Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels wrote a whole book showing that voters do not keep track of what elected officials do, and so politicians are not punished for bad behavior, see excerpt here:
That’s easy: it’s not our guy! It’s those other guys! We’re wonderful and they’re terrible!
That’s how incumbents can maintain their edge whilst Congress as a body is untrusted.
I’m convinced that capping the House of Representatives at 435 was a mistake, and Federalizing most laws even more of a mistake. The question isn’t whether democracy can scale, but whether ours can within its present constraints. The reforms I would want to see are mechanical; not social, economic or judicial. A Continental-sized nation with hundreds of millions and growing probably needs thousands—not a few hundred!—of legislators if representation is to be meaningful. Short of that, my Representative has 700K+ constituents, so any one individual holding her accountable without other connections is a pipe dream at best.
> That’s easy: it’s not our guy! It’s those other guys!
I mean, that has certainly been true for me, and many other people. I sent someone to Congress I liked. Congress then has a wide spectrum of people who end up doing whatever a small group decides (this term, whatever Manchin and Sinema want). It's pretty easy to like your guy but not the end results of the process or the body as a whole that produced it.
> It's pretty easy to like your guy but not the end results of the process or the body as a whole that produced it.
This is the biggest argument against my ideas of reform: this is compromise actually working even with all the flaws I think are there. In the absence of consensus the consensus is to do nothing at all, which drives the people who want to do a lot and quickly crazy.
That said, Federated States in a Union with a weaker Federal government than we presently have would have fewer compromises they would have to make at the cost of also having to live with the fact that others who are ostensibly as much a part of the nation as you are are going to live differently; and as people, humans really, we tend to hate that. C’est la vie.
> others who are ostensibly as much a part of the nation as you are are going to live differently
I don't honestly think that most people care about people "living differently". They care because people affect each other. And the rules in your state affect me living in my state quite a bit.
They do. It can be expressed through many different means but the end result is the same: people want to exert control over each other, especially people they consider “their own”. Having a representative legislature with members on equal footing is a bulwark against this. Which is why in the absence of consensus the consensus is to do nothing at all.
> And the rules in your state affect me living in my state quite a bit.
So two things about this: you’re not exactly wrong, but as far as humanity goes: the Earth is a closed system which means as far as we go there’s no limit to this line of thought except those we impose upon ourselves. Recognizable borders are a compromise, even internal ones.
What I do might affect you, and things my State does might change conditions in your State in the abstract, but in the absence of a damages claim or a legitimate grievance, we are not automatically entitled to effect the lives of others as we see fit. Which is why we have representative legislatures and governments: these are chambers and actors which are vested with powers to negotiate amongst themselves on behalf of their constituents and diplomatically engage with other governments.
1. Wyoming Rule. No district should be larger than the least populist state.
2. Make DC a Museum. With modern technology there is no need to "send" legislatures to Washington DC, they can vote, meet, etc all remotely. This will make lobbying more expensive, and put the representatives back in their actual communities, because lets face it most of them represent Washington DC not Local Communities.
3. Expand the Term to 4 Years, with a 2 year offset to the president Election. So every 4 years the entire house is elected as a Mid Presidential term Election
I'm entirely in favor of making lobbying as expensive as possible, but I disagree that there isn't something to be gained from having people be in the same physical location to achieve a common goal. Some things just can't be done very well over Zoom.
I do wish that more federal functions would be spread out throughout the country, in the same way that Germany does; many of their federal agencies are headquartered in places far away from Berlin. There's no reason why the USDA shouldn't be headquartered in Kansas City, the Fed in New York, and the Department of the Interior in Wyoming.
>but I disagree that there isn't something to be gained from having people be in the same physical location to achieve a common goal.
So then I assume you also reject Full time work from home?
I can not think of a single reason why Congress needs to be in the same physical location to read a bill, take public comment on a bill, then vote on if that bill is good for their community or now. That is the SOLE and ONLY function of the US House of Representatives.
If they are doing other things, well that is beyond their scope of work and should be curtailed.
Full time remote work can be done for a lot of jobs, but even those you would agree that occasional in-person time helps. I'm not taking an absolute position one way or another.
> that is beyond their scope of work and should be curtailed
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. For those decisions that need to be made collectively, democracy is just the worst bad method we've come up with.
But one huge benefit of freedom is that if we embrace freedom, the vast majority of decisions can be made individually, or by mutual agreement of consenting individuals, and not collectively. So the negative consequences of democracy aren't as impactful.
Perhaps democracy is fine, but we are just doing voting wrong. See this page for some interesting alternative voting systems that have different / better outcomes: https://ncase.me/ballot/
Assuming we need some kind of government, then does "against all" actually offer an improvement over the current system? The economist Kenneth Arrow suggested something in the opposite direction, approval voting, where the voters get as many votes as their are candidates, so the voters have the option of voting for everyone except maybe the absolute worst. Arrow did the math and liked the results from such a system of voting. And also, what is the goal of voting? Is it to give an individual an avenue for self-expression, or is it to achieve the social goal of forming a government? This is the argument against self-expression:
That arguably makes vote splitting worse. Do you cast your vote for the least bad corrupt candidate so the other candidate that wants to [legalize killing babies/control women's bodies] doesn't win, or do you vote for the "against all" option so that both corrupt candidates get disqualified?
You're contradicting thousands of years of political philosophy and theory with that statement. Democracy is a complete mess of whiplashing changes. It's only real redeeming factor is that it's better than tyranny by a monarch or aristocracy. That's an incredibly important factor though, so you need to find a way to make it work. Representative democracy is a way to temper the erratic will of the people and turn democracy into a workable form of government.
Most of those thousands of years of political philosophy was devised by that very aristocracy. Of course they're horrified of "mob rule", if it means that they get stripped of all the wealth that they have so patiently fleeced from their slaves / serfs / workers for generations.
In practice, all the claims that were made about representative democracy being superior to direct on the basis that it's "less erratic" have been proven false by experience - just look at who we keep electing to Congress etc. At best, it gives the whole circus some veneer of respectability - as in, our representatives still make an erratic mess, but they do so with gravitas. But even that doesn't last for long - at some point, if enough voters really feel like it, you get someone like Donald Trump.
The worst thing about representative democracy is the sham scalability. In theory, a parliament can "represent" as many people as you want - there's an upper limit on the number of MPs who can still hold a coherent discussion, but there's no limit on how many people each MP "represents". However, the higher that number is, the more said "representation" is removed from the voters, and the more of a sham it is. With direct democracy, because of how poorly it scales, you have to keep the scope of the government small for it to function at all procedurally, and then come up with some federation arrangements above that - and that's a good thing.
In the other comment seneca points out that you're ignoring history with your comment. You might want to consider a system that goes in the other direction, and adds more layers of representation:
Correct, which is why I spoke mostly of Presidents and Parties who are all big enough targets that most American voters do form opinions about what they’re up to, even with only vague notions about the details. Individual members of Congress can usually skate by, but that’s only as true as their district or State is uncompetitive.
And in States where “big issue” lawmaking is deferred to the public via referendum on a regular basis there’s almost no incentive at all to mind what the legislature or governor is doing; especially if tax increases also have to be voter approved. Who do you hold accountable when it’s the voters who make a bad decision about a law?
The emphasis on parties might be the most accurate part. This is a possible reason for the so-called "Panama Exception" -- a nation the should be a dictatorship and yet has been a thriving democracy:
That statistic alone has me questioning if democracy is a good system