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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously running democracy for so long.

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> Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time

There is an informal understanding that the government gives a certain number of life peerages to the opposition and minor parties, subject to the government being able to veto individual appointments they find objectionable. So it literally isn’t true that everyone gets one by being friends with the PM-although it certainly helps

Some parties reject their entitlement-the only reason why there are no SNP life peers, is the SNP has a longstanding policy to refuse to appoint any. There are currently 76 LibDem peers, 6 DUP, 3 UUP, 2 Green and 2 Plaid Cymru. SNP would very quickly get some too if they ever changed their mind about refusing the offer. The Northern Ireland nationalist parties (Sinn Fein and SDLP) likewise have a policy against nominating life peers.

So the correction is “friends of the PM, and a few other key politicians”. Still a club of people who represent no one. And more problematic, are accountable to no one.

As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution: "An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered."

Absent ideological capture, it is perhaps one of the best forms of government ever created due to its pragmatic nature and its Lindyness is proof.

50% + 1 is called democracy. Civil liberties are more liable to be swept away by minorities that come to power. In the US, the republicans often do this because they have minority popular support but a disproportionate representation in government. So the key is to make sure that it's 50% + 1 but also representative of the real population.

The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.

All other democracies have safeguards against the tyranny of the majority. Whether it is representativity by state in the US or in the EU, a constitution requiring a large consensus to change in the US, or the senate being elected by the elected officials of small cities in France, it is not true that democracy is just 50% + 1 vote.

What you describe is called a Republic. Pure democracy is precisely 50% + 1 vote.

Worth noting that the distinction between democracy and republic that you're clearly advocating here is a usage particular to Americans. It doesn't have much currency elsewhere.

Countries like the Netherlands, Denmark etc all have safeguards the dilute the power of 50% + 1, and yet they are clearly not republics, being monarchies.

Political scientists tend to talk more of 'liberal democracy' (whether republican or monarchical) v 'electoral autocracy' etc. This depends on the classical use of the term 'liberal' of course, which is another word that Americans tend to use differently from everyone else.

> The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.

Alexis de Tocqueville would disagree - he believed that intermediate institutions (churches, professions, elites, etc) blunt the power of the state before it reaches average people. A society without intermediate institutions is one where you have an all-powerful state on the one hand, and a largely un-coordinated mass of average people on the other. He thought this was the highway to democratic despotism. (Worth noticing that totalitarian governments focus a lot of their energy on destroying alternative centres of power such as these.)

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