[fortythirteen]

When you divide the state up geographically instead of by population, it's way red (as is with every state in the union). While the current gerrymandering is ridiculous, I don't think it has much of an effect on the overall outcome.

[hyperpape]

"When you divide the state up geographically instead of by population, it's way red (as is with every state in the union)."

So don't do that. Land doesn't vote, people do. If you give every 600k people a congressional district, the state is slightly more red than blue.

[fortythirteen]

Any country with our agricultural exports and requirements that decides to do that will collapse upon itself.

When every policy decision is decided by the needs of the residents of a few, highly populous cities, with no thought to the different needs of those living in rural areas, being a farmer, miner, logger, etc. becomes completely disincentivized.

When all those people in those cities (and the rest of the country) require incentivized agriculture to supply their basic survival needs, the system falls apart. The whole reason we have a Senate is so people in states that produce our agricultural products aren't disenfranchised.

[hyperpape]

Leave aside the argument that people outside of agricultural states will not understand that the billions of dollars worth of agriculture are valuable, which seems false.

Even so, California is our largest agricultural producer, and it's disenfranchised by the Senate. Other major producers include some small states like Nebraska, but also other large states like Texas, Illinois and North Carolina.

[throwawayjava]

> Any country with our agricultural exports and requirements that decides to do that will collapse upon itself... incentivized agriculture to supply their basic survival needs

Ugh.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. The agricultural industry does not exist in isolation, so its most immediate practitioners do not deserve a minority-rule electoral power.

Farmers use Wall St money to fund the planting of seeds geo-engineered by folks living in cities, harvest the resulting crops using tractors designed/built by folks living in cities, then ship the product on freight designed/built by folks living in cities. Throughout the whole process, farmers depend upon a whole set of energy informatics products (from weather prediction to oil discovery) made possible by a tour de force of scientific and engineering talent designed/built by folks living in/around cities.

Farmers are not rugged individualists, and an individual farmer is no more "critical to the survival" of city folk than a Deere software engineer or an Exxon scientist is "critical to the survival" of the modern farmer. And yet, you don't see those folks asking for a non-representative democracy...

The myth of the rugged farmer as the pillar holding modern society is just that -- a BS mythology.

And all of this before even considering that city folk help pay for all the public infrastructure that makes farming possible in the first place -- everything form rural roads and interstates they never directly use to subsidized crop insurance they don't immediately benefit from to concessions in international treaties that directly harm their industry in return for concessions that boost our agricultural industry and thereby contribute to our own food security.

Going back to the article, farmers don't deserve to be the dictators of a minority-ruled psuedo-democracy because farmers are just one more cog in a huge machine, a machine that farmers depend on to support their own way of life and, in many cases, even survival.

> When every policy decision is decided by the needs of the residents of a few, highly populous cities, with no thought to the different needs of those living in rural areas, being a farmer, miner, logger, etc. becomes completely disincentivized.

There are lots of people in cities who depend on and know a lot about the agricultural industry. Some of them grew up on farms and went on to work in knowledge industries supporting farming. Many of these city folks know more about farming/logging/mining than even the most skilled farmer/logger/miner. And many have more at stake in the success of America's agricultural industry than the folks actually working the land.

Presuming that someone who doesn't work the land can't know the needs of the agricultural/mining/logging industry is a somewhat conceited viewpoint.

[fortythirteen]

> an individual farmer is no more "critical to the survival" of city folk than a Deere software engineer or an Exxon scientist

Utter, pompous nonsense. And I say that as a software engineer.

> farmers don't deserve to be the dictators of a minority-ruled psuedo-democracy because farmers are just one more cog in a huge machine

What they don't deserve to be is permanently dictated to because their profession requires that they live in less population dense areas.

> There are lots of people in cities who depend on and know a lot about the agricultural industry.

What percentage of people living in New York have worked a farm? I think you're pulling your conclusions out of thin air.

[throwawayjava]

> Utter, pompous nonsense. And I say that as a software engineer.

One hundred years ago maybe. Not today. And the Exxon scientist/Deere engineer is meant to be read in a prototypical way. The point is, modern food security depends on the proper functioning of a lage, inter-dependent system.

It would be pompous to claim that the average software/petro engineer understands farming better than a farmer. But I didn't make that claim. I made the claim that some of these folks understand a related industry that is as important to US food security as is the actual act of farming a particular piece of land.

I also provided concrete and specific ways in which Farmers rely on a larger social fabric and, in particular, engineering/scientific/financial expertise that tends to concentrate in large cities.

Instead of calling names, provide counter-points those concrete and specific dependencies. Explain how a modern modern farmer could do his work, in an economically and ecologically sustainable way, without those other industries.

Also, in addition to the dependencies I've already pointed out, I'll provide an actual counter-example to your claim. Plenty of countries with many more farmers per capita than the USA have far worse food security than the USA, even given excellent farmland. So clearly, farmers are only part of the story!

And also a counter-example in the other direction: plenty of countries that don't use insane gerrymandering to give a minority of voters out-sized political influence have excellent agricultural systems. So clearly, farmers don't need minority rule in order for a society to enjoy a stable agricultural sector.

So no, we are not going to starve if rural folks lose their ability to push policy on abortion and bathroom usage. Both rationally and empirically, the claims you're making about the supremacy of the farmer's vote don't hold up to observed reality.

> What they don't deserve to be is permanently dictated to because their profession requires that they live in less population dense areas.

That's true. But they also don't deserve more say because they live in a less dense area, which is what you were originally claiming.

And even if farmers did have some unique secret sauce understanding of the inter-connected system that ensures US food security, your argument still does not justify giving rural folks in general an out-sized voice in governance. You do not make the case that the average rural McDonalds employee should have more voting power than the average urban McDonalds employee. The proposition that your argument actually defends is that that (farm) land ownership/stewardship should determine voting power.

Ew.

Each person should have one vote, equally weighted, and without respect to geographic location. No?

> What percentage of people living in New York have worked a farm? I think you're pulling your conclusions out of thin air.

Well, New York has a lot of agriculture ;-)

WRT NYC, That's not the correct question. The correct question is: what percentage of people in New York understand OR[1] contribute to some industry or process that's critical to US food security? That's a good question, and sounds difficult to answer with any specificity, so I stand by my original claim: "a lot".

[1] Mere understanding is sufficient here, because your claim was that farmers need a bigger electoral voice to ensure food security. My claim is that many people in cities understand what's necessary for a functioning agricultural system, and will vote accordingly (seeing as they like eating and all)

[FireBeyond]

While I get some of the merits of this method in the beginning, it really does subvert democracy.

"Los Angeles and New York get less proportional representation, just because many people choose to live there."

"What about the people of rural South Dakota, don't they get a vote?"

Absolutely they do.

Geographic systems are based on a flawed predicate. Democracy should be based on "1 person, 1 vote", not "1 square mile/foot, 1 vote".