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At least with a judge you’d have representation in some form, and have an actual argument for-against it. Agencies will just write whatever they want, enforce

At least with a judge you’d have representation in some form, and have an actual argument for-against it. Agencies will just write whatever they want, enforce it, then after have the legal system involved. At that point the damage is done. Lets try to get closer to laws and rules that have some semblance of representation, even if its not “perfect” yet.

deleted 2y ago
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dangus 2y ago
Technically the president who handles a lot of agency appointments and guidance is elected somewhat more democratically than the senate, who confirms federal judges. At least the electoral college roughly takes state population into account. The senate just assigns two senators to states with 580,000 people and then does the exact same for states with 38 million people.
- quartesixte 2y ago
  Senators were designed as senior statesmen representing the interest of State Governments, and as a check against the popularly-elected Representatives in the House so that the smaller states could have a voice. That's why general public couldn't even vote for senators until the 17th amendment in 1913. I wonder from time to time the ramifications of turning Senators into basically super-representatives. I think it's always good to keep in mind that the Founders and Framers really did consider the individual States as semi-autonomous entities bound together in a tight FEDERATION that would cooperate on interstate commerce, mutual defense, and foreign diplomacy. And so, Wyoming, Maine and Rhode Island get just as many senators as New York, Texas, and California because they are just as important to this Union as any other state. Edit: Apparently (but not surprisingly) there is some partisanship surrounding this issue and I want to make clear that 1) I came to this thought via just some first-principles thinking 2) I do sympathize with the motivations behind the 17th and the challenges of reverting to pre-17th (in the same way we really can't go back to pre-12th Amendment style POTUS elections).
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    > first-principles thinking What does this mean? There are first principles in maths and physics, what are first principles in, what is this actually, political philosophy? The first principles must be universally agreeable and indisputable, like 1 + 1= 2, what would be an example?
    - quartesixte 2y ago
      US Constitutional Law and the very specific field it has created. So, in this case, Articles I, II, and III of the US Constitution + 27 amendments. Which, I concede doesn't fall under a narrow-definition of First Principles thinking but I think the term has been meme'd enough to allow for some play here.
  - dangus 2y ago
    You said that each state has equal importance to the union, right? So what would you say if California had a state vote and decided to split into 5 states. There would be states for the LA, Bay Area, San Diego, Sacramento, and a 5th state for all the other areas. California would gain 8 new senators just by dividing its boundaries, and it would probably all be the same political party. Or the same for Wyoming. Why not Wyoming just declare that it is now 4 states and quadruple its representation? See the problem here? This assignment of senators is arbitrary and has nothing to do with representing states. States aren’t people. This system isn’t really designed with the incentives or guard rails to do what you say it does. There’s nothing that requires a senator to be this image of a dignified senior statesperson that represents the interests of the state in the way that the founders imagined. Case in point: JD Vance became a senator with zero public service experience. He has no longstanding relationship with state congresspeople in Ohio. The founders made the constitution in a time before our advanced financial and media landscape. It was also conceived at a time when states were barely even agreeing to be united into a single country. It was also made at a time before mass urbanization. With all this context in mind I can’t really see what the Senate’s purpose is besides disenfranchising voters in larger states. Congress isn’t really there to make sure that smaller states are satisfied, it’s there to pass federal laws in areas where the federal government has authority over states. It’s not even legally allowed for a state to secede. So why are the needs of arbitrary state boundaries more important than those of the people? I would argue that the founders might have been wrong to decide that we need a check on the desires of voters. They were clearly wrong on the electoral college, which should just go away entirely or at least change to a more granular system like the states that split their electoral votes. I would say that the best thing we could do is expand the House of Representatives to around 2,000 representatives and then eliminate the senate entirely. Or, perhaps, turn the senate into a subcommittee of more tenured representatives elected by members of the House of Representatives.
Propelloni 2y ago
Under the rule-of-law, after such a ruling, you can sue the state for damages. If you can show damages you will be made whole, i.e. indemnified. I, for one, am looking forward to companies showing how and how much they were damaged by the ban of non-compete clauses in working contracts. Should be some interesting numbers.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >If you can show damages you will be made whole, i.e. indemnified. You can be made whole to the best extent humanly possible. Which is to say, no. No matter how much money you might win, you can't be made whole for the time and human capital wasted on fending off Executive Branch abuse. The ideal timeline is to stop the abuse before it has taken root, bloomed, and spread its hay fever all over the place.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dangus 2y ago

Technically the president who handles a lot of agency appointments and guidance is elected somewhat more democratically than the senate, who confirms federal judges. At least the electoral college roughly takes state population into account. The senate just assigns two senators to states with 580,000 people and then does the exact same for states with 38 million people.

quartesixte 2y ago
Senators were designed as senior statesmen representing the interest of State Governments, and as a check against the popularly-elected Representatives in the House so that the smaller states could have a voice. That's why general public couldn't even vote for senators until the 17th amendment in 1913. I wonder from time to time the ramifications of turning Senators into basically super-representatives. I think it's always good to keep in mind that the Founders and Framers really did consider the individual States as semi-autonomous entities bound together in a tight FEDERATION that would cooperate on interstate commerce, mutual defense, and foreign diplomacy. And so, Wyoming, Maine and Rhode Island get just as many senators as New York, Texas, and California because they are just as important to this Union as any other state. Edit: Apparently (but not surprisingly) there is some partisanship surrounding this issue and I want to make clear that 1) I came to this thought via just some first-principles thinking 2) I do sympathize with the motivations behind the 17th and the challenges of reverting to pre-17th (in the same way we really can't go back to pre-12th Amendment style POTUS elections).
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > first-principles thinking What does this mean? There are first principles in maths and physics, what are first principles in, what is this actually, political philosophy? The first principles must be universally agreeable and indisputable, like 1 + 1= 2, what would be an example?
  - quartesixte 2y ago
    US Constitutional Law and the very specific field it has created. So, in this case, Articles I, II, and III of the US Constitution + 27 amendments. Which, I concede doesn't fall under a narrow-definition of First Principles thinking but I think the term has been meme'd enough to allow for some play here.
- dangus 2y ago
  You said that each state has equal importance to the union, right? So what would you say if California had a state vote and decided to split into 5 states. There would be states for the LA, Bay Area, San Diego, Sacramento, and a 5th state for all the other areas. California would gain 8 new senators just by dividing its boundaries, and it would probably all be the same political party. Or the same for Wyoming. Why not Wyoming just declare that it is now 4 states and quadruple its representation? See the problem here? This assignment of senators is arbitrary and has nothing to do with representing states. States aren’t people. This system isn’t really designed with the incentives or guard rails to do what you say it does. There’s nothing that requires a senator to be this image of a dignified senior statesperson that represents the interests of the state in the way that the founders imagined. Case in point: JD Vance became a senator with zero public service experience. He has no longstanding relationship with state congresspeople in Ohio. The founders made the constitution in a time before our advanced financial and media landscape. It was also conceived at a time when states were barely even agreeing to be united into a single country. It was also made at a time before mass urbanization. With all this context in mind I can’t really see what the Senate’s purpose is besides disenfranchising voters in larger states. Congress isn’t really there to make sure that smaller states are satisfied, it’s there to pass federal laws in areas where the federal government has authority over states. It’s not even legally allowed for a state to secede. So why are the needs of arbitrary state boundaries more important than those of the people? I would argue that the founders might have been wrong to decide that we need a check on the desires of voters. They were clearly wrong on the electoral college, which should just go away entirely or at least change to a more granular system like the states that split their electoral votes. I would say that the best thing we could do is expand the House of Representatives to around 2,000 representatives and then eliminate the senate entirely. Or, perhaps, turn the senate into a subcommittee of more tenured representatives elected by members of the House of Representatives.

Propelloni 2y ago

Under the rule-of-law, after such a ruling, you can sue the state for damages. If you can show damages you will be made whole, i.e. indemnified. I, for one, am looking forward to companies showing how and how much they were damaged by the ban of non-compete clauses in working contracts. Should be some interesting numbers.

Dalewyn 2y ago
>If you can show damages you will be made whole, i.e. indemnified. You can be made whole to the best extent humanly possible. Which is to say, no. No matter how much money you might win, you can't be made whole for the time and human capital wasted on fending off Executive Branch abuse. The ideal timeline is to stop the abuse before it has taken root, bloomed, and spread its hay fever all over the place.