Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon1m0us | Hacker News Reader

You should be careful about the word "small" here. What you mean is least populous, but geographically, they are large.

Thus, the question is: Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?

If you eliminate the electoral college you give political control of resources to those who have absolutely NO physical control of those resources and yet still suffer the impact of their environmental influence.

What I mean is, people in California, Texas, and New York would push all the bad things to the rural states and take all the good parts, leaving those who live in the rural areas to feel the full brunt of those decisions. Take Louisiana as an example. It's been decimated by everyone who doesn't live there.

View on HN

Weighting "resources" is not a good thing. In the past it's been used to justify some of the most horrific policies in the U.S.

The U.S. constitution counted slaves at 60% of a person. Some of the arguments for the three fifths compromise were that slaveholders didn't want people who weren't "knowledgable" about slaveholding to be meddling in slaveholder's business. This is essentially one of the causes that sparked the Civil War.

I don't understand why Americans are so against becoming a full democracy. It's not like the current system benefits anyone. Congress, presidents and our courts are dysfunctional. The government is becoming the laughingstock of the world. At least in a democracy there's more chances of unified rule instead of 6 years of gridlock followed by 2-years of whiplash changes.

All wars throughout all of history have been about resources. In the end, resources are all that matter. The civil war was about resources as well. It was the slaves that helped extract those resources from the land. It wasn't about slavery, it was about what they used the slaves to get.

This is really a red state vs blue state debate, but even on a county by county level, the majority of the counties of California, Oregon and Washington state are red. Those states' votes are determined by a handful of counties around a few urban centers. The rest of the counties' interests are more closely aligned with the red states.

And thus, the electoral college gives those red counties a voice that's ignored in their own states.

> And thus, the electoral college gives those red counties a voice that's ignored in their own states.

And in many cases gives them more of a voice.

There's an irony that the EC more accurately represents votes per acre/square mile than per constituent, and (one of) the reasons for the move to the US was to get away from tyrannical land/owners.

Gridlock is good. The last thing I want is control by one party.

If you think the government is becoming the "laughingstock of the world" then:

a) read more widely, there's a lot of governments out there that are more worthy of the moniker (and even more that are horrifying)

b) read more widely, the newspapers you're reading aren't being honest (otherwise you'd know about (a))

“Better than the world’s worst” is not such a high bar to set.

Again, the 3/5 compromise was forced on the slave states to reduce their power in federal decision making ( the House specifically). It had nothing to do with what you claim.

> Again, the 3/5 compromise was forced on the slave states to reduce their power in federal decision making

To claim it reduced their power is false. It was less than they preferred, and more than the free states preferred

The argument for any consideration of slaves in apportionment included the arguments GP puts forward.

No, it is not false.

The standard would have been that the slaves would have counted for representation purposes, which would have given the slave states the power to ensure slavery continued. The compromise reduced their power drastically and paved the way for slavery to eventually end.

> The standard would have been that the slaves would have counted for representation purposes

No, there is no basis for even asserting that there was a standard, much less that the standard was that property, whether slaves, cattle, or horseshoes, would count for representation purposes.

Ok, since you don't like my phrasing, the argument from the slave states was that slaves should count, which would have given them greater representation.

My statements stand.

> My statements stand.

No, they don't, because they assume the slave state argument wasn't just their argument but a privileged default position, such that giving them something that was a compromise between what they wanted and what the free states wanted was a harm to them from the privileged default and not an inducement to keep them in.

That's what we call word salad.

To be clear, there was no "privileged default", the "default" was that everyone counted. The 3/5 compromise was forced on the slave states to reduce their power from the default. It was not an "inducement", they were forced into it.

I’m not following your example. You clarified in another comment that Louisiana is environmentally decimated due to the actions or votes of the blue states. However Louisiana typically goes hard red, and the GOP is very much opposed to environmental protections.

Also I’m not sure what you mean by them pushing all the bad stuff to Louisiana and what that has to do with presidential elections (aside from that the president sets EPA policy, but again, Louisiana voted for trump so I don’t get it)

To be fair, the primary cause of the decimation of Louisiana is it’s state government.

I would also add that the resources of the country belong to all of us, not just those who live in close proximity (aka the same state).

Does this apply to other borders? Do the resources of Canada or Iraq belong to "all of us"? Or just internal US resources?

> Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?

Land doesn't vote.

> Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?

Your question presumes quite a lot. I'll start with "what makes you think people who don't live in Wyoming are incapable of understanding Wyoming?"

Two things:

1. I’m gonna take a hard line that people deserve a vote, dirt doesn’t.

2. Louisiana is the 25th most populous state and I think 25th densest. So, I’m not sure the electoral college is protecting those less dense states’ environments. As the sibling points out, sometimes coastal liberals want environmental protection, while natives want to exploit the environment for profit.

In the case of Louisiana, we (natives) have been screaming for environmental protections for decades, because erosion has been eating away at our state.

Meanwhile, our state government seems more concerned with gutting education wherever possible and doing everything it can to destroy New Orleans' economy.

The recent electoral record in Louisiana doesn't exactly make it seem that high a priority for them.

And if Louisiana's federal desires are consistently decided by more populous states, what is left that motivates Louisiana to remain a member of the United States?

I don't understand the premise of the question. Why would Louisiana expect to be able to dictate federal policies against the wishes of other states?

They would expect other states to not be able to dictate things against them, not necessarily them against other states. This is looking increasingly likely as political opinion on immigration, gun control, abortion, etc continues to divide further left and right.

free migration, free trade, subsidized education and health, subsidized social security.

Louisiana can certainly give all that because they cannot force TX, NY, CA, etc to bow to their whim. But that would be sort of dumb.

I would assume Louisiana is not interested in the majority of those things. Free trade is the most obvious benefit Louisiana would want, but I wouldn't put it past a state to suspend disbelief and press forward with succession, similar to what happened with Brexit.

For a start, they get massive transfers of money from more productive states: three dollars for every one that they pay in taxes.

Agree this is a benefit, but in Louisiana's case this benefit is only 0.5% of their GDP (10 billion aid / 205 billion GDP). In a red state, where business interests more heavily control political power, I don't think federal tax benefits will influence a Brexit-tier decision too much.

To put this in blunt terms: there are a ton of impoverished African Americans in these states that receive a large chunk of that federal aid. The segments of Louisiana that don't receive that aid are tax-productive and will not vote against a Brexit-like decision, even if it means that federal aid stops flowing

> this benefit is only 0.5% of their GDP (10 billion aid / 205 billion GDP)

This is 5%, not 0.5%. On top of that, your numbers aren't correct: they receive around $20bn net, and their GDP is around $250bn, which means that which means that direct net federal spending is about 8% of their GDP (and gross federal spending is a whopping 20%). These are pretty huge numbers, and they affect the entire state economy, directly affecting the profits of the business owners that you claim wouldn't care.

Doh, what a stupid error. 8% seems significantly more meaningful, but I would still be curious exactly how that positive 20b is spent.

> Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?

Well, if you want to propose a system where Alaska (area 570,640.95 sq mi) gets the same representation as Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina, Maine, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama combined (area ~525,000 sq mi),

...then I'm all ears...

* Please don't tell me "But Alaska has so few people!"

> Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?

So you prefer that the majority of the USA population is being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about the issues faced by the most populous and developed regions of the USA?

In what way has Louisiana been decimated?

Gulf of Mexico disasters. Erosion. Pollution. Hurricanes.

Currently it seems that rural states push all the bad things on themselves, e.g. climate change and other environmental destruction, so how much worse can it be for them?

The non-rural states are responsible for more environmental damage but they export it to other states/countries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com