Direct election of Senators totally screws that up the scheme. State governments are no longer represented in the federal government (So it's really not "federal" anymore) separation of powers between the federal and state governments has gone by the wayside and the sates have ceased to be sovereign in any meaningful sense.
I completely agree. The beginning of the explosion of government growth can be directly traced to the passage of the 16th (hey, I can get as much funding as I want!) and 17th (hey, those pesky states can't limit what we do!) amendments. The federal (divided powers) model was supposed to protect the citizenry from the abuses of governmental power. Those two amendments effectively dismantled the system, all in the name of "increased democracy".
Instant runoff is a bad system. Throwing away part of someone's preference is a sure way to record an inaccurate preference. You need to evaluate them all simultaneously not sequentially - a Condorcet method. A preference for 4th place over 5th is just as important as a preference for 1st place over 2nd. You can't throw away the former just because they were "low" numbers! You may think Al Gore and Ralph Nader both stink, but if you think Ralph stinks less, that should still count for something!
I agree with most of what you said, regarding the Senate (pure democracy is evil, republicanism is a safeguard against it), compulsory service (that's called "slavery"), etc. But term limits are just a plain bad idea. Why should a good representative (hard to imagine, I know!) be tossed out arbitrarily? The ballot box is the term limiter. He have such a high incumbent reelection rate because our voting system sucks. Implement a system that gives voters a real choice between candidates, so they have to campaign on the merits of their ideas, and that will remedy itself. As it is now, everyone "knows" it will come down to Kang or Kodos in the end, so that's how they vote "to make it count". We never learn the lesson that voting dishonestly never gets us what we want. Voting defensively against the greater evil just means you lose slowly - but you still lose. We need a system that encourages people to vote their hopes, not their fears. Personally I'm a fan of Condorcet methods.
What is the largest number a person can adequately represent? I actually believe that 30K might be on the high side of that estimation.
Very insightful! I've been saying this for a long time now. When the 17th Amendment was ratified, populists thought that direct election of US Senators would be a great move for democracy! Instead, they shot themselves in the foot. Do you really think your Senator cares a fig about your opinion? You're one among millions. Back when s/he was accountable to the state's legislature though, you can be darn sure he paid attention to their few dozen opinions. Losing the support of any one legislator was significant.
Making Senators into super-Representatives was just silly. The House has a 2-year term because the electorate is fickle. Senators have a 6-year term because (in theory) your legislators are wise enough to make more thoughtful decisions. If we trust them enough to make laws for the state, can't we trust them enough to select Senators? But no, now we are stuck with our fickle decisions for 6 whole years - and 6 years after they make dumb decisions they can be sure we've forgotten about them, so they are even less accountable than ever!
Increase the House membership to 1000, and repeal the 17th Amendment. Those are the two best things we could do to "fix" the Congress in a relatively easy manner.
He's talking about representation in the HoR - the EC is a completely separate issue.
The EC is an attempt to use two different representation schemes (equal between persons, and equal between states) for a single office (the presidency). Naturally if you look at how much influence any one person has in such a system (every X number of people should be equal, like in the House!), it looks grossly biased. Just as obviously, if you look at how much influence any one state has in the EC (every state should be equal, like in the Senate!), it seems unfair as well. You can't have equality by both systems at the same time.
On the principle of the thing, he is right. Within the House, every X people should have as much voice as X people from another state. Whether his algorithm is better or not, I have no idea.
We'd need 10,000 seats now, at that original proportionality. That's a bit unrealistic, even with modern technology. However, we do have technology that was unavailable in 1911, when the size was frozen at 435 representatives. We could easily reset that number to, say, 1000. This would immediately have the effect of making reps more in touch with their constituents, as well as diminishing the "small state bias" that many see as a failing of the Electoral College. It would be a very smart thing to do, IMHO.
Some states have laws against that, and they work quite well. Compare the district boundaries in Iowa to those in Georgia.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
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· Score: 1
I tend to agree. I want my writing and my formatting to be separate steps. Word almost forces you to format as you go, as it tries to "helpfully" clean up for you as you write. In fact, I basically want a smart markup editor so that I can denote what something is, and later decide how I want those things to look. Much like what I do with HTML+CSS.
When someone (particularly the Debate Commission or the Media) decides that Candidate X hasn't a chance of winning, it falls under the category of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Precisely. And thus they tacitly endorse their servitude to the Duopoly. Until people actually vote in protest (i.e. third party, cries of "but it's a wasted vote!" be damned) nothing is going to change.
I repeat, staying home is not a protest. It's just the incumbents laughing at you all the way back to their offices at the capitol.
Funny...you're the guy suggesting people you disagree with be "wiped from the world" but you're worried about me? The irony here is illustrated quite well by that photo on your homepage.
Your mistake is thinking there is such a thing as an unbiased news source. Tip for you: they're all biased. The real thing is exercising a little discernment and critical thinking!
You miss the point. My 87-year-old arthritic grandfather is still dangerous with a gun. Any would-be burglars or government freedom-grabbers would do well to be afraid of him. If he only had a knife...well, easy pickins.
In other words, unless you actually use the guns against the government you're pretty much a paper tiger, and, as another poster said, just another arsehole gun-owning nut-job.
But when you do, you're labelled another domestic terrorist gun-owning nut-job.
Awfully hard for freedom-lovers to stand up against that kind of PR, thanks to the rabidly anti-gun media.
Yep, you're seeing the hand of Political Correctness Censorship. The Other Side(TM) is bigger than you, so you lose. Messianic Judaism faces many of the same issues, enough so that we started cataloging instances of these editorial disagreements.
I do agree that there is not nearly enough contrast between the foreground and background applications. F10 does a good job of accentuating that, but why doesn't it happen (to a degree) all the time?
Those came as a result of the time and nutrition that I mentioned. Any distinction you make between yourself and an embryo is arbitrary. You are the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely agree. The beginning of the explosion of government growth can be directly traced to the passage of the 16th (hey, I can get as much funding as I want!) and 17th (hey, those pesky states can't limit what we do!) amendments. The federal (divided powers) model was supposed to protect the citizenry from the abuses of governmental power. Those two amendments effectively dismantled the system, all in the name of "increased democracy".
Instant runoff is a bad system. Throwing away part of someone's preference is a sure way to record an inaccurate preference. You need to evaluate them all simultaneously not sequentially - a Condorcet method. A preference for 4th place over 5th is just as important as a preference for 1st place over 2nd. You can't throw away the former just because they were "low" numbers! You may think Al Gore and Ralph Nader both stink, but if you think Ralph stinks less, that should still count for something!
I agree with most of what you said, regarding the Senate (pure democracy is evil, republicanism is a safeguard against it), compulsory service (that's called "slavery"), etc. But term limits are just a plain bad idea. Why should a good representative (hard to imagine, I know!) be tossed out arbitrarily? The ballot box is the term limiter. He have such a high incumbent reelection rate because our voting system sucks. Implement a system that gives voters a real choice between candidates, so they have to campaign on the merits of their ideas, and that will remedy itself. As it is now, everyone "knows" it will come down to Kang or Kodos in the end, so that's how they vote "to make it count". We never learn the lesson that voting dishonestly never gets us what we want. Voting defensively against the greater evil just means you lose slowly - but you still lose. We need a system that encourages people to vote their hopes, not their fears. Personally I'm a fan of Condorcet methods.
Very insightful! I've been saying this for a long time now. When the 17th Amendment was ratified, populists thought that direct election of US Senators would be a great move for democracy! Instead, they shot themselves in the foot. Do you really think your Senator cares a fig about your opinion? You're one among millions. Back when s/he was accountable to the state's legislature though, you can be darn sure he paid attention to their few dozen opinions. Losing the support of any one legislator was significant.
Making Senators into super-Representatives was just silly. The House has a 2-year term because the electorate is fickle. Senators have a 6-year term because (in theory) your legislators are wise enough to make more thoughtful decisions. If we trust them enough to make laws for the state, can't we trust them enough to select Senators? But no, now we are stuck with our fickle decisions for 6 whole years - and 6 years after they make dumb decisions they can be sure we've forgotten about them, so they are even less accountable than ever!
Increase the House membership to 1000, and repeal the 17th Amendment. Those are the two best things we could do to "fix" the Congress in a relatively easy manner.
He's talking about representation in the HoR - the EC is a completely separate issue.
The EC is an attempt to use two different representation schemes (equal between persons, and equal between states) for a single office (the presidency). Naturally if you look at how much influence any one person has in such a system (every X number of people should be equal, like in the House!), it looks grossly biased. Just as obviously, if you look at how much influence any one state has in the EC (every state should be equal, like in the Senate!), it seems unfair as well. You can't have equality by both systems at the same time.
On the principle of the thing, he is right. Within the House, every X people should have as much voice as X people from another state. Whether his algorithm is better or not, I have no idea.
We'd need 10,000 seats now, at that original proportionality. That's a bit unrealistic, even with modern technology. However, we do have technology that was unavailable in 1911, when the size was frozen at 435 representatives. We could easily reset that number to, say, 1000. This would immediately have the effect of making reps more in touch with their constituents, as well as diminishing the "small state bias" that many see as a failing of the Electoral College. It would be a very smart thing to do, IMHO.
Except the whole terrorist paranoia in the US (at least how the reaction to past events has influenced current policies) is completely unreasonable.
Some states have laws against that, and they work quite well. Compare the district boundaries in Iowa to those in Georgia.
I tend to agree. I want my writing and my formatting to be separate steps. Word almost forces you to format as you go, as it tries to "helpfully" clean up for you as you write. In fact, I basically want a smart markup editor so that I can denote what something is, and later decide how I want those things to look. Much like what I do with HTML+CSS.
Whatever happened to Minimo?
Hmm, I wonder how matchbox would work on my compact Macs...
When someone (particularly the Debate Commission or the Media) decides that Candidate X hasn't a chance of winning, it falls under the category of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Precisely. And thus they tacitly endorse their servitude to the Duopoly. Until people actually vote in protest (i.e. third party, cries of "but it's a wasted vote!" be damned) nothing is going to change.
I repeat, staying home is not a protest. It's just the incumbents laughing at you all the way back to their offices at the capitol.
Yeah, it sounds funny until you realize that this isn't that big a stretch. Then it becomes nervous laughter.
At least the Duke boys will be safe in that '69 Charger...
Punch the ol' android under the left armpit, and it's "shutdown -h" time for Commander Yelloweyes!
Funny...you're the guy suggesting people you disagree with be "wiped from the world" but you're worried about me? The irony here is illustrated quite well by that photo on your homepage.
Your mistake is thinking there is such a thing as an unbiased news source. Tip for you: they're all biased. The real thing is exercising a little discernment and critical thinking!
You miss the point. My 87-year-old arthritic grandfather is still dangerous with a gun. Any would-be burglars or government freedom-grabbers would do well to be afraid of him. If he only had a knife...well, easy pickins.
But when you do, you're labelled another domestic terrorist gun-owning nut-job.
Awfully hard for freedom-lovers to stand up against that kind of PR, thanks to the rabidly anti-gun media.
Yep, you're seeing the hand of Political Correctness Censorship. The Other Side(TM) is bigger than you, so you lose. Messianic Judaism faces many of the same issues, enough so that we started cataloging instances of these editorial disagreements.
I do agree that there is not nearly enough contrast between the foreground and background applications. F10 does a good job of accentuating that, but why doesn't it happen (to a degree) all the time?
A wiki just for the 2008 US Congressional elections? Maybe this is a silly question, but what was wrong with the Campaigns Wiki?
Those came as a result of the time and nutrition that I mentioned. Any distinction you make between yourself and an embryo is arbitrary. You are the same.
Just like you were once. Thus, you == blob of cells. Nothing separates you from an embryo, save time and nutrition.