g. broadening the franchise and ending chattel slavery with that whole Civil War thing. The way our Senate is composed is arguably an un-fixed one of these—it's that way on purpose, but it's, you know, bad. 2) Things they got wrong by accident. These are usually cases where politicking, application of game theory, and bad actors in general conspire to make things work differently than they were intended. This is stuff like the system stabilizing at two viable political parties, and the way the electoral college has worked in-practice almost from day one (but not the way the electoral college favors low-population states, because that part was on purpose, so would go under point 1 if we're regarding it as an error)
    - pc86 4y ago
      You're conflating something being bad by definition, in an inexcusable fashion, with simply not liking it. There's nothing inherently bad about the upper chamber of a bicameral legislature being explicitly not designed to represent individual people in a perfectly proportional manner. As originally designed, the US is not a nation with a strong central federal government that happens to be made up up 50 weak states and a handful of territories and districts. It's 50 strong states who happen to be united under one central but relatively weak federal government. In that context, having States represented equally, without regard to their populations, makes complete and total sense. Completely by chance, that happens to indirectly overrepresent people you disagree with. That's unfortunate (depending on your ideology), but it certainly doesn't make the entire system broken or bad.

adamsb6 4y ago

A supermajority threshold requirement is not minority rule. It's supermajority rule. Minority rule would be if 40% of the Senate could pass laws at will.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

pyuser583 4y ago

It guarantees the federal government had a strong bias towards inaction.

prepend 4y ago

The filibuster decreases the rate of change.