Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec As much as they might want to, Texas can't ally with Russia and declare war on Ukraine.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec No, they absolutely do not. By definition, they gave that up to join the union.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec All sovereign countries engage in their own diplomacy, and the only ones without their own military are protectorates of states that do have a military.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec Is Canada then a Union of provinces? If not, what's the difference?

@freemo @peterdrake @thegonzoism @trinsec All states use popular votes. Two use ranked-choice, two use majority vote, and the other 46 use plurality votes.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec Then the US doesn't qualify as a union. Our states are not "nation-states". They are not sovereign, they do not have their own militaries, they do not engage in their own diplomacy.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec The number of reps is determined federally, and those numbers determine how well represented each voter is. The fact that there exists a 68x spread in representation tells me that the system is deeply broken.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec All non-tiny countries are unions of subdivided geography and culture.

And the EU, UN, and NATO, aren't comparable to the US. Those are alliances, not sovereign countries.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec Also, it is not the "way virtually every union of member states operates". It is, in fact, the way very few of them operate.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/22/among-democracies-u-s-stands-out-in-how-it-chooses-its-head-of-state/

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec That's not how it works though. The state governments don't represent themselves to the feds. We elect federal representatives. And some of us have 68x more voting power than others of us in the name of "states rights". That seems like a pretty obvious sham to me that ensures tyranny of the minority.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec Why should states' rights override humans' rights?

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec I strongly disagree. Weighting votes by population density doesn't seem that far off from weighting votes by skin color. It gives unfair preference to certain people just because they were lucky enough to be born into a certain culture.

Having your vote be worth the same as your fellow countrymen's isn't a "punishment" just because you don't have enough like-minded people around to win.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec Right, because they have more people. If you're measuring a vote by both number of people and breaking it down by geographic regions, then a fair vote should logically "favor" the geographic region with the most voters. That's simple statistics, not a problem to be solved.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec But the real better answer is to stop weighting votes by arbitrary geographic boundaries and just count one vote for one adult citizen. That's true freedom and democracy.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec California has 30% more people than the second most populous state. For a vote to favor California is a sign that people are being properly represented. (And I don't like it any more than you; even living in the land of Florida Man, I think California is bonkers.)

Honestly, the better answer, in my opinion, would be to break up both California and Texas into into about three states each. That would allow better representation of the people in their local areas, instead of being lumped in with 40 million others.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec We do in the house, which is actually somewhat representative, yes. But there's no tweaking in the senate. The boundaries of the states are fixed and there are two senators per state.

Which means that a person from Wyoming's vote is about 68x more powerful than a person from California in the Senate.

@freemo @thegonzoism @trinsec Well, I gotta say, if that's the goal, then weighting human beings' votes based on arbitrary, archaic geographic borders seems like an especially poor method of achieving it.

As America's population grows, new cities will bloom in currently-vacant states. Once there's a metropolis in every state, how well will this system prevent that "tyranny" you're concerned about?