The senate should be abolished.

[Unrein]

It comes down to this, very simply: geography and arbitrarily drawn lines should not disparage power in any way, shape, or form, between individual people. The senate, as opposed to the house, is based not on any proportionate effort to keep the amount of representative power any two different individuals in this countries has in relation to one another, but rather to disproportionately reward unequal representation over where an imaginary line on the map has been drawn.

I'm very aware, by the way, of the go-to justification. "The big states would just be mean and control the small states!" But this assumes that a 'state' is a hive-mind collective of people with uniform values, backgrounds and beliefs. It's false, and is the premise of the justification. To say everyone is California has some collective identity and interest in exploiting people from 'small states' around them is absurd.

 

[fmw]

It comes down to this, very simply: geography and arbitrarily drawn lines should not disparage power in any way, shape, or form, between individual people. The senate, as opposed to the house, is based not on any proportionate effort to keep the amount of representative power any two different individuals in this countries has in relation to one another, but rather to disproportionately reward unequal representation over where an imaginary line on the map has been drawn.

I'm very aware, by the way, of the go-to justification. "The big states would just be mean and control the small states!" But this assumes that a 'state' is a hive-mind collective of people with uniform values, backgrounds and beliefs. It's false, and is the premise of the justification. To say everyone is California has some collective identity and interest in exploiting people from 'small states' around them is absurd.

No, the concept was to have one part of congress that equalizes the states and another part that represents population. Makes perfect sense to me. It would be terrific if the members weren't corrupt beyond hope.

 

[Aunt Spiker]

It comes down to this, very simply: geography and arbitrarily drawn lines should not disparage power in any way, shape, or form, between individual people. The senate, as opposed to the house, is based not on any proportionate effort to keep the amount of representative power any two different individuals in this countries has in relation to one another, but rather to disproportionately reward unequal representation over where an imaginary line on the map has been drawn.

I'm very aware, by the way, of the go-to justification. "The big states would just be mean and control the small states!" But this assumes that a 'state' is a hive-mind collective of people with uniform values, backgrounds and beliefs. It's false, and is the premise of the justification. To say everyone is California has some collective identity and interest in exploiting people from 'small states' around them is absurd.

Yes, you're right - a state is not a hive-mind when represented by a small number of people.
It's a large number of people being represented by an elite-mind.

It's not 'everyone in California' it's 'the small group of people sent to DC on behalf of all Californians'

. . . and I don't see how it's remotely fair to permit your elite group to overshadow the input of my elite group. . . because it would - just by the sheer nature of the alternative, that's just what would happen even if they all were voting on ice cream flavors.

 

[Papa bull]

The fact that we have both a senate and a house of representativs assures us the best balance of representation possible. I mean, sure.... I think we'd be better off if the house of representatives that were so heavily loaded with republicans was calling all the shots, but the way we represent power in Washington with the two methodologies we do spreads out power much more evenly and gives the legislative branch a good chance to balance it's own power without the need of a heavy handed veto pen which might or might not be in place at any given time.