There are a lot of issues that are fundamentally important to people living in one area that those in another don't care about. Water rights for agriculture are a good example.
The most important part, though? If you live in the city and your vote counts 9/10ths of the vote of a person in a rural community, you're probably not going to complain about lack of representation. If you live in a rural community and you have one representative and the city has 12, you may complain and that complaint may turn into violence or rebellion, because you feel you don't have adequate representation even though statistically speaking, you do.
There's a lot of issues important to those demographics, that are, in the world we live in, not important to others.
If you give cis white people 9/10th of the vote of a trans black person, people will absolutely complain about lack of representation. They will lose their minds. Have you been paying any attention to gender/race issues over the past... Well, ever? There are political movements, with street marches, and torches focused on 'taking the country back' from people who are, by most metrics, are getting the short end of the stick.
It's a different story when you look at your literal neighbor and they have more representation than you.
And actually, yes, most of this anger is linked to a feeling that people in rural areas have too little representation compared to major population centers, where most people live. So this illustrates what happens when you've got proportional representation but a completely unbalanced population distribution; it's fine when everything is going well, but when the mills close down and the farms go out of business, you get a lot of angry people who feel they have no political outlet.
Jealousy is not a particularly sound or convincing ideological justification.
> And actually, yes, most of this anger is linked to a feeling that people in rural areas have too little representation compared to major population centers, where most people live.
It's worth pointing out that MA is a bit of a special case nationally. In most of the Midwest, for example, the resentment (and power/money) flows the other way.
Operating on and creating a framework of laws that operate on flawed concepts of human nature leads to operational failures. It's one of the main problems with economics, traditionally. The right laws and system of government works with an understanding of human nature including jealousy, laziness, greed and other weaknesses.
In fact, one of the arguments used at the constitutional convention against Madison's proposed Negative was jealousy on the part of the representatives, as the Senate would hold powers that the representatives did not. It's not an incredibly convincing argument to me, but it happened.
MA isn't that much of a special case, as it's the case in the majority of states and Federally. I'm surprised that it's not in places like Iowa - especially as urban populations grow while rural decline, but maybe that's balanced by the majority of industry being related to agriculture.
On the one hand, you say we shouldn't give other minorities extra power because without geographic distance jealousy/tension would overwhelm the political system.
I can't help but point out that you're making this claim on a thread attached to a story about a violent rural rebellion against urbanites! I.e., geography doesn't defuse those tensions.
So given that those tensions exist no matter what, is there any justification?
> It might not be a reasonable, logical justification, but it exists.
So to be clear, there's no reasonable justification for giving geographic minorities extra voting poewr that doesn't also justify giving other minorities extra voting power.
The only justification is grounded in realism: a fear of jealous-inspired violence toward neighbors that geographic distance would presumably prevent.
How does the very article we're commenting on not completely refute this argument?
> MA isn't that much of a special case, as it's the case in the majority of states and Federally.
It's a special case in the majority of land mass (this is just a tounge-in-cheek joke ;-) )
Federally, I disagree. Democrats won the popular vote in the Senate and Presidency but control neither. That's largely attributable to urban voters in states that allocated their electoral votes to (R).
Exactly - Shay's rebellion occurred in large part because rural voters didn't feel that they were adequately represented in their government. The Federal government didn't have enough power to oversee what was happening and the State government was made up of people from other districts, who then proceeded to disenfranchise people in the rural areas in order to more completely concentrate voting power in the urban East.
>So to be clear, there's no reasonable justification for giving geographic minorities extra voting poewr that doesn't also justify giving other minorities extra voting power.
The reasonable justification, beyond infrastructure spending, differences in industry and geographical considerations is that other minorities don't have a history of rebellion. In a centralized power structure, rural areas DO have a history of rebellion, successful rebellion, especially when they feel their interests are not served by the central government.
I suppose we all would've spilled less ink if you had just led with "might makes right" :-)
That's true.
The same is true for discrimination based on other mutable or immutable characteristics, though. It's all well and good to ingore minority issues, until you get a lot of other angry people with no political outlet. (Because presumably, one person, one equal vote is not good enough for them.)
That's exactly why the Federal government doesn't ignore them, and why States shouldn't either. But you shouldn't be able to carry discriminatory policies with you.
Elsewhere, you've suggested that rural areas deserve to get extra votes, because they are likely to participate in an armed revolt. In that case, why shouldn't we give men extra votes, compared to women? Most armed revolts are carried out by mostly men. Should we ration out political power to the most violent minority group of people that we can find? Maybe give the former Confederate states each an extra senate seat or two, and a handful of congressional ones?
The point is that the same underlying principle applies in both cases. If you're going to extend extra voting power for minorities for geography, why not for {set of other personal attributes}?
In practice, most people defending this setup -- it often comes up in discussions around the electoral college -- seem to support it simply because it happens to align with their own political objectives. It gives their state extra votes, so awesome! Understandable, but hardly principled.
> And actually, yes, most of this anger is linked to a feeling that people in rural areas have too little representation compared to major population centers,
Well yeah, they have less representation because we're in a democracy and there are fewer people there. I'm not terribly sympathetic to "I deserve extra voting power because of my lifestyle choice".
> So this illustrates what happens when you've got proportional representation but a completely unbalanced population distribution
What does "balanced" even mean in this context? Most people lived in rural areas when farming was most people's job, and now that we live in the information age, most people live in cities. Are both of those imbalanced? Because to me, it just sounds like in both cases, people simply adapted the needs of the time.
Simply pointing out that most people live in urban areas to prove "imbalance" is like pointing out that we have far more believers than non-believers around, therefore the religious belief distribution is "imbalanced". Who exactly is deciding what "balance" looks like for things like this?
> It's fine when everything is going well, but when the mills close down and the farms go out of business, you get a lot of angry people who feel they have no political outlet.
There are certainly some people who feel that way, but unemployment is low, and moving to where the jobs are (in the cities) remains an option.
I don't have a ton of sympathy here, given that the very same areas we're talking about usually practically worship the free market and like talking up how "self-reliant" they are (while simultaneously being heavily reliant on government subsidies from urban areas and demanding that the government protect their way of life). It would be nice to at least see a little more ideological consistency, a little less hypocrisy.
[edit] You say the point is that the same underlying principle applies in both cases; I don't agree. Geography doesn't have anything to do with personal characteristics. If you own land, you are tied to it. It's not easy to move, and we don't usually want people to move because if you stay in a place, you tend to improve it. I'm not sure why you brought up that most people arguing about something tend to pick the side that benefits them. I live in New York City. This does not benefit me.
When I referred to rural vs urban population distribution, balanced meant an even distribution. What else would it have meant?
Your sympathy or lack thereof isn't the point. The point is that we have a system that works pretty well - part of the reason is that it was created without depending entirely on people's better nature. Ideological consistency doesn't really play into that.
We live in both these things.
Well actually I live in Germany at the moment, but I'll be coming back someday!
> Geography doesn't have anything to do with personal characteristics.
Don't be ridiculous, where you choose to live doesn't count as a personal characteristic? You can find endless examples of people who disagree, just ask.
> If you own land, you are tied to it. It's not easy to move, and we don't usually want people to move because if you stay in a place, you tend to improve it.
There are both upsides and downsides to people being tied down. You're right, people who own in a place are more invested in it. On the other hand, we want a certain amount of labor fluidity as different metros and industries rise and fall. There are people who insist on staying in their hometown even though the jobs have all left and aren't coming back anytime soon, and often that's not great for them or the government.
> I'm not sure why you brought up that most people arguing about something tend to pick the side that benefits them. I live in New York City. This does not benefit me.
I'm talking about what I've usually seen. I'm not saying it applies 100% of the time.
> When I referred to rural vs urban population distribution, balanced meant an even distribution. What else would it have meant?
That's absurd. If I talk about "people who live in a major city vs people who don't", then suddenly it's the people living in major cities (proper, not metro area) who are a "minority". The lines here are completely arbitrary.
Or take farmers vs not-farmers. Oh no, it's imbalanced because only like 2% of people are employed in farm work!
> The point is that we have a system that works pretty well
It works reasonably well, but it would still work well, and likely better, if representation was simply one person, one vote, without any special handouts based on where you live or who you are or what you do for a living.
>Or take farmers vs not-farmers. Oh no, it's imbalanced because only like 2% of people are employed in farm work!
I wasn't saying that balance was good and imbalance was bad - I was saying that it had an extremely uneven population distribution, which it does. It's not an 'oh no!' situation, it's another variable.
>It works reasonably well, but it would still work well, and likely better, if representation was simply one person, one vote, without any special handouts based on where you live or who you are or what you do for a living.
I don't know any place that follows that rule, and theoretically I can find some ways that it wouldn't work better or at all if it was a much more direct democracy without subsidies of any kind.
Geographic distribution of voting power is not an essential component of Republicanism. Although unequal voting power was a feature of traditional Roman Republicanism, that distribution was a hereditary distribution, not a geographic distribution.
More to the point, the US system is so different from the patrician/pleb system of Rome that calling our system Republican while calling (our system minus geographic distribution) not Republican is a pretty freaking arbitrary line in the sand.
Also, it's worth noting that Cicero's greatest effect on Roman politics was foiling a somewhat Haysian rebellion.
> I'm not sure why you brought up that most people arguing about something tend to pick the side that benefits them. I live in New York City. This does not benefit me.
I won't presume to know your political beliefs, but it's worth noting that you could increase the power of your preferred coalition while weakening your own vote.
That wasn't the line in the sand I was drawing. I was saying that a system of direct democracy doesn't support the Kantian Republic we set up, but a system where there is uneven distribution of power based on region does.
The Soviet Union was a nondemocratic federal republic—a federal republic that is not a democracy.
Many Americans would prefer the US to be a democratic federal republic, that is, a federal republic that is also a representative democracy.
A nondemocratic republic is not a goverment of, by, and for the people. It is, at best, just the last of those three.