I'm currently reading the Federalist Papers. (; Finished the section on the House of Representatives two days ago. According to the Federalist Paperrs, we are supposed to have one representative for each 30,000 people. In California, each representative represents over 600,000 people.
That's not what the framers of the Constitution intended. But then, I do not think our Founding Fathers had even an inkling of how large some of our populations might become.
That said -- it's a very substantial difference from the original intent, and I really do not believe that all of these people are being well-represented at a national level.
Currently, California receives 78 cents of every dollar we are taxed at the federal level. We pay a high level of federal taxes because we are taxed on our wealthy people -- and we have a lot of those. However, we also have a disproportionate amount of poverty, if cost of living is taken into account.
Frankly, I'm in total agreement with you in that the federal government is not taking peoples' concerns seriously. I believe they're not taking anyone's concerns seriously, large state or small.
If California receives 78 cents of every dollar, what do all the other states get of theirs? That actually seems rather high to me, as that means less than a quarter of every dollar goes to little things like defense and the federal system itself.
No, the Founding Fathers never conceived the mass of population that would be the United States. As slow as Congress is to get anything useful done now with 435 reps, we'd have something like more than ten thousand people in Congress if the scaling had not changed! How much would possibly get done then? Scaling was necessary to attempt to keep things from grinding to a total halt.
Being well represented at a national level is a whole other kettle of fish, and depends on the ethics and skill at negotiation of those elected. That isn't really part of the rules, but changing custom that shifts with the generations.
My comment started and to me still represents an objection to making both houses based on population. The founding fathers were trying to balance the interests of short term/bread and circuses against longer term/posterity. It also is partly a balance of interests of the larger and populated states against the smaller and more resource rich ones. Taken to the extreme, if a couple of smaller states were found to have the important "bleem" resource, the larger states could effectively railroad the smaller ones out of existence completely. Some of that can be seen in the building of the Alaskan pipeline. That is even more a denial of the representation than we have now.
The system is a hodgepodge of adaptations from the simpler and smaller society with a very much simpler agrarian pre-industrial country.
How would you propose to make a change to the system to balance the underdog states and protect them from the larger ones, in a way that doesn't depend only on all those elected being competent and ethical? Removing checks and balances on power is not the way, when so much of the power as already in the House for the last century.
"Taken to the extreme, if a couple of smaller states were found to have the important "bleem" resource, the larger states could effectively railroad the smaller ones out of existence completely."
States don't deserve protection, people do. That theoretical is set up in the small state's favor, with them having the "bleem" resource and others wanting to exploit them, but it's just a hypothetical. Another hypothetical is that one small state has the "bleem" and the rest of the country desperately needs it, but the small state bands together with a few other small states and refuses to do what's best for the people. In that case you don't have protection of the minority, you have a tyranny of the minority.
Every individual deserves the same representation, or as close to it as we can get. We shouldn't set things up so that 600,000 in Texas can never be the underdog while 600,000 people in Alaska are always given advantages for being the underdog. Saying that there are a few specific people who are designated as protected minorities because of arbitrary borders does not make the system more fair.
How about a somewhat more reasonable hypothetical. A law is drafted that impacts the emissions on "vehicles." Urban dwellers who mostly drive cars or have ready access to public transportation like the law... It doesn't have a huge negative impact on them, and green is good.
However, rural dwellers, who more frequently use trucks and other large vehicles at work (i.e. to haul things or cover rough terrain) are punished more harshly. Due to an oversight when the bill was drafted, tractors and other heavy machinery are extremely harshly punished.
In a strictly population based system, there is no check to prevent such a law from passing. If places like LA and NY are in favor of the law, it takes an extremely unified front from the rural states to overturn it. If a few of the borderline states decide to side with the urban point of view, then the rural areas will likely have no recourse.
It does benefit the most people. However, the relative benefit to the many is minor while the impact to the few is much larger.
I got the 78 cents number from a speech the Governator made last week. I have not done serious investigation into the subject, but this seems like it might be the place to go for the details.
I'm uncertain as to whether the military money is wrapped up in those numbers or not. Thing is, we have a huge military presence here in SoCal, so if the military money is wrapped into that, that might actually make sense. The military is a huge part of the San Diego economy.
As slow as Congress is to get anything useful done now with 435 reps, we'd have something like more than ten thousand people in Congress if the scaling had not changed!
My objection is not so much that the scaling has changed, as how the scaling has changed. At this point, each large-population states' representatives are representing as many as 20% more people apiece than low-population states. To use the largest example, California, as we mentioned, has one rep for each 697,389 people. Wyoming, on the other hand, has one rep for its population of approximately 544,207 people (as of last census on both numbers).
By fixing the number of representatives at 435, we have made the representation disproportionate. If we kept the scaling the same or even slightly larger than it is now, but allowed the number of representatives to fluctuate, it would provide a more accurate overall ratio.
But I still don't think that the people, as a whole, are getting properly heard in Washington. I don't think that adding a boatload more reps is the answer, because I agree with you that it would bog things down at a ridiculous rate. I'm not sure what the right answer is, and that's something I've been thinking about for a while.
My comment started and to me still represents an objection to making both houses based on population.
I agree with you on that subject. I was only talking about the House, not the Senate.
How would you propose to make a change to the system to balance the underdog states and protect them from the larger ones, in a way that doesn't depend only on all those elected being competent and ethical?
I don't believe you can force people to do a quality job without competency or ethics. Regardless of the system, it's still people that are putting it into effect.
The change I would like to see in the system is a return to the United STATES of America, as opposed to the United States of AMERICA, if that makes any sense. I would like substantially less federal government, and I'd like them to get back to the only things they're pretty much permitted by the Constitution -- running the military and ensuring responsible inter-state commerce. I think a lot more responsibility needs to go back to the states.
And I really think that ideally, chopping up some of the larger states and some of the cities in the larger states would be much more effective. People self-govern better in smaller groups, because it's easier to keep an eye on who's being responsible and ethical and who isn't, and deal with the problems as they arise. It's also easier for smaller governments to be more flexible and responsive to change and sudden needs.
But dividing up into smaller entities is not something that will actually occur in practice. I really don't have a good solution that is still practical, but I believe it's an issue well worth discussing.
Anyway! (: Aaron's blog is really not the place to be discussing all of this. Ehehe. Sorry, Aaron! ^_^; If you want to keep talking about it, drop me a line over at my blog.
The change I would like to see in the system is a return to the United STATES of America, as opposed to the United States of AMERICA, if that makes any sense. I would like substantially less federal government, and I'd like them to get back to the only things they're pretty much permitted by the Constitution -- running the military and ensuring responsible inter-state commerce. I think a lot more responsibility needs to go back to the states.
And I really think that ideally, chopping up some of the larger states and some of the cities in the larger states would be much more effective. People self-govern better in smaller groups, because it's easier to keep an eye on who's being responsible and ethical and who isn't, and deal with the problems as they arise. It's also easier for smaller governments to be more flexible and responsive to change and sudden needs.
Three questions on this:
1) The Constitution empowers the Congress to provide for "Defense and General Welfare", how do you define "General Welfare"?
2) What happens when problem larger than the states come across? I'm thinking environmentally where we would have to reduce pollution as a country as a whole or in the case of a real pandemic or biological terror attack.
3) What powers could be delegated back to the states that could make them run more effectively? A good number of the States budgets are near a breaking point. State governments are going to have to terminate services such as unemployment, medicaid, education, etc. Reconfiguring the government so it only provided for Military, Police, and maybe Fire sounds like a really good way to turn the country into a confederation of banana republics.
Here's my ultimate problem with the who "Less Government"-idea, we're a nation of 370+ million people on our way to becoming 400 million in the next decade or sooner. At that level there is no such thing as small government.
Even if you chopped everything up into smaller states and townships, it's no guarantee of better Government. I've seen Small City and County government be just as dysfunctional due to personality conflicts, I've also seen them sell themselves out just as readily to a large corporation (For much cheaper, too)
That's not what the framers of the Constitution intended. But then, I do not think our Founding Fathers had even an inkling of how large some of our populations might become.
That said -- it's a very substantial difference from the original intent, and I really do not believe that all of these people are being well-represented at a national level.
Currently, California receives 78 cents of every dollar we are taxed at the federal level. We pay a high level of federal taxes because we are taxed on our wealthy people -- and we have a lot of those. However, we also have a disproportionate amount of poverty, if cost of living is taken into account.
Frankly, I'm in total agreement with you in that the federal government is not taking peoples' concerns seriously. I believe they're not taking anyone's concerns seriously, large state or small.
Reply
No, the Founding Fathers never conceived the mass of population that would be the United States. As slow as Congress is to get anything useful done now with 435 reps, we'd have something like more than ten thousand people in Congress if the scaling had not changed! How much would possibly get done then? Scaling was necessary to attempt to keep things from grinding to a total halt.
Being well represented at a national level is a whole other kettle of fish, and depends on the ethics and skill at negotiation of those elected. That isn't really part of the rules, but changing custom that shifts with the generations.
My comment started and to me still represents an objection to making both houses based on population. The founding fathers were trying to balance the interests of short term/bread and circuses against longer term/posterity. It also is partly a balance of interests of the larger and populated states against the smaller and more resource rich ones. Taken to the extreme, if a couple of smaller states were found to have the important "bleem" resource, the larger states could effectively railroad the smaller ones out of existence completely. Some of that can be seen in the building of the Alaskan pipeline. That is even more a denial of the representation than we have now.
The system is a hodgepodge of adaptations from the simpler and smaller society with a very much simpler agrarian pre-industrial country.
How would you propose to make a change to the system to balance the underdog states and protect them from the larger ones, in a way that doesn't depend only on all those elected being competent and ethical? Removing checks and balances on power is not the way, when so much of the power as already in the House for the last century.
Reply
States don't deserve protection, people do. That theoretical is set up in the small state's favor, with them having the "bleem" resource and others wanting to exploit them, but it's just a hypothetical. Another hypothetical is that one small state has the "bleem" and the rest of the country desperately needs it, but the small state bands together with a few other small states and refuses to do what's best for the people. In that case you don't have protection of the minority, you have a tyranny of the minority.
Every individual deserves the same representation, or as close to it as we can get. We shouldn't set things up so that 600,000 in Texas can never be the underdog while 600,000 people in Alaska are always given advantages for being the underdog. Saying that there are a few specific people who are designated as protected minorities because of arbitrary borders does not make the system more fair.
Reply
However, rural dwellers, who more frequently use trucks and other large vehicles at work (i.e. to haul things or cover rough terrain) are punished more harshly. Due to an oversight when the bill was drafted, tractors and other heavy machinery are extremely harshly punished.
In a strictly population based system, there is no check to prevent such a law from passing. If places like LA and NY are in favor of the law, it takes an extremely unified front from the rural states to overturn it. If a few of the borderline states decide to side with the urban point of view, then the rural areas will likely have no recourse.
It does benefit the most people. However, the relative benefit to the many is minor while the impact to the few is much larger.
Reply
I'm uncertain as to whether the military money is wrapped up in those numbers or not. Thing is, we have a huge military presence here in SoCal, so if the military money is wrapped into that, that might actually make sense. The military is a huge part of the San Diego economy.
As slow as Congress is to get anything useful done now with 435 reps, we'd have something like more than ten thousand people in Congress if the scaling had not changed!
My objection is not so much that the scaling has changed, as how the scaling has changed. At this point, each large-population states' representatives are representing as many as 20% more people apiece than low-population states. To use the largest example, California, as we mentioned, has one rep for each 697,389 people. Wyoming, on the other hand, has one rep for its population of approximately 544,207 people (as of last census on both numbers).
By fixing the number of representatives at 435, we have made the representation disproportionate. If we kept the scaling the same or even slightly larger than it is now, but allowed the number of representatives to fluctuate, it would provide a more accurate overall ratio.
But I still don't think that the people, as a whole, are getting properly heard in Washington. I don't think that adding a boatload more reps is the answer, because I agree with you that it would bog things down at a ridiculous rate. I'm not sure what the right answer is, and that's something I've been thinking about for a while.
My comment started and to me still represents an objection to making both houses based on population.
I agree with you on that subject. I was only talking about the House, not the Senate.
How would you propose to make a change to the system to balance the underdog states and protect them from the larger ones, in a way that doesn't depend only on all those elected being competent and ethical?
I don't believe you can force people to do a quality job without competency or ethics. Regardless of the system, it's still people that are putting it into effect.
The change I would like to see in the system is a return to the United STATES of America, as opposed to the United States of AMERICA, if that makes any sense. I would like substantially less federal government, and I'd like them to get back to the only things they're pretty much permitted by the Constitution -- running the military and ensuring responsible inter-state commerce. I think a lot more responsibility needs to go back to the states.
And I really think that ideally, chopping up some of the larger states and some of the cities in the larger states would be much more effective. People self-govern better in smaller groups, because it's easier to keep an eye on who's being responsible and ethical and who isn't, and deal with the problems as they arise. It's also easier for smaller governments to be more flexible and responsive to change and sudden needs.
But dividing up into smaller entities is not something that will actually occur in practice. I really don't have a good solution that is still practical, but I believe it's an issue well worth discussing.
Anyway! (: Aaron's blog is really not the place to be discussing all of this. Ehehe. Sorry, Aaron! ^_^; If you want to keep talking about it, drop me a line over at my blog.
Reply
And I really think that ideally, chopping up some of the larger states and some of the cities in the larger states would be much more effective. People self-govern better in smaller groups, because it's easier to keep an eye on who's being responsible and ethical and who isn't, and deal with the problems as they arise. It's also easier for smaller governments to be more flexible and responsive to change and sudden needs.
Three questions on this:
1) The Constitution empowers the Congress to provide for "Defense and General Welfare", how do you define "General Welfare"?
2) What happens when problem larger than the states come across? I'm thinking environmentally where we would have to reduce pollution as a country as a whole or in the case of a real pandemic or biological terror attack.
3) What powers could be delegated back to the states that could make them run more effectively? A good number of the States budgets are near a breaking point. State governments are going to have to terminate services such as unemployment, medicaid, education, etc. Reconfiguring the government so it only provided for Military, Police, and maybe Fire sounds like a really good way to turn the country into a confederation of banana republics.
Here's my ultimate problem with the who "Less Government"-idea, we're a nation of 370+ million people on our way to becoming 400 million in the next decade or sooner. At that level there is no such thing as small government.
Even if you chopped everything up into smaller states and townships, it's no guarantee of better Government. I've seen Small City and County government be just as dysfunctional due to personality conflicts, I've also seen them sell themselves out just as readily to a large corporation (For much cheaper, too)
Reply
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