Hierarchical Structures in PostgreSQL (2020)

Re:Hierarchical Structures in PostgreSQL (2020) by munificent on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:06PM (#27634286)

> One interesting fact is that the USA population has roughly increased by a multiple of Dunbar's number since its organizational structure was codified in its Constitution. Perhaps time for another look?

I have had that exact same idle thought.

In 1813, each of the 182 US Representatives represented on average ~40,000 Americans. Today, each of our 435 Reps stands for about ~760,000 people. That's over an order of magnitude growth. To keep the same rate of representation, we'd need to have over 8,000 Representatives, which is clearly too large a body to get anything done.

So we're probably well beyond the point where we could benefit from a large House of Subrepresentatives and then a smaller House of Superrepresentatives that aggregate them.

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Re:Hierarchical Structures in PostgreSQL (2020) by mulmen on Friday June 25, 2021 @03:03PM (#27634942)

Well isn’t that why we have limited federal government and defer most decisions to the states?

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Re:Hierarchical Structures in PostgreSQL (2020) by beardedetim on Friday June 25, 2021 @04:18PM (#27635741)

Who should then defer to county/parish, who then defer to city, who then defer to neighborhood

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Re:Hierarchical Structures in PostgreSQL (2020) by mulmen on Friday June 25, 2021 @06:00PM (#27636786)

Right, that scales better than 8000 representatives in the house.

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