General Politics Three: But what is left/right?

[Arwon]

I agree, and I don't know what the most likely fix is. I think we need to abolish the Electoral College, create term limits for SCOTUS justices, require SCOTUS justices to abide by the same code of conduct that other Federal judges are required to observe, and clarify that the Senate confirmation of SCOTUS justices isn't optional. Those four things would solve a few problems, and I don't think any of them are in any way unreasonable, but I think they're all essentially impossible. It would be asking the party in power and the branches of government to impose new rules upon themselves. In the event the Electoral College can't be blown out the proverbial airlock, individual states are allowed to appoint their EC representatives proportionally. Currently, two states do that, Maine and Nebraska. Again, what are the odds 40-something other states would do that? (I don't actually know how many states would need to do that for the results of the General Election to essentially mimic the popular vote, even if it's still technically being done through the EC.)

There is an effort to get enough states to agree to award their EC votes to the winner of the popular vote, all together, that the total EC votes between them would be enough to determine the General Election. I think they've reached about half of the number they'd need, but I think I might as well ask Betty Gilpin to marry me and see which happens first. (Oh, here it is: It's the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That says they've got 77% of the votes they'd need, as of this month. More than I thought. Still not going to hold my breath.)

As for the two-party system, I have no idea what a reasonable solution to that is.

I think this is pretty presidentialism focused, the electoral college is silly but you're still inescapably electing just one person there. Short of switching to parliamentary republic, or a Swiss collective executive, about the best that can be done with a presidency is a two round system.

 

[Arwon]

Proportional votes. Two-party systems exist because of the FPTP.

There's two party systems and then there's two party systems.

Other FPTP places like the UK and Canada still do have minor parties getting an appreciable fraction of the vote, albeit heavily impeded by the tactical voting dilemma etc.

But the US also has a bunch of ballot and funding and enrollment laws and procedures that result in close enough to zero votes for minor parties.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Armenian PM defends decision to give four villages to Azerbaijan

Nikol Pashinyan urges calm after making concessions in attempt to avoid war with his country’s heavily armed neighbour

www.theguardian.com

Pashinyan, defending his strategy for peace, said Armenia had shown itself to be candid and sincere, and was seeking to defend the territory of Armenia.

“Beyond the internationally recognised borders, Armenia has no aspirations, no claims, and we hope that in the border delimitation process, the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia will be restored,” he said.

He called for realism about what the Armenian armed forces could achieve. “I was approached by a woman who was forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, and she asked how realistic is it that we will have a possibility to go back to Nagorno-Karabakh and she said: please give me a direct and candid answer. I told her given the perceptions that prevail, I do not consider it realistic.

“I cannot lie to you, because if it were realistic, then the displacement from Nagorno-Karabakh would not have happened.”

But his drive to protect Armenia by building new alliances and seeking a peace settlement with Azerbaijan may fail if Azerbaijan abandons the lengthy peace talks in favour of land grabs. Azerbaijan has an 80% to 20% military advantage over his country, Pashinyan said.

 

[Lexicus]

A lot of those states have low budgets and low incomes. That's how clout has worked out in the interplay between the economies of consumption and the economies of production. Services availability, too. Enough that people clearly find the desirable over the available alternatives. Prima facie the political skew isn't yet large enough to correct through governance towards social equity as yet. It might need to get larger.

Now, in the areas where the richest also get the most dangling dongles of votes, you need a different argument. But this is the argument of "in totality, total social/health outcome."

That would imply that, like gerrymandering, all else is contrivance and perversion of the underlying principle.

I'm going to make this easy for you:

I believe some people's votes should count more than others because blank, blank, and blank.

Now you just fill in the blanks instead of talking around the question.

 

[Farm Boy]

I didn't.

So where are we now, I swear at you, I get redtexted... should we get lotion for this?

Money is social power. Vote weights, if anything, are social power. Do you find the senator-skew inherent in the upper house of the legislature and its trickle down effect on the EC is having a meaningful impact on governance to the point where it has a measurable impact selecting where people are choosing to live? I.e. actualizing their total social outcome? Do they live longer in those states? Or, does the "thumb on the scale" of the political portion perhaps need to be firmer yet? Assuming representation influences governance and governance has the capacity to impact those two things. Or, instead some other non-measurable we should be looking at?

 

[Lexicus]

I didn't.

So where are we now, I swear at you, I get redtexted... should we get lotion for this?

You're talking around the question. You're vaguely mentioning some factors that might be connected to an actual argument but you still haven't made any actual argument, just this kind of Trump-like word-cloud thing where your audience has to try to fill in the blanks (with the same result that different people read different things into what's being said).

Again, try a sentence in the following form:
I believe some people's votes should count more than others for these reasons...

 

[Hygro]

I'm glad we all agree to end the electoral college and from there can discuss redoing the Senate and from there, expanding the House.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I think this is pretty presidentialism focused, the electoral college is silly but you're still inescapably electing just one person there. Short of switching to parliamentary republic, or a Swiss collective executive, about the best that can be done with a presidency is a two round system.

That, in a nutshell, is why I think the election of a President should be a simple majority (or plurality, as the case may be) of the popular vote. There's no way to split the office, and the minority party has other controls preventing a 'tyranny of the majority.' It is of course the Republicans who want to expand the powers of the Presidency, from Nixon declaring that "when the President does it, it's not illegal", to the Neo-Cons, to Trump.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm glad we all agree to end the electoral college and from there can discuss redoing the Senate and from there, expanding the House.

Is that where we are?

 

[Hygro]

I jumped in late with no context, so if we're talking about people having more votes, that's what I'm thinking.

 

[Lexicus]

[snip] Moderator Action: Edited by Birdjaguar
I'm totally chill man, I just still don't know what you're actually trying to argue.
Anyway here's a map of state GDP per capita from 2021

File:GDP per capita by U.S. state.svg - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

[/mod2]

 

[Farm Boy]

The point of democratic governance is to promote a rough innate equity between people, right? Do the top five there show suffering in real terms from thier lack of control over the government? Do the bottom five seem to proportionally have too much? Does DC need more?

I think "chill" doesn't conflict, btw.

 

[Lexicus]

I fundamentally don't agree with making this conversation about states or other geographic entities. It has to be about individuals.

 

[Farm Boy]

So we don't want real outcomes involved? Just abstract principle?

 

[Hygro]

The current system has produced these very inequalities. Red states with over representation are doing things like denying federal money for the deliberate disadvantage of only their own average citizens, which wouldn't even happen with 1-person 1-vote, given the policy preference breakdowns we see in national polls. I see what you are saying but as a matter of practice I'm reminded of those memes where lovers of capitalism post pictures of America under Republican leadership and say "this is what would happen if there was socialism."

 

[Farm Boy]

No, the low population states do receive a lot of federal monies per head. Real outcomes. They horsetrade for it and they get it because they have a form of clout in the upper house. Clout the sort of the south sides of a few cities could use in thier local governance. It doesn't make it pretty, but it does make it less ugly.

This all plays out in regulatory devil in the details every day. Most things aren't purely social issues. They're logistics and compensation and infrastructure, too.

 

[Lexicus]

So we don't want real outcomes involved? Just abstract principle?

"Real outcomes" happen to individuals. To talk about rich or poor geographic entities is an abstraction at best, a distortion at worst (for example, contrary to your apparent belief, there are in fact plenty of low-income individuals living in high-income states).

 

[Farm Boy]

The real outcome of governance is systemic, yes.

If you don't like the GDP measure of the graphic you posted, I'm happy to use median income, life expectancy, suicide rates... what do you want to use as the measured systemic outcomes of these people? They all trend to the same place over time(all the individuals die), so to measure how the system is doing you need to pick a metric(s).

Or, as is a valid option, do we just want it to be an abstraction?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Money is social power. Vote weights, if anything, are social power. Do you find the senator-skew inherent in the upper house of the legislature and its trickle down effect on the EC is having a meaningful impact on governance to the point where it has a measurable impact selecting where people are choosing to live? I.e. actualizing their total social outcome? Do they live longer in those states? Or, does the "thumb on the scale" of the political portion perhaps need to be firmer yet? Assuming representation influences governance and governance has the capacity to impact those two things. Or, instead some other non-measurable we should be looking at?

Yeah, this is what I thought you were saying... and why I was referencing it earlier (Wyoming), but you didn't respond to that part at the time... or maybe I missed it?

In any case, you seem to be hitting the nail on the head here... except I think it works in the reverse of what you seem to be suggesting. That is to say, I agree that people don't choose where they live based on where they are going to get the most bang-for-their-buck, so to speak, in terms of their vote-share. People choose where they live based on a myriad of other factors, that don't even begin to take something like "disproportionate Congressional representation" or gerrymandering into account. Its only after people move to a particular place/district that they sometimes take stock of things and say/think "Hey! Wait a minute... I think I'm getting screwed electorally, by living in this location/state".

Of course the legislators already know that, in fact, its what they intend. That's the point. The legislators know that the people in the more populous states are getting the short end of the stick, in terms of how much their vote counts vis-a-vis people in the small population states... AND they also know that people don't take that into consideration when they choose where to live. People don't generally move just to get out of a gerrymandered district for example. So legislators can leverage that dynamic to push through legislation and in some cases, Presidents... that the majority (or plurality) of people don't want. If people actually did choose where they lived, based on where they would get the better deal in terms of voting power, it would balance things out... but people don't do that... the legislators know it... and that allows them to take advantage of it.

 

[Lexicus]

The real outcome of governance is systemic, yes.

If you don't like the GDP measure of the graphic you posted, I'm happy to use median income, life expectancy, suicide rates... what do you want to use as the measured systemic outcomes of these people? They all trend to the same place over time(all the individuals die), so to measure how the system is doing you need to pick a metric(s).

Or, as is a valid option, do we just want it to be an abstraction?

The measure is fine, its relevance to determining how much people's votes should count is what I'm dubious about.

I posted that graphic because it shows us that actually some of the highest GDP per capita states are also those favored by the electoral college, which I think casts some significant doubt on your argument that the electoral college acts as a counter to concentrated economic power.

I guess at the end of the day maybe we think about this differently. The way I see things, the GDP per capita of New York state not primarily because of governance issues but because of the fact that New York state contains New York City.

This segues into the next point that most of the states are arbitrary rectangles and that makes using states (as opposed to something like a metropolitan statistical area) as a proxy for the geographic apportionment of political power quite counterproductive to what you say you want, which is "correcting" for concentrated economic power.