5 ms·

In the US, the bias is the other way: Effectively, the Constitution gerrymanders the US Senate in favor of rural populations. Every state gets two senators, so

by mmooss 2y ago

In the US, the bias is the other way: Effectively, the Constitution gerrymanders the US Senate in favor of rural populations. Every state gets two senators, so highly urban states with much greater population have fewer senators per person than rural states with much less population. That also biases presidential elections, due to the way the Electoral College is calculated.

ty6853 2y ago
Because the federal government was meant to be extremely limited and mostly serve to mediate _actual_ interstate commerce and foreign affairs. The oft ignored 10th amendment left most everything else to states or the people. The system wasn't designed to fairly accommodate the gigantic social benefits, massive regulatory apparatus, and local spending apparatus the feds now get involved in. The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional. If they planned on that stuff being constitutional they'd have likely made the Senate more like the house in composition.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional. Do you have evidence of that? It sounds like an 'appeal to authority' of the small government crowd. > the federal government was meant It was meant to be a democracy, where the people are free to make it what they want.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    Yes, see the FDR era and the threatening to pack the courts to change the interpretation to allow progressive reform. The reason why the thoughts of the people that designed our government is relevant is not appeal to authority but to understand the rational to how it was designed the way it was. >democracy The whole point here is the Senate is not a democracy in a conventional sense, but rather distorted on weight of vote per capita.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      20th century events are not evidence of your claim about 18th century people. And yes, of course it's not a pure democracy; I'm not debating terminology. The point is self-determination - Americans get to decide what their country is like. You don't get to impose what you want on them because you have lots of rationalizations.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - ty6853 2y ago
        ... the 20th century event was notable because it marked a change from the thought at time of founding up to then. You can ignore history but simply declaring it can't be imposed on you ignores all the inertia of a system only partially amended since the 18th Century (and amended using mostly 18th century imposed criteria). It imposes whether you acknowledge it or not, and no matter how soundly you might think your rebuttal it does zero to change that.
        mmooss 2y ago
        > ... the 20th century event was notable because it marked a change from the thought at time of founding up to then. Can you back that up? The history I learned is of constant change. It's another 'appeal to authority' to say your way is the true way and therefore others shouldn't get to vote for their way. How about trying to persuade people on the merits of different options, and then they can vote?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - jack_h 2y ago
    > Do you have evidence of that? It sounds like an 'appeal to authority' of the small government crowd. It's well known that people like John Lock, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, William Blackstone, David Hume, Francis Bacon, and others influenced the founders in the US. A lot of the ideas espoused by those people formed the philosophical underpinning for our country. Even in the 19th century authors like Alexis de Tocqueville traveled and wrote about the great experiment embarked upon by the Americans in "Democracy in America". I think a lot of the ideas of the founding generation can be summed up by Frederic Bastiat who said in the the 19th century "[l]ife, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." > It was meant to be a democracy, where the people are free to make it what they want. The federal government includes many anti-democratic features. Let's just take bills of attainder as an example. In a democracy this is possible, you can legislatively vote that someone is guilty. In our system this is just not allowed, at least not without amending the constitution which requires a very wide margin of support. The Supreme Court and judicial review is anti-democratic, as is the electoral college, as was the senate until the 17th Amendment. The Bill of Rights are what we now call negative rights, but these can be traced back to John Locke's conception of rights as a limitation on government as opposed to what many people today consider rights, e.g. right to an education which is a positive right. To draw an analogy to software development, it seems like we have a legacy code base that we really want to make changes to with a bunch of new ideas. Just like software development though, too many people don't understand the code base at all and any changes that are made carry a very high risk of breaking something else.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      I don't understand your first paragraph. The other commenter said "The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional." I asked about evidence, as you quoted. I don't see how your paragraph is evidence ... > The federal government includes many anti-democratic features. No matter how much detail someone includes, you can always correct them with more, pointing toward democracy or a million other things. It's an enormous subject. The federal government includes many many democratic features, such as electing the legislature and executive. For a short comment on HN, it's safe to say 'It was meant to be a democracy'.
- _w1tm 2y ago
  > Because the federal government was meant to be extremely limited and mostly serve to mediate _actual_ interstate commerce and foreign affairs. The oft ignored 10th amendment left most everything else to states or the people. What some people in the 18th century intended it to be matters little in the 21st. Today it’s a massive legacy system that is almost impossible to reform without a rewrite.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    Clearly it does, as we now have a system highly maladaptive for what it delivers; and that is the legacy you refer to built from 18th century intentions.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Is there a system of government that is less maladaptive?
      - ty6853 2y ago
        Given you called the senate 'gerrymandering' I think you had an idea before you hid behind this socratic method to avoid making any assertion yourself.
        mmooss 2y ago
        Too bad you have to turn a conversation into a fight. I wasn't thinking that at all. I hope your day improves!
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        ty6853 2y ago
        ... you were trumping up how rural people had an oversized hand. Now you pretend you have no idea. Lets not play dumb.
ch4s3 2y ago
That’s not what Gerrymandering means, which refers to a process of carving up improbably shaped constituencies to create safe electoral seats by choosing the voters. The senate is just plainly 2 per state as a compromise to keep large populace states from steamrolling small or sparsely populated states. You may criticize that compromise but it’s not gerrymandering.
Loughla 2y ago
That's why the house exists? Senate is equal representation for states. House is equal representation for people. Also the presidential population is decided by delegates based on population. What am I missing here? I feel like that's basic information.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > the presidential population is decided by delegates based on population. Each state's number of electoral college votes = house + senate representatives. The latter number is always 2, of course, so people in less populated states have more electoral college power per capita.
  - pests 2y ago
    But the point I think being made is that those 2 senators are not supposed to represent the people of those states, they represent the states themselves. The House represent the people of those states. The fact we use an electoral college or count senators and house reps equally is separate and after the fact, we don't have to do it that way We see a similar hierarchy in the order laws are passed. The people get a law proposed via the House, once it passes it goes onto "state review" in the Senate, and finally "Federal" review by signing of the president.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      > those 2 senators are not supposed to represent the people of those states, they represent the states themselves They were, but not are. They are now elected by popular vote and the citizens clearly expect the senators to represent them. Few people know this history and fewer care. Most are in the crowd always looking for another argument against freedom and democracy. > The fact we use an electoral college or count senators and house reps equally is separate and after the fact, we don't have to do it that way It's in the Constitution just like the Senators, so we do have to do it. We can change anything, of course. We can get rid of both branches and go with a parliamentary system. > We see a similar hierarchy in the order laws are passed. The people get a law proposed via the House, once it passes it goes onto "state review" in the Senate, and finally "Federal" review by signing of the president. Legislation originates also in the Senate, and of course the president authors much of it (wherever it's interoduced). Only a few things are required to officially start in the House. Still, that's an interesting way to look at it. But I follow politics and federal government closely, I read lots of history, and read at a sophisticted level, and I've never heard that. Maybe that was an idea back in the 18th century?

by mmooss 2y ago

ty6853 2y ago

Because the federal government was meant to be extremely limited and mostly serve to mediate _actual_ interstate commerce and foreign affairs. The oft ignored 10th amendment left most everything else to states or the people. The system wasn't designed to fairly accommodate the gigantic social benefits, massive regulatory apparatus, and local spending apparatus the feds now get involved in. The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional. If they planned on that stuff being constitutional they'd have likely made the Senate more like the house in composition.

mmooss 2y ago
> The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional. Do you have evidence of that? It sounds like an 'appeal to authority' of the small government crowd. > the federal government was meant It was meant to be a democracy, where the people are free to make it what they want.
- ty6853 2y ago
  Yes, see the FDR era and the threatening to pack the courts to change the interpretation to allow progressive reform. The reason why the thoughts of the people that designed our government is relevant is not appeal to authority but to understand the rational to how it was designed the way it was. >democracy The whole point here is the Senate is not a democracy in a conventional sense, but rather distorted on weight of vote per capita.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    20th century events are not evidence of your claim about 18th century people. And yes, of course it's not a pure democracy; I'm not debating terminology. The point is self-determination - Americans get to decide what their country is like. You don't get to impose what you want on them because you have lots of rationalizations.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ty6853 2y ago
      ... the 20th century event was notable because it marked a change from the thought at time of founding up to then. You can ignore history but simply declaring it can't be imposed on you ignores all the inertia of a system only partially amended since the 18th Century (and amended using mostly 18th century imposed criteria). It imposes whether you acknowledge it or not, and no matter how soundly you might think your rebuttal it does zero to change that.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        > ... the 20th century event was notable because it marked a change from the thought at time of founding up to then. Can you back that up? The history I learned is of constant change. It's another 'appeal to authority' to say your way is the true way and therefore others shouldn't get to vote for their way. How about trying to persuade people on the merits of different options, and then they can vote?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- jack_h 2y ago
  > Do you have evidence of that? It sounds like an 'appeal to authority' of the small government crowd. It's well known that people like John Lock, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, William Blackstone, David Hume, Francis Bacon, and others influenced the founders in the US. A lot of the ideas espoused by those people formed the philosophical underpinning for our country. Even in the 19th century authors like Alexis de Tocqueville traveled and wrote about the great experiment embarked upon by the Americans in "Democracy in America". I think a lot of the ideas of the founding generation can be summed up by Frederic Bastiat who said in the the 19th century "[l]ife, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." > It was meant to be a democracy, where the people are free to make it what they want. The federal government includes many anti-democratic features. Let's just take bills of attainder as an example. In a democracy this is possible, you can legislatively vote that someone is guilty. In our system this is just not allowed, at least not without amending the constitution which requires a very wide margin of support. The Supreme Court and judicial review is anti-democratic, as is the electoral college, as was the senate until the 17th Amendment. The Bill of Rights are what we now call negative rights, but these can be traced back to John Locke's conception of rights as a limitation on government as opposed to what many people today consider rights, e.g. right to an education which is a positive right. To draw an analogy to software development, it seems like we have a legacy code base that we really want to make changes to with a bunch of new ideas. Just like software development though, too many people don't understand the code base at all and any changes that are made carry a very high risk of breaking something else.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    I don't understand your first paragraph. The other commenter said "The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional." I asked about evidence, as you quoted. I don't see how your paragraph is evidence ... > The federal government includes many anti-democratic features. No matter how much detail someone includes, you can always correct them with more, pointing toward democracy or a million other things. It's an enormous subject. The federal government includes many many democratic features, such as electing the legislature and executive. For a short comment on HN, it's safe to say 'It was meant to be a democracy'.
_w1tm 2y ago
> Because the federal government was meant to be extremely limited and mostly serve to mediate _actual_ interstate commerce and foreign affairs. The oft ignored 10th amendment left most everything else to states or the people. What some people in the 18th century intended it to be matters little in the 21st. Today it’s a massive legacy system that is almost impossible to reform without a rewrite.
- ty6853 2y ago
  Clearly it does, as we now have a system highly maladaptive for what it delivers; and that is the legacy you refer to built from 18th century intentions.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Is there a system of government that is less maladaptive?
    - ty6853 2y ago
      Given you called the senate 'gerrymandering' I think you had an idea before you hid behind this socratic method to avoid making any assertion yourself.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        Too bad you have to turn a conversation into a fight. I wasn't thinking that at all. I hope your day improves!
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        ty6853 2y ago
        ... you were trumping up how rural people had an oversized hand. Now you pretend you have no idea. Lets not play dumb.

ch4s3 2y ago

That’s not what Gerrymandering means, which refers to a process of carving up improbably shaped constituencies to create safe electoral seats by choosing the voters. The senate is just plainly 2 per state as a compromise to keep large populace states from steamrolling small or sparsely populated states. You may criticize that compromise but it’s not gerrymandering.

Loughla 2y ago

That's why the house exists? Senate is equal representation for states. House is equal representation for people. Also the presidential population is decided by delegates based on population. What am I missing here? I feel like that's basic information.

mmooss 2y ago
> the presidential population is decided by delegates based on population. Each state's number of electoral college votes = house + senate representatives. The latter number is always 2, of course, so people in less populated states have more electoral college power per capita.
- pests 2y ago
  But the point I think being made is that those 2 senators are not supposed to represent the people of those states, they represent the states themselves. The House represent the people of those states. The fact we use an electoral college or count senators and house reps equally is separate and after the fact, we don't have to do it that way We see a similar hierarchy in the order laws are passed. The people get a law proposed via the House, once it passes it goes onto "state review" in the Senate, and finally "Federal" review by signing of the president.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > those 2 senators are not supposed to represent the people of those states, they represent the states themselves They were, but not are. They are now elected by popular vote and the citizens clearly expect the senators to represent them. Few people know this history and fewer care. Most are in the crowd always looking for another argument against freedom and democracy. > The fact we use an electoral college or count senators and house reps equally is separate and after the fact, we don't have to do it that way It's in the Constitution just like the Senators, so we do have to do it. We can change anything, of course. We can get rid of both branches and go with a parliamentary system. > We see a similar hierarchy in the order laws are passed. The people get a law proposed via the House, once it passes it goes onto "state review" in the Senate, and finally "Federal" review by signing of the president. Legislation originates also in the Senate, and of course the president authors much of it (wherever it's interoduced). Only a few things are required to officially start in the House. Still, that's an interesting way to look at it. But I follow politics and federal government closely, I read lots of history, and read at a sophisticted level, and I've never heard that. Maybe that was an idea back in the 18th century?