The US's origin as a settler-colony shines through with how its legislature is set up, it effectively gives land a vote. A few settlers in the great state of Nowhere have as the much more populated coastal states.
The US's origin as a settler-colony shines through with how its legislature is set up, it effectively gives land a vote. A few settlers in the great state of Nowhere have as the much more populated coastal states.
The bicameral legislature, with proportional and equal representation, has valid arguments to support it. That isn't to say it's perfect, but it was a compromise made for some justifiable reasons. Where we really went wrong was the Reapportionment Act of 1929, that capped the size of the house, and guaranteed small states at least one seat. This has given small states extremely outsized impact, that gets worse every year (as the growth of other states continues to out pace them). Even with a single chamber legislature, capping the members in this fashion would lead to the same problem. If the house was truly proportional, as originally intended, we'd be a very different country, regardless of the senate.
To see why this really matters, see this CGP Grey video about the electoral college and it's relation to Congress (equal voters as reps in Congress). Then consider how the President gets to nominate judges, and consider the cascade of nonsense that follows.
The Senate should be abolished. The existence of 2 legislative chambers, both of which need to approve each piece of legislation, is an obvious flaw that leads to deadlock and cynicism about "government not working" (rightfully so), and often lets both parties plausibly blame the other. No rational consensus algorithm involves an even number of peers.
Of course, the Senate will never be abolished, because doing so would require 2/3 of the Senate to approve its own abolition, which no rational Senator would vote for. So we'll just have to wait for the US government lose a war to a foreign adversary or some sort of revolution.
There's an advantage to a "reactive body" and a "contemplative body" to have short term advocating for your direct constituents and a mediating push for better longer term results, but not the way we do it.
Giving votes to land is foolish.
Keep the two houses, but apportion senators by population as well.
On the issue of the senate here I present my opinions nobody asked for: I live in a country with a unicameral parlaiment with both party list and local representatives serving in it and boy it has it's problems too. To be fair they are caused by shitty election laws and I'm fairly certain most of the USA's problems are a result of that too. The two party system is way more harmful than the senate in my opinion and while every state getting two senators sounds stupid I do see it's advantages.
For one it does not guarantee a good system but it does guarantee a stable one. Obviously the people who came up with it thought their system was pretty good so it made sense to make it hard to temper with. Then people figured out the system wasn't as good as they initially thought and turns out you can change stuff if enough people around the country agree.
In my country it's election (for everyone in the parliament) every four years, whoever wins probably gets to rewrite the constitution if they are into that and the other half of the country goes to the streets for like two days before realizing they will just do it back all in four years.
If I had to summarize I think the senate good be a good system. It isn't but it could be.
So yeah I do envy that kind of system even if just a bit (well the fact that more than one person here seems to think things would be better if their system was more like someone else's seems to indicate the system itself may be irrelevant), but this may not be my best take ever, given it's 4 AM when I'm writing this lol
The system is limited by the people implenting it.
No syatem can withstand a majority of those involved prioritize working around rules or creating loopholes.
thanks for using Leebra!
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I mean yeah, duh. The US constitution is fucking stupid. "Yeah lets have a bicameral legislature where states with a population of 6 get as much representation in the upper house as ones with a population of 60 million" said no one ever with a fucking brain in their skull. I spent my entire life growing up being told how the US constitution protected our "democratic norms" (as if this wretched shithole ever paid more than lip-service to democracy), while I watched hordes of illiterate racist degenerates continue to elect fascists and the systems I was told were supposed to protect democracy actively aided and abetted them.
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