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0 pointsrsj_hn4y ago0 comments

No, you can't. The only way you can truly prevent states from having their interests overriden by a majority of the nation is to give them a direct role in the legislative process.

Democracy is three wolves and two sheep voting on what to have for dinner. It's last thing we want. So when the three wolves invite the two sheep to join them in a democracy, the sheep wisely say "Not a democracy, but a federal union, with an upper house in which votes are allocated by species rather than population, then we will join your nation". Now the wolves may moan that this is anti-democratic, but they agreed to it, as that's the price paid for getting the sheep to join with the wolves. The sheep are the small states, and the wolves are the large states.

So anti-democratic structures are good. But at the same time, giving the population input is also good. We want popular pressures to have a veto, but not to be able to force legislation onto states without their consent.

Similarly, we want the states to have a veto but not to force their legislation onto the nation as a whole without the public's consent.

This is the balance -- a mechanism to limit mob rule while also requiring mob consent. Seriously this is not some strange thing I should have to explain -- these issues were all debated during the discussions surrounding the adoption of the constitution, as you can read in the Federalist Papers. See especially no. 10.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-017...

It is why we do not live in a democracy, but in a Federal Republic. The house is the hotbed of populism, that's where all the crazy stuff happens, and the senate is the moderating force that can filter it out. The house then has to moderate its positions and pass something that the states also consent to.

And that's exactly how it's played out. The senate always moderates or blocks extremist measures coming out of the house. The founders were amazingly prescient.

Moreover this obviously leads to better and more stable government. Control of the house flips from red to blue to red every 5-8 years. Now imagine a nation's entire base of laws constantly flipping back and forth that often.

As an example, when the GOP controlled the house in 2017 they tried to pass a tax bill to completely eliminate the SALT deduction. The Senate moderated that to 10K max. Now the democrats control the house and they want to make it (effectively) unlimited again. The Senate will block that. In 2024, say when the GOP is back in control of the house, they will try to eliminate it again. The Senate will block that. The 2017 house eliminated Obama's ACA -- but the Senate blocked that. Just think of all the whipsaws in policy we would have if healthcare is massively reconfigured every 4 years. So you need to do more than just get 51% to redo healthcare in America. That's how it should be. Yes, it's anti-democratic, but thinking you can rewrite a nation's laws with 51% is foolishness. It's a recipe for secession and civil war.

In other words, going from 49% to 51% doesn't mean you go from 0 to 100% power, but rather you have to settle for 48% of what you want, and then 51% of what you want. The removal of that discontinuity creates stability in government.

It is intentionally, and wisely, anti-democratic, while also being intentionally, and wisely, anti-aristocratic. Both sides need to come to a compromise, and this stability is why our constitution has lasted as long as it has.

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notfromhere4y ago

States don’t have interests, states are a pass through entity for the people they represent. The current structure disenfranchises the people actually living in those states. They’re semi autonomous provinces, not independent nations in a confederation (especially since we’ve settled the question of whether anyone can leave the union).

The voting blocs aren’t between small states and large states, those basically don’t and haven’t existed for a long time. The senate is not a moderating body; the founders entirely failed to account for political parties.

The constitution isn’t a suicide pact, the founders lived in a completely different world, and it’s very apparent that the US federal government system is dysfunctional and failing.

The US legislature is designed to not do much, especially with the filibuster. Which is a huge problem when there are a succession of crises that the legislature has failed to address.

TulliusCicero4y ago

States' interests matter and should be explicitly represented at the state level.

But we're not talking about the state level, we're talking about the federal level. Senators are there to represent the people of their state, and the fact that some people get vastly more representation than others is wrong. People should be as equal as possible for a given playing field.

Funny how the people arguing that it's okay to do this to protect 'minorities' are never, ever okay with doing this for any other minorities. Give extra voting power to people in low pop states to shield them from the majority? Great! Give extra votes to black people, or Asians, or Muslims, or Jews? Uhhhhhh, no, no thank you.

cercatrova4y ago

How do you deal with the problem of the US population becoming more urbanized such that eventually we might have 70% Republican states to 30% Democratic ones? The Senate then becomes a purely Republican controlled one.

rsj_hnOP4y ago

That's extremely unlikely, but let's hypothesize a situation in which 70% of the states are rural Republican and 30% are urban Democrat. So the GOP always controls the senate and Dems always control the House. Then you either form something like a coalitional government where both sides have a veto, which in your scenario would be just the status quo, or you negotiate some kind of split.

This would be like the scenario where Lebanon assigns fixed seats for christian/muslim votes.

The issue with geographic states as minorities - as opposed to other minority categories -- say bald men -- is the geographic group is a functioning community and it can secede, so you have to decide whether you want to keep them in the country or not.

This goes back to the original debates in the constitution, where the smaller population states weren't willing to be a part of the country unless they were given a veto.

Nothing about that has changed.

It's just like when you have a team -- 10 developers with 6 feeling strongly to do A and 4 feeling strongly to do not A. Well, you find some compromise where both sides agree, because you if force A, and you do that over and over where the same group of 4 keep having their ideas overriden, then you lose 4 developers from your team. They secede as there is no reason for them to be a part of a team that keeps overriding them, and they can walk.

So if the 70% of your states are constantly having policies shoved down their throats that are extremely hated, then you are going to lose those states.

Now you can say, "no if they try to secede we will crush them militarily" and now the mask comes off that this is about domination and the imposition of the will, which suddenly undermines the whole concern for fairness and democracy.

So you are back to requiring a compromise. If you have 51% of the population, you should get 51% of what you want. Not 100%. And this power discontinuity is a well understood defect of the democratic decison making process -- e.g. it's not representative, whereas a consensus decision making process is more representative. In the consensus process, you give a veto to the minority. Now which minority gets the veto? Well, the founders selected the small state to be the minority because they can actually walk. Not bald men. So due to the underlying dynamics to keep the nation together, we give the rural states disproportinately a bit more power.

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