Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The

Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The other ten percent is empty desert and wilderness, populated only by a grizzled hermit named Jim. Tasked with inventing a representative political system for this country, you say, “Well, looks like there are two areas here, so I’ll draw a line between the city and Jim’s land, and I’ll give each an equal number of representatives. When the ten million city people want something they will have to negotiate with Jim, who has a power equal to all of them combined.”

Stupid, right? Yes. This is the United States Senate. This is quite literally the design of the U.S. Senate…

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 days ago

    As it is, the Senate makes representation in Congress less proportional, which I think makes it less democratic.

    I have wondered, though, if the Senate could serve a different purpose. I wonder if the Senate could become a body of experts, like medical experts, scientists, and those with extensive knowledge, education and experience in an important field of study. That way, there would be a kind of technocratic body that could push back against or otherwise moderate misinformed policy that might come from voters and their representatives. Just a thought I’ve had.

    • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      There already were federal departments for such things.

      Cdc. Fda, education department. And a ton more. Trump has just been dismantling them.

      • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 days ago

        There already were federal departments for such things.

        That’s true. Those departments have served a similar purpose to what I described.

        There’s really no reason, then, not to abolish the Senate, in my opinion.

        • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          There can be a reason to leave two different legislative bodies both agree on legislation before it advances, with different rules, as it ensures more deliberation before new laws are sent to the President for signature.

          And as I mentioned in another post, there can be value in having an entire state vote for a Senate seat, because then that seat is not so easy to gerrymander.

          Perhaps we need a different system than “2 Senators for each state, regardless of size”. But then in order to get that, the current States need to mostly agree, and there are enough small states which will lose too much power.