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"Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair," Who determines what is fair? Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representa

"Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair," Who determines what is fair? Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representation? "This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones." The urban ones have more power in the house as that chamber is designed to represent the people. The rural states have equal power in the Senate. It might just happen that there are more rural states (just as in the House some states happen to have more people).

krapp 1y ago
What "urban concerns" and "rural concerns" are we talking about, specifically?
- mothballed 1y ago
  One in my state is solar panel legislation. You can't install solar panels in AZ without a permit and building plans and roof plans. That's all well and good in the city, but here in bumfuck nowhere I built a house with no building plans or roof plans. Why exactly did the majority of city dwellers pass this law without even considering people like me in bumfuck nowhere, who have as much or higher utility for solar panels than even those in urban areas, need to have this regulation? The answer is they didn't even think about us, they just did it. Now I can't install solar panels without producing a bunch of extra paperwork that city dwellers just assumed everyone already has on hand because in the city you're required to file those when you build the house. Due to that and other rules that are half-cocked consideration for rural counties that don't inspect literally anything else, they basically made it the hardest to put solar in the places where it is most practical and has the most impact.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Literally everything even vaguely construction-ish is rife with crap like this. It would be one thing if people were actually asking for this regulation because they wanted it. They're mostly not. The trade groups, the professional organizations, the big industry players, they push it and the legislature just writes it knowing full well that the "lives somewhere with good schools" part of their electorate will go to bat for just about any regulation, the landlords can mostly afford it and tenants don't see the true cost. This just leaves the few non-wealthy homeowners (mostly in rural areas where homes are still cheap-ish) and slumlords to complain and so the legislature knows they have nothing to fear at election time. I don't even live somewhere rural. I live in a proper city. It's just poor enough that stupid rules like that are a massive drag on everyone who wants to do anything. It's hard to amortize needless BS into whatever it is you're doing when the local populace can't afford it.
  - hattmall 1y ago
    But who in bumfuck is going to stop you exactly? Are you talking about a grid-tie system, where you feedback to the power company? My experience in rural areas is that after the initial approval for utilities if needed, no one is coming back to inspect anything.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Oh the power company doesn't care. But counties use satellites to find solar panels or other unpermitted installations. If it's not noticeable via satellite imagery then yeah, probably nothing will happen.
      - QuercusMax 1y ago
        Why is your rural county spending resources to find these unpermitted installations? Sounds like you should vote for better local representatives who don't do stuff you dislike.
        giantg2 1y ago
        To charge fines, I'm sure. But even if it wasn't your local government, insurance companies do this sort of thing to deny claims even in tangentially related unapproved installations.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    > The answer is they didn't even think about us, they just did it. Asserted without evidence. Many parts of the USA until sometime in the 1980s had no building codes. Now many of them do (some still go without). Society has made a slow and steady move towards saying, in effect "whatever and wherever you build, we want to be certain that it meets a set of minimum design and construction standards, and we justify this with both public safety (fire, for example) and the interests of anyone who may acquire what you built in the future". You can say, if you like, that this is bullshit. But don't try to claim that they didn't even think about you. p.s. I live in rural New Mexico and installed my own solar panels, under license from the state.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      The state has no law about me connecting to the electric grid without any building plans, drawings, or inspection. In fact I did so. That's more connected to others than solar panels are. Just solar panels. They simply forgot. FYI i built the house after the solar panel law passed. So it's not like it's an old house that needs brought up to modern code or something.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        Solar panels are generators that backfeed the line. Power utilities are going to take every opportunity to discourage/prevent/penalize the connection of generators to their lines. Connecting your house to the grid poses more or less no threat to the grid or the linemen who work on it.
        mothballed 1y ago
        What does that have to roof plans and [structural] building plans? You know, the things I called out. I've never claimed there is a city/rural contrasting point of relevance on documenting the electrical generation capacity of the solar panels.
        PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
- giantg2 1y ago
  I don't have any specific ones that would be pertinent to this conversation without causing a flame war of some kind, but we can see the general difference based on county level urbanization as it correlates to party voting in the presidential election. Those rural concerns can also vary from one state to another (a core part of why the Senate was created).
tbrownaw 1y ago
> Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representation? Some people aren't used to thinking of states as relevant sovereign entities.
cthalupa 1y ago
The problem with this argument is the Permanent Apportionment Act. The House is more representative of the people than the Senate, but capping the size means that as it stands lower population states still receive an outsized amount of power per capita in the House vs. more populous states. As electoral votes are based on Congressional representatives across the two chambers, this also means they have outsized impact on Presidential elections as well. The deck is stacked in favor of rural states in too many places for it to be balanced. Repeal the PAA and I am much more sympathetic to the idea that the Senate as it stands is fine.
- rootusrootus 1y ago
  I probably need to go read the arguments at the time the 17th amendment was adopted, because my inclination is that we should repeal the 17th amendment right along with repealing the PAA. Then the senate can truly represent the States, and we can have representatives who more closely reflect their constituency.
  - cthalupa 1y ago
    Also perfectly fine with a repeal of the 17th alongside the PAA. I think even with the 17th the Senate still quite closely represents the States so it's less of a priority, but the current status quo for Congress is just insane.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      We could also split states. It could very much be gerrymandered in a way to keep the red-blue balance of power neutral. But it will never happen because the state governments would never give up any power.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  This. If we pegged the size of a congressional district to the population of the least populates state, we'd end up with more House seats, many of which would be apportioned to CA and TX (as two large states with average district sizes much larger than Wyoming's state population).
PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
If you conceive of democracy as a mechanism to allow individuals to have a role in choosing their leaders (and thus policy decisions), then any part of that mechanism that allows some individuals to have more of a role than others is inherently undemocratic, and thus (if you consider democracy to be good) unfair. If instead you consider our system of government to just be a bunch of hacks to come up with leaders and policy decisions, with those hacks there to satisfy people who believe that there are interests than just people, then sure, the system we have is as fair as any other. For myself, the idea that "the state of Wyoming" deserves any sort of political representation above and beyond what the individual residents of Wyoming deserve is obviously non-sensical. But then I believe in democracy ...
- giantg2 1y ago
  "If you conceive of democracy as a mechanism to allow individuals to have a role in choosing their leaders (and thus policy decisions), then any part of that mechanism that allows some individuals to have more of a role than others is inherently undemocratic, and thus (if you consider democracy to be good) unfair." Not exactly. We are a democratic republic of states. You don't have to be an direct democracy to have benefits or be fair (under your argument, anything less than a direct democracy creates uneven power for an individual voter). To be fair to the states that joined the country, they each got equal voting rights in the senate. Again, the senate is supposed to represent states' interests and not the direct people's. "For myself, the idea that "the state of Wyoming" deserves any sort of political representation above and beyond what the individual residents of Wyoming deserve is obviously non-sensical. But then I believe in democracy ..." That's the first amendment right to organize - petiton for statehood, form cities, etc. You can set your own laws for your area. The federal level is not supposed to hold excessive power over any state of any size,bit nobody cares about the 10th amendment.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    > We are a democratic republic of states. I made no comment about what "we" are ... The idea that the USA is actually a democracy whose members are states is, IMO, just a post-facto rationalization by people who believe in the compromise that the Senate represents. I find it totally absurd. Now, more commonly "we're not a democracy, we're a republic" is used to explain this, but this I find absurd. Democracies and republics are somewhat orthogonal: there are democracies that are not republics (e.g. the UK), republics that are not democracies (several African countries, for example), and systems that are both democracies and republics (the USA for example). "Republic" describes a system in which political power rests with the people who live in it; "Democracy" describes the process by which those people make political decisions. > The federal level is not supposed to hold excessive power over any state I think you missed significant changes to the US system in the aftermath of both the civil war and the great depression. Granted these were not encoded as constitutional amendments (which would have been better). However, you seem attached to the conception of the union as it was in 1850, not as it is in 2025.
mring33621 1y ago
The problem is that the number of house members per state is capped, which results in more-populous states having less influence per-capita than less-populous states. So, in a way, more-populous states are disadvantaged in both the house and senate.
- giantg2 1y ago
  Do you have a link to that being a widespread problem after the huntington-hill method was used? For example, Delaware?
  - cthalupa 1y ago
    Wyoming is an easy example 590,000 / 342,800,000 roughly 0.00172 0.00172 × 435 roughly 0.75 Wyoming would not even qualify for a full seat in the House if it wasn't for minimums at this size house.

krapp 1y ago

What "urban concerns" and "rural concerns" are we talking about, specifically?

mothballed 1y ago
One in my state is solar panel legislation. You can't install solar panels in AZ without a permit and building plans and roof plans. That's all well and good in the city, but here in bumfuck nowhere I built a house with no building plans or roof plans. Why exactly did the majority of city dwellers pass this law without even considering people like me in bumfuck nowhere, who have as much or higher utility for solar panels than even those in urban areas, need to have this regulation? The answer is they didn't even think about us, they just did it. Now I can't install solar panels without producing a bunch of extra paperwork that city dwellers just assumed everyone already has on hand because in the city you're required to file those when you build the house. Due to that and other rules that are half-cocked consideration for rural counties that don't inspect literally anything else, they basically made it the hardest to put solar in the places where it is most practical and has the most impact.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Literally everything even vaguely construction-ish is rife with crap like this. It would be one thing if people were actually asking for this regulation because they wanted it. They're mostly not. The trade groups, the professional organizations, the big industry players, they push it and the legislature just writes it knowing full well that the "lives somewhere with good schools" part of their electorate will go to bat for just about any regulation, the landlords can mostly afford it and tenants don't see the true cost. This just leaves the few non-wealthy homeowners (mostly in rural areas where homes are still cheap-ish) and slumlords to complain and so the legislature knows they have nothing to fear at election time. I don't even live somewhere rural. I live in a proper city. It's just poor enough that stupid rules like that are a massive drag on everyone who wants to do anything. It's hard to amortize needless BS into whatever it is you're doing when the local populace can't afford it.
- hattmall 1y ago
  But who in bumfuck is going to stop you exactly? Are you talking about a grid-tie system, where you feedback to the power company? My experience in rural areas is that after the initial approval for utilities if needed, no one is coming back to inspect anything.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Oh the power company doesn't care. But counties use satellites to find solar panels or other unpermitted installations. If it's not noticeable via satellite imagery then yeah, probably nothing will happen.
    - QuercusMax 1y ago
      Why is your rural county spending resources to find these unpermitted installations? Sounds like you should vote for better local representatives who don't do stuff you dislike.
      - giantg2 1y ago
        To charge fines, I'm sure. But even if it wasn't your local government, insurance companies do this sort of thing to deny claims even in tangentially related unapproved installations.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  > The answer is they didn't even think about us, they just did it. Asserted without evidence. Many parts of the USA until sometime in the 1980s had no building codes. Now many of them do (some still go without). Society has made a slow and steady move towards saying, in effect "whatever and wherever you build, we want to be certain that it meets a set of minimum design and construction standards, and we justify this with both public safety (fire, for example) and the interests of anyone who may acquire what you built in the future". You can say, if you like, that this is bullshit. But don't try to claim that they didn't even think about you. p.s. I live in rural New Mexico and installed my own solar panels, under license from the state.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    The state has no law about me connecting to the electric grid without any building plans, drawings, or inspection. In fact I did so. That's more connected to others than solar panels are. Just solar panels. They simply forgot. FYI i built the house after the solar panel law passed. So it's not like it's an old house that needs brought up to modern code or something.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      Solar panels are generators that backfeed the line. Power utilities are going to take every opportunity to discourage/prevent/penalize the connection of generators to their lines. Connecting your house to the grid poses more or less no threat to the grid or the linemen who work on it.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        What does that have to roof plans and [structural] building plans? You know, the things I called out. I've never claimed there is a city/rural contrasting point of relevance on documenting the electrical generation capacity of the solar panels.
        PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
giantg2 1y ago
I don't have any specific ones that would be pertinent to this conversation without causing a flame war of some kind, but we can see the general difference based on county level urbanization as it correlates to party voting in the presidential election. Those rural concerns can also vary from one state to another (a core part of why the Senate was created).

tbrownaw 1y ago

> Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representation? Some people aren't used to thinking of states as relevant sovereign entities.

cthalupa 1y ago

The problem with this argument is the Permanent Apportionment Act. The House is more representative of the people than the Senate, but capping the size means that as it stands lower population states still receive an outsized amount of power per capita in the House vs. more populous states. As electoral votes are based on Congressional representatives across the two chambers, this also means they have outsized impact on Presidential elections as well. The deck is stacked in favor of rural states in too many places for it to be balanced. Repeal the PAA and I am much more sympathetic to the idea that the Senate as it stands is fine.

rootusrootus 1y ago
I probably need to go read the arguments at the time the 17th amendment was adopted, because my inclination is that we should repeal the 17th amendment right along with repealing the PAA. Then the senate can truly represent the States, and we can have representatives who more closely reflect their constituency.
- cthalupa 1y ago
  Also perfectly fine with a repeal of the 17th alongside the PAA. I think even with the 17th the Senate still quite closely represents the States so it's less of a priority, but the current status quo for Congress is just insane.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    We could also split states. It could very much be gerrymandered in a way to keep the red-blue balance of power neutral. But it will never happen because the state governments would never give up any power.
alistairSH 1y ago
This. If we pegged the size of a congressional district to the population of the least populates state, we'd end up with more House seats, many of which would be apportioned to CA and TX (as two large states with average district sizes much larger than Wyoming's state population).

PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago

If you conceive of democracy as a mechanism to allow individuals to have a role in choosing their leaders (and thus policy decisions), then any part of that mechanism that allows some individuals to have more of a role than others is inherently undemocratic, and thus (if you consider democracy to be good) unfair. If instead you consider our system of government to just be a bunch of hacks to come up with leaders and policy decisions, with those hacks there to satisfy people who believe that there are interests than just people, then sure, the system we have is as fair as any other. For myself, the idea that "the state of Wyoming" deserves any sort of political representation above and beyond what the individual residents of Wyoming deserve is obviously non-sensical. But then I believe in democracy ...

giantg2 1y ago
"If you conceive of democracy as a mechanism to allow individuals to have a role in choosing their leaders (and thus policy decisions), then any part of that mechanism that allows some individuals to have more of a role than others is inherently undemocratic, and thus (if you consider democracy to be good) unfair." Not exactly. We are a democratic republic of states. You don't have to be an direct democracy to have benefits or be fair (under your argument, anything less than a direct democracy creates uneven power for an individual voter). To be fair to the states that joined the country, they each got equal voting rights in the senate. Again, the senate is supposed to represent states' interests and not the direct people's. "For myself, the idea that "the state of Wyoming" deserves any sort of political representation above and beyond what the individual residents of Wyoming deserve is obviously non-sensical. But then I believe in democracy ..." That's the first amendment right to organize - petiton for statehood, form cities, etc. You can set your own laws for your area. The federal level is not supposed to hold excessive power over any state of any size,bit nobody cares about the 10th amendment.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  > We are a democratic republic of states. I made no comment about what "we" are ... The idea that the USA is actually a democracy whose members are states is, IMO, just a post-facto rationalization by people who believe in the compromise that the Senate represents. I find it totally absurd. Now, more commonly "we're not a democracy, we're a republic" is used to explain this, but this I find absurd. Democracies and republics are somewhat orthogonal: there are democracies that are not republics (e.g. the UK), republics that are not democracies (several African countries, for example), and systems that are both democracies and republics (the USA for example). "Republic" describes a system in which political power rests with the people who live in it; "Democracy" describes the process by which those people make political decisions. > The federal level is not supposed to hold excessive power over any state I think you missed significant changes to the US system in the aftermath of both the civil war and the great depression. Granted these were not encoded as constitutional amendments (which would have been better). However, you seem attached to the conception of the union as it was in 1850, not as it is in 2025.

mring33621 1y ago

The problem is that the number of house members per state is capped, which results in more-populous states having less influence per-capita than less-populous states. So, in a way, more-populous states are disadvantaged in both the house and senate.

giantg2 1y ago
Do you have a link to that being a widespread problem after the huntington-hill method was used? For example, Delaware?
- cthalupa 1y ago
  Wyoming is an easy example 590,000 / 342,800,000 roughly 0.00172 0.00172 × 435 roughly 0.75 Wyoming would not even qualify for a full seat in the House if it wasn't for minimums at this size house.