I know this is going to sound like a broken record thing that people have nitpicked over centuries and sounds like silliness every time you hear it, but I have a clear reason for making the nitpick for my argument. We are not in a democracy, we are in a representative republic. In a democracy everyone has a vote on every issue, in a representative republic you elect representatives to vote on issues for you. The main issues with our country are actually failures to adapt to this proper representation as the federal government has increased in power and the population has increased dramatically. Many say that the solution to this is to reduce the power of the federal government, but that's not exactly an easy task sometimes (even if it's a good goal). An easier task is to increase the representation of the people. We currently have a population of 323.7 million people in the United States. When the country did its first census in 1790, we had a population of roughly 3.9 million people. We currently have 537 elected representatives in the federal government (435 House, 100 Senate, 1 President, 1 Vice President). In 1790 we had 13 states, and 95 representatives in the federal government (67 House, 26 Senate, 1 President, 1 Vice President). Appointments by elected officials don't really count in my mind since you elected the people who did the appointing, and had no real say in the matter. (please fact check these numbers, some of them were a little hard to get accurate on) So this means that in 1790 we had a ratio of 24.36 representatives per million people. This number actually kind of surprised me since I guess I didn't realize we already had 3.9 million people around by 1790. Anyway, in 2016 we have 1.687 representatives per million people. It's 14.43 times less representation than we originally had. Compare that to the monarchy, where one non-elected person was representing at 0.2564 per million people. We are rapidly approaching the level of representation of the original monarchy that our country revolted against in the first place, so expect political dissatisfaction and civil unrest to rise as people feel the system is "rigged" when in reality it just hasn't adjusted appropriately to our increasing population. Honestly I don't really know how we could have ever thought we could be adequately represented by our governmental structure, but these representative ratios have plummeted quite rapidly over the years and fixing those ratios could make a significant impact.I do not welcome the last, greatest evidence of the failure of Democracy to the selfishness, ignorance, and vice of the masses.
I recently heard someone argue that the biggest problem in the US government today, is the 17th Amendment. The 17th Amendment changes Senators to be directly elected by citizens. Whereas previously US Senators were elected by local state legislatures. Today, the vast majority of people don't care about local elections. People vote for President and, hopefully, Congress, and ignore the rest, or at best vote along party lines. The argument is, if national positions are elected by local representatives, people will care about local elections, which in practice have a much greater effect on citizens' everyday lives. This guy went so far as to argue that all federal positions—President, Senate, House—should be elected by State legislatures, and State, by local city or county governing bodies. So citizens would only vote for their immediate local city councils and mayors. And thus, they would vote locally, and pay attention to local issues. I'm not completely convinced, I can certainly think of issues with taking the Republic that far, but I can also see the advantages.
It's pretty east to use the 17th amendment itself as a case-controlled experiment in whether the 17th amendment was a net negative. Doing so, it's really easy to make an argument in favor of direct election of senators, and really difficult to make one against (if we're using data and history and not some specious hypothetical argument about local accountability).
I mean in the types of legislation that have been passed since senators have been directly elected. I'm thinking of the new deal, the GI Bill, the civil rights act, and so on. This of course isn't evidence that these laws wouldn't have been passed otherwise, but they're all consequences of people demanding action from the federal government, which seems easier if you have some say in who's passing the laws. It's not as if only good people became senators before the 17th amendment. There were a number of rebel leaders who assumed Senate seats after the civil war, for example. I think we should go further and destroy the electoral college, and add a lot more representatives, so that we can get closer to equal representation. The Senate is insular enough even when we do have a voice in who's there.
I mostly agree with you b_b. Has anyone else been literally capable of throwing a rock at someone at work without even standing up, yet officially if you want a response from them you have to communicate to your boss, they have to communicate to their boss, that boss communicates with a parallel position, it goes down the chain a few layers back to the person, then you are relaying through 10 people what could be said out loud in 5 seconds? I once communicated directly with someone at an organization and got reamed by the managerial roles for doing it rather than going through "official channels". I remember having a beer later with the guy I communicated directly to and it was clear it wasn't him complaining and that he was quite glad that I communicated to him directly, just the middle managers going berserk for no reason. It's annoying and frustrating, just like sending messages through local officials before reaching your senators. Revoking the 17th amendment just leads to more unnecessary bureaucracy in government. That being said, there is an issue with people not paying attention to local elections, but this proposed solution actually makes Senators turn into appointed positions like judges. As I was saying in my original post, I don't really consider appointed positions as representatives. If they can be considered representatives, those appointed positions also hire and fire employees underneath them (essentially the same as appointing), so technically the entire federal government and every employee would indirectly be "representatives" for us, which I think everyone can agree isn't really the case. We definitely have a culture issue with focusing on federal elections pretty much exclusively, but I don't think any change in government would change that. People would still think the federal government was responsible for their political choice and just demand it goes to their Senator, get more frustrated, and cause more civil unrest and frustration with government. I think the only way to solve the local/federal issue is through culture, but our culture seems to think the presidency is a dictator anyway with every president in the last 100 years spending time pushing legislation through Congress instead of exclusively being the head of the executive branch. I think people just think of the three branch system as separation of powers exclusively, and not separation of responsibility. What we need is a president who will STFU about what policies he/she will be pushing through Congress and have a real debate on what they want to do with the executive branch itself. Some of that is difficult to achieve when the majority of the executive branch is clouded in secrecy even from legislators. Transparency in the executive branch is really a key thing we need to move this country forward, and every elected president that ran on a transparency platform has done the exact opposite (Obama comes to mind in particular here). Great, we have a way to petition the government for a response on something. That's not real transparency, and they can't even respond to all of the petitions that have gone past the threshold. I think that might be a reason people want to vote for Trump as well. They think he'll "tell it like it is" and start explaining government, but in reality he's just going to make his public interactions a series of Twitter flame wars and the few times he actually attempts to explain what's going on in government he's just going to show his complete moronic idiocy on how things really work and botch the whole thing and mislead the public with false information. Unfortunately, we'll have no way to fact check him when he's talking about secretive procedures so when he says something we'll have no idea if he's telling the truth because his track record of telling the truth is spotty at best. So the real solution is proposed best by Bill Burr: video“They won’t just come out and say it. Nobody has the balls to say it. Look, 85 percent of you have to go. That’s it! That. Is. It. I have been bitching about the population problem for three specials in a row! Waiting, for some politician to have the balls to bring it up, but they won’t do it. We live in a democracy. A democracy. You can’t be honest in a democracy. You need the votes. You can’t run with that as your platform. Coming out there." He puts the mic in the stand and begins bellowing: "‘AND IF I’M ELECTED, I WOULD IMPLEMENT A PROGRAM TO IMMEDIATELY ELIMINATE AT LEAST 85 PERCENT OF YOU! THIS PLANET CANNOT SUSTAIN THE SHEER NUMBERS – LET ME FINISH! – THIS WILL NOT BE ARBITRARY. UNDER YOUR SEATS IS A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONNAIRE. IF YOU DID NOT BRING A PENCIL, YOU’RE ALREADY OUT! You can’t do that. You gotta be nice. You got to be fucking nice. Especially in this day and age, man. Everybody getting in trouble. All these god-damned groups out there bitch-moaning and complaining, and anytime anybody says anything – ‘You offended the group!’ – you’ve got to apologize.”
You're arguing for Direct Democracy over Republic. There are many advantages to a Republic, arguably the biggest of which is protection of minorities. In Direct Democracy, the 51% can and will oppress the 49%. The Republic insulates against that. James Madison does a great job explaining the theory of the Republic in Federalist No. 10.this proposed solution actually makes Senators turn into appointed positions like judges. As I was saying in my original post, I don't really consider appointed positions as representatives.
I'm actually not for a direct democracy, simply more representatives in our existing representative republic. I just wanted to make the distinction so we could discuss the structure of a representative republic and not confuse our structure with a democracy. I understand the tyranny of the majority, and we already basically have it even in our representative republic because of our ratio of representation. It can happen in either structure, but the representative republic only works if you continuously increase representation in line with the population. That also gets into why we have a bicameral legislature as well, since the original founders weren't entirely convinced that just direct correlation of population (House of Representatives) would adequately represent smaller states. I agree with this, I just think there should be more senators and more congressman both.
Certainly. How would you go about accomplishing that, without worsening the tyranny of the majority? How does that solve the problem?we already basically have it even in our representative republic because of our ratio of representation. It can happen in either structure
more representatives in our existing representative republic
there should be more senators and more congressman both.
I agree. I have had the good fortune of having personal meetings with both of Michigan's senators, and I can all but guarantee that would never have happened if they didn't get held to account by the voters now and then. It's a really amazing thing, actually. Yes, laughable, really. The man is on record as saying that lying is part of his everyday interactions, but that so long as he gets his, why should it matter? This is the type of thing he says on record, and for some reason people take it as evidence of his honesty. If the big bad wolf tells you he's going to eat you, you should believe him.It's annoying and frustrating, just like sending messages through local officials before reaching your senators. Revoking the 17th amendment just leads to more unnecessary bureaucracy in government.
I think that might be a reason people want to vote for Trump as well. They think he'll "tell it like it is" and start explaining government, but in reality he's just going to make his public interactions a series of Twitter flame wars and the few times he actually attempts to explain what's going on in government he's just going to show his complete moronic idiocy on how things really work and botch the whole thing and mislead the public with false information. Unfortunately, we'll have no way to fact check him when he's talking about secretive procedures so when he says something we'll have no idea if he's telling the truth because his track record of telling the truth is spotty at best.