[rvz]

> British democracy and government is cool.

Oh sweet summer child.

The government there does not care about you and will promise anything to get another 5 years in power despite causing the issues they promised to solve in the first place.

You are essentially voting in the same party to be in government and progress there moves in the hundreds of years; hence the riddance of the scam that is unelected hereditary nobles which it took more than 700 years to remove them.

[pjc50]

In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".

[rvz]

Are there unelected hereditary nobles somewhere in the US that is entitled to having a seat in congress and can vote against laws being passed?

Nope. I don't think so, not even the length of the term is the same.

[xp84]

unelected hereditary nobles

Let's break down what Senators are:

> Unelected

In most states a single party will always win statewide elections, so our Senators are what I'd call "marginally elected" since they only have to face a quiet low-turnout primary election and then they sail to an easy re-election. They're nearly always guaranteed to win their primaries as long as The Party supports them, and they'll do so as long as you're loyal to The Party agenda.

> Hereditary

Many of them come from generational wealth, and a few suspiciously just happen to become wildly wealthy while in office, including through their stock trades, which has been decided to be 100% not illegal even when they know things the public does not know.

> nobles

Ours are called "elites," but most things are the same - they tend to all have gone to the top 2-4 colleges, and you can't 'break into' this set unless you were born into old money. Seems close enough from the perspective of those of us who aren't nobles or elites.

So, you can think of the Senate as the House of Lords lite.

[hunterpayne]

Just checking, but you do realize that this kind of unhinged, populist takes are exactly the kind of propaganda you use to destroy a democratic system. You know that right?

Only a couple of states are like you describe and none of them are red. The governor of KY (the reddest state) for example is a Dem. One of the Senators for Montana is a Dem, etc. In fact, if you want the Dems to win the presidency in 2028, one of those folks is your best bet. The other thing we can do it get rid of gerrymandering but that's unlikely and the most recent gerrymandering attempts are likely to end up blowing up in the face of the party drawing the lines. Politics is nothing if not ironic.

PS Look at who is running for governor of CA right now and ask yourself if any of those folks actually represents CA in any real way. Also, ask yourself why there is only 1 Dem in that race?

[xp84]

You can't destroy a democratic system that isn't democratic and already doesn't serve the people. The Senate was never designed to be democratic in the first place. The House was, but its main problem is just campaign finance decadence that means to the extent those guys do any governing during their 2-year terms, it's a part-time gig in between fundraising. And together, the legislative branch has become a joke. They now just fart around, either rubber-stamping whatever the President says, or shutting down the government whenever the party out of power can't accept that the public has rejected their policies. So I hope I can be forgiven for being pessimistic about whether this "democratic system" even serves any purpose at this point.

But back to the Senate. Jon Tester was defeated in 2024. There is a peppering of Democrats in statewide office here and there -- Fetterman and Beshear, and the Virginia and Georgia Democrats, the latter of which got really lucky to both run in the election that was a referendum on Trump's COVID chaos, and the one getting to run against a proud child molester. They are also the exact kind of politicians that don't get support from the blue-state Democrats in primaries for national elections, because they are too moderate. If you don't check every box, the primaries will destroy you. To be fair, Republicans have the exact same problem. Blue-state moderates certainly could have been persuaded to support say, Jeb Bush, but the party only supports... well, since the phenomenon became locked in, they have only given their support to one man. Sorry to ramble, my point is that the practice of split-ticket voting is dying off faster than discounted DRAM.

There used to be a lot of these cross-party appeal people like Bill Clinton, Ann Richards, Jon Tester, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, and on the Republican side George Pataki, Mitt Romney, Chris Christie. But this is now massively the exception, and trending down.

BTW I'm all for getting rid of gerrymandering, but the Democrats have set that cause back by 100 years by selling out their supposed deeply held beliefs last year in California. Now we're just being honest that it's only about power.

I don't remember who's running for governor in California, but I am guessing there is only one Dem running it's because the California Democratic Party is powerful and disciplined in ways neither national party is, and has told everybody but the party's favorite to sit down and shut up. That's speculation - let me know if I'm wrong.

[BigTTYGothGF]

In the US our unelected hereditary nobility just buys candidates.

[fc417fc802]

And yet all of your objections apply to us in equal measure. Almost as though hereditary nobles don't have much to do with them.

[pjc50]

Not hereditary, but SCOTUS functions somewhat worse than the House Of Lords: unelected, unremovable, life appointments, but ability to change the law. Hence the decades spent shifting the balance to reverse Roe v Wade.

A lot of important US freedoms only came from the courts in spite of the legislatures, which I think is an under appreciated problem of the system.

The US system skews much older for some reason too. The only president born after 1946 was Obama. Like being stuck in a time warp.

[t43562]

The governments don't really cause the issues. The big issues are just things that face the country no matter who is in control - how to pay for everything, how to deal with population aging etc.

It's not a simple country - it's a machine with millions of complicated parts and therefore it's difficult to come up with simple things to do that will make everyone happy.

The public don't all have a 10000 foot view, which I don't think any 1 person could comprehensively understand anyhow, and are susceptible to being sold "simple solutions" by politicians - in fact they won't elect anyone who doesn't pretend at least to offer simple solutions.

[tjpnz]

What on earth are you talking about? They were elected in 2024. If anything its the issues caused over the previous 14 years which must be fixed.

[jongjong]

No idea why this was down-voted, it's true. It's replacing one hereditary system based on inheritance of titles with another hereditary system based on inheritance of capital.

[pseudalopex]

> No idea why this was down-voted

> Oh sweet summer child.

And Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[jongjong]

You need to have a very cynical worldview already to find my comment boring; as in; no information content. I really don't think most people are there yet.

[pseudalopex]

> You need to have a very cynical worldview already to find my comment boring; as in; no information content.

Boring does not mean no information content. But the part of your comment about comment voting was boring and noise.

[koakuma-chan]

I think that guideline means that if your own comment gets downvoted, don't reply complaining about it. A "why was this downvoted? it's true" from another user is fine, I think.

[pseudalopex]

It could have said your comments if it meant your comments. And It never does any good, and it makes boring reading was not less true.