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> "The framers didn't realize that most changes would be blocked by at least one party, out of fear that it would advantage the other guys."

Check out some of the founders' essays. This is no accident, or oversight. It's absolutely intentional and for good reason.

The Constitution grants power to all three branches of government, which is the same as granting power to none of them. The more they disagree, the less power they have. In this way power can only be wielded through cooperation (selflessness).

It's a honey pot for the power hungry.

Working very well as we can see currently.

It's worked well as a honeypot, but I don't think it's working well as a device for paralysis. The executive has seized an alarming amount of power (with the tacit approval of the party in control of the legislature), and the constitution isn't doing much of anything to stop it.

Sure. But it's amazing that we have a system where he needed the legislature. That's pretty new in the grand scheme.

Do you not understand why PR isn't a state? Seems like you don't. Support for PR statehood is only about 50% (on the island). That largely has to do with the fact that their taxes would increase if they became a state. Additionally, they would have to switch to English (along with Spanish) which makes things a lot more complicated. They are already US citizens and can move to anywhere in the US if they want to vote in federal elections (and half of them do but mainly for work). They don't want independence either. So the current limbo state is actually desirable to them.

Even if the citizens of PR wanted statehood, you have to get both parties to agree. This means probably 2 states at the same time (one red, one blue). Since there isn't another potentially red state (Alberta but that's probably never going to happen) to join, that's hard to do. Look at US history, statehood has always worked this way. It has nothing to do with whatever you are implying.

PS The 27th amendment was 1992, probably during your lifetime. You would expect the rate of new amendments to slow overtime so the average of a new amendment about every 15-20 years seems about right.

27th amendment was about congressional salaries and had basically no effect on governance.

26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18 for state and local elections and had no effect on national elections (statute already set the national voting age as 18, but courts prevented it from applying to state and local elections).

25th clarified presidential succession to work exactly how everyone had already assumed it to work for over a century, so for practical purposes did nothing.

24th in 1964, which outlawed poll taxes as a criteria for voting, was the last amendment with any effect on national governance.

You just explained in your second paragraph how one party would block PR statehood for no valid reason, not because it shouldn't be one, but because it would presumably advantage Dems. That is literally what I said: any change gets blocked for fear it would advantage the other guys. And whether it's "always worked that way" doesn't make it right. A fair system would have said that an existing territory with enough people that can organize a government and vote to join the union must be admitted, to avoid those shenanigans. Leaving them unrepresented is embarrassing.

And your first paragraph sounds like it's quoted from an anti-statehood propaganda flyer. PR has high taxes today -- an 11.5% sales tax, and a high local income tax, because PR has to pay for everything itself, and because Congress screws them over, such as refusing bailouts when natural disasters devastate the island. Many states receive significant money from the Federal government that PR doesn't get. If it were a state, some people would have to pay some federal income tax, but it would not be automatically a worse tax burden.

Same for language, there's nothing in the constitution that mandates that. PR already has two official languages. And nothing lawmakers decide will stop people from choosing to speak Spanish all day long if they want. If you don't agree with me, walk around any city in California, Arizona, or Texas.

New and shiny is not always better. Science has spoiled us in the last century, but it has little to say about how a good government should operate.

Many of us have a popular set of ideals that we think are superior and have attempted to overlay those on every aspect of modern life, but they have little to no data behind them and are ultimately just beliefs that make us feel good. As such, there is no reason to expect they are optimal for governing either.

It’s true. In the long arc of history I have no doubt that our current government systems will be considered childish

Look, just let us get rid of first-past-the-post as the only voting method, and I'll be happy. I'm not asking for voting via Neuralink, holographic VR Presidential debates, or flying car taxis to the polling places.

>> For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in amber from a time before many of the political and policy challenges of our day were not even thought of yet.

Please, please, please go read the Federalist papers. The Founders thought of a lot more than you realise.

The design of a constitution is the design of the distribution of power. The nature of power hasn't changed.

Things they appear to have not thought of:

1. Any voting system other than the disastrous FPTP which forces a two-party system and punishes any attempt to break this duopoly.

2. What if Congress is composed entirely of weasels and just, though formal law-passing or by sheer inaction, cedes nearly all their power to the executive branch?

3. What if the Supreme Court has at least 5 partisans who will say just about anything to keep in power the party (or even the individual) who put them there? What if they say stupid things like "A President has absolute criminal immunity for any act that falls within his 'conclusive and preclusive' constitutional authority, and presumptive immunity for all other official acts."

4. Even if SCOTUS is basically working as intended, what if the President just...ignores them?

5. What if a President is mentally incompetent due to age, and his whole party refuses to acknowledge it? (This one is Biden, arguably - I'm disgusted with both parties)

I do get checks and balances, I know that a big part of the whole "they can't pass anything" is a feature and not a bug. But come on, it's got out of hand when every single term we have multiple debt limit hostage negotiations -- and now BOTH parties are doing it!

That's a lot of what ifs, some more fanciful than others. There is no political system that could withstand a such a barrage of bad intentions and corruption. But I'd note that despite how bad things seem, the things you describe for the most part haven't actually happened? The executive is generally complying with SCOTUS decisions, e.g. tariffs. The US remains a robust if fractious democracy, unlike much of the rest of the world.

More broadly, go look at other countries' politics. The facade of stability is being held up in a lot of places by restrictions on speech, on assembly, on political organisation of a kind that would be unthinkable in the US. It's borderline illegal to assemble for Palestine in Britain. Is that society less divided than the US, or just more controlled? And that's a democratic peer country. Things get much worse - Hungary, Russia, Iran, etc