3 ms·

> Expand the House (and make provisions that keep it updated with each census). Interesting. Looking in from a country with a smaller lower house, I think memb

> Expand the House (and make provisions that keep it updated with each census). Interesting. Looking in from a country with a smaller lower house, I think members in the US are already so numerous they seem to fade to the background and their survival becomes mostly about party politics not making a good impression on their district. It's not like most of them could make a good speech while most members are present and listening. Only senators seem individually important enough to make a name for themselves (with the exception of the speaker etc). But I've never lived and voted in the US so maybe I'm missing something important here.

thmsths 1y ago
I absolutely agree. You are just moving the lack of representation to the next level if you increase the size of the house. House members need to know each others and works with each others to be effective. And this is where math says things turn ugly, the size of the graph connecting all house members grows exponentially, until at a certain size (which I believe we have already reached) it is simply unmanageable. the solution might be to add yet another layer in the system. Naively, it seems that democracy is hard to scale (this does not mean that we should no try though). But last time I tried to bring up that concern on HN it did not go well...
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  Members of the House of Representatives’ first obligation to my view is knowing their constituents. Knowing each other may not help as much as you may think unless you’re on a committee. As the population increases, members of the House were meant to increase. This increasing size has been arrested.
  - thmsths 1y ago
    They do get to vote on any bill regardless of committee membership though. Maybe we should just abolish the general vote, allow for the number of reps to keep up with the population increase and only have (larger) committees that have final decisions on the bills that fall under their purview.
- rolandog 1y ago
  I do wonder if we could have some sort of deterministic/coordinated ⌈n⌉-level rotating hierarchy (think a rotating program cycle with period ⌈n⌉) such that n^n ≈ population. The aim would be to have ⌈n⌉-generation stewardship [0], without immediate-issue-deprioritization [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainabilit... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtermism#Deprioritization_of_immediate_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtermism#Deprioritization_o...

thmsths 1y ago

I absolutely agree. You are just moving the lack of representation to the next level if you increase the size of the house. House members need to know each others and works with each others to be effective. And this is where math says things turn ugly, the size of the graph connecting all house members grows exponentially, until at a certain size (which I believe we have already reached) it is simply unmanageable. the solution might be to add yet another layer in the system. Naively, it seems that democracy is hard to scale (this does not mean that we should no try though). But last time I tried to bring up that concern on HN it did not go well...

aspenmayer 1y ago
Members of the House of Representatives’ first obligation to my view is knowing their constituents. Knowing each other may not help as much as you may think unless you’re on a committee. As the population increases, members of the House were meant to increase. This increasing size has been arrested.
- thmsths 1y ago
  They do get to vote on any bill regardless of committee membership though. Maybe we should just abolish the general vote, allow for the number of reps to keep up with the population increase and only have (larger) committees that have final decisions on the bills that fall under their purview.
rolandog 1y ago
I do wonder if we could have some sort of deterministic/coordinated ⌈n⌉-level rotating hierarchy (think a rotating program cycle with period ⌈n⌉) such that n^n ≈ population. The aim would be to have ⌈n⌉-generation stewardship [0], without immediate-issue-deprioritization [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainabilit... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtermism#Deprioritization_of_immediate_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtermism#Deprioritization_o...