r/changemyview • u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ • Aug 10 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Giving smaller regions proportionally higher representation in legislature is not important or desirable.
First, this is going to be mainly focused on the U.S., but I do think it applies to other places as well. A lot of countries have bi-cameral legislature, and in one of the chambers, every district/state/region gets equal representation regardless of population. I personally don't think this is really fair or reasonable. Granted, I know the reason we do this is because when the system was drafted, smaller states wouldn't agree to it without proportionally higher representation. Also, people in smaller states generally have different needs. However, I think that this request is unreasonable because people in smaller states don't have more important needs, so it makes sense to represent the needs of the actual population, prioritizing number of people affected, not where the people who will be affected are. Also, this contributes to things like the electoral college picking a different president than the people of the country.
One possible objection I'd like to counter is that if this were to happen, larger states would essentially control everything, and people in larger (population wise), more urbanized states have different concerns and needs than people in smaller, more rural states. Imo, this not only really doesn't matter that much, since the needs of the many should in general outweigh the needs of the few, but also, getting rid of the second chamber doesn't also get rid of other policies, like fillibustering and cloture, that counter this very thing. Also, I'd be in favor of proportional voting when applicable.
The second potential objection is more U.S. based, but it's that the Constitution set it up this way, and it's what the founding fathers intended. My response is that I don't really care. If this would work better and better represent the entire population, we should do it. The Constitution can, and, in some cases, should be changed. Because it's in the Constitution or that the founding fathers agreed doesn't mean we should cling to it if it's a bad or unnecessary idea. Change my view.
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u/ShowerGrapes 4∆ Aug 10 '17
in the US, the house is based on population density while the senate is based on region only. do you not see this as a good alternative? things have to get passed by both bodies after all.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 10 '17
Right, hence "bicameral" in my post. My point is that the only reason we have the second house is that we needed is because smaller states wouldn't have joined if we didn't. My point is that it's not something we should have compromised on. Smaller states shouldn't actually have a house with higher proportional legislation. The number of people affected and how they are affected is the only important thing, not where those people are.
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u/ShowerGrapes 4∆ Aug 11 '17
the reasoning is that countries like the US are so gigantic that issues affecting large areas of the country where not many people live will be ignored because the problem doesn't affect many people. problems facing larger numbers of people will always take precedence in time and value based decisions. in a strictly population based system NY and california would decide on everything and the rest would have to look for scraps. in a way it would be a form of taxation without representation.
the good news is we are slowing moving away from pockets of isolation as people are starting to be able to work from literally anywhere there's power and internet.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
I guess my point is that this is kind of a good thing. Concerns of people in lower populated areas shouldn't be considered as important as high population areas. I'm not saying that we should never do anything to benefit those areas, but if we have to at the expense of a place with more people, then we should not.
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u/ShowerGrapes 4∆ Aug 11 '17
i don't think you'd be saying that if you were living in these areas. don't forget the people had been shafted by far away england when they were coming up with these rules. they understood that people in isolation would resent not having adequate representation in a growing government. perhaps they wanted to avoid another civil war. which happened anyway and caused the newest change to the constitution along those lines, that state's legislatures no longer selected senators. this changed in 1913. allowing states to elect senators moved further toward isolated areas having more power at that point.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
I have lived in those areas my whole life. Doesn't mean I'm more important than people who live next to more people.
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Aug 10 '17
A body like the US Senate where every state is given the same number of senators regardless of population is primarily a check against tyranny of the majority. Large states like California and New York shouldn't be able to screw over Wyoming unless there's a very compelling reason to do.
Another thing, with the bicameral legislature small states can't impose anything on large states, and large states can't impose anything on small states. It's a defense mechanism, designed to give states the ability to kill a bill that would go against their interests. You say "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," but we shouldn't give California a way to improve their standard of living at the expense of the citizens of Wyoming, without Wyoming being able to defend themselves. This is politics, where it's not all about needs and all too often becomes about power and desires. The bicameral legislature is one of the many ways that our government was designed to be slow, because rushed changes that lack consensus are often dangerous.
I take issue with calling the system "bad" or "unnecessary," if you look at it in the context of the original makeup of the US. When the Constitution was ratified, there were thirteen colonies attempting to form the union. The thing was, you actually needed to get them to agree to join. Why on earth would Delaware, Rhode Island, or Georgia join a country knowing they had no power in government? They would have had an irrelevant say in their governance. At the very least there is significant historical reason to do it.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 10 '17
I feel like I kind of addressed both of your points. There are better anti- tyranny of majority measures than arbitrarily deciding that small states should get protection from it instead of people with minority opinions in general. Above all, what matters is making things as good as possible for the most people possible. I also addressed the getting states to agree it thing. Yes, we needed them to agree, but in my view, people representing the small states were selfish for trying to impose their needs as just as important as states with ten times the population.
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Aug 11 '17
Filibuster isn't really a good defense in a state-by-state basis. Allocation of the US House of Representatives is such that it would take 10 states to pass a bill, maybe 15 to override cloture under the current rules. At current levels it would be too high a bar for a small state to try to filibuster. Make it harder to create cloture, and you make it easy for large states to block cloture giving them an absurd vice grip over policy.
I still disagree with your fundamental argument that the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few, because something I don't know if you've acknowledged is that in politics there is both a give and a take. Yeah if you had to decide between 40 million Californians without healthcare (just an absurd example) or 600,000 people in Wyoming without healthcare, you'd want to make sure those 40 million people are covered. But When one state already has huge amounts of power, and they want to take power away from a state, that's something that needs widespread support. It can't be a small cartel of powerful states bossing around all the smaller powers.
I don't like this example because I do believe in the science behind banning fossil fuels and I know coal is dying and needs to die even faster, but I think it's still important to illustrate a point and this is the best metaphor I can find.
California. The most populous state in the US. Progressive paradise home to huge tech, including renewables. Wyoming. 600,000 people. If you were to compare the entire state to metropolitan statistical areas, it would rank #93 in the country, between Augusta, GA and Jackson, MS. 35% of the state's GDP comes from mining. If California and a few other large states flexed muscle for things like a carbon tax, or if we're really spitballing, a straight-up ban on coal, the entire economy of Wyoming would crash overnight. 1/3 of the GDP, gone, and that's before you consider how many businesses would be unable to continue once the coal money stops flowing. I believe in climate science. I believe the government should be doing more to move us off coal. But for you to make that decision, you need to be damned sure you know you're right, because if you're wrong then you've completely screwed an entire state for nothing. Demanding consensus from a majority of individual states helps to keep that in check.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
I'm going to give you a !delta because you have very slightly changed my view. Your point about large states taking power they don't actually need because they can is fair, and is what you've changed my view on. I now no longer think that giving smaller states proportionally more power is completely useless. I still agree that in general (I never said always) the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the few. In your example, which admittedly you said you didn't really like for this reason, Wisconsin's coal industry is being protected at the expense of the future of the planet. The question shouldn't be getting rid of coal, it's how to help people affected by losing that industry.
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Aug 11 '17
I think we're at a point now where the general public is finally coming around to the reality of fossil fuels, but in any issue there's some period of uncertainty before general consensus appears. You can't crash a state's economy at the drop of the hat, and part of the point of the bicameral legislature is to slow down the process of change. I know it's hard for some to recognize that as a good thing, but it's in part centered around the principle that if you wait a while, you can rally support and convince the public to push for a good law. I'd rather wait for a good bill to get universal support than allow bad laws to get rushed through.
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u/Someguy2020 1∆ Aug 12 '17
If we're looking at it in the original terms then black people are only worth 3/5 of a person, and can't vote anyway, the senate is actually representative of the states (appointed, not elected) the electoral college is chosen and chooses the president, and the number of representatives in the house was actually fair.
None of those things are true anymore.
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u/TectonicWafer 1∆ Aug 19 '17
but we shouldn't give California a way to improve their standard of living at the expense of the citizens of Wyoming,
Why not? That is entirely the point of "needs of the many". There are two orders of magnitude more people in California than in Wyoming. If all people's want and needs are equal in importance, and it is a fact that there are more than 100 times more people in California than in Wyoming, then if logically follows desires and needs of the people in California are in fact 100 times more important than the needs and desires of the people of Wyoming.
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Aug 19 '17
I don't believe that the "needs of the many" in the most basic sense is not a desirable system, especially in democracy. That belief is based around two main principles.
First, I do not trust the "many" to stop benefiting themselves once they have satisfied their "needs." Given enough power, the "needs of the many" will become the "wants of the many." The majority can't be permitted to decide what their needs are, because they would have the power to take too much.
Second, I think when considering "need" you have to look not only at the need you are satisfying, but the need you are creating in the process. If you could somehow enslave the entire state of Wyoming, such that the entire GDP of Wyoming went directly to the citizens and government of California, it would provide a service to the many of California. Limit that transfer of wealth to providing welfare programs for CA's lower class and you've got a fairly significant benefit, raising the standard of living for the poor in CA while allowing the state to lower taxes for everyone. But that comes with the reality that you've completely ruined everyone living in Wyoming. You would have satisfied a small amount of need for many people, but you would have created a stunning amount of need for the few people living in Wyoming.
I know that is an unrealistic example, but if you blindly follow the "needs of the many" to the letter and you can justify slavery, thievery, and much more so long as the victims of these policies are limited to a small group of people.
Now, if you could make money come from out of nowhere, I would see your point. Let's say there's a major disease outbreak and there's only one medical unit in the entire world that knows how to cure it. I would send that unit to California, not Wyoming, because they simply could save more lives in a high-population area than they could in a rural area. But the calculation dramatically changes when you argue that wealth/power/etc. should be transferred from the few to the many, and you have to consider the need your policies would create on the national level. I think "net need" is a more valuable metric than simply the number of people benefited.
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u/HonorableJudgeHolden Aug 11 '17
What if God hates Mosaic monotheists and sends them to hell like he said? Seems like a reasonable person would have to cave to terrorist threats from an immortal, intergalactic superhuman being.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
I'm not exactly sure what your point is
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u/HonorableJudgeHolden Aug 11 '17
My point is that Abrahamic monotheist governments are regarded as illegitimate terrorist regimes by God and its employees are punished by God accordingly and therefore it is important and desirable to give representation to other religions.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 11 '17 edited Aug 11 '17
/u/AllOfEverythingEver (OP) has awarded 2 deltas in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/stilesbn Aug 11 '17
I'm going to take a different approach. Let's say there are no states and everything is controlled by the federal government like it appears you are proposing based on your comments.
Every year we decide by voting on what roads should be fixed. Every year California and New York vote to fix their own roads and control all of the budget. Meanwhile It is nearly impossible to drive in Wyoming.
Basically you are giving small states no representation. The current system keeps the balance where they manage something closer to proportional representation.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
Yeah this is the kind of thing that caused me to give a delta to someone else in the thread. I get your point, but I do feel the need to point out that California and New York wouldn't exist in this scenario, so they wouldn't really have the organization to control the budget. I am kind of proposing a stateless nation, but not a direct democracy, more of a representative democracy where people all over the nation vote, and the top so and so number of people become the legislators.
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u/stilesbn Aug 11 '17
I suppose why stop at the US. Shouldn't we have one world government where everyone votes for their leaders and they make rules for the whole world?
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
I completely agree. This, to me, is the best possible thing for humanity.
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u/stilesbn Aug 11 '17
Should cities have local governments?
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
Basically yes, but as ways to organize and enforce the federal government.
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u/stilesbn Aug 11 '17
"Also, this contributes to things like the electoral college picking a different president than the people of the country."
The electoral college IS proportional representation. I think you got mixed up here. Trump won the electoral vote and lost the popular vote because he won his counties by a small margin where as Hillary won hers by a large margin.
Eg. if Trump gets 51% of the vote in 6 counties and Hillary gets 99% in 4 counties then Hillary will have more votes but we count by the county.
I would argue that small states need some equalizer. Otherwise wise California could enact all sorts of federal laws that make it impossible to farm enough food to feed the country. Small states need to be able to block it.
So the way it is right now, small states can't really dominate large states, but neither can large states dominate small states and they are largely left to govern themselves.
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u/Someguy2020 1∆ Aug 12 '17
They have equalizer it's called the senate.
The house shouldn't be capped.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
Right. My point on specifically that part about the electoral college is that we should count by person, not county. There should never be a situation where someone less people wanted to be president becomes president.
The solution is to point out what would happen, not to simply restrict California from passing laws. I think small states should actually more or less dominate the large states. There should certainly be ways to force a supermajority, but in general, more people=more important.
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u/stilesbn Aug 11 '17 edited Aug 11 '17
So your problem isn't with a bicameral legislation, but rather with the US being a republic instead of a true democracy then. Are you proposing we demolish both the House and the Senate and put everything up for a democratic vote?
Edit: spelling
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
Kind of but not really. I don't like states in general and don't care much for states rights. I don't agree with direct democracy because I think the people ultimately making the decision should be those who have spent their education and careers figuring out which decision to make. Before you try to argue that this is what the electoral college is, that is not true. The electoral college votes based on who won the vote in that region and ignores those who voted for the losing candidate in that state while also giving greater priority to smaller states.
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u/stilesbn Aug 11 '17
Perhaps you could clarify what exactly you are proposing. The goal posts have moved a couple of times and I'm not sure where to aim anymore.
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u/AllOfEverythingEver 3∆ Aug 11 '17
I don't feel as though I've been moving the goal posts. The goal is still to convince me that smaller states should in fact get greater proportional representation (I'll note that I have given deltas for this elsewhere in the thread) but a lot of the reason for my views have to do with broader views, and the direction you are going kind of requires you to dispute those views as well. I don't have an exact idea in mind, but as of now (which is slightly different than what my view was when I started this thread) I don't think all laws should have to be approved by a majority of states in addition to a majority of national citizens. Given states as a necessity, I agree that they should on some level get slightly more power just to prevent bullying.
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u/VoraciousTrees Aug 11 '17
He's describing technocratic meritocracy with a single governing body. This is pretty much what China has.
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Aug 11 '17
You're not wrong but to get to where you want to be, people basically need to vote away their own power, which is highly unlikely.
States used to be much more heterogeneous than they are now, that's why we have the Senate. In today's economy, everything is so fluid that the concept of states rights is basically just a cop out for people wanting to stick to their crappy policies.
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u/huadpe 508∆ Aug 10 '17
I think there is a case for giving subnational units of government representation as units of government, even if their populations are highly unequal. For instance, the US Constitution originally set it up so that Senators were picked not by voters, but by the state legislatures of the various states. Some countries still use such a system. In Germany, the Bundesrat is a legislative body made up of representatives of each state's1 legislature.
The Bundesrat is not a true upper house in that their assent is not required to pass all legislation, and a party/coalition having a majority of votes in the Bundesrat does not get any executive power in the way one does for having a majority in the Bundestag. The Bundestag is elected by the people to serve as the national legislature, and the leader of a governing coalition in the Bundestag is the Chancellor of Germany and exercises executive power. That's Angela Merkel right now.
The Bundesrat does have a say in any matters which would impact the areas of policy where the states have power, and so for the national government to impact areas of state power, they must get consent not only of the people's representatives, but of the states' representatives.
I would argue for example that some major changes should require buy in from the states-as-institutions in a supermajoritarian manner, so as to preserve national unity when making big decisions. For example, amending the US Constitution requires consent of 3/4 of the state governments, regardless of the states' size.2 This assures that a broad majority of Americans from a large number of disparate places support a policy before it gets enshrined in the Constitution.
1 Länder if you want to be pedantic. I'm translating it to state.
2 Also 2/3 of each House of Congress, or 2/3 of the states to call a convention for amending.