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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

that law does not exist, probably because not enough people feel that way

That’s a pretty naive model of how laws get passed in the US. A lot of laws would be different if your model held true.

s/people/money

As if the will of the people is what matters... Only if those people are backed by money does matter. I don't agree with that, but that's the world we live in.

Or because the Epstein class has used their stranglehold of the media and politics to push that belief.

Your reasoning does not stand at all. There are plenty of things that the majority of people agree upon in this country but it does not get done for a variety of reasons. For example, it's not as important as other issues so they can't prioritize it for voting, gerrymandering, etc...

or, you know, lobbying and oligarchy. great at changing outcomes even when the folks agree.

It literally does? Things that people care strongly about get prioritized. I said others don't feel like the OP. Maybe they agree with the point if presented with the choice, but again, they don't feel the same way, so they don't think, protest, comment, demand it in the way the OP does.

More accurately, they adwquately don't give politicians the money and exercise the power of wealth.

An extensive study [0], showed "Basically, average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interest groups also want it"

They studied actual attitudes about issues, moneyed attitudes, and tracked what got implemented as laws. NONE of the 'thinking, protesting, commenting, of demanding' was effective. MONEY was.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...

Not at all. I can feel very strongly about that, but if I feel more strongly about health care so tens of thousands of people don't die needlessly and countless millions more don't go bankrupt or get maimed from lack treatment, one is going to win over the other. That doesn't mean I don't feel strongly about it. Also, the 600,000 in Wyoming get the same two senators as the 40,000,000 people in California so it's not like there is equal representation by any means.

Like I said, not enough people care about it enough to push for legislation.

And proportional representation is found in the House of Representatives. We have a bicameral legislature.

> not enough people care about it enough to push for legislation.

This is a just-so-story. No matter how much people care you can always say they don’t care enough when the law doesn’t match what people want - and when the law does match it’s because they cared enough, no matter how much they actually cared.

In practice, the laws don’t match what people want.

But all that aside - the laws already exist to block this acquisition, the only thing that’s missing is enforcement.

The Constitution simply states that representation shall be based on population but doesn't specify a fixed cap. The number of Reps in the House was frozen by the Congressional apportionment Act of 1929.

How is that proportional, a century of pop growth later?

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