[maeln]

Let's look at a simple fact: Finland as a Parliament of 200 seat for a population of roughly 5.5 million. France as a Parliament of 577 seat for a population of roughly 67 million.

Thats around 3 times more representative per citizen.

It's more like more democracy = more social wellness.

EDIT: To have the same amount of representative in France, we would need ~1900 députés, which mean 19 députés per département, and ~6 députés per arondissement.

[alkonaut]

Finland has 4-5000 trees per person. Clearly it's the abundance of trees that creates the social wellness.

[maeln]

Well ofc the reality is more complex than that and my example is an oversimplification. But the point still stand. The more a country is democratic, the more benefit will be distributed to the global population instead of a small portion of it.

[alkonaut]

I don't think many would agree that a larger parliament would make something "more democratic". It must matter infinitely less than e.g. a media climate, level of corruption, regulation of political donations, etc. etc.

[szemet]

In many countries every member of the parliament push the button decided by their party[1] - so one representative per party would be sufficient:

it would be much cheaper salary wise - also they could gather in a small meeting room somewhere ;) And those countries would stay as much "democratic" as now, just without the Potemkin village of the parliament...

[1] edit: by "party" I mean not the representatives, or all the party as a whole, but the leader of the party / or a smallish leading group

[maeln]

A higher number of representative per citizen ten to counter this effect. When an election as a small number of people who vote, their vote as more individual power, which mean, the people who end up being elected has more responsibility toward the voter, since each of them can significantly impact his chance of being re-elected.

Election with a big voter pool tend, on the other end, to blur the individual for the benefit of identifiable group with clear political line. The result of this is that, the representative get elected because they are part of this group, not truly because of his own idea (although there is exception). Due to this, it is their expected behavior that they will be faithful to the line of the party.

[AdrianB1]

We have more representatives in the Parliament than France for a quarter of the population, everybody is voting what the party leader decides. Hard facts, not anecdotal evidence.