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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"Political power should absolutely be proportional to population represented though."

That's your opinion. The opinion of people in Wyoming is likely different. What the facts would show if you look into the history of why the Senate was necessary, it would show that smaller states wouldn't have joined, and would be justified in leaving. The real problem is that the scope of decisions at the federal level has gotten ridiculous due to "interstate commerce" and "taxes", so we now operate more at the federal level than the system originally intended.

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Yes, in case you didn't notice, everything we are stating is opinions.

I absolutely reject the notion that the senator from Wyoming should have equal political power to the senator from Texas or California, I think it is absurd, I don't doubt that some people in Wyoming disagree.

I think Wyoming joining the US as a state without equal representation as the most populous state would still be a massive win for them and they would have almost certainly taken the deal at the time.

> I think Wyoming joining the US as a state without equal representation as the most populous state would still be a massive win for them and they would have almost certainly taken the deal at the time.

I doubt that very much. But more pertinent is this: we know for a fact that the smaller founding states would not have joined without the compromise in how Congress is structured. They were, after all, the whole reason it exists. So without that compromise, the country would not exist at all (or would at minimum exist very differently to today). You can't just renege on that deal 250 years later and figure people should be ok with it.

I think it's completely fine to renege on deals that were made with people who have been dead for centuries, actually, if there's a good reason to.

Courts and political institutions routinely nullify all kinds of "deals" that are considered to be against public policy. For instance, lots of people in the US made legally binding deals to purchase other human beings as slaves, and those deals were undone by the 13th amendment. Maybe those people would have made different life choices if they knew that their slaves would be freed in the future. Tough luck.

In other legal contexts, we recognize that allowing people to exert control over things long after their deaths is a bad idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

A bunch of states wouldn't have entered the union without the compromise on slavery.

But we ended that "compromise" some time ago. No reason that equal Senate representation, or even general state "sovereignty" couldn't be revisited either.

Yep. In fact, those probably needed to be addressed at the same time.

But would they continue to take the deal is the real question.

If you understand your just opining to other user’s opining… why do you think your opinions can outweigh other’s?

Do you have a fleshed out logically sound argument?

>why do you think your opinions can outweigh other’s?

I don't see where this is implied. I took the implication of "your opinion did not sway my own"

>Do you have a fleshed out logically sound argument?

The "logic" is "larger states in a democracy should have more power because they represent more people". Which naively makes sense. I'm sure game theory would show some consequence of this formation though as a bunch of smaller states coalition around each other and make a two party system based on land, as opposed to ideology.

If you don’t think your opinion can outweigh other’s here… how does replying even once, without an attached or linked argument, make sense?

It wouldn't male sense, but an opinion in this case is the argument, no? You can disagree with an opinion and also think your own isn't necessarily superior.

In much of internet discourse, your goal isn't even to convince the person to reply to, it's to give more viewpoints to the silent majority who lurk and never comment. Whether they think an opinion is better or worse is up to them.

This really doesn’t make sense.

I can also just say:”All the opinions presented so far are deficient, here is my new, better, opinion X”

By your logic if I replied with that to every comment chain in every HN post adjusting X to each topic… then I would become the most productive HN user of all time.

>I can also just say:”All the opinions presented so far are deficient, here is my new, better, opinion X”

Yes, I browse reddit every now and then. It's a shame the Alt-Right pipeline hijacked this. They realized that being loud is better than being correct.

I'm a bit confused on how we got onto a tangent about productivity, though. All I was talking about came down to "opinions are arguments, and restating an opinion (in good faith) often means you aren't convinced of another opinion". They're opinions, they aren't inherently right or wrong.

If opinions were worth, or equivalent to, any kind of argument whatsoever… then my example holds true.

I would become the most productive HN user ever… anyone could do so by following that… so clearly opinions cannot be worth anything.

All the opinions you’ve ever written, and will ever write, must literally all add up to less than one solid argument.

I interacted with someone from Wyoming once. She made this point: Wyoming has a lot of Native Americans, and it struck her as contradictory when people would say "native Americans are underrepresented" alongside "Wyomingites are overrepresented." Of course there's nuance but it was interesting in any case.

Wyoming has 16k native americans. California has 762k native americans (if you agree with self-id, which I don't). Your friend clearly must be in favor of disenfranchising these native americans if she thinks her Wyoming vote should count for 67 native american votes in California.

In general, I don't find the idpol defense of 67x relative voting power for Wyoming's particularly compelling.

If you could read you'd see (A) I didn't refer to her as a friend and (B) I didn't mention her political affiliation. In fact your assumption is wrong.

sure, just using friend colloquially. but on b, i think pretty clearly she is articulating an argument for disproportionate representation?

It wasn't a very political conversation but yes it could be used that way. I'll say this though. Isn't that what Native Americans need? They are in fact a tiny percent.

no, i don’t think we should move towards some sort of race-based confessional system. minority rights, sure - but the color of your skin should not impact your vote share.

If we truly believed in a capitalistic system, wouldn't the US become a hyper aggressive competiton to make the most citizens settle in their given state? It would bring down home prices, offer amenities, fight cut throat for the best labor laws, and so much more.

But it seems like we gave up and focused on a republic when it came to this matter instead.

> it would show that smaller states wouldn't have joined, and would be justified in leaving

This may have been true for the original 13 colonies. Doubtful for the subsequent joiners.

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