> I'd ask you to consider that this might be a sign of the exact opposite, and that we can't get broad buy-in on the things that some groups see as obvious additions.

Polls show that we do have broad buy-in on a number of issues, sometimes across partisan lines, but the way the system is designed, a small minority can block almost any action. Also, the leaders of both major political parties often act against the desires of their own "supporters", by which I mean voting supporters rather than their financial supporters.

> For citizens, this is so demonstrably false that I feel like I must be misinterpreting you here.

Here's what I said: "The founders weren't omniscient, benevolent gods. They were just wealthy landowners looking out for their own interests — it's crucial to note that they ignored over half the population of the colonies, i.e., women and black people". How exactly are you interpreting that?

This is an aside but the MLB has been actively modifying rules the past few years. Some of them have been quite good, but others seem to contradict each other in purpose and leave me wondering what they actually want. For example, they have attempted to increase action on the bases by increasing base size and banning the shift, but they also deadened the ball so that it travels a few feet less on average.

The latter decreased home runs (at least early in the season last year, I forget end of season results), but just turns them into boring fly outs. It also didn’t really increase base running, since it wasn’t dead enough to cause most players to change their approach (mainly, try and hit a home run). I’m unsure how the ball has been this year but it’s seemed to carry more based on my casual viewing, and the MLB has been suspected of tampering with the ball for seasons / games for a few years now without discussing it (e.g., putting juiced balls in big games and tweaking the formula season to season for one reason or another).

They also mandated motion capture cameras be present in every stadium to collect data for teams and push that data to both teams and viewers, yet bemoan that baseball has become too analytics driven. Manfred (the commissioner) has complained about decisions like starting pitchers facing fewer batters, pitchers being too good in general, the shift before it was banned, and more, but these tactics have largely come about due analyzing the data.

As an organization, they generally seem confused about what they want and how to achieve it. I’m not sure if that’s due to factions within the ownership group (maybe you can draw some political parallels there), or something within the MLB leadership.