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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Because humans aren’t atomized individuals, and instead belong to communities that themselves have a political identity. Therefore there’s a multi-dimensional optimization space, which involves not just how to make the decision (majority vote, etc.) but where to make the decision. For example, if you had a national majority vote to decide Puerto Rico’s political status (independence or statehood), Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t be happy about that.

There is a reason that virtually every country has some form of multi-level government. And in a multi-level government, non-majoritarian voting at higher levels can help protect the integrity of the multi-level system.

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> For example, if you had a national majority vote to decide Puerto Rico’s political status (independence or statehood), Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t be happy about that.

"Two in three Americans (66%) in a June Gallup survey said they favor admitting Puerto Rico, now a U.S. territory, as a U.S. state. This is consistent with the 59% to 65% range of public support Gallup has recorded for Puerto Rico statehood since 1962." https://news.gallup.com/poll/260744/americans-continue-suppo...

The point is of course not whether the national vote would happen to agree with what the puerto Ricans would want, but the fact the whatever they want (which may or may not be statehood, don't forget a lot of people there are against statehood) would be drowned out by the rest of the country, and despite being ostensibly democratic, that doesn't mean it (nation vote) is the best solution.

The majority of Puerto Ricans and the majority of Americans both support Puerto Rican statehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Puerto_Rican_status_refer...

The only thing stopping Puerto Rican statehood is the lack of majority rule in the US, and the fact that Republicans are heavily against Puerto Rican statehood. It's a partisan issue: "The majority of Democrats showed support for statehood for both D.C. (61.8%) and Puerto Rico (69.7%)" while among Republicans, only 26.7% supported D.C. statehood and 34.8% supported Puerto Rican statehood.

The majority of supporting Puerto Ricans is quite slim (especially compared to the national support). A couple percentage points lower and the majority wouldn't be in favor. So my point was that if you _determined_ the question in a national vote versus a local vote, locals might be quite upset about it (particularly those who lost - if it was a local loss, then they fit to participate and lost, if it was national, then they never got a say).

Although, if you're now switching to argue that the national opinion is _against_ (or at least the republicans would block it), then this actually excellently illustrates the original point that there are decisions which shouldn't be made nationally instead of locally!

> The majority of supporting Puerto Ricans is quite slim (especially compared to the national support). A couple percentage points lower and the majority wouldn't be in favor.

So? Majorities are often slim. Just look at US elections. The difference is whether you have majority rule or minority rule.

> Although, if you're now switching to argue that the national opinion is _against_ (or at least the republicans would block it)

I'm not switching, I'm just saying it's a partisan issue, and Republicans happen to be over-represented in the national government due to territorial representation, which is how they're able to block Puerto Rican statehood, against the wishes of the majority. And it's pretty obvious why Republican leaders want to block Puerto Rican and D.C. statehood, because that would likely lead to additional Senate and House seats for Democrats.

> So? Majorities are often slim. Just look at US elections. The difference is whether you have majority rule or minority rule.

Slim majorities mean the outcome of the election is not obvious - it's possible that the vote would have a different outcome.

> I'm not switching, I'm just saying it's a partisan issue

It illustrates the point well regardless.

conflating Puerto Rico and DC statehood is frustrating to me.

Puerto Rico should choose independence or statehood, and the Congress should approve either way. Continuance of the colonialist/protectionist status is shocking.

But D.C. was originally not supposed to have any citizens. Only federal government offices, foreign embassies, and monuments/parks/museums. Perhaps Maryland can reclaim part of the district, as Virginia did.

> But D.C. was originally not supposed to have any citizens.

Times change. That ship has sailed. It's the 21st century now, not the 18th.

Fair enough, but maybe we should allow Maryland to take back most of the rest of DC.

The "no permanent residents" rule isn't necessarily bad

This all makes sense as long as questions like “state hood” are a thing.

Us primates need not foist past spoken traditions and hallucinations on the future.

58% of Americans live in the state where they were born, and the median American lives 18 miles from their mom. Statehood absolutely is a thing.

It’s absolutely hilarious that we’re watching Supra-national unions disintegrate (how much longer will Scotland be part of the UK?) but some Americans think a unitary majority-rules government in a country of 330 million people is a good idea. Madness.

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