Weighting Rural Votes?/Election Reform

[Telconi]

Fitting comparisons are fitting.

I mean, I agree that there are some political similarities between the Nazis and those who oppose democracy in favor of rule by a select few, but that's still a very unfair comparison to jump to.

I give your snark a C-, it was passably amusing, but just barely.

[The Two Jerseys]

Unequivocally yes

So why do you get to have these beliefs and not me?

*crickets*

Just like how we're still waiting for an explanation of how the minority party voters have "representation" when they lose every district by a narrow margin...

[Neu Leonstein]

I'm not much of a Marxist, but I have always had a certain predilection for the underlying idea behind historical materialism... the idea that our institutions and societies will, over really long time frames, change with economic and technological realities. You know, once the usefulness of a castle for everyone to go hide in diminished, so did the role of the people who owned those castles in our institutions, etc.

Urbanisation is probably among the most important major economic trends of the 20th century, and in quite a few places it will be in the 21st century as well.

Another major trend of the second half of the 20th century has been the substantial reduction in the cost and time of trading internationally. Vietnamese or Mexican workers have always earned less than American ones, but the idea that it would make economic sense to harvest cotton in Mexico, put it on a ship and sail it across the Pacific to Vietnam to make a shirt out of it, back to Mexico to print something onto that shirt, and then to Boston to put into a store would have seemed pretty out there to someone from earlier in the last century.

Yet another major trend is that there is more and more relative value in services and especially in knowledge-based activities, where the output might be some form of IP rather than a physical product. Invention and innovation are more useful in those sectors than efficiency in production, given that the IP can be replicated almost costlessly. But what you do need to foster innovation is an environment that has a certain critical mass of the sorts of people and supporting sectors of 'creative' pursuits that you don't find in very low-density regions.

Which is to say that, as far as the underlying economic and technological realities are concerned, the share of productive activity in our societies that takes place in larger cities is growing and will probably continue to grow.

Coming back to historical materialism, one might say that a 'nation' as invented in the 18th and 19th centuries was a construct that amalgamated the newly-emergent industrial cities with the hinterlands they needed to provide the resources and physical protection (in the form of potential military recruits from the rural population). Whether you call that amalgamation the result of a plot by industrialists to create a false sense of loyalty towards one's oppressors is neither here nor there. What matters is that one can come up with an economic function that the institution of the 'nation' served.

But those economic functions are changing over time. As a share of output, rural production (i.e. primary industries like farming or mining, and in many places secondary industries like manufacturing) is becoming less and less important. The proportion of the urban economy that needs to be used to procure these inputs from the rural economy can be expected to shrink. And not only that - because transport costs have come down so much, it's not necessarily rural areas close to the city, or even in the same country, which can competitively supply these inputs. At the same time, other inputs are becoming relatively more important (e.g. IP, technology and talented individuals), and those can mostly only be found in other cities.

So there are a number of factors that would suggest that the importance of the rural area of a country to its cities is diminishing over time. A historical materialist viewpoint would be that we will see our institutions change as a result. Cities are increasingly being asked to pay for rural communities, while at the same time the importance (and, dare I say it, cultural relevance) of those rural communities is shrinking. It's only a matter of time before people start to put 2 and 2 together.

Right now we're in a phase that might well threaten to accelerate this process. On issues like Brexit or Trump, rural populations are imposing unpopular policy choices on urban ones. Generating these sorts of grievances might backfire. The Brexit referendum was followed by calls for London to declare its own exit from the UK. These were (mostly) not serious... but how long before that changes?

My recommendation to rural populations would be to enjoy it while it lasts, and stop sawing the branch they're sitting on. A world of alliances of independent city states would be a far closer alignment of political power and economic contribution than what we have right now.

[San Lumen]

So why do you get to have these beliefs and not me?

*crickets*

Just like how we're still waiting for an explanation of how the minority party voters have "representation" when they lose every district by a narrow margin...

Your scenario is an impossible one. Your not going to have every district won by 51-49

[Thermodolia]

*crickets*

Just like how we're still waiting for an explanation of how the minority party voters have "representation" when they lose every district by a narrow margin...

Your scenario is an impossible one. Your not going to have every district won by 51-49

You’re right it will just be won with 24% of the vote. Pay no mind that the vast majority of the people didn’t want that person

[Telconi]

*crickets*

Just like how we're still waiting for an explanation of how the minority party voters have "representation" when they lose every district by a narrow margin...

Your scenario is an impossible one. Your not going to have every district won by 51-49

But it happens to some districts.

[San Lumen]

Your scenario is an impossible one. Your not going to have every district won by 51-49

You’re right it will just be won with 24% of the vote. Pay no mind that the vast majority of the people didn’t want that person

And that’s why you have irv or ranked choice to avoid that

[Doing it Rightland]

Sorry, this is a long response. I've broken it down in each spoiler.

If you know that I don’t understand why we need the changes your proposing which aren’t practical

My changes are putting more authority in the hands of the counties. Budget distribution is still is held by the state, but individual counties would be more able to govern themselves and address their solutions.

Your scenario is an impossible one. Your not going to have every district won by 51-49

This example isn't exactly by that slim of margins, but look at the state of New Mexico. A little over 30% of the country is registered Republican, and around 45% Democrat. Yet, all the senate and house seats are controlled by Democrats. Sounds real unrepresentative to me. I agree that STV and IRV is the way to go to fix this though.

I'm not much of a Marxist, but I have always had a certain predilection for the underlying idea behind historical materialism... the idea that our institutions and societies will, over really long time frames, change with economic and technological realities. You know, once the usefulness of a castle for everyone to go hide in diminished, so did the role of the people who owned those castles in our institutions, etc.

Urbanisation is probably among the most important major economic trends of the 20th century, and in quite a few places it will be in the 21st century as well.

Another major trend of the second half of the 20th century has been the substantial reduction in the cost and time of trading internationally. Vietnamese or Mexican workers have always earned less than American ones, but the idea that it would make economic sense to harvest cotton in Mexico, put it on a ship and sail it across the Pacific to Vietnam to make a shirt out of it, back to Mexico to print something onto that shirt, and then to Boston to put into a store would have seemed pretty out there to someone from earlier in the last century.

Yet another major trend is that there is more and more relative value in services and especially in knowledge-based activities, where the output might be some form of IP rather than a physical product. Invention and innovation are more useful in those sectors than efficiency in production, given that the IP can be replicated almost costlessly. But what you do need to foster innovation is an environment that has a certain critical mass of the sorts of people and supporting sectors of 'creative' pursuits that you don't find in very low-density regions.

Which is to say that, as far as the underlying economic and technological realities are concerned, the share of productive activity in our societies that takes place in larger cities is growing and will probably continue to grow.

Coming back to historical materialism, one might say that a 'nation' as invented in the 18th and 19th centuries was a construct that amalgamated the newly-emergent industrial cities with the hinterlands they needed to provide the resources and physical protection (in the form of potential military recruits from the rural population). Whether you call that amalgamation the result of a plot by industrialists to create a false sense of loyalty towards one's oppressors is neither here nor there. What matters is that one can come up with an economic function that the institution of the 'nation' served.

But those economic functions are changing over time. As a share of output, rural production (i.e. primary industries like farming or mining, and in many places secondary industries like manufacturing) is becoming less and less important. The proportion of the urban economy that needs to be used to procure these inputs from the rural economy can be expected to shrink. And not only that - because transport costs have come down so much, it's not necessarily rural areas close to the city, or even in the same country, which can competitively supply these inputs. At the same time, other inputs are becoming relatively more important (e.g. IP, technology and talented individuals), and those can mostly only be found in other cities.

So there are a number of factors that would suggest that the importance of the rural area of a country to its cities is diminishing over time. A historical materialist viewpoint would be that we will see our institutions change as a result. Cities are increasingly being asked to pay for rural communities, while at the same time the importance (and, dare I say it, cultural relevance) of those rural communities is shrinking. It's only a matter of time before people start to put 2 and 2 together.

Right now we're in a phase that might well threaten to accelerate this process. On issues like Brexit or Trump, rural populations are imposing unpopular policy choices on urban ones. Generating these sorts of grievances might backfire. The Brexit referendum was followed by calls for London to declare its own exit from the UK. These were (mostly) not serious... but how long before that changes?

My recommendation to rural populations would be to enjoy it while it lasts, and stop sawing the branch they're sitting on. A world of alliances of independent city states would be a far closer alignment of political power and economic contribution than what we have right now.

(Image)

Yes, urbanization has been a major facet of the 20th century, bringing about immense changes to the world economy. But, I have a few issues with your statements. My apologies for such a dense series of statements.

Primarily, if you consider the people who grow the crops, who mine the metals and coal, who provide the materials that cities use to grow and flourish to not be adequately participating in "productive activity" then you are blind. The only reason cities are even sustainable is because rural communities have become incredibly efficient at providing vast quantities of materials at low costs, utilizing a strong transportation network. The importance of these rural areas is not becoming less important, and if anything, is more important to fuel cities to continue to grow.

Some "Talented Individuals" originating from cities (since apparently rural areas don't have those) like engineers are great, don't get me wrong. But without enough people who know how realize an engineer's vision, then their brains aren't worth as much.

If people "put 2 and 2 together" like you suggest, what happens? You don't continue this point. Do you just cut the rural communities entirely?

A majority of voters who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum voted to leave. I disagree with their decision, same as you, but the majority did speak. And finally, the main reason cities comprise that much of America's income is because (according to the US Census Bureau as of 2015) around 63% of Americans live in cities, and a total of 80% in urban areas (includes surrounding sprawl not otherwise part of the city). That density is unsustainable without rural communities doing hard work to provide the raw materials needed.

City-states are great and all, but if there's nobody outside them, then how would they survive? Current estimates state that a family of 4 needs 2 acres of land to feed themselves for a year, and since NYC has roughly 8.6 million people, that equates to a little over 6700 square miles of land needed. Considering New York State is about 54.5 thousand square miles, then you'd need at least 12% of the whole state's land used to make food (and nothing else) for one city.
Acquiring fuel, metal, consumer goods, technologies, and everything that a modern society needs to function drastically expands the land requirement. That's not even considering anyone else in the state of New York, not to mention New England (which NY is not a part of), which isn't particularly known for it's agriculture compared to areas like the midwest.

Edit: Have fixed many grammatical and spelling errors.

[Hagston]

Maybe you should become a leftist.

[San Lumen]

Sorry, this is a long response. I've broken it down in each spoiler.

If you know that I don’t understand why we need the changes your proposing which aren’t practical

My changes are putting more authority in the hands of the counties. Budget distribution is still is held by the state, but individual counties would be more able to govern themselves and address their solutions.

Your scenario is an impossible one. Your not going to have every district won by 51-49

This example isn't exactly by that slim of margins, but look at the state of New Mexico. A little over 30% of the country is registered Republican, and around 45% Democrat. Yet, all the senate and house seats are controlled by Democrats. Sounds real unrepresentative to me. I agree that STV and IRV is the way to go to fix this though.

I'm not much of a Marxist, but I have always had a certain predilection for the underlying idea behind historical materialism... the idea that our institutions and societies will, over really long time frames, change with economic and technological realities. You know, once the usefulness of a castle for everyone to go hide in diminished, so did the role of the people who owned those castles in our institutions, etc.

Urbanisation is probably among the most important major economic trends of the 20th century, and in quite a few places it will be in the 21st century as well.

Another major trend of the second half of the 20th century has been the substantial reduction in the cost and time of trading internationally. Vietnamese or Mexican workers have always earned less than American ones, but the idea that it would make economic sense to harvest cotton in Mexico, put it on a ship and sail it across the Pacific to Vietnam to make a shirt out of it, back to Mexico to print something onto that shirt, and then to Boston to put into a store would have seemed pretty out there to someone from earlier in the last century.

Yet another major trend is that there is more and more relative value in services and especially in knowledge-based activities, where the output might be some form of IP rather than a physical product. Invention and innovation are more useful in those sectors than efficiency in production, given that the IP can be replicated almost costlessly. But what you do need to foster innovation is an environment that has a certain critical mass of the sorts of people and supporting sectors of 'creative' pursuits that you don't find in very low-density regions.

Which is to say that, as far as the underlying economic and technological realities are concerned, the share of productive activity in our societies that takes place in larger cities is growing and will probably continue to grow.

Coming back to historical materialism, one might say that a 'nation' as invented in the 18th and 19th centuries was a construct that amalgamated the newly-emergent industrial cities with the hinterlands they needed to provide the resources and physical protection (in the form of potential military recruits from the rural population). Whether you call that amalgamation the result of a plot by industrialists to create a false sense of loyalty towards one's oppressors is neither here nor there. What matters is that one can come up with an economic function that the institution of the 'nation' served.

But those economic functions are changing over time. As a share of output, rural production (i.e. primary industries like farming or mining, and in many places secondary industries like manufacturing) is becoming less and less important. The proportion of the urban economy that needs to be used to procure these inputs from the rural economy can be expected to shrink. And not only that - because transport costs have come down so much, it's not necessarily rural areas close to the city, or even in the same country, which can competitively supply these inputs. At the same time, other inputs are becoming relatively more important (e.g. IP, technology and talented individuals), and those can mostly only be found in other cities.

So there are a number of factors that would suggest that the importance of the rural area of a country to its cities is diminishing over time. A historical materialist viewpoint would be that we will see our institutions change as a result. Cities are increasingly being asked to pay for rural communities, while at the same time the importance (and, dare I say it, cultural relevance) of those rural communities is shrinking. It's only a matter of time before people start to put 2 and 2 together.

Right now we're in a phase that might well threaten to accelerate this process. On issues like Brexit or Trump, rural populations are imposing unpopular policy choices on urban ones. Generating these sorts of grievances might backfire. The Brexit referendum was followed by calls for London to declare its own exit from the UK. These were (mostly) not serious... but how long before that changes?

My recommendation to rural populations would be to enjoy it while it lasts, and stop sawing the branch they're sitting on. A world of alliances of independent city states would be a far closer alignment of political power and economic contribution than what we have right now.

(Image)

Yes, urbanization has been a major facet of the 20th century, bringing about immense changes to the world economy. But, I have a few issues with your statements. My apologies for such a dense series of statements.

Primarily, if you consider the people who grow the crops, who mine the metals and coal, who provide the materials that cities use to grow and flourish to not be adequately participating in "productive activity" then you are blind. The only reason cities are even sustainable is because rural communities have become incredibly efficient at providing vast quantities of materials at low costs, utilizing a strong transportation network. The importance of these rural areas is not becoming less important, and if anything, is more important to fuel cities to continue to grow.

Some "Talented Individuals" originating from cities (since apparently rural areas don't have those) like engineers are great, don't get me wrong. But without enough people who know how realize an engineer's vision, then their brains aren't worth as much.

If people "put 2 and 2 together" like you suggest, what happens? You don't continue this point. Do you just cut the rural communities entirely?

A majority of voters who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum voted to leave. I disagree with their decision, same as you, but the majority did speak. And finally, the main reason cities comprise that much of America's income is because (according to the US Census Bureau as of 2015) around 63% of Americans live in cities, and a total of 80% in urban areas (includes surrounding sprawl not otherwise part of the city). That density is unsustainable without rural communities doing hard work to provide the raw materials needed.

City-states are great and all, but if there's nobody outside them, then how would they survive? Current estimates state that a family of 4 needs 2 acres of land to feed themselves for a year, and since NYC has roughly 8.6 million people, that equates to a little over 6700 square miles of land needed. Considering New York State is about 54.5 thousand square miles, then you'd need at least 12% of the whole state's land used to make food (and nothing else) for one city.
Acquiring fuel, metal, consumer goods, technologies, and everything that a modern society needs to function drastically expands the land requirement. That's not even considering anyone else in the state of New York, not to mention the rest of New England, which isn't particularly known for it's agriculture compared to areas like the midwest.

Edit: Have fixed many grammatical and spelling errors.

I agree that Irv or STV is the ideal solution as it doesn’t require radically altering the law and totally revamping our election system

[Thermodolia]

Sorry, this is a long response. I've broken it down in each spoiler.

My changes are putting more authority in the hands of the counties. Budget distribution is still is held by the state, but individual counties would be more able to govern themselves and address their solutions.


This example isn't exactly by that slim of margins, but look at the state of New Mexico. A little over 30% of the country is registered Republican, and around 45% Democrat. Yet, all the senate and house seats are controlled by Democrats. Sounds real unrepresentative to me. I agree that STV and IRV is the way to go to fix this though.

Yes, urbanization has been a major facet of the 20th century, bringing about immense changes to the world economy. But, I have a few issues with your statements. My apologies for such a dense series of statements.

Primarily, if you consider the people who grow the crops, who mine the metals and coal, who provide the materials that cities use to grow and flourish to not be adequately participating in "productive activity" then you are blind. The only reason cities are even sustainable is because rural communities have become incredibly efficient at providing vast quantities of materials at low costs, utilizing a strong transportation network. The importance of these rural areas is not becoming less important, and if anything, is more important to fuel cities to continue to grow.

Some "Talented Individuals" originating from cities (since apparently rural areas don't have those) like engineers are great, don't get me wrong. But without enough people who know how realize an engineer's vision, then their brains aren't worth as much.

If people "put 2 and 2 together" like you suggest, what happens? You don't continue this point. Do you just cut the rural communities entirely?

A majority of voters who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum voted to leave. I disagree with their decision, same as you, but the majority did speak. And finally, the main reason cities comprise that much of America's income is because (according to the US Census Bureau as of 2015) around 63% of Americans live in cities, and a total of 80% in urban areas (includes surrounding sprawl not otherwise part of the city). That density is unsustainable without rural communities doing hard work to provide the raw materials needed.

City-states are great and all, but if there's nobody outside them, then how would they survive? Current estimates state that a family of 4 needs 2 acres of land to feed themselves for a year, and since NYC has roughly 8.6 million people, that equates to a little over 6700 square miles of land needed. Considering New York State is about 54.5 thousand square miles, then you'd need at least 12% of the whole state's land used to make food (and nothing else) for one city.
Acquiring fuel, metal, consumer goods, technologies, and everything that a modern society needs to function drastically expands the land requirement. That's not even considering anyone else in the state of New York, not to mention the rest of New England, which isn't particularly known for it's agriculture compared to areas like the midwest.

Edit: Have fixed many grammatical and spelling errors.

I agree that Irv or STV is the ideal solution as it doesn’t require radically altering the law and totally revamping our election system

STV would require multi-member districts. Something you’ve said you’re against

[San Lumen]

I agree that Irv or STV is the ideal solution as it doesn’t require radically altering the law and totally revamping our election system

STV would require multi-member districts. Something you’ve said you’re against

I would not have a issue with that. Doesnt Australia use STV and they have single member districts?

[Thermodolia]

STV would require multi-member districts. Something you’ve said you’re against

I would not have a issue with that. Doesnt Australia use STV and they have single member districts?

Australia uses STV for the senate (multi-member Districts) and IRV for the house (single member districts).

[United New England]

That's not even considering anyone else in the state of New York, not to mention the rest of New England

New York is not in New England.

[Neu Leonstein]

Primarily, if you consider the people who grow the crops, who mine the metals and coal, who provide the materials that cities use to grow and flourish to not be adequately participating in "productive activity" then you are blind. The only reason cities are even sustainable is because rural communities have become incredibly efficient at providing vast quantities of materials at low costs, utilizing a strong transportation network. The importance of these rural areas is not becoming less important, and if anything, is more important to fuel cities to continue to grow.

In aggregate, yes. But my point was that any one rural area is becoming less important to a city. Of course the resources cities need have expanded dramatically, and technological progress has allowed rural areas to provide them. But how much of New York's primary resource inputs are coming from its surrounding countryside? What was that number 50 or 100 years ago? My point is that a city can now cheaply import resources from further and further away. The countryside around New York is competing with places all over the US, and ultimately with places all over the world. What leverage rural areas have is increasingly political rather than economic, and I'm asking whether one without the other will ultimately be sustainable.

Some "Talented Individuals" originating from cities (since apparently rural areas don't have those) like engineers are great, don't get me wrong. But without enough people who know how realize an engineer's vision, then their brains aren't worth as much.

Sure, but I didn't say there aren't talented people in the countryside. What I'm saying is that for those people to actually apply their talents they leave the countryside and move to the cities. Just look at the incessant laments by conservatives about the decline of rural and small town communities. But from the perspective of the individual, at the moment by moving to the city people in many countries in the world (i.e. any of those who have an electoral system that in some way allocates parliamentary seats by region rather than population) give up political power for economic opportunity, because their vote counts for that much less by living in a city.

The question is how long it takes before they wonder why they should do so. What does their hometown have to offer the city that would justify giving them such a disproportionate share of the franchise?

If people "put 2 and 2 together" like you suggest, what happens? You don't continue this point. Do you just cut the rural communities entirely?

The end game would be either one person-one vote equal share of the franchise regardless of location, or greater political independence for the cities - reducing the relationship between city and country to a commercial one, where (metaphorical) wheat from upstate New York is not just competing with wheat from Kansas, but also with wheat from Kazakhstan. May the cheapest one win.

A majority of voters who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum voted to leave. I disagree with their decision, same as you, but the majority did speak.

It did, but the problem is that this was an issue that didn't affect the countryside anywhere near as much as it will the cities. It's a neat example of the more general trend - life in cities depends increasingly on globalisation. Economic, but also cultural and migratory. They are developing away from the rural areas around them. In many ways, life in London is more similar to life in New York than it is to life in the English countryside.

But London and New York are politically separate, and each in turn is politically tied to a more dissimilar political unit with increasingly conflicting economic and cultural priorities. London's population would never have chosen to pursue a policy of isolation, but rural England did and is dragging London along with it.

The notion of the nation as a sensible way of allocating political power is dependent on the similarity of the people in that nation. The idea is that everyone is part of the same community. But if that was ever true, it is becoming less true with time. Sooner or later, something will have to give. That's certainly the way rural communities hold disproportionate political power in many of our countries, but I think in the long term it will be the political cohesion of the nation as we understand it.

Australia uses STV for the senate (multi-member Districts) and IRV for the house (single member districts).

I wouldn't necessarily hold up Australia as a great example. Election campaigns here are fought almost exclusively in a key number of parliamentary seats that are close enough to swing either way. Safe seats for either major parties will get relatively little, while new hospitals and infrastructure projects are routinely allocated in marginal seats.

Add to that the system of cross-party and candidate deals for allocating second preferences, which means that in upper houses you will often find sitting senators who were nowhere near a majority on their own terms.

I think Germany has a better system. You vote for the person in your seat, and the one with the most votes wins. But you also separately vote for a party, and those second votes are used to calculate a number of additional seats in parliament that aren't tied to any particular locality. So the number of seats for each parliamentary term changes in order to make sure that the proportions in parliament reflect the true proportions of the vote across the country in aggregate.

[San Lumen]

I would not have a issue with that. Doesnt Australia use STV and they have single member districts?

Australia uses STV for the senate (multi-member Districts) and IRV for the house (single member districts).

Id have no issue with multi member districts. A few states do it. I know Washington. Idaho, Maryland, Vermont and New Hampshire do it.

[Telconi]

That's not even considering anyone else in the state of New York, not to mention the rest of New England

New York is not in New England.

The name is "New" followed by a place in England...

[Ghost Land]

New York is not in New England.

The name is "New" followed by a place in England...

That doesn't necessarily make it a part of New England. New Paris, Pennsylvania, for example, is not and has never been a part of New France (which has now ceased to exist anyway). New England consists of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

[Doing it Rightland]

First and foremost, you are all correct that NY is not part of New England. I feel very stupid considering I'm from New England and my parents NY. I have corrected it in that post.

In aggregate, yes. But my point was that any one rural area is becoming less important to a city. Of course the resources cities need have expanded dramatically, and technological progress has allowed rural areas to provide them. But how much of New York's primary resource inputs are coming from its surrounding countryside? What was that number 50 or 100 years ago? My point is that a city can now cheaply import resources from further and further away. The countryside around New York is competing with places all over the US, and ultimately with places all over the world. What leverage rural areas have is increasingly political rather than economic, and I'm asking whether one without the other will ultimately be sustainable.

You do make a good point here and in the rest of your post, and that actually segways into my proposal from earlier. I proposed that we reduce the amount of power rural districts have over cities and vice versa, and make each more responsible for their own issues. This would be done by reducing the powers held by state governments and giving it to counties (or whatever subdivision system we come up with). That way, rural areas don't hold too much sway over cities (and vice versa of course). I've quoted it in below. There are still some issues with it that we're debating over, but I think it would go a ways to resolve your concern.

Breakdown 2: Electric Boogaloo
Note: This is modified from when I initially posted it due to some concerns brought forth.

County
For things that are going to be heavily dependent on the region itself. For example, NYC could pass stricter gun legislation to reduce crime, and somewhere like Syracuse or Buffalo can have more relaxed policies since they're rural communities that don't have the same violent crime issues as large cities. This could also extend to stuff like farming; why should NYC bother wasting its time discussing agricultural regulations for upstate NY when they can merely let the rural communities pass their own regulations?

State
For the financial stability of the counties. The State government would be reduced to tax distribution, judicial matters, and maybe a few auxiliary functions. That way, individual counties can more easily assess their own situations, but the revenue needed can still be amply supplied. If taxing was given to the counties, rural areas especially would struggle to gain enough money to sustain themselves. But aside from these responsibilities, I don't believe the state government needs much more authority.

National
For things that are going to more universally affect the entire nation, whether it be foreign policy, civil rights protections (like gay marriage). These things are going to be important to everyone, and not disproportionately impacting rural or urban areas.[/quote]

I suppose that I ought to make it a bit more clear that I'm not in favor of disproportionately weighting rural votes. I think its highly undemocratic. What I do believe is that we should ensure that those rural communities can function without as much interference from urban electors and representatives. My proposal would do that. In terms of actual voting systems, STV or IRV (depending on the circumstance) with 1 person 1 vote is the way to go.

[Ballotonia]

First and foremost, you are all correct that NY is not part of New England. I feel very stupid considering I'm from New England and my parents NY. I have corrected it in that post.

In aggregate, yes. But my point was that any one rural area is becoming less important to a city. Of course the resources cities need have expanded dramatically, and technological progress has allowed rural areas to provide them. But how much of New York's primary resource inputs are coming from its surrounding countryside? What was that number 50 or 100 years ago? My point is that a city can now cheaply import resources from further and further away. The countryside around New York is competing with places all over the US, and ultimately with places all over the world. What leverage rural areas have is increasingly political rather than economic, and I'm asking whether one without the other will ultimately be sustainable.

You do make a good point here and in the rest of your post, and that actually segways into my proposal from earlier. I proposed that we reduce the amount of power rural districts have over cities and vice versa, and make each more responsible for their own issues. This would be done by reducing the powers held by state governments and giving it to counties (or whatever subdivision system we come up with). That way, rural areas don't hold too much sway over cities (and vice versa of course). I've quoted it in below. There are still some issues with it that we're debating over, but I think it would go a ways to resolve your concern.

Breakdown 2: Electric Boogaloo
Note: This is modified from when I initially posted it due to some concerns brought forth.

County
For things that are going to be heavily dependent on the region itself. For example, NYC could pass stricter gun legislation to reduce crime, and somewhere like Syracuse or Buffalo can have more relaxed policies since they're rural communities that don't have the same violent crime issues as large cities. This could also extend to stuff like farming; why should NYC bother wasting its time discussing agricultural regulations for upstate NY when they can merely let the rural communities pass their own regulations?

State
For the financial stability of the counties. The State government would be reduced to tax distribution, judicial matters, and maybe a few auxiliary functions. That way, individual counties can more easily assess their own situations, but the revenue needed can still be amply supplied. If taxing was given to the counties, rural areas especially would struggle to gain enough money to sustain themselves. But aside from these responsibilities, I don't believe the state government needs much more authority.

National
For things that are going to more universally affect the entire nation, whether it be foreign policy, civil rights protections (like gay marriage). These things are going to be important to everyone, and not disproportionately impacting rural or urban areas.

I suppose that I ought to make it a bit more clear that I'm not in favor of disproportionately weighting rural votes. I think its highly undemocratic. What I do believe is that we should ensure that those rural communities can function without as much interference from urban electors and representatives. My proposal would do that. In terms of actual voting systems, STV or IRV (depending on the circumstance) with 1 person 1 vote is the way to go.[/quote]

I think you're correct in that judgement. The only way to prevent mistreatment of a minority at the hands of a majority is to somehow eliminate the majority's capacity to engage in such behavior. Be it by divesting power (which is really only a quantitative reduction) or by specifically inhibiting such mistreatment via constitutional controls.

[San Lumen]

This alleged mistreatment that you cite Telconi is simply you not liking that people have audacity to disagree with you. That is what we have elections for.

If we are going to inhibit what you allege is mistreatment why bother having elections at all. Lets just make it so whatever the minority thinks is automatically law and then the legislature is totally hamstrung unable to get anything done. It would never be passed as it would be totally unfair government

[Doing it Rightland]

I think you're correct in that judgement. The only way to prevent mistreatment of a minority at the hands of a majority is to somehow eliminate the majority's capacity to engage in such behavior. Be it by divesting power (which is really only a quantitative reduction) or by specifically inhibiting such mistreatment via constitutional controls.

I don't think it's a requirement to eliminate or restrict the majority's capacity to govern. That tends to detach governance from the popular will, which is also bad. In fact, it's not actually pertinent to the proposal that we eliminate the majority. The proposal is geared at getting the majority in a certain region to being the people who actually understand the region. What is needed is for people who understand their local issues to handle them, and people who don't to take a more backseat role in those issues. Let's take an example state, with districts of equal population:

State-istan (I'm not good at names)
Farmlandia: Rural County
Wyoming 2: Rural County
City-opolis: Urban County

Here we see that rural people have a majority. Under current circumstances in the US, they would be able to advance their own interests, generally neglecting or mishandling issues of the urban people. Under the proposal, each county takes care of itself, only cooperating on issues that span more than one county. Here, the state's majority doesn't abuse power (purposefully or accidentally) because the state isn't the body with power. Each county now has its own majority and minority, but they are specific to the rural or urban settings. Thus, the majority/minority can more easily handle its issues without having to worry about sway from people who aren't immediately impacted by or knowledgeable of the situation. Ergo, the majority doesn't abuse the minority, but the majority isn't stopped from executing its goals for the areas it controls.

[Telconi]

This alleged mistreatment that you cite Telconi is simply you not liking that people have audacity to disagree with you. That is what we have elections for.

If we are going to inhibit what you allege is mistreatment why bother having elections at all. Lets just make it so whatever the minority thinks is automatically law and then the legislature is totally hamstrung unable to get anything done. It would never be passed as it would be totally unfair government

This is as wrong now as the first time you've said it. If you can't understand the functional difference between "people disagreeing with you" and "People forcing you to act on their disagreement" then that's on you.

To elect government officials. Or, y'know, we could be reasonable people. Totally unfair government gets passed all the time, you yourself gloat about it.

[Azubaja]

to think if Germany never helped Austria-hungary, nazism would have never happended, and we wouldnt of had this conversation

[San Lumen]

This alleged mistreatment that you cite Telconi is simply you not liking that people have audacity to disagree with you. That is what we have elections for.

If we are going to inhibit what you allege is mistreatment why bother having elections at all. Lets just make it so whatever the minority thinks is automatically law and then the legislature is totally hamstrung unable to get anything done. It would never be passed as it would be totally unfair government

This is as wrong now as the first time you've said it. If you can't understand the functional difference between "people disagreeing with you" and "People forcing you to act on their disagreement" then that's on you.

To elect government officials. Or, y'know, we could be reasonable people. Totally unfair government gets passed all the time, you yourself gloat about it.

What do you mean by forced? Do you understand the concept of law? Congress and the legislature was elected to do a job and with a agenda. You dont get to opt out of the laws they pass because you didnt vote for the party in charge.

And are reasonable people only those who agree with you?