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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I like where you’re going here, and the only things I disagree with are the Senate merge and Electoral College as these still serve a purpose. The removal of the House cap will rebalance there, and if anything the Senate could be reverted from popular election back to being appointed by the State Legislatures so they rebalance back to being actual actors for the State as intended vs overpowered Representatives.

    The Electoral College helps balance democracy being 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner, but maybe get some math experts to review the equation for apportionment and/or set all electors to be proportional to the vote percentages in every state.




  • That makes sense if the states were just administrative zones like the Canadian provinces and territories, all fully subsumed and beholden under the Federal Government. We are not. We are a closely connected economic and political union of individual states collected into a Republic, all of which work together and compete with different ideas. All powers not specifically enumerated to the Federal Government are each State’s to decide and manage. This allows States to try different things and see what works best, from tax strategy, to universal healthcare (Romneycare), to UBI.

    The people have their focus on what is best for them personally. This encompasses differing things from worldwide events to their neighborhood, but it is still a narrow scope. City/county leadership is focused on how best to keep their city/county running for maximum benefit of their population. States have the same focus over all the cities and counties therein.

    We only have a ruling elite because people tend to vote for the incumbents, and we have no term limits except for the Presidency. It is also relatively stupid to put everything to a mass democratic vote, especially for things that should be decided by experts. Water rights, mineral rights, pollution controls, regulations, revenue allocation, etc.

    That is like saying that the division leadership in a company shouldn’t have a voice in decision making alongside the union and board of directors, just let the union make the decisions. You don’t need input from finance and design/engineering and human resources and warehousing and production and quality control, the people in those departments all elected their union representatives so we don’t need input from those department leads.



  • “Well, that’s just like, your opinion man”. The constitution is still set up that way, and powers not explicitly granted to the Federal Government are the dominion of the States. We are still more like the EU than other “full-fledged” countries. You may not like that, but I would bet that just as many people feel differently as those that agree with you. It would also take the adoption of a new constitution to do that, and the odds of the Country remaining united through a complete constitution change compared to breaking up into several independent countries doesn’t seem high right now.


  • The US is far more like the EU than it is like Britain or Canada, being a Republic of aligned States. We have a body representing the states themselves (the Senate, and each state is equal and gets 2 Senators), a body representing the People in those states (the House of Representatives, which has been capped for total size and is no longer equally proportional but serves the same purpose), and a body representing the entire Union (the Executive branch - the President, Vice President, Cabinet, etc.).


  • Minor correction: the Senate is 2 per state, so Wyoming’s 1 state has the same representation as California’s 1 state. The Senate is (supposed to be) the voice of the States in the Federal Government. The Senate wasn’t even supposed to be elected by popular vote, they were appointed/elected by their state governments until the 17th amendment. The change made senators into super-representatives, which changed power dynamics. Arguments can be made here for whether this was ultimately better or worse.

    The House of Representatives IS the voice of the people, and should be proportional to population size (but was artificially capped because the Feds complained it was getting too big so now Wyoming has more representational power per person than California). This needs to change because it’s only going to get worse going forward.

    With this breakdown, the Federal Government’s interests, State’s interests, and the People’s interests balance each other. These three bodies have vastly different focuses.