The crisis isn’t too much polarization. It’s too little democracy | Hacker News Reader

The crisis isn’t too much polarization. It’s too little democracy

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20 pointscmurf29 comments

Why should people who cluster in a few cities get to decide how the rest of the places are governed?

Yes, there is too little democracy, that's the point. Federal Republics are not democracies, by design. Just because you're in larger numbers, you don't get to choose everything for everyone else.

If you want to see the faults of near-pure democracy, look no further than the north/south divide of California. Two key characteristics of Northern California today: (1) has most all the State's water (2) has a great deal of the State's fires. Now as a negotiation offer, the water in theory should be a strong hold for the State to put ample effort for deforestation, but as of today water is a Human Right (thus Southern California has a non-negotiable right to the Northern water) and the bloated bill for forest fire management put perhaps a 100th of the effort needed for forest-management practices.

Is the problem that you don't believe water should be a human right or that California is not one state, and should be split into two parts with individual rights to their own water?

Neither, the problem is raw population is the only metric of state-impact, even essential goods like water are paltry for impacting state-direction as the raw population of the many major cities of Southern California.

The point of water being a human right is not the actual on-the-face claim (of course!) but that California is the only State in the Union to declare it so. This is purely politics at State-level, not a humanitarian objective (a la "national security" at the federal level). The exchange of this essential good should pay forward to the state-control and security for the North via deforestation is my point.

Think: Northern California already would be called Jefferson by now if Southern California pushed for it as well, but they refuse on the basis of Northern water, yet they give no due State power, that is the fundamental hypocrisy of Democracy.

From my perspective, California has always been just California. I've never seen the south/north divide you're describing. If they thought deforestation or whatever was the solution to the fires in the North, they would've done something about it, considering the one-party nature of the state. Instead, they believe the problem is climate change or whatever warming, and they have voted and taken action toward mitigating climate change. If you have more info about SoCal blocking the north from being able to put more resources toward deforestation, I'd love to see it.

Are you referring to AB 685? That's drinking water. If you're talking about water rights, i.e. lakes, rivers, streams, California is not unique in having this complicated regime that goes back to early settler ranching and farming to make sure an upstream user can't claim 100% of the water, leaving everyone downstream with none. What does the water right regime have to do with democracy? It's based on the earliest claims/users, earlier the right was acquired the more valuable. If anything I'd call it it a throw back to feudalism than anything democratic.

"Every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes."

Not just drinking water, 685 covers most all standard water usage. What the water-claimant regime is pointing to here is that nothing is even remotely comparable in State government control under a democracy to raw population. And thus a minority population is left with no recourse.

Why should people who spread out over a large area get to decide how most people are governed?

A republic can be democratic, autocratic, or made of an oligarchy. Only one of those is predicated on a majority of the participants choosing their representatives, and is far more stable than the other two where the minority must use coercion and force to successfully exact its will on the majority. How do you propose a nation has representative leaders who aren't appointed by most of the participants? From what principle do they derive their authority?

It's called the "United States" for a reason. The country was designed to be a union of semi-autonomous states, not a single entity. The president is still elected democratically, but the state's votes are what matter, not individuals. If we went by the popular vote, it would be a minority of states imposing their will on the majority of the remaining states. You could argue that that's preferable, but acting like Republicans are using "this one weird trick" to get electoral votes is ignoring why the country was set up the way it is.

I've never found this to be a convincing argument in favor of the electoral college as implemented. Why favor a system which constantly cedes power to the same small arbitrary electorate (swing states), year after year?

States should allocate electors in proportion to their own popular votes. The +2 electors for each state is already a good mechanism for combatting pure majority rule. At this point, swing state influence is arguably worse for this country than majority rule.

http://archive.fairvote.org/e_college/reform.htm#proportiona...

I have been thinking about the same argument recently as well and the most compelling argument I can come up with to justify it is that the states give up some of their power in the federal scheme in return for a degree of sovereignty. That conception of it works out pretty well if the federal government is limited and deals with concerns that all states share (like defense) and leaves most of the decisions that impact people's everyday lives to the states. IE, the degree to which the federal government impacts a person's life in California is far less than California's impact on that person's life. But interpretations of the interstate commerce clause really drive up the federal governments power to where that tradeoff in power might not be worth it. It is interesting, really, to consider this system where we have sort of two, dual sovereign entities governing us that are sort of kind of related but not directly so.

> a minority of states imposing their will on the majority of the remaining states

These are arbitrary ways of cutting up the vote. Right now we have a minority of people imposing their will on the majority of the remaining people. I don't have any allegiance to one state or another. I'm an American and go where my job needs me. Why do I deserve less representation in government just because I need to live in a city for a profession instead of living back with parents in the middle of nowhere?

I agree that no electoral system should favor 100% majority rule. But as far as federal republics go, ours is exceptionally prone to abuse, to the point that political chicanery is often more effective than good public policy.

Why should a few people in rural states have up to ten times the representation that I do in government just because my job requires me to "cluster in a few cities"?

Our leaders govern people not land and any system that enforces minority rule to the point that presidential hopefuls know more about the cost of corn in Iowa than about the specifics of tech regulation which affect 1000x the number of people is wrong.

62.7% of the U.S. population lives in just 3.5% of the land area: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33....

They should make all the laws they want for themselves. Why should they make laws for people far away and in different circumstances?

A single unified country is a double-edged sword. If every part of a country truly had their own laws, it's hard to keep that thing a single country. Federations are a way to counterbalance that, but if the states were fully independent it wouldn't be a federation anymore by definition right?

> Why should people who cluster in a few cities get to decide how the rest of the places are governed?

Because those who cluster in the cities pay the bills for the rest of the places.

Taxation without representation was one of the grievances that founded the US.

I'd like to see them "pay bills", or even just function, if the rest of the country stops working for a few months. I'm pretty sure that groceries and durable goods do not materialize out of thin air.

When the Electoral College was established, only 6% of the population had the right to vote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t...

Besides extending the right to vote to the entire population, we've also switched to elected US Senators (originally they were appointed by state legislature) and presidential primaries (a Democratic Party invention after the 1968 convention disaster).

The history of the United States has been to enfranchise more voters. To become more democratic. The Electoral College is an anachronism. It does not serve its original purpose and has not for a very long time:

http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2020/11/whats-wrong-with-electoral-...

The president is the sole representative of the entire country. It's a position that should be elected by popular vote. It was nearly so in the 70s:

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-nearly-abolis...

Abolishing the EC is supported by a majority of Americans:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/04/26/5-the-electo...

> Why should people who cluster in a few cities get to decide how the rest of the places are governed?

Because land doesn't vote, people do. And it's not a few cities, it's a lot of cities:

https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-popul...

(Select "Show Population Circles" and "No County Overlap")

Why should a minority of voters get to hold the majority hostage just because they happen to be distributed across the country in rural areas? And because there are two Dakotas but only one California? And because the number of Congressional districts got pinned to 435 leaving CA and NY with too few compared to Wyoming? And because the Congressional Apportionment Amendment failed to be ratified?

We're not talking about the majority infringing on minority rights or mob rule. Rights are protected by the constitution and the rule of law, not by the EC. Even without the EC, we'd still be a democratic constitutional republic. We're talking about things like making progress on climate change, universal healthcare, and, well, a ton of policies supported by a majority of Americans that we cannot make progress on because one party insists on labeling everything it doesn't like as being socialist and radical.

Disclosure: we're clearly having a political discussion here. I'm a liberal/progressive/Democrat. I'm tired of not making progress even though my opinion is in the majority. Defending the status quo is a privileged position. I'm doing fine in life. I could easily be a conservative. I was born to good parents. I have good paying job, a wife, two kids, a dog. I want for nothing. I want every American to be able to have the opportunity to have what I have. I believe that government is how humans work collectively to solve problems. Whenever I see a GoFundMe for a surgery or rent, I interpret that as a failure of governance. I cannot solve the world's problems through individual action. It has to be collective action. So, I vote democratic and Democratic. I don't think Democrats get everything right, which is why I'm especially saddened by what the GOP has become since... well, Eisenhower if I'm being honest. $0.02.

Addendum: my preference would be for the US to have multi-party proportional representation as much as possible at the Federal level. I like Lee Drutman's ideas.

> elected US Senators (originally they were appointed by state legislature)

That phrasing is interesting. Do you consider the heads of governments of parliamentary republics elected or appointed?

I should have written that originally they were elected by state legislatures. Appointed is the wrong word. The important point though is that voters now choose their senators directly. That's a trend toward greater democracy.

A lot of people's political beliefs are driven by the problems the see in their communities and what they think the solutions should be. It's hard to set effective policies at the federal level for a country as diverse as the US. Even boring things like the minimum wage need to vary drastically across the country.

At the same time, while you'd think more local policy is the answer, state boundaries that cross metro areas create regulatory headaches. Portland, Or. is across the river from Vancouver, Wa. Washington has no personal income tax, Oregon has no state sales tax.

It's tricky because there needs to be a policy baseline so living can happen, metro areas need some amount of sovereignty they don't have right now, and rural areas need something else.

Do a few regulatory headaches really mean that we should give up on local government?

The more power we give the federal government, the less say each of us has in the laws that impact our lives. In a sense, the less we become a democracy.

It's amazing that both parties seem to have forgotten how important local government and limited federal powers were to the founding fathers.

To further complicate things,any of those city dwellers moved there from other parts of the country, to seek opportunities not available where they come from.

It's amazing to see how the narrative around decisiona/arguments about limiting democratic participation and continuing slavery have changed to that they have been about state rights.

The big one is the civil war obviously, but also the electoral college. The EL was never about state rights, that's what the senate is for. It was a compromise between the people who wanted more democracy, i.e. a popular vote of the president and the people who feared "mob rule" and did not trust the uneducated masses to vote properly. In particular it was though to get the Southern States on board who wanted a way for their power being counted based on population including slaves but did not want their slaves to vote (leading to the famous 3/5 compromise)

https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fath...

https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

> The EL was never about state rights, that's what the senate is for.

Nothing was ever about “States Rights” distinct from slavery, “States Rights” entered the American political lexicon as a reference to slavery, and has always been a reference to either that or discriminatory policies meant to replace it after abolition.

While I agree that the term state's rights is largely a reference to slavery, I did use it here for brievety. There were and are definitetly arguments about the distribution of power between state and federal branches of government and responsibilities.

Part of that balance was why the senate was created, and similar structures were adopted by many other democracies in the world and I do see the arguments why it serves a purposeful role.

On the other hand the EL was never about that balance, it was always largely about the southern state wanting a disproportionate say without giving slaves the power to vote. I'm also not aware of any other country adopting a similar system (probably somebody will point out a counter example though).

Pretty much every argument of this type is really an argument "I want a minority that I agree with hold disproportionate amount of power"

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