It's very deliberately built in to the American political system that the will of the half-plus-one majority does not dictate the direction of the whole country. If anything, the ever-increasing Federalization of laws and policies is the real problem: Californians living like Californians is fine, and Wyomingites living like Wyomingites is also fine, but there is a problem when one tries to make the other live more like them.
Let's have fifty vibrant laboratories of democracy.
> how many presidential elections we can go where the "winner" receives fewer votes than the "loser" before people seriously question what the purpose of our democracy is.
I'm already questioning that myself, considering roughly half of all eligible voters don't even bother to show up for presidential elections -- let alone midterms, which is more like two thirds. If we consider that chunk that does not vote as being OK with the status quo, then I think we have a lot of room left before American democracy is really imperiled.
The problem with this is that Mississippi would bring back slavery/segregation.
I live in a neighboring state and it's unthinkable that the people of this state would bring back slavery or segregation. In fact, a much bigger portion of the population here lives amidst people of other races -- break bread with them, celebrate each others' big life events -- compared to certain other states where an attitude like yours about Mississippi is common.
If it were a one-off, that might be different, but you've been posting tons of unsubstantive comments. That's not what this site is for.
The problem that we have is the reverse - a half-minus-one minority can (and occasionally does) dictate the direction of the whole country. Tyranny of the majority is bad, but tyranny of the minority is even worse.
They'll need to stop trading with each other, then.
cf. current CA legislation that will make it hard/impossible for other states to sell pork in CA that was not raised in accordance with CA law.
Now, I happen to agree with the CA legislation, and would love it to cause a change in pork rearing nationwide. But you have to see the writing on the wall: with the level of economic inter-connectedness we have today, either large-market states get to dictate policy, or you need a higher-level body that takes charge of this sort of thing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-to-consider-toler...
The WSJ article is clearly written as an homage to The Onion.
Finally, San Francisco is not a big enough market to swing anything (or almost anything). California is, particularly if there are at least a few producer states whose sympathies lie in the general direction the CA is trying to push (e.g. with vehicle emissions).
The actual reporting done by WSJ is still top tier imo.
Regulation simply equals increased prices which is essentially a tax on the middle class and poor.
Whatever was regulated will become a luxury. The rich will have it but the middle class and poor will not.
See car prices, gas prices, food prices, liquor licenses, etc. Anything the government gets it's hand on to regulate increases prices.
The rich don't notice the increased cost of regulation but the middle class and poor suffer.
That assumes:
* either pork production for CA takes place only inside CA or in other states they have two levels of pork production
* if the latter, this further requires that pork producers are happy maintaining two levels of production
* it also requires that no or few other states follow CA lead on requirements
> Regulation simply equals increased prices
Regulation is often (not always, but often) about bring externalities into the actual cost. So the full picture of the result of regulation needs to include:
* what were the externalities now being priced?
* where was the cost of the externalities previously experienced (e.g. poor communities dealing with runoff and waste from pork production)
* what was the full cost of the externalities before regulation bought some of them into the actual price?
* what are the remaining externalities after the regulation
That's not how it works in the real world. See how California sets the entire US auto policy.
(And common defense)
Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the right wing, was governor of California.
California from decades ago is hardly comparable to modern day California.
It actually is possible to have an opinion about the electoral college that is grounded in principal, rather than how your favored political party is benefiting.
True in the very short term, but that's only because neither party really targets the popular vote. Both would realign their platform and bases accordingly, and we'd just end up with a new system with new flaws.
However, if you are correct, that would mean a de facto one-party state. That's downright frightening to me, even if I am a member of that party.
If the GOP were to collapse and die out (as it should), the Democratic Party would simply break in 2, creating two new parties: the left-wing/progressive party and the center-right party. The former would champion all kinds of social causes and the latter would be the pro-business party.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
I agree that the Electoral College needs reform but I am sure that we will not agree on the solution. I think that each state, being an equal member in the union, should have an equal number of electoral votes. Equal votes per state reinforces the purpose of the republic. The republic is supposed to ensure that each state can live the way they want and have military protection. Having one state with more say in the executive is antithetical to a republic. The president is supposed to represent the union, not the people, on the international stage.
Doing away with the Electoral College and going for a direct democracy is a recipe for disaster. Direct democracy does not work on a large scale.
The answer to much of the contention we have today is to return to the limited government that was originally described in the Constitution. Power has become too concentrated in DC and now everybody is playing the game of thrones.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-17/
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...
"... if, in a word, the Union be essential to the happiness of the people of America, is it not preposterous, to urge as an objection to a government, without which the objects of the Union cannot be attained, that such a government may derogate from the importance of the governments of the individual States? Was, then, the American Revolution effected, was the American Confederacy formed, was the precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard-earned substance of millions lavished, not that the people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the government of the individual States, that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form?"
It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union. In like manner, as far as the sovereignty of the States cannot be reconciled to the happiness of the people, the voice of every good citizen must be, Let the former be sacrificed to the latter."
(https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed45.asp)
And here's a bit more specifically on the nature of the government that they were trying to establish:
"The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national."
It’s like saying, “Lead was added to fuel to improve the efficiency of the engines. We can’t change it now!”
1. There should be one person, one vote.
2. People should get to vote on every position (and only those positions) that affect them.
3. Therefore, the role of president, which affects all people in the US, should be voted on as one person, one vote, nation-wide.
(Nobody seems to complain that all governors are voted on by a state-wide popular vote, and not by say the state’s mayors!)
This is a talking point that doesn't make any sense. Electing the president and vice president by popular vote is not "direct democracy". It is how virtually every other representative democracy with a presidential system elects their executive leaders.
And which countries are those?
Russia Turkey El Salvador Philippines
Not exactly paragons of democracy.
Face it: the Presidential system itself is a disaster. A Parliamentary system is what you want if you want a democratic country with high-quality governance.
The list is far longer than that.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/politics/michigan-gop-poll-wo...
I also don't consider Costa Rica to be a "prosperous" nation. It's probably the only one in that whole list I'd consider living in besides the US though, because at least it isn't a war-torn or authoritarian hellhole, but it's not exactly an economic power either.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/22/among-democ...
However, many countries also do not do it -- and many countries elect a "president" who does not directly control the executive branch, while indirectly electing a "prime minister" or "chancellor" with such control (as in Austria or France).
In many cases, the prime minister is appointed by the president, and in some cases, they could theoretically appoint almost any adult citizen they want; but in practice, they have to elect someone that the legislature is going to accept and work with; and in many cases, the legislature can bring about a vote of no confidence and cause the government to fall.
There are a lot of details here and it seems like a matrix of four to ten columns might be needed to meaningfully get even a bird's eye view.
It maybe could with smart use of modern technologies, revocable proxies, and..., but that’s irrelevant because “adopt direct democracy for the US” is not even among the top 10 proposed alternatives to the current setup of the Electoral College.
Electing the President by national popular vote is by far the most commonly cited alternative.
> It does seem like most conversation focuses on direct democracy
It does not.
> since it’s fixated on respecting the popular vote.
Electing officials by popular vote is representative democracy, not direct democracy. Direct democracy is the citizens making policy decisions by popular vote, without elected officials as intermediaries (e.g., many U.S. states use some form of ballot initiative and/or referendum system, which are – limited forms, since they still have elected legislators do most lawmaking – direct democracy.)
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed22.asp
"The right of equal suffrage among the States is another exceptionable part of the Confederation. Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
"... To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy."
Note that the highlighted bit is exactly the state of affairs that we have today. Which is to say, EC/Senate today is basically as bad as AoC 1-state-1-vote was back then.
The people are represented by the House and assert their will that way. The apportionment of representatives should be changed so the same number of people are represented by each representative. That alone would alleviate most of the complaints of unequal representation. Being stuck with 435 representatives really skews the power distribution. Returning the Senate to selection by state legislature also solves the complaint of unequal representation in the senate. Representing the people isn't supposed to be the purpose of the senate.
However, for electing an executive, what is wrong with one vote per state? The states are selecting their international representative that Constitutionally has little power.
The mess we have was made incrementally over time. It doesn't make sense to give states one vote in presidential elections without fixing representation of the people and of the state governments. Fixing the house should be the first step so the people feel like they are being represented equally. Then fix the Senate so state governments have a voice. The maybe we address changes to the Electoral College.
?? Wyoming would still have 2 senators, just like California. How does that help in any way?
> Representing the people isn't supposed to be the purpose of the senate.
For many of us, that's precisely the problem. The role of the government is the representation of the people, and to the extent that the senate fails to do that, it is a failed part of the government.
The role of government is to protect states from foreign or domestic invasion and to ensure no government tramples the rights of the people.
But, we are so far past what the government is supposed to do we have people trying to figure out how to get more power for themselves. The Federal government was meant to be inconsequential to your daily life.
Your assertions about the role of the federal government represent one view of that role, and a very historical one at that. That doesn't make it wrong, but it would probably be more useful to say something like "I continue to believe that the view of the some of the framers, and many of the land owning class in the 1700's, that the federal government's role should be very small, continues to be correct even in the 2020s".
More useful because lots of people don't agree with that perspective.
Senators did represent the people but once removed. The people can be swayed by a smooth talker or a pretty face. The state legislature selecting senators ensured that senators represented the collective wishes of the state and reinforced state sovereignty by giving the state government a voice in congress. The Senate acted as a check on the people's whims represented in the House.
Federalists 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 75, and 76 address the Senate but the reason for the Senate is summarized at https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/idea-of-the....
Unless a Constitution describing a large government is ratified I will stick to my belief that a large portion of the government is unconstitutional and unnecessary. The Constitution explicitly says that the only powers the federal government has are what is described in the Constitution. Anything beyond that shouldn't exist at the federal level.
A small federal government ensures that what the people of one state want has absolutely zero effect on any other state. It ensures that the people that live closest to each other are deciding the rules they live by. That makes for a happier populous as the people feel they actually have a say in how their lives are governed. A large central government is costly, ineffective and overbearing.
> A small federal government ensures that what the people of one state want has absolutely zero effect on any other state.
This is ridiculous oversimplification. The people of the states move, they travel, they do business, they have family and friends, across state lines. They also dump waste, use water, pollute the air, kill the wildlife .. across state lines. Recently, procurement of health care across state lines has also become a matter of increased necessity, thanks to the decisions of some states.
> A large central government is costly, ineffective and overbearing.
and is also the only thing that can provide an effective counterweight to interstate and transnational corporate power.
At the big picture level, I think you're fundamentally missing that the context that provided most of the reasons for the original existence of states at all has morphed so dramatically that continuing to insist that the only true conception of the USA is as a rather limited aggregation of states is just denying both time and reality.
We had a civil war to deny some of the people in some of the states the opportunity to hold others as slaves and/or leave the union. When the disagreements between states reaches certain levels on some issues, it is not possible for the union to continue unchanged. Those disagreements will lead either to war or dis-union. That was true long before the federal government expanded as it has in the C20, back when we were much closer to the loose aggregation that you seem to prefer.
why? how is this superior to the alternatives?
If we were to ignore the many costs of direct democracy for everything, the best way to fulfill this role would be ... direct democracy (i.e. ask everybody everything all the time).
However, those costs are real, and I consider representative democracy to be an acceptable substitute most of the time. Nevertheless, stacking layers of representative selection on top of themselves reduces the acceptability of this. Choosing the people who will choose the people who will choose the people who will choose the people who will make decisions is, I think, obviously absurd.
So the question is: is there any way in which two layers of representation might be better than one? I can see none. I do not believe that the votes of a state's already elected representatives to pick the people who will in turn represent the state in the US Congress to be superior in any way than having the same people who vote for the state representatives also vote for the US ones.
In general, I view representatives with a wariness roughly inversely proportional to the number of people they represent. My county commissioner? Very low standing, but if they get something good done, great. My state rep? Not a bad person, but vulnerable to local threats. State senator? slightly better, but still very "local". US rep? Now we're talking. US senator? about as good as it gets, in a state-based system.
There’s a vast stretch of land past the Mississippi River that the English Aristocracy had no say in the division of past 1776. You could broadly argue that the land West of the original 13 states up to the Mississippi was drawn by the English, but even after independence Americans chose the borders of states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and many more.
It doesn't forbid it, it just requires states losing equal representation to consent to the change.
Of course, it also doesn’t limit, say, reducing the powers of the Senate, including transferring them entirely to either the House of Representatives or a new third house of Congress, leaving Senators as purely decorative fixtures.
Ok, fine, it forbids it in this Universe then.
Not at all. Republicans have won the Congressional popular vote more times than democrats since 1992, and are about to win it again. There has only been one election since 1992 where Republicans won more House seats while losing the Congressional popular vote. They’re 2% ahead in the generic Congressional ballot right now. You can’t blame that on gerrymandering or whatever.
Republicans consistently lose the Presidential popular vote because their incentive is to run the most right-wing person who can win the vote that actually counts, the Electoral College vote. For Congress, republicans have to contest at least some seats in New York and California. But for the Presidency they don’t care if a single person in those states votes for them.
If we used a nationwide popular vote, the GOP would just run someone closer to the median of their House delegation, which consistently does win the popular vote.
To get an idea of what things might look like in a counter-factual world, look at this three-way poll in a Cheney/Trump/Biden matchup: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-premise-poll-li.... Biden would get 36%, Cheney 20%, and Trump 45%. Shifting to a popular vote would move the coalitions around a bit: Republicans would have to care a little more about holding onto Romney/Biden suburbs. But it doesn’t mean consistent democratic majorities.
Sounds pretty great to me.
The question is just should that 50% line be about the middle of all citizens, or should that “middle” be randomly skewed towards people who happen to live nearer to farms.
Not since Appomattox and the subsequent enactment of the Civil War Amendments — and arguably not even then (see the Supremacy Clause and the Oath of Office Clause in the original Constitution).
State "sovereignty" is basically a fiction that occasionally gets dragged out as a convenient battle cry — often by racists — to try to justify rejecting national standards of conduct. Just one example: In 1957, President Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Arkansas National Guard, and sent in the 101st Airborne, to enforce compulsory desegregation of Little Rock schools, after local officials and the state's governor cited "state sovereignty" as a justification for flouting the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. [0] The Supreme Court's subsequent Cooper v. Aaron decision rejecting the Arkansas view was — uniquely in the Court's history — signed, not merely joined, by all nine justices. [1]
The intention was for state legislatures to nominate electors who would then vote for president.
It wasn't until mid 1800's that states started elections (of electors) by popular vote. Note: still through an elector proxy.
Also this is not a government run by popular vote, it is a mixture of state and population based government and also representation democracy not direct democracy.
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.
The fact that people feel that states shouldn't have equal say and equal power is to me a huge breakdown of society.
Having California run the entire country would be a nightmare.
The only thing that wins popular votes is ... having a majority of voters voting for it. Doesn't sound so bad does it? At least until you start to introduce the petty tribalism of "I don't want those folks who ain't from round here telling us what we can and can't do".
The real question is: there are obviously different "ideal sized bodies" for a popular vote controlled democracy, depending on the issue at hand. It probably is right that "folks from round here" get to decide a bunch of issues, without having to convince the whole country. And there are issues where you really should only be able to move forward with a popular vote across the whole country. So the question is: what's the right scale/scope of the voting entities for different kinds of issues?
I don't know the right answer, but I'm fairly sure that the states we have right now are not the correct choice for a lot of issues.
tyranny of the masses is equally as bad as tyranny of the one especially considering how tribalistic people are.
That's why the framers of the Constitution decided against what you're proposing.
as to the right size question. there is no right size. it's totally arbitrary. States are what we have and that's fine.
"Tyranny of the masses" is a red-herring. If your constitution (and its enforcement mechanisms) are good, the masses can't do anything to the minorities other than make them irritated (which is a condition we all live in from time to time). And if your constitution isn't good, then your "republic-not-a-democracy" is going to suck for some (or even all) people, too.
I don't agree that there are "no right sizes". I do agree that we don't know what they are yet.
States are not what we have, states are one-sized thing that we have, but we also have villages, towns, cities, counties and even in some cases and for some purposes, regions. And while you may think that its fine, others do not.
They are playing a game to win the electoral college, expect if it were popular vote they would play a different game with different policies
Right, and that different game would look nothing like the current Republican Party, hence why it’s a totally fair statement to say that the Republican Party as we know it today would never stay in power in such a system. They’d have to change, and that change would probably make them look a lot more like Democrats.
Put differently, the current politics and policies of the Republican Party only yield electable candidates in a country that gives outsized power to rural voters.
It's still a good thing.
Having people directly elect their representatives is still very much a republic and in no definition I've ever seen considered direct democracy. We're talking about people electing their representatives, not their laws.
Was Morgan Kousser teaching at Tech when you were there?
Two words: Jim Crow
When they say "trample on the rights of the minority" they mean "enact legislation unpopular among conservatives."
And that's why black and white people couldn't intermarry until 1967.
Nit: "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."
yup, that was by intention. That's also exactly why the senate was erected; they didn't want smaller states to be ignored by campaigns that could ultimately just focus on enough electoral votes to win the election.
>This rationale/compromise may have made sense in the late 1800s, but it's difficult for me to see how this is a good thing now. I wonder how many presidential elections we can go where the "winner" receives fewer votes than the "loser" before people seriously question what the purpose of our democracy is.
I'm not sure. the exact same gaming would work today if we aboloished the Electoral College tomorrow. The same gaming could happen today; you focus on CA, NY, TX, and FL and you have a large chunk of the population talked to in one swoop. But that leaves 40+ states de-prioritized. figuring out how to solve that without putting the fate of the country in Ohio's hands is a delicate balance to seek.
I'd personal prefer for spillover voting to help ease off the polarization of it all, but that would be an even more uphill battle. Obviously both parties would not want to lose any potential power.
If you think CA is too populous for it's people deserve an equal vote, CA should be 6 states. But the slavers fought that too (Missouri Compromise).
State boundaries are legal constructs inherited from obsolete aristocracy, not meaningful cultural boundaries.
It makes no sense to solve a hypothetical tyranny of large states by replacing it with an actual tyranny of small states. The Constitution is We the People, not the We the States.
This is the kind of BS law that can only pass when small states get to run roughshod over large ones.
What you're really going for is that the required service provision level by states should be as low as possible, and if any states wish to exceed that, other states should not need to subsidize it.
Which would perhaps be OK if we had a better democracy, and the decision of a state to provide a very low level of public services truly reflected the desires of its inhabitants. However, all evidence points to the idea that states which actually operate at these lower levels also do their very best to limit the political influence of those would seek higher public service levels.
What you're actually doing is allowing the priviledge of wealth (and power) in some states to percolate up to the federal level to make it harder for other states (and their own) to respond to public desire.
Sorry, that is simply not true. Virginia, a slave state, was by far the most populous state at the time the Constitution was adopted.
Only if you count slaves and I don't see why you would in this context.
It was the slave states that wanted slaves fully counted, while the free states didn't want them to count at all.
People who go off about "3/5 of a person" don't realize that doing that made the slave states weaker, not stronger.
That would be true only if the slaves could vote. Since they could not it made those states stronger.
Children can't vote to this day but still count in terms of representation in the House.
That ended at Appomattox and with the ensuing Civil War Amendments - see the 14th Amendment.
1) At the time of the founding, the free-state/slave-state dichotomy was almost perfectly orthogonal to the big-state/little-state dichotomy. The plan for proportional representation in both houses was the Virginia Plan.
2) The Missouri Compromise had nothing to do with California being one state. When California was admitted to the union, it had significantly less population than South Dakota and North Dakota did when they were admitted to the union. The subsequent growth of California was an accident of history.
3) State boundaries are absolutely meaningful cultural boundaries. My wife is Oregonian and I’m from Virginia and we’re really different. Even the blue parts of both states are very different.
Also, we have freedom of movement in this country. The precision of the state boundaries doesn’t matter so much given that people can self select to the states that reflect their values.
Here in Canada we have the same setup but without the historical baggage of slavery justifying it, so I don't think your reason holds up. There are good reasons for avoiding a tyranny of the majority.
For instance, the less populous states tend to be more rural and make most of your food. The more populous states are more urban and its people largely have little idea how food is made. I'm only slightly exaggerating, but maybe give the states that are making your food an equal say in your nation as those that are eating that food.
IMO, the main thing wrong with us federalism is that the western states ought to be broken up
Given how few people live year-round in Wyoming, but how many Californians own vacation ranches there, that actually might make sense.
The people who live within 500' of you do not have exclusive control over what happens in that 500' radius circle. Control is ceded to entities like your town, or county, or state, or federal government, in no particular way. The federal government controls, for example, what happens in the air above where you live; your state probably controls the building code for where you live; your town likely controls where you can take a dog for a walk or the intensity of outdoor lighting.
There's no smooth gradient of control dropping off as you get further from where you live. It's messy and it's complicated.
In addition, your stated view of who should have control also acts as a major barrier to people who do not live in a place from ever doing so. I suspect you may have no problem with that, but it's not technically "the American way" (aspirationally, anyway).
Perhaps I was a bit concise in my comment, but your attempt at rebuttal against some restrictions that you made up is unnecessary.
The danger with letting people far away from a place hold jurisdiction over that land is that it encourages bad actors. For example, if Wyoming were truly represented proportionally then resource extraction would be freer to damage the Wyoming environment. While true Californians (for example) visit often, there are many parts of the state unseen by tourists. Those who live there may witness environmental abuses or needs particular to that area that we do not. They should forward those to their representatives, who can represent their needs. If we truly represented them proportionally, profit-motivated companies and other bad actors would be freer to mutilate the Wyoming environment as the residents would have even less of a voice.
The problem with places like California and one of the reasons for massive polarization in the state is that Cali's government is too centralized. There are many Wyomings within California (and other large, populated states) that feel unrepresented. Bad actors ruin their environment, and they are powerless to do anything because they have representation proportional to the population.
Land, landscapes, environments, and ecosystems deserve representation as well.
In theory this would appear to be true. But in practice, the opposite seems more common in history. Wyoming's government is more beholden to its rich and powerful interests, and has less power to resist their beck and call. Consequently resource extraction interests are able to behave in ways that a federal government may not (and in many cases, does not) tolerate.
One of the central roles of government is to add balance to the struggle between the interests of the majority and the power of existing wealth. The smaller and more local the government, the less ability it has to add this balance. My county could not possibly effectively taken on a multinational corporation that was or planned to act in ways against our collective interests. In fact, even my state is having problems doing that right now (but it is certainly in a better position than the county).
In a world of gentleman farmers and homesteads, perhaps local governments would be enough to mount a steadfast defence of the interests of the many over those of the few. But we live in a world of gigantic and almost unimaginably powerful corporations, and local (even state) governments are not effective tools when we need to bend their behavior to our will.
The problem of people feeling unrepresented within the government does not go away by subdividing things down to smaller units and thus allowing the State of Jefferson etc. to exist. It might help, somewhat, but it would not eliminate it. When views on, for example, the correct response to a public health emergency (or even the actual existence of a public health emergency), become sufficiently polarized and divergent, different sides in such a scenario are always going to feel unrepresented by whatever action/inaction a government takes.
In addition, it is not clear to me that actively encouraging The Great Sort by creating politically-motivated jurisdictions is a great idea for the long run.
The UN, however, is primarily a venue for the airing of grievances, the distribution of aid, and occasionally the finding of common purpose. It's not much like the US Senate, which consistently blocks legislation supported by a majority of the population.
The Republicans are competing under the rules that exist - and they’re very, very good at it. Do you think they would blindly wander from defeat to defeat without seriously changing tactics?
That's a meaningless observation. If the rules were different such that the popular vote mattered more, then Republicans would play a different game. Roughly the same equilibrium would be achieved in the end.
This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2016. Similarly, if you look at Congress, especially the Senate, Republicans have outsized power due to the additional votes that those in less populated/rural areas get.
The fact is that our Constitution reduces voting rights for those that live in populous urban areas and gives outsized voting rights to those that live in rural/sparsely populated areas. California has nearly 70 times the number of people as Wyoming, but they both get 2 senators. Even looking at the Electoral College, California only has 18 times as many electors as Wyoming, despite having 70x the people.
This rationale/compromise may have made sense in the late 1800s, but it's difficult for me to see how this is a good thing now. I wonder how many presidential elections we can go where the "winner" receives fewer votes than the "loser" before people seriously question what the purpose of our democracy is.
One other note, the equal-number-of-senators-per-state is the one thing that the Constitution explicitly forbids changing by amendment, the last clause of Article V.