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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

Funny how not much changes in 200yr. Basically every part of MA that isn't a part of the Boston area still resents that the state is run economically and socially (order of importance varies by who you talk to) according to what Boston wants/needs/wishes. I'm sure if you went and asked people in Springfield, Hoyoke, North Adams, Fitchburg, New Bedford, (not to mention all the rural communities) what they thought about the quality decision making on Beacon hill you'd get about the same responses you would have gotten in 1787.

Edit: By Boston area I do NOT mean [1] which includes a lot of the Fall River/New Bedford area, the Lowell area and places more under the effect of Worcester. I mean the area in MA where Boston is the major city that has the most effect on day to day life (not to be confused with "daily effect on life") of most people. The area covered by Boston Craigslist is a pretty good proxy for this.

[1] https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/Massachusetts/Boston...

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It's also the reverse. When working in Cambridge I mentioned that I grew up in the Pioneer Valley, a five-college area in Western MA which includes two of the "Seven Sisters" among yielding some famous poets.

"Oh, in the 413 huh?" the coworker snarked, referring to the area code of a large western portion of the state that wasn't Boston (which was 617 at the time). As if everyone west of Worcester was a rube.

I live in the South Shore and they do that to me too.

They do that to the Central and Mountain timezones. Why would you be any different?

I should say, I treasure the time I've spent in the Boston area.

Because I live like fifteen minutes away? I literally take the train from the South Shore to Boston every morning and yet people act like I told them I just flew in from Idaho.

Exactly. It's like if I took VTA Light Rail from Campbell [where I currently live] to San Jose, which is comparable to your commute in terms of time, only to have people look down their nose at me. Fortunately, instead, I often receive "Oh Campbell yeah, I like that town" or similar.

The big thing is that the South Shore is more blue-collar and suburban (and I suppose in general more politically conservative) than the North Shore or Metro West area so they think of it as full of hicks.

I think that's basically every large metro area's view of those that live in a less dense environment. I get the same feeling if talking to someone who lives in San Francisco, as I live and was raised an hour north. Some of that could just be my own perception though.

Anecdotally, I've lived in San Francisco for a long time (over a decade) and I've never met anyone who has a negative, "redneck" impression of Marin/North Bay. The reaction I'd expect is "oh it must be beautiful up there".

I have noticed a little bit of disdain towards the more suburban parts of the Bay, like the Peninsula, but IME that has more to do with the way they interact politically with the rest of the Bay.

Well, less of a "redneck" vibe, and more of a subtle "I can't imagine living in some place so much less dense, and I can't see why you would live there other than it being cheaper." I think sometimes this is misinterpreted to be harsher than intended.

Sort of a "it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" vibe. Which, to be fair, is exactly how I feel about SF and the metro area around it.

Ah sure. IME, that's a pretty neutral & symmetric observation: I can't imagine living in Marin (at this pt in my life) instead of DT SF because it doesn't suit me in the same way. This is compatible with your observation that you feel the same way about SF.

What's the opinion of Oakland? Or, say, Modesto?

I think Oakland is seen as pretty cool and edgy. Modesto...oh well... I'm pretty sure it's very much looked down on.

Which is funny, because the Pioneer Valley is probably one of the least rube-y parts of the country I've ever visited.

Suddenly that Pixies song U Mass makes more sense to me.

Metro Boston has 4.6M and Massachusetts has 6.9M.

Wikipedia even has a "combined statistical area" of Boston at 8M.

How many people (non-Bostonian Massachusites) are we talking about here?

The Boston Metro area covers a fairly big area (and the combined statistical area even more, including cities in adjacent states). Within the city limits proper, the population is under 1 million--although that's partly because Cambridge and Somerville aren't part of Boston.

The statistical metro is probably the closer match to the Boston that controls the state than the proper city.

That's true but the parent was asking how many people don't live in Boston but are effectively controlled by the politics there anyway. And the statistical metro is in some sense a measure of the area/population that can be thought of as associated with Boston. (i.e. more or less by definition, the people whose politics/economics are influenced by it)

But that's kind of the rub -- people in Hingham might carp that they don't want to pay for the T in Boston, and yet their own prosperity comes, in part, from having a nearby city with well-funded public services

>How many people (non-Bostonian Massachusetts) are we talking about here?

The Boston statistical area also covers Nashua and Portsmouth which while not as heavily populated is not even part of Massachusetts and NH prides itself on having much different culture and politics than it southern neighbor, just worth pointing that out.

A huge chunk of the population across the entire state is gonna be apathetic on any/every issue. If you cut those out of your counting (which probably cuts the state population in half or so) I'd say 45%+/-10% really resent Boston's control over the rest of the state, particularly in the second tier cities that get pushed around at the state level when it comes to funding.

There's a pretty steep drop off to approval of state government once you're outside I495.

Also, the preferred pronoun for people from MA is "Masshole" ;)

Edit: By Boston area I do NOT mean [1] which includes a lot of the Fall River/New Bedford area, the Lowell area and places more under the effect of Worcester in addition to parts of NH and ME. I mean the area in MA where Boston is the major city that has the most effect on day to day life (not to be confused with "daily effect on life") of most people. The area covered by Boston Craigslist is a pretty good proxy for this.

[1] https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/Massachusetts/Boston...

>the preferred pronoun for people from MA is "Masshole"

assuming you can even find one any more, a cabot or a shaw would disagree. But brahmins are scarce these days.

Grew up in Framingham, enlisted in '94 and haven't lived there since, but even out here in the Quad Cities, I still think of myself as a Masshole... and I use the word liberally for my home state :)

> A huge chunk of the population across the entire state is gonna be apathetic on any/every issue but I'd say a solid million or two really resent Boston's control over the rest of the state

The Boston metro area is a majority of the state's population, is it not? "Minority wishes it wasn't overruled by majority" isn't exactly news, and it's exactly how you want a democracy to work anyway.

It might be how you want a democracy to work, but it's not entirely how you want a Republic to work.

Yes, it depends on what you feel is the fundamental component of American society: the person, or the parcel of land.

No, it doesn't. We have checks on the power of the majority in a Republic because the majority doesn't always think long term and it's easy to get a populist leader that splits the country apart.

Yeah, those checks are things like the judicial branch, separation of powers, periodic (and particularly in the case of the Senate, infrequent) voting, and the Constitution being difficult to amend. Giving special power to one type of minority is unnecessary and subverts the general will of the people.

If we had a legislative house for white people and another for black people, would that be a good idea because hey, that white majority doesn't always think long term? Again, there's no reasonable justification for why it should be that geographic minorities get extra political power.

>If we had a legislative house for white people and another for black people, would that be a good idea because hey, that white majority doesn't always think long term?

No, because that doesn't make any sense. Nobody always thinks long term. That's one of many reasons why we have a Republic, not a Democracy.

Geographic minorities in the US get extra political power because they require increased infrastructure spending relative to their population, they have a history of rebellion in systems with a centralized government and so that lower population states are more likely to not only accept the decisions of government but actively take part.

> No, because that doesn't make any sense. Nobody always thinks long term.

Then why do we have one house where geographic minorities get extra power permanently?

> Geographic minorities in the US get extra political power because they require increased infrastructure spending relative to their population

No, they get extra political power because it was needed to bring them into the union when the country was founded, and the Constitution is very difficult to amend. At this point there's no reasonable justification it should continue this way, except that the very parties that benefit also have veto power over the system changing. It's like the Security Council.

> they have a history of rebellion in systems with a centralized government

Funny, there are lots of countries that don't give extra political power to rural areas that seem to manage just fine. Does anyone seriously think Wyoming is going to try and secede? Why would they if, by your own admission, they're being subsidized by the more populous states?

> more likely to not only accept the decisions of government but actively take part.

Syracuse, NY has an even smaller population than those states, and yet somehow its residents manage bring themselves to take part in politics.

Doesn't Wyoming currently have disproportionate political power relative to their population? If they didn't, would they still be subsidized?

> If we had a legislative house for white people and another for black people, would that be a good idea because hey, that white majority doesn't always think long term?

I mean, maybe. What year are we talking about here?

Perhaps in 2018 that wouldn't be a good idea, but even if you were to go back to so far as the 50s, I think that you would find a lot of blacks saying "yes. I very much WOULD like to have a seperate government ruling me in America, because this other group doesn't care about my rights".

There are lots of times when the majority is wrong, and decentralizing power is one method of insulating people from the effects of it.

Bay Staters is the real demonym

Massachusetts is at least somewhat atypical in that the state capitol and economic center are the same city. In a lot of states, the state capitol is in some smaller city precisely so that all the power in the state doesn't flow from a single place.

Sometimes I wonder about that. The US as a whole has the same setup (DC isn't the biggest metro area), and the way the legislative houses and executive branch are usually not controlled by a single party at once. Having that separation of power certainly sounds nice, but if you compare it to other countries where the capital IS the biggest city, and where there's always one party/coalition in control of the entire legislative and executive branches...well, they seem to actually function better, on average?

Like, I'm not seeing the practical benefits here. Does anyone look at how Congress and the Presidency behave in the year 2018 and think, "ah yes, this clearly has the results we want"? It seems to me like the problem of splitting up power too much is that you get fragmentation, and situations where each party just blames the other and it's hard to tell who actually deserves responsibility for anything.

Making it harder to do things makes it hard to do dumb or bad things as well as good things. Not everything government does is good. Americans generally prefer be protected from bad government at the expense of making good government less effective rather than enable good government to do things quickly and risk that it does things they consider bad.

I'm not sure how can you look at the US government and 2018 and say we need to enable these people to get more things done. I think the current administration is a relatively harmless (compared to alternatives) lesson in the importance of checks and balances and not concentrating too much power in one branch of government.

They function more efficiently, sure - but longevity remains to be seen. Our system is by design not the most efficient one.

> but if you compare it to other countries where the capital IS the biggest city, and where there's always one party/coalition in control of the entire legislative and executive branches...well, they seem to actually function better, on average?

> Does anyone look at how Congress and the Presidency behave in the year 2018 and think, "ah yes, this clearly has the results we want"?

Here in 2018, we have the executive branch, and both houses of congress controlled by the same party. And as you point out, it's not going well.

Ha, touche. Although in this case, the legislative and executive branches are still separated more than they are in typical parliamentary systems of government, with differing incentives.

DC may not be the biggest metro area, but it's arguably the richest overall in terms of per household or per capita incomes. 5 of the top 10 richest counties in the US are DC 'burbs:

1 Loudoun Co, VA 2 Fairfax Co, VA 3 Howard Co, MD ... 5 Arlington Co, VA 6 Stafford, Co, VA

With Montgomery Co, MD and Prince William County at 11 and 12 respectively.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/richest-counties-in-the-...

At the time, Salem had similar economic power to Boston. New Bedford and Portland (then part of Mass) as well. But the British established their seat of governance in Boston, and here we are today.

I haven't really looked into this but I had always assumed this was more of an artifact of historical circumstances than an intentional decision.

It's so natural for an economic center to become a political center (and vice versa), and so common in the US to see the opposite, that I always assumed it was intentional. I could be wrong though: Can you elaborate on what kind of historical circumstances might account for this happening across so many states?

The economic center of the state 200 years ago and the economic center of the state today being different cities (for instance, the capital of Florida presumably isn't Miami because the area was a practically uninhabitable backwater in the 19th Century)

One is that the states are often bordered by major rivers or oceans, the economic centers are there, and they want the capital to be somewhere closer to the middle of the state, geographically. Another reason is that it's more secure, militarily.

State capitals are usually established when the state is established (they can occasionally be moved afterwards, but in most cases aren't after the first decade or so of statehood). At that time, there is no economic center to most states, because economic development has not yet begun.

Sacramento, for example, has been the capital of CA since 1854. At the time, the population of Sacramento was 10,000, San Francisco was 34,000, Los Angeles didn't exist yet, and most economic activity centered around gold mining, which usually happened near the Sacramento hinterlands.

Similarly Nevada's capital has been Carson City since 1864. In 1864 the primary industry in Nevada was silver mining of the Comstock Lode, which is right next to Carson City. Las Vegas didn't exist until 1905.

Some state capitals also have rather colorful histories, as well. The capital of Louisiana was moved from New Orleans (the economic center) to Baton Rouge because "New Orleans was too sinful". The capital of Idaho moved from Lewistown (the previous economic center, driven by a gold rush) to Boise (the new economic center, driven by mineral mining) in violation of a court order, and featured the governor fleeing the state for Portland and the state treasury being stolen from his steamboat cabin.

There's a catch-22 for settlement patterns where large-scale settlement and economic development of many states didn't happen until after they gained statehood, at which point the capital is already decided.

I mean, Boston is the economic engine of eastern Massachusetts and few in the greater Boston area are operating independent homestead farms anymore.

I really strongly believe that each state legislature should have a structure similar to the federal legislature in order to address this: state representatives should be apportioned by population and state senators should be apportioned by counties. This way the geographic regions of states would have a say, and you wouldn't have places like Boston, New York City or Denver running roughshod over the rest of their respective states.

While I tend to agree in principle, there's nothing special about how county lines are drawn. In Massachusetts (like many states), counties are pretty much irrelevant except for some fairly specific purposes. (For example, state courts and related legal institutions are organized by country.)

I like this idea. It seems like it would work well considering that the population in the US in 1800 was on the same order as the population of many states.

> This way the geographic regions of states would have a say

What's the ideological basis for giving "geographic minorities" extra voting power? Should we give extra voting power for other minorities too, based on race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.?

Should we give Muslims and Jews their own legislative house so the Christian majority doesn't run roughshod over them? Maybe a separate house for racial minorities, or for gay people so that the straight majority doesn't dominate them?

Many (most?) of the risks governments are trying to mitigate are fundamentally geographic - interpersonal violence, spread of fire, spread of disease, etc.

Why does, say, halting the spread of fire or disease require extra voting power given to rural areas? And couldn't you make a similar argument for, say, the government dealing with racial discrimination/dismantling oppressive power structures? There are fewer women in legislative roles than men, and women deal with all kinds of crap in society, does that mean women should be given extra votes?

Well, because the majority of the population might not vote to distribute money to infrastructure outside of their area - why should the state pay for something that the majority of the state won't immediately use? Without some political power, the rural areas wouldn't be likely to even get proportional funding and infrastructure.

There are a lot of issues that are fundamentally important to people living in one area that those in another don't care about. Water rights for agriculture are a good example.

The most important part, though? If you live in the city and your vote counts 9/10ths of the vote of a person in a rural community, you're probably not going to complain about lack of representation. If you live in a rural community and you have one representative and the city has 12, you may complain and that complaint may turn into violence or rebellion, because you feel you don't have adequate representation even though statistically speaking, you do.

The majority of the population might not vote to extend the same services, rights, protection, or opportunities to minorities.

There's a lot of issues important to those demographics, that are, in the world we live in, not important to others.

If you give cis white people 9/10th of the vote of a trans black person, people will absolutely complain about lack of representation. They will lose their minds. Have you been paying any attention to gender/race issues over the past... Well, ever? There are political movements, with street marches, and torches focused on 'taking the country back' from people who are, by most metrics, are getting the short end of the stick.

Yeah, I'm not talking about gender/race though. I'm talking about regions.

It's a different story when you look at your literal neighbor and they have more representation than you.

And actually, yes, most of this anger is linked to a feeling that people in rural areas have too little representation compared to major population centers, where most people live. So this illustrates what happens when you've got proportional representation but a completely unbalanced population distribution; it's fine when everything is going well, but when the mills close down and the farms go out of business, you get a lot of angry people who feel they have no political outlet.

> It's a different story when you look at your literal neighbor and they have more representation than you.

Jealousy is not a particularly sound or convincing ideological justification.

> And actually, yes, most of this anger is linked to a feeling that people in rural areas have too little representation compared to major population centers, where most people live.

It's worth pointing out that MA is a bit of a special case nationally. In most of the Midwest, for example, the resentment (and power/money) flows the other way.

It might not be a reasonable, logical justification, but it exists.

Operating on and creating a framework of laws that operate on flawed concepts of human nature leads to operational failures. It's one of the main problems with economics, traditionally. The right laws and system of government works with an understanding of human nature including jealousy, laziness, greed and other weaknesses.

In fact, one of the arguments used at the constitutional convention against Madison's proposed Negative was jealousy on the part of the representatives, as the Senate would hold powers that the representatives did not. It's not an incredibly convincing argument to me, but it happened.

MA isn't that much of a special case, as it's the case in the majority of states and Federally. I'm surprised that it's not in places like Iowa - especially as urban populations grow while rural decline, but maybe that's balanced by the majority of industry being related to agriculture.

On the one hand, you say we need to give geographic minorities extra power so that their interests are protected.

On the one hand, you say we shouldn't give other minorities extra power because without geographic distance jealousy/tension would overwhelm the political system.

I can't help but point out that you're making this claim on a thread attached to a story about a violent rural rebellion against urbanites! I.e., geography doesn't defuse those tensions.

So given that those tensions exist no matter what, is there any justification?

> It might not be a reasonable, logical justification, but it exists.

So to be clear, there's no reasonable justification for giving geographic minorities extra voting poewr that doesn't also justify giving other minorities extra voting power.

The only justification is grounded in realism: a fear of jealous-inspired violence toward neighbors that geographic distance would presumably prevent.

How does the very article we're commenting on not completely refute this argument?

> MA isn't that much of a special case, as it's the case in the majority of states and Federally.

It's a special case in the majority of land mass (this is just a tounge-in-cheek joke ;-) )

Federally, I disagree. Democrats won the popular vote in the Senate and Presidency but control neither. That's largely attributable to urban voters in states that allocated their electoral votes to (R).

>I can't help but point out that you're making this claim on a thread attached to a story about a violent rural rebellion against urbanites!

Exactly - Shay's rebellion occurred in large part because rural voters didn't feel that they were adequately represented in their government. The Federal government didn't have enough power to oversee what was happening and the State government was made up of people from other districts, who then proceeded to disenfranchise people in the rural areas in order to more completely concentrate voting power in the urban East.

>So to be clear, there's no reasonable justification for giving geographic minorities extra voting poewr that doesn't also justify giving other minorities extra voting power.

The reasonable justification, beyond infrastructure spending, differences in industry and geographical considerations is that other minorities don't have a history of rebellion. In a centralized power structure, rural areas DO have a history of rebellion, successful rebellion, especially when they feel their interests are not served by the central government.

> The reasonable justification... successful rebellion

I suppose we all would've spilled less ink if you had just led with "might makes right" :-)

It's foolish to ignore things that have led to armed conflict and focus on what's fair. I mentioned several reasons, but yes, the need to balance potential for armed conflict is one. Should it not be?

All the reasons hold, though. You discriminate based on address (and oppose discrimination among people at the same address.) You cite that different addresses have different needs, and this justifies that discrimination.

That's true.

The same is true for discrimination based on other mutable or immutable characteristics, though. It's all well and good to ingore minority issues, until you get a lot of other angry people with no political outlet. (Because presumably, one person, one equal vote is not good enough for them.)

>It's all well and good to ingore minority issues, until you get a lot of other angry people with no political outlet.

That's exactly why the Federal government doesn't ignore them, and why States shouldn't either. But you shouldn't be able to carry discriminatory policies with you.

Rural areas getting proportionate political power, instead of disproportionate political power won't get ignored either. No more then racial and religious minority groups are being ignored, that is. Yet, here we are, with rural areas having disproportionate political power, and urbanites being discriminated against (Governments tend to take money from the cities, and give it to rural areas.)

Elsewhere, you've suggested that rural areas deserve to get extra votes, because they are likely to participate in an armed revolt. In that case, why shouldn't we give men extra votes, compared to women? Most armed revolts are carried out by mostly men. Should we ration out political power to the most violent minority group of people that we can find? Maybe give the former Confederate states each an extra senate seat or two, and a handful of congressional ones?

> Yeah, I'm not talking about gender/race though. I'm talking about regions.

The point is that the same underlying principle applies in both cases. If you're going to extend extra voting power for minorities for geography, why not for {set of other personal attributes}?

In practice, most people defending this setup -- it often comes up in discussions around the electoral college -- seem to support it simply because it happens to align with their own political objectives. It gives their state extra votes, so awesome! Understandable, but hardly principled.

> And actually, yes, most of this anger is linked to a feeling that people in rural areas have too little representation compared to major population centers,

Well yeah, they have less representation because we're in a democracy and there are fewer people there. I'm not terribly sympathetic to "I deserve extra voting power because of my lifestyle choice".

> So this illustrates what happens when you've got proportional representation but a completely unbalanced population distribution

What does "balanced" even mean in this context? Most people lived in rural areas when farming was most people's job, and now that we live in the information age, most people live in cities. Are both of those imbalanced? Because to me, it just sounds like in both cases, people simply adapted the needs of the time.

Simply pointing out that most people live in urban areas to prove "imbalance" is like pointing out that we have far more believers than non-believers around, therefore the religious belief distribution is "imbalanced". Who exactly is deciding what "balance" looks like for things like this?

> It's fine when everything is going well, but when the mills close down and the farms go out of business, you get a lot of angry people who feel they have no political outlet.

There are certainly some people who feel that way, but unemployment is low, and moving to where the jobs are (in the cities) remains an option.

I don't have a ton of sympathy here, given that the very same areas we're talking about usually practically worship the free market and like talking up how "self-reliant" they are (while simultaneously being heavily reliant on government subsidies from urban areas and demanding that the government protect their way of life). It would be nice to at least see a little more ideological consistency, a little less hypocrisy.

We are not in a Democracy. We live in a Republic. For a guy who's name comes from Cicero, you don't seem hot on the legal or organizational distinction.

[edit] You say the point is that the same underlying principle applies in both cases; I don't agree. Geography doesn't have anything to do with personal characteristics. If you own land, you are tied to it. It's not easy to move, and we don't usually want people to move because if you stay in a place, you tend to improve it. I'm not sure why you brought up that most people arguing about something tend to pick the side that benefits them. I live in New York City. This does not benefit me.

When I referred to rural vs urban population distribution, balanced meant an even distribution. What else would it have meant?

Your sympathy or lack thereof isn't the point. The point is that we have a system that works pretty well - part of the reason is that it was created without depending entirely on people's better nature. Ideological consistency doesn't really play into that.

> We are not in a Democracy. We live in a Republic.

We live in both these things.

Well actually I live in Germany at the moment, but I'll be coming back someday!

> Geography doesn't have anything to do with personal characteristics.

Don't be ridiculous, where you choose to live doesn't count as a personal characteristic? You can find endless examples of people who disagree, just ask.

> If you own land, you are tied to it. It's not easy to move, and we don't usually want people to move because if you stay in a place, you tend to improve it.

There are both upsides and downsides to people being tied down. You're right, people who own in a place are more invested in it. On the other hand, we want a certain amount of labor fluidity as different metros and industries rise and fall. There are people who insist on staying in their hometown even though the jobs have all left and aren't coming back anytime soon, and often that's not great for them or the government.

> I'm not sure why you brought up that most people arguing about something tend to pick the side that benefits them. I live in New York City. This does not benefit me.

I'm talking about what I've usually seen. I'm not saying it applies 100% of the time.

> When I referred to rural vs urban population distribution, balanced meant an even distribution. What else would it have meant?

That's absurd. If I talk about "people who live in a major city vs people who don't", then suddenly it's the people living in major cities (proper, not metro area) who are a "minority". The lines here are completely arbitrary.

Or take farmers vs not-farmers. Oh no, it's imbalanced because only like 2% of people are employed in farm work!

> The point is that we have a system that works pretty well

It works reasonably well, but it would still work well, and likely better, if representation was simply one person, one vote, without any special handouts based on where you live or who you are or what you do for a living.

>That's absurd. If I talk about "people who live in a major city vs people who don't", then suddenly it's the people living in major cities (proper, not metro area) who are a "minority". The lines here are completely arbitrary.

>Or take farmers vs not-farmers. Oh no, it's imbalanced because only like 2% of people are employed in farm work!

I wasn't saying that balance was good and imbalance was bad - I was saying that it had an extremely uneven population distribution, which it does. It's not an 'oh no!' situation, it's another variable.

>It works reasonably well, but it would still work well, and likely better, if representation was simply one person, one vote, without any special handouts based on where you live or who you are or what you do for a living.

I don't know any place that follows that rule, and theoretically I can find some ways that it wouldn't work better or at all if it was a much more direct democracy without subsidies of any kind.

> We are not in a Democracy. We live in a Republic.

Geographic distribution of voting power is not an essential component of Republicanism. Although unequal voting power was a feature of traditional Roman Republicanism, that distribution was a hereditary distribution, not a geographic distribution.

More to the point, the US system is so different from the patrician/pleb system of Rome that calling our system Republican while calling (our system minus geographic distribution) not Republican is a pretty freaking arbitrary line in the sand.

Also, it's worth noting that Cicero's greatest effect on Roman politics was foiling a somewhat Haysian rebellion.

> I'm not sure why you brought up that most people arguing about something tend to pick the side that benefits them. I live in New York City. This does not benefit me.

I won't presume to know your political beliefs, but it's worth noting that you could increase the power of your preferred coalition while weakening your own vote.

>More to the point, the US system is so different from the patrician/pleb system of Rome that calling our system Republican while calling (our system minus geographic distribution) not Republican is a pretty freaking arbitrary line in the sand.

That wasn't the line in the sand I was drawing. I was saying that a system of direct democracy doesn't support the Kantian Republic we set up, but a system where there is uneven distribution of power based on region does.

> We are not in a Democracy. We live in a Republic.

The Soviet Union was a nondemocratic federal republic—a federal republic that is not a democracy.

Many Americans would prefer the US to be a democratic federal republic, that is, a federal republic that is also a representative democracy.

A nondemocratic republic is not a goverment of, by, and for the people. It is, at best, just the last of those three.

The reason I focus on Republic over Democracy is because we do not live in a system with complete and proportional representation. We live in a system where the Executive and Legislative is separated and where there is a somewhat uneven distribution of power in terms of population.

> Should we give "X" their own legislative house so the "Y" majority doesn't run roughshod over them?

Yes. Though that method is more inefficient than the ones we already have.

The Constitution's purpose is the suppression of the majority. At every end it is designed to impede 'progress'.

Three houses of government, a bi-cameral legislature, voting rules which require large majorities of representatives, voting rules which require large majorities of states, differing term lengths, and "hard" limits on federal power (admittedly this section of the constitution has failed).

If we wanted the majority to get what they wanted we would just vote in referendums.

Sounds similar to the way the Lebanese government works.

The senate's structure made sense at the time of the country's founding, when people thought of themselves as citizens of their state first, and citizens of their (very recent) country second. But that hasn't been true for at least decades now, and thus the Senate is rather anti-democratic. People shouldn't have more or less voting power just because of where they live in the US.

> The senate's structure made sense at the time of the country's founding,

Sure, when the question of “how do we make sure the slave states, who have smaller population and even smaller yet free, voting populations than the free states, are able to protect the institution of slavery” was current, all of the structure of the Senate, it's mirror in the electoral college, and the 3/5 compromise for the House made sense.

The Virginia Plan (also known as the Randolph Plan, after its sponsor, or the Large-State Plan) was a proposal by Virginia delegates for a bicameral legislative branch.[1] The plan was drafted by James Madison while he waited for a quorum to assemble at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.[2][3] The Virginia Plan was notable for its role in setting the overall agenda for debate in the convention and, in particular, for setting forth the idea of population-weighted representation in the proposed national legislature.

Quoting this because it's important to note it's not nearly as simple as that. Virginia was the largest state (and largest slaveholding state).

Yes, but looking at the larger picture, the tidewater aristocracy's interests were protected by the disproportionate power given to the South up till the Civil War, so I think the claim you're responding to is compelling.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia voted for the Virginia Plan, while New York, New Jersey, and Delaware voted for the New Jersey Plan, an alternate that was also on the table. The delegates from Maryland were split, so the state's vote was null.

It's pretty evenly split. It's difficult to suggest it's all or mostly about slavery.

It may be compelling but claims like that need evidence, and when you pull in the evidence it's not so convincing.

Certainly for a state like Connecticut it was more about preserving the influence of a smaller state, but why would Virginia throw its support behind a plan that would seem to weaken its own influence? That's a question worth asking (and honestly I don't know enough about the views of all the individual delegates to answer it). And in reality the plan did benefit slaveholder interests -- certainly by the time Southerners were trying to conquer every piece of Latin American territory they could get their hands on to increase the slave vote they were conscious of these dynamics.

Because while they were aware of that, there was more at play than racism and slavery, as Virginia voting against its interests suggests.

Slightly pedantic, I could be wrong, but no serious attempts were ever made to conquer south; less than the attempts to conquer Canada, anyway. History is complex!

Such as? What I am suggesting is that when we take slavery into account Virginia was not actually voting against its interests, despite surface appearances.

You said it yourself in another post: they were just copying the British.

The Virginians, that aristocratic lot, would have and did prefer features like the Senate, which would have provided a counterweight to the more radical House. It's that way even today.

I can't speak further to the historical context, but everything I've read about federation/modern/consensus democracies suggest that bicameralism is a benefit (ex http://wikisum.com/w/Lijphart:_Patterns_of_democracy).

Again, that's not saying that's what they were considering then, but also read some of the Federalist Papers (Madison in particular) and how much they were weighing factions/balance of power into some of these solutions.

> Consensus democracies also have "kinder, gentler" traits: lower incarceration rates, less use of the death penalty, better care for the environment, more foreign aid work, and more welfare spending.

Uh, I'm not convinced it's working here, chief.

On the Convention count, as you can see, I find some logic in both explanations.

> Slightly pedantic, I could be wrong, but no serious attempts were ever made to conquer south

Florida and Texas?

Privateers were constantly trying in places like Cuba and Nicaragua too (this practice is the origin of the term "filibustering;" look up William Walker if you're interested) but yeah the Mexican-American War is the obvious answer. Somehow I missed that paragraph when I replied earlier.

Virginia threw its support behind this plan because it was the best possible constitutional plan available. Madison was pushing for a stronger National government at the time but being blocked, and as a part of that national government, he was advocating the Senate have the ability to essentially veto state laws - remember that there was no Judicial Review in the system at the time.

So for the Senate to have that power, they needed to have equal representation from each state otherwise populous states would have too much influence on the internal government of other states.

That's part of it, anyway. It's more complicated and I'd recommend you read Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention if you're really curious.

The Senate exists largely because smaller states' representatives at the Constitutional Convention wanted it to and because the US government was essentially a copy-and-paste job of the British one with an elected president in place of the king. I think it would be a mistake to attribute that much unique suitability, even in an 18th-Century context, to it.

And it's been getting worse as the population concentrates into fewer states, giving those people relatively less and less representation in the Senate.

That's a feature by some people's opinion

It’s also worth remembering that the people who designed the Constitution had to actually convince the various states to join in and accept the end result. There may have been a better way to structure the resulting nation, but if too many states didn’t like it then you wouldn’t have a nation in the first place.

A number of states did have that kind of structure, before this unequal distribution of voting power was successfully challenged as a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Giving people extra votes because of empty land, or slaves, is just a way of saying some people are more worthy of having government reflect their will than others.

> A number of states did have that kind of structure, before this unequal distribution of voting power was successfully challenged as a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

It's ludicrous to claim that the constitutional form of government violates the Constitution. Since apportionment of federal senators by state doesn't violate the Constitution, apportionment of state senators by county doesn't either.

Not at all.

States are sovereign, counties are lines on a map. The county that I live in is an artifact of a feudal Dutch patroonship and was 3x larger a 150 years ago. A county about an hour from me is the legacy of a land-grant to a revolutionary war hero and is mostly berfit of people. Why should a mountain be better represented than my family?

Apportionment of US Senators doesn't violate the constitution because it is explicitly referenced in the constitution. The Senate has always been a reactionary force in US politics, placed there to ensure the political power of the south -- since their population of "human chattel" would have limited their political influence. The openly corrupt nature of it's early makeup (ie. no direct election of Senators) was partially addresses via constitutional amendment. The legacy of the Senate isn't pretty -- it is directly responsible for the system of vigilante lynching that terrorized the south, for example.

What's ludicrous is replicating that legacy of regressive policy and difficult to hold accountable representatives in other layers of government.

The Senate is directly responsible for lynching? Holy claims Batman, you should back up such an assertion.

They were, among other things, aping the British system, where a reactionary upper house was an old feature.

State governments in regions where lynching were commonplace were unable or unwilling to address it at the state level.

From 1882-1968, over 200 bills were introduced in Congress to make lynching a Federal crime. 7 US presidents called upon congress to address the issue in legislation as late as 1952. None made it through the Senate, I don't recall exactly, but I think that only one made it out of committee. The "solid south" Senators kept these measures bottled up.

Only the extraordinary abilities of LBJ was able to break the ossification in the Senate the blocked civil rights.

To my modern sensibilities, lynching is not a different crime than murder. Why would a separate law be needed to address it?

Murder is targeted at one person and committed by one or a few people. Lynching is used to terrorize groups of people by other groups of people.

Because the states were complicit and Federal action was required. The Federal government lacks jurisdiction without specific laws. In one case, the Federal government was able to prosecute a Florida policeman. He was fined $1000.

From President Truman's Commission on Civil Rights, about two of the "less brutal" lynchings in 1946:

"On July 20, 1946, a white farmer, Loy Harrison, posted bond for the release of Roger Malcolm from the jail at Monroe, Georgia. Malcolm, a young Negro, had been involved in a fight with his white employer during the course of which the latter had been stabbed. It is reported that there was talk of lynching Malcolm at the time of the incident and while he was in jail. Upon Malcolm's release, Harrison started to drive Malcolm, Malcolm's wife, and a Negro overseas veteran, George Dorsey, and his wife, out of Monroe. At a bridge along the way a large group of unmasked white men, armed with. pistols and shotguns, was waiting. They stopped Harrison's car and removed Malcolm and Dorsey. As they were leading the two men away, Harrison later stated, one of the women called out the name of a member of the mob. Thereupon the lynchers returned and removed the two women from the car. Three volleys of shots were fired as if by a squad of professional executioners. The coroner's report said that at least 66 bullets were found in the scarcely recognizable bodies. Harrison consistently denied that he could identify any of the unmasked murderers. State and federal grand juries reviewed the evidence in the case, but no person has yet been indicted for the crime.

Later that summer, in Minden, Louisiana, a young Negro named John Jones was arrested on suspicion of housebreaking. Another Negro youth, Albert Harris, was arrested at about the same time, and beaten in an effort to implicate Jones. He was then released, only to be rearrested after a few days. On August 6th, early in the evening, and before there had been any trial of the charges against them, Jones and Harris were released by a deputy sheriff. Waiting in the jail yard was a group of white men. There was evidence that, with the aid of the deputy sheriff, the young men were put into a car. They were then driven into the country. Jones was beaten to death. Harris, left for dead, revived and escaped. Five persons, including two deputy sheriffs, were indicted and brought to trial in a federal court for this crime. All were acquitted.

These are two of the less brutal lynchings of the past years. The victims in these cases were not mutilated or burned."

Link to reference: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/civilrights/srights2.htm#20

One suspects the point was that a federal crime would be prosecuted by federal prosecutors, who would be less likely than the local county guy to be drinking buddies with local Klansmen.

And yet that's what the Supreme Court decided here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims

> It's ludicrous to claim that the constitutional form of government violates the Constitution.

It's not ludicrous to claim that the Constitutional form of the federal government would, if replicated in the states, violate a constitutional restriction that applies only to the states, which the Equal Protection Clause does.

All things being equal that would be great, but things are not equal. There is more than ample evidence that racism and partisan politics would disenfranchise voters and cause more harm than the current "one person, one vote" system. With an exception of the US Senate, which is a nod to the nominal sovereignty of US states, american representatives at all levels represent people, not territory.

I don't know too much about Colorado or Massachusetts, but the issue in New York has nothing to do with voting policy. Our national policy for 50 years has been to sacrifice the overall prosperity of the nation and gut all of the productive sectors. In my father's lifetime, the corridor from Utica to Syracuse to Rochester to Buffalo was an economic powerhouse. Decades of tax and fiscal policy sent industry south and abroad, and turned those places into shadows of their former selves.

Springfield and Holyoke are similar stories in Massachusetts. People out there resent the ever creeping outward Boston metro, but the core of their economy is educating Boston metro kids.

The only reasons that public institutions in these place still function is the tax revenue generated in the big cities.

> With an exception of the US Senate, which is a nod to the nominal sovereignty of US states, american representatives at all levels represent people, not territory.

The Senate could be seen as a nod to geographic minorities, allowing the few people in, say, Wyoming to have an equal footing with more populous states like New York. Most states have a Senate, it's not just a national thing - unless you think the state Senate is a nod to nominal sovereignty of the counties?

Most state senates, as far as I am aware--and while I used to do work in this space I am no expert--are elected by roughly equivalently-populated districts. They're an "upper house" that might be elected on a longer cycle but they're still fairly similar in partitioning (just usually fewer of its members).

Which is fine to me, tbh. Land doesn't need to vote.

There is certainly a valid view to see it as a way to represent those interests.

To my knowledge, counties and cities are almost always political subdivisions of the State, so that "nod" to geography isn't justified by that nominal sovereignty.

Usually a state senate is an upper house that has a smaller number of members, and usually has unique "advise and consent" powers over judicial and executive appointments.

Your proposal would make a city-dweller's vote worth less than the vote of a rural resident. This is brazenly unequal and undemocratic.

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