True, I know we don’t disagree on the fundamentals. And you make a good point about how some governing bodies like the UN aren’t proportional in their representation. Although to be fair, the UN doesn’t levy taxes or directly interfere in the lives of citizens.
I suppose we could reform the US Senate to be more proportional by adding some seats so people living in populous states aren’t locked out of Federal decision-making.
Democracy is not binary. That is why democratic scholars consider the United States to be what’s called “a flawed democracy.”
And the Senate is one of those flaws.
The idea makes sense when you think of it as a federation of separate and equal units
That’s the problem. California and Wyoming are separate, but they are not equal! (Arguably they’re not even separate.) Wyoming has 1/40th the population. One person in Wyoming has the same voting power as 40 Californians to determine their own laws and taxes. That’s reminiscent of taxation without representation. For all practical purposes, the people of California have been disenfranchised by the US government.
Lastly, how Ireland, or Star Wars, or anyone else organizes their federal system has no bearing on whether the US Senate is in fact anti-democratic. 92% of the countries in the world are not full democracies.
If a federal government that levies taxes and enacts laws affecting individual citizens represents “states” in a manner disproportional to the population of these same citizens, the result is undemocratic.
This is a normative fact.
You can’t argue that giving some citizens hundreds of times the voting power over others is somehow democratic. Or is a person in California and Texas worth less than someone living in Alaska or Delaware? Why do they get less say in how they are taxed?
1 person, 1 vote.
The EU has a representative setup, which is democratic. Nothing like the US Senate, which is designed to rob people of representation.
Again, governments justify their existence by serving people, full stop, not arbitrary land masses. What’s next, a tertiary chamber of Congress for corporations?
Correction, they voted for it.
The EU uses the 'd'Hondt method' which is a mathematical formula for proportional representation systems.
This is the opposite of the US senate.
It’s important to note that there’s no distinction between a democracy and a republic: a republic just is a type of (representative) democracy.
The United States is a republic, true, but there are aspects of our government that are undemocratic and vulnerable to corruption. The Senate is one of these aspects. The Supreme Court is another, so is the electoral college, and the influence of money, and the enormous power of the chief executive.
You’re so right. Thank you! I am doing my best. Thanks for your kind words.
I’m in Austin, TX. I’ve lived on two continents, three countries, ten US states. This region of the world is by far the worst place I’ve ever lived... fellas, I lived in a third world country and Texas is worse. It’s dystopian. You can’t go outside. It’s 100 degrees half the year with high humidity. The air is dirty, polluted, full of allergens. People burn garbage everywhere. There is no wildlife. Trash in the street. Everything is dead, except a few biting insects, there’s no living creatures — not even birds. Dogs chained outside in the heat. Nature is dying, yellow and faded, except for the artificial grass — a rare sign of life (until the water runs out). Houston meanwhile is a gridlocked pile of parking lots and dirty overpasses built on a swamp, so whenever it rains it floods (which is comical — why does anyone live here?). Don’t come. There is no hope.
First of all, we had close to 100 million eligible non-voters. “Didn’t vote” is definitely the winner of this election. Secondly, those numbers are from projections and statistics. At least 10 million democrats who should have voted, didn’t.