That person didn’t suggest it, it’s in OP’s list.
There’s no benefit to that. Removing the limit on house representatives, that’s huge and real, but merging Congress is dumb. There’s a few dumb things on the list (eg “abolish gerrymandering” is like saying “abolish speeding”). Choose your favorite!
Edit: Now that I’m not trying to hurry to get ready for work:
Chapter One: the HoRs.
For those that aren’t aware of how it works:
There’s are two lawmaking bodies with two different purposes. The Senate is equally split among states. There are 2 senators for each state – as a result, those seats are elected by their entire state (more people voting on each person), and the seats are more competitive (more people want to be elected to that seat). So Senators tend to be more serious politicians, more “universally appealing” (aka centrist). This also makes the Senate the one that gives smaller, or less populous states, more power, because both California and Wyoming get 2 senators, no matter what. These factors contribute to the Senate being a more deliberative body.
The House Representatives are determined by population – so California has many more senators than Wyoming. They’re elected in their district, which can be quite small, so the profile of voters in a district is often very different than in an entire state. (This is why all the crazies are in the House.)
There’s a minimum, obviously – the smallest state will always have at least 1? Or 2? I don’t remember. But you can’t have a state with no representation, that’s not ok.
The problem is, our national population is very very different from what it was. The difference between New York and Maine is much more drastic than it was 200 years ago. But we haven’t increased the number of Representatives. And there’s a minimum. As the oopulation grows, and the House doesn’t, it’s becoming more and more unbalanced, in favor of smaller states.
Imagine trying to get smaller states to vote in favor of decreasing their power.
(Also: electoral college votes are on the same system. The electoral college was intended to give smaller states more power, but because there’s a minimum, and we haven’t reduced the total, it’s become super imbalanced. It was a mediocre idea to start with, and now it’s even worse. Abolishing the EC is pretty popular, but it might be easier/better to just follow the rules and increase the total number of EC votes. But, again, small states won’t agree to it.)
The Constitution says we’re supposed to increase the total number of Representatives (and EC votes) but at some point (1929 to be specific) Congress was like nahhhh
Chapter two: why we can’t Abolish Gerrymandering.
First of all, it’s already illegal.
Secondly, it’s hard for outsiders to tell the difference between appropriate “gerrymandering” and actual gerrymandering. If you look at Chicago, where I’m from, there’s a weird vote assignment on the west side of the city, it looks manipulated and weird. But if you live here, you know, there’s a huge highway that cuts through there that’s very hard to cross, so populations on one side are very different from on the other. One side of the highway is there a bunch of Latino immigrants and settled, and on the north side are more affluent (white) people.
(The fact that a highway cuts through a neighborhood isn’t an accident, but that’s just regular systemic racism, unrelated to Congress.)
If you made the voting map a simple grid, the Latino voters might be split up in a way that reduces their voting power. So the map is weird, but it’s actually good that it’s weird.
(This is why I said it’s like speeding: one, it’s already illegal, but two, it’s something everyone is doing (and traffic would be super shitty if everyone followed the speed limit), but some people are taking it to an illegal extreme.)
If you look at a state, calculate a percentage of the minorities, and check that number (those numbers – since there are more than one minority) against the number of districts that vote the way those minorities vote, then, that’s what we’ve decided is “fine” – and, for real, what else are you going to do.
Illegal gerrymandering is when those blocks of voters (“blocs,” is you want to get into Gramsci), are intentionally divided so as to reduce their power. The voting rights act of 1965 made this illegal, and every ten years, after the census, districts are often redrawn. In 2010, we ended up with a lot of gerrymandering. Now,finally, were starting to see some corrections to badly gerrymandered maps, like Alabama, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, Georgia… Louisiana…idr the others, but it’s a lot. 2024 is going to have a very very different House of Representatives than the one we have now.
This last point is worth underscoring. The current Republican house majority is due to illegal distract maps. It is, technically, an illegal Congress. So all these ridiculous shenanigans the House Republicans are up to shouldn’t be happening. (And, in fact, one could easily make the argument that the high percentage of insane and stupid Republican Representatives is because of the maps – because the the “depressurization” caused by fair maps would have dialed Congress back to a more centrist stance.
If you want to learn more, check out Democracy Docket, which is a news source from a group of people (lawyers) who are taking bad maps to court.
Ethics are interesting because you can ignore them. It’s like, ethics exist within you regardless of whether you agree to them; if you don’t listen to that little voice, it gets easier and easier to ignore it. To put that in practical terms: murdering someone is pretty ethically difficult. Murdering a second time is less ethically difficult. It’s like we build a climate around ourselves; the more you listen to your ethical beliefs, the more repugnant the idea of ignoring them becomes.
That said, I’m not sure I’m on board with you on RHCP – but that’s maybe just me. I used to listen to them a lot in jr high (I’m old) when blood sugar sex magic had just come out. And while your opinion is totally valid, for me, like, I never thought he was much of an ethical role model. His lyrics are pretty misogynistic. (And, not great regardless, from a “objective artistic/poetic” perspective.) So like yeah he’s not a great person, but he never pretended to be, so to find out he isn’t doesn’t change much.
(As opposed to, say, Jowling Kowling Rowling, who used to talk about hating bigotry, but then turned out to be a super terrible bigot.)
Flea, on the other hand – I’ve never looked into him. I’m also a bassist and his influence on my bass education is so deep that I’m afraid to find out if he’s toxic lol. But he’s been in a band with Anthony Keidis for like 40 years, so, he’s probably not perfect.
(I’m not a slap or funk bassist, but what I learned from Flea was how to feel it. You can’t play Flea’s bass lines mechanically, they literally don’t sound correct; you have to feel the vibe, the groove has to move your fingers, not the time signature. That dude, ffs I hope he’s not an asshole, because he’s fucking incredible.)
Though IDK – after long careers together, from what I understand, people tend to see each other less.
For example, after the whole Me Too thing started, I heard an interview with Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother, the two of them started Miramax together and were basically partners. But he knew his brother was a piece of shit, and, at that time a few years ago, hadn’t actually spoken to him in “many years.” He didn’t dwell on the topic, he just said that, basically, and his tone was like, obviously disgusted, but he didn’t want to spend the time talking about that, so he didn’t.
He wasn’t exactly going to snitch his own brother into prison, and that’s asking a bit too much imo, but it shows ethical strength to not slip into that same kind of toxicity, especially when it’s so close to you, and probably so easy.