That statistic alone has me questioning if democracy is a good system
That’s how incumbents can maintain their edge whilst Congress as a body is untrusted.
I’m convinced that capping the House of Representatives at 435 was a mistake, and Federalizing most laws even more of a mistake. The question isn’t whether democracy can scale, but whether ours can within its present constraints. The reforms I would want to see are mechanical; not social, economic or judicial. A Continental-sized nation with hundreds of millions and growing probably needs thousands—not a few hundred!—of legislators if representation is to be meaningful. Short of that, my Representative has 700K+ constituents, so any one individual holding her accountable without other connections is a pipe dream at best.
I mean, that has certainly been true for me, and many other people. I sent someone to Congress I liked. Congress then has a wide spectrum of people who end up doing whatever a small group decides (this term, whatever Manchin and Sinema want). It's pretty easy to like your guy but not the end results of the process or the body as a whole that produced it.
This is the biggest argument against my ideas of reform: this is compromise actually working even with all the flaws I think are there. In the absence of consensus the consensus is to do nothing at all, which drives the people who want to do a lot and quickly crazy.
That said, Federated States in a Union with a weaker Federal government than we presently have would have fewer compromises they would have to make at the cost of also having to live with the fact that others who are ostensibly as much a part of the nation as you are are going to live differently; and as people, humans really, we tend to hate that. C’est la vie.
I don't honestly think that most people care about people "living differently". They care because people affect each other. And the rules in your state affect me living in my state quite a bit.
1. Wyoming Rule. No district should be larger than the least populist state.
2. Make DC a Museum. With modern technology there is no need to "send" legislatures to Washington DC, they can vote, meet, etc all remotely. This will make lobbying more expensive, and put the representatives back in their actual communities, because lets face it most of them represent Washington DC not Local Communities.
3. Expand the Term to 4 Years, with a 2 year offset to the president Election. So every 4 years the entire house is elected as a Mid Presidential term Election
I do wish that more federal functions would be spread out throughout the country, in the same way that Germany does; many of their federal agencies are headquartered in places far away from Berlin. There's no reason why the USDA shouldn't be headquartered in Kansas City, the Fed in New York, and the Department of the Interior in Wyoming.
So then I assume you also reject Full time work from home?
I can not think of a single reason why Congress needs to be in the same physical location to read a bill, take public comment on a bill, then vote on if that bill is good for their community or now. That is the SOLE and ONLY function of the US House of Representatives.
If they are doing other things, well that is beyond their scope of work and should be curtailed.
"For the important stuff, insist on two votes, but for everything else, make it easy to get stuff done fast"
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/streamlining-the-actual-pro...
But one huge benefit of freedom is that if we embrace freedom, the vast majority of decisions can be made individually, or by mutual agreement of consenting individuals, and not collectively. So the negative consequences of democracy aren't as impactful.
Then approval rating would mean something.
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/should-a-system-of-voting-a...
In practice, all the claims that were made about representative democracy being superior to direct on the basis that it's "less erratic" have been proven false by experience - just look at who we keep electing to Congress etc. At best, it gives the whole circus some veneer of respectability - as in, our representatives still make an erratic mess, but they do so with gravitas. But even that doesn't last for long - at some point, if enough voters really feel like it, you get someone like Donald Trump.
The worst thing about representative democracy is the sham scalability. In theory, a parliament can "represent" as many people as you want - there's an upper limit on the number of MPs who can still hold a coherent discussion, but there's no limit on how many people each MP "represents". However, the higher that number is, the more said "representation" is removed from the voters, and the more of a sham it is. With direct democracy, because of how poorly it scales, you have to keep the scope of the government small for it to function at all procedurally, and then come up with some federation arrangements above that - and that's a good thing.
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-democracy-empowe...
