The Spirit of Democracy

Think back to the time of 6th century BCE Athens. The city controlled an empire of dozens of separate Greek states. It was the world center of philosophy, science, and art. And it was the world’s first society to govern itself by democracy.

Of course we must qualify that statement by noting that only landed Athenian males 21 years of age and older were allowed to participate in the forms and offices of government. But within those limitations it was a true participatory democracy. Every eligible citizen was a member of the primary governing body– the Assembly. That would have been about 40,000 men at the height of the Empire. A quorum of the Assembly was 6,000 citizens.

We call it the age of Pericles, but he was neither king nor president. He was one of ten elected generals, each of whom served a one year term. He was elected to that position multiple times, so clearly he must have had both charisma and leadership skills. But it was the Assembly that made all key decisions. And all decisions were made by simple majority vote. In that respect the Athenian democracy was a true democracy, unlike our representative federation. Decisions of state in our system are not made by we the people, but by those we elect to represent us.

The delegates of what we now call the Federal Convention did not invent democracy, and they did not invent the key features of our federal system: separation of powers, a bicameral legislature, a hierarchical court system, and the guarantee of rights for all citizens. All of those elements were incorporated into the constitutions of various of the states after they declared independence.

The Constitution was a remarkable document for its time, but it retains many anti-democratic elements. The Senate represents states, not the people. Nine U.S. states contain more than half of total U.S. population, and yet those states only have 18% representation in the Senate. That is extremely unfair to the residents of the most populous states.

In 1929 Congress passed the Permanent Apportionment Act, which capped the total number of Representatives in the House at 435. That constraint, coupled with the Constitution’s requirement that every state must have at least one Representative, has resulted in the over-representation of low population states. The House now has 114 fewer members than it should on the basis of population alone.

Neither the House nor the Senate truly represent the national character. The Senate represents the separate states and the House represents state defined localities. The president is the only nationally elected official who represents the nation as a whole. That is the primary reason why the president and Congress are so often at odds.

And since the Electoral College is based on the number of members of the House and Senate, it amplifies the misrepresentations of those two bodies.

There is work to do if we wish our government to be more democratic and more fairly representative. But we should ask: is democracy necessarily a good thing? Can the public really be expected to make sound decisions in a world of every greater complexity? Perhaps we should allow those who have the greatest understanding of government, economics, and society to make the nation’s most important decisions. Maybe we would be wise to establish a class of professionals who are specially trained to lead the country, as imperial China did.

Alexander Hamilton touched on this question in his defense of the Electoral College:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.

(The Federalist #68, Alexander Hamilton, 1788)

The chief question Hamilton did not answer in his musings is just how, exactly, we are to recognize the persons who possess the requisite “information and discernment”? We have seen many examples recently of people who loudly proclaim their credentials and their wisdom who in fact know little or nothing about their areas of alleged expertise.

Should we expect the average citizen to be an expert on all matters relevant to the health and safety of the nation? No, absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean that the average citizen has no stake in national or international affairs. On the contrary, national issues have national impacts. The entire nation will almost certainly be adversely affected by foolish national policies.

The greatest risk to the nation is when our leaders lose touch with the people. The examples of the Vietnam and Iraq wars show that it makes no sense to engage in foreign wars if you do not have the full support of the people.

The divine right of kings was firmly entrenched in ancient Egypt by no later than 3000 BCE. The king, later called “Pharaoh,” was declared to be the son of Ra– literally the son of God. And yet the trappings of divinity could never disguise the fact that kings of the centuries since have had frailties and foibles, or that we all are subject to the indignities of our mortality.

There is no single class of people who are most qualified to lead. That simple truth is the central glory of democracy. Great leaders do not always have the greatest pedigrees. Trust the people.

Is economics complicated? Yes, as is immigration policy, trade policy, cybersecurity, and many other aspects of modern society. But those who seek our votes should be able to state their positions on the issues of the day in such a way that the average citizen can understand them. Those who sneeringly assume that the average citizen is too uninformed to make sound decisions do not deserve our votes.

The central principle of democracy, whether representative or participatory, is fairness. The idea that every citizen should have the right to vote and to expect that vote to count forces everyone to respect others. Other governmental systems do not necessitate such behavior. In fact many– especially autocracies– thrive on intolerance. That is why the spirit of democracy is the highest and the most basic– something every religion should call its own. Without tolerance people can easily fall into vindictiveness and aggression. Without respect for others they can become aloof and indifferent to human suffering. Democracy is the only governing principle that is predicated on tolerance for all.

Federal Deficits

There is much confusion about federal budget deficits. Many people, whether liberal or conservative, believe that the federal government will go bankrupt “soon” because of its habit of deficit spending. There are multiple US debt counters, both online and IRL, that put this notion in the starkest possible terms. Here’s one:

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

The attention the national debt has received is indicative of a deep sense of fear that pervades much contemporary thought about the role of the federal government. But is it warranted?

First a couple of basic facts:

Congress– and only Congress– has the power to issue currency, as stated in Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution. So the financial constraints on the federal government cannot be meaningfully compared to those of a family, or a business, or even a US state.
The federal government issues treasury bonds whenever it expects to spend more than it receives in revenue. But that’s just a policy that was established by Congress. It’s not a fiscal necessity.¹
The federal government will always have the ability to pay for any programs or policies adopted by Congress. So said Alan Greenspan before Congress when he was asked to testify before it by Paul Ryan in 2005.²
Congress has paid down more than 20% of the federal debt 7 times in the past– and every time the result was either a recession or a depression.³

Here’s an example that will serve to explain the impact of deficit spending on the US economy.

Suppose that Congress decides to spend $100 billion on infrastructure improvements without raising revenue. That would result in negative $100 billion on the government’s ledger. But every ledger has two sides. So there must be a positive $100 billion somewhere else. Where would that be?

To figure that out we need to understand what the government would do with its $100 billion of newly issued currency. To improve infrastructure it will need to go into the private sector to purchase infrastructure improvement services. That is, the government will be writing checks to individuals and companies that can provide the required services. (The government could opt to have the US Army Corps of Engineers perform many of these services, but let’s ignore that case.)

So the result would be a positive $100 billion deposit to business accounts in the private sector.

Now imagine that after a couple of years of infrastructure improvements the deficit hawks win out and Congress decides to balance the federal budget. Doing so would add a positive $100 billion to the government’s ledger, bringing its balance to zero. But that positive $100 billion would have to be offset by a negative $100 billion in the private sector.

What does that negative $100 billion represent? That is Uncle Sam reaching into the bank accounts of private citizens and businesses to extract $100 billion. Exactly who will pay that $100 billion would depend on other government policies, such as tax policy. But the net effect is that the private sector will see $100 billion in liquidity evaporate. That is the recipe for a recession.

What about inflation? Doesn’t government spending always result in inflation? Didn’t Milton Friedman win the Nobel Prize for that insight?

Let’s go back to our example of a $100 billion spend on infrastructure improvements, and let’s imagine that at that time the national economy is running at 100% capacity. Every business is fully booked, and there is 0% unemployment nationwide. Now Congress jumps in and requests bids for $100 billion of infrastructure improvement services. In this case it’s pretty likely that the bidding service providers will offer their services for a premium price– which means that prices for such services will generally tend to go up.

But would that affect the general consumer? For general consumer products such as home electronics and groceries– no, probably not. But the increased demand for infrastructure services would likely put upward pressure on the cost of building new housing, since most housing foundations require excavation, grading, and cement footings. So there would very likely be a modest side effect on the Consumer Price Index.

When Congress funds new weapons systems for the US military, such purchases are relatively unlikely to affect the CPI since consumers can’t purchase warplanes or submarines at their favorite retail outlets. But there may be side effects. Weapons systems may require the use of specialized materials, such as rare earths, that might also be used for some consumer products, and the government induced increase in demand could result in an increase in prices for some categories of consumer goods.

All of the above analysis would be different if the economy were not running at full capacity. In that case it might be that businesses that provide the required services are hungry for work and therefore wouldn’t bid their services at premium prices.

Now let’s consider a different case. Imagine that Congress decides to buy flat screen TVs for every classroom in America. Since the government doesn’t have flat screen TV manufacturing facilities in its tool set it would have to go to the private sector to purchase flat screen TVs– and the increased demand would almost certainly put upward pressure on the prices of consumer electronics. That would definitely affect the CPI.

The point is that the impact of government spending on the nation’s economy depends on the state of the economy at the time of the expense and on the specific sectors of the economy that would be impacted by the increase in demand generated by the government’s requirements.

The primary constraint on government spending is inflation. So long as we are keeping an eagle eye on inflation, so long as we don’t allow inflation to spin out of control, government spending is not in and of itself a crisis. The accumulated “debt” of the federal government is simply a record of the funds that Congress has allocated for the good of the nation and it will never need to be repaid.

I underwent a massive re-think of my understanding of the federal deficit when I read “The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton. Ms. Kelton is a world class economist whose book clearly articulates the true nature of the federal deficit. I heartily recommend her book for those interested in a deeper dive. Most of the above is based on her book.

_____________________________________________________________

Notes:

1 “The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton, Chapter 4

2. “The Deficit Myth”, pg. 180-181

3. “The Deficit Myth”, pg. 96

A More Perfect Union

In 1789 the US Constitution was innovative and daring. It established the United States as a representative federation with some democratic elements. It was a radical departure from the norms of the time in that most every other government was either a monarchy or an autocracy.

Other nations found the US Constitution inspiring. The soaring words of the Declaration of Independence promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all, while the Constitution guaranteed protection from the depredations of an oppressive ruling class. Other nations adopted the Constitution as a template for their own governing principles.

But many of the anti-democratic elements of the Constitution were eventually discarded by other countries. Although some included a variation of the Electoral College in their own constitutions, all of them discarded it as unfair. The United States is the only major country with democratic-like government that still retains an Electoral College. See Chapter 7, “America the Outlier” from Tyranny of the Minority by Levitsky and Ziblatt for a brief history of these changes.

There are many other anachronisms in the US Constitution. Because the US Constitution is so hard to amend it has become stagnant and rooted in the past. For example, the Senate was designed to represent states, not people. There was much debate during the Federal Convention about how the Senate should be structured. The debate got so testy that it was handed off to a committee for resolution. The two primary advocates of direct representation of the people rather than states (Wilson and Madison), were purposefully excluded from the committee. The decision to cave in to the demands of low population states had already been made.

To improve the democratic profile of the US Constitution I propose the following 7 principles:

The Constitution should be much easier to amend. The requirement that amendments be approved by three quarters of the states is particularly onerous.
The president and vice president should be elected by the people directly, that he/she may represent the people of the nation as a whole, not the states.
The method of the election of representatives in the House should ensure that representation is proportional to population across the entire country, rather than skewed to the advantage of low population states.
The method of the election of senators should represent the people of the nation, rather than states.
The sizes of the House of Representatives and of the Senate should remain permanently fixed, regardless of the size of the nation’s population or the number of states.
Representatives and senators should represent the national character, not the characters of state defined localities.
The members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate should be selected by different methods to ensure that they represent two different aspects of the American character.

These 7 principles would eliminate most of the anti-democratic barriers in the current US Constitution and its amendments. While several possible structures for the House and the Senate could be compatible with the above 6 principles, I propose the following:

Change the Constitution to require that amendments be approved by two thirds votes in both House and Senate, rather than by three quarters of the states.
Eliminate the Electoral College for both the president and vice president.
The numbers of persons in the House of Representatives and of the Senate should be based on the psychology of group decision making, rather than on the numbers of states, or the numbers of citizens.
We traditionally think of the Senate as the more measured and deliberative body; so we would probably want the number of senators to be smaller than the number of representatives.
Representatives should be elected from national groupings based on relative population density, as this is the greatest single contributor to differences of perspective across the nation.
Senators should be selected from national groupings that are based on something other than population density. I suggest that senators should be chosen from random national groupings. That would ensure that senators represent the nation as a whole, regardless of their geographical origins.
Voter registration should be nationalized by adding a new data element to the Social Security Administration’s database of every American citizen for the state in which the citizen is registered to vote. Then require every state to update that field whenever a citizen registers to vote in that state. This will eliminate registration ambiguity.
Amend Article I Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution to state that members of the House and Senate can only block a vote to move a process forward with a 40% vote of the members. Then those of the blocking minority would have a limited period of time– I recommend 72 hours– to persuade the other members of Congress to their view. After that time the legislation must be brought to the floor for a vote. Only one such blockage can be issued for any one piece of legislation.

These changes would permanently eliminate gerrymandering, would eliminate voter registration ambiguities, and would ensure that both House and Senate represent the people of the nation as a whole, rather than local within-state groups. And they would ensure that proposed measures could be blocked by minorities only through concerted effort by those minorities.

These principles can be extended to the individual states. Doing so would ensure that state legislatures are representative of the people of their respective states in the same manner as the national government represents the nation as a whole.

Book Review: Tyranny of the Minority

Earlier I reviewed How Democracies Die, published in 2018 by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Tyranny of the Minority was published in 2023 by the same two authors, both of them professors of Government at Harvard University.

This book isn’t a sequel to their earlier book. How Democracies Die is a sweeping study of democracies around the world. Tyranny is focused chiefly on the United States, though it burgeons with the lessons of democracies around the world.

Much of the book is a history lesson of how the United States evolved from being at the very forefront of the global experiment in democracy as a method of government to lagging far behind other democracies. Certainly the US Constitution is a marvel of political innovation. The three branches of government, each serving to check and balance the others; the bicameral legislature; a president elected (indirectly) by the people; the Bill of Rights; the power to amend the Constitution itself through a regular process– each of these was a major innovation. The US Constitution served as a model for the constitutions of many other countries, many of which are strong, healthy democracies today.

But most of the other countries that adopted some form of the US Constitution as their original template have radically revised their own constitutions to make them more suitable to contemporary social purposes and needs. The authors explain that many countries had some form of indirect voting for their legislatures or for their presidents, as was originally implemented in the US Constitution. (Article I Section 3 says that the members of the Senate would be elected by the state legislatures; the 17th Amendment changed that to support direct election by the people of each state. And the people elect electors to the Electoral College, which in turn elects the president.) But most of them got rid of it. Here’s what the authors have to say about it:

By the late nineteenth century, France and the Netherlands had eliminated the powerful local councils that had previously selected members of parliament; Norway, Prussia, and Sweden did the same in the early twentieth century. France experimented with an electoral college for a single presidential election in the late 1950s but then dropped it. Electoral colleges gradually disappeared across Latin America. Columbia eliminated its electoral college in 1964 under military rule but replaced it with direct presidential elections in 1988. Argentina, the last country in Latin America with indirect presidential elections, dropped its electoral college in 1994.
Tyranny of the Minority, pg. 205

Here in the US, there have been many proposals to eliminate the Electoral College– and they have all failed, usually in the Senate.

The US Constitution is encumbered with many counter-majoritarian components, several of which prevent the majority of the American people from getting what they want from their government. The counter-majoritarian elements are enumerated in Tyranny as follows:

The Bill of Rights
A Supreme Court with lifetime appointments and the power to declare legislation passed by Congress incompatible with the Constitution
Federalism, which grants many powers to the states
A bicameral legislature, requiring majorities in two different houses for the passage of any legislation
A radically skewed representation in the Senate
The filibuster, which requires a 60% majority in the Senate to end debate (and which can now be enacted with nothing more than an email)
The Electoral College
Radically restrictive rules for implementing constitutional change: 2/3 vote of each house in Congress and 3/4 ratification by the states

(Tyranny of the Minority, pg. 147 – 148)

The Bill of Rights grants many privileges to citizens that we certainly want to protect and defend, so that component is actually protective of democracy. Similarly we want the courts to ensure that our laws are consistent with our principles– so granting the Supreme Court the power of judicial review is reasonable, and potentially protective of democracy. But lifetime tenure on the court can serve as an obstruction to change and for that reason it is more likely to contribute to stagnation.

(I would have added the Apportionment Act of 1929 to the above list, as that legislation capped the number of members of the House at 435. That, coupled with the constraint that each state must get at least one representative, has resulted in a massive over-representation of low population states. For example, the state of California has about 26% less representation in the House than it should have on the basis of population alone.)

The authors show that the many counter-majoritarian elements of the US Constitution have produced the result that the US is a true laggard among modern democracies. Here is how the authors express it:

America is the only presidential democracy in the world in which the president is elected via an Electoral College, rather than directly by voters. Only in America can a president be “elected against the majority expressed at the polls.”

America is one of the few remaining democracies that retains a bicameral legislature with a powerful upper chamber that is severely malapportioned due to the “equal representation of unequal states” (only Argentina and Brazil are worse). Most important, it is the world’s only democracy with both a strong, malapportioned Senate and a legislative minority veto (the filibuster). In no other democracy do legislative minorities routinely and permanently thwart legislative majorities.

America is one of the few established democracies (along with Canada, India, Jamaica, and the U.K.) with first-past-the-post electoral rules that permit electoral pluralities to be manufactured into legislative majorities and, in some cases, allow parties that win fewer votes to win legislative majorities.

America is the only democracy in the world with lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices. All other established democracies have either term limits, a mandatory retirement age, or both.

Among democracies, the U.S. Constitution is the hardest in the world to change, for it requires supermajorities in two legislative chambers plus the approval of three-quarters of the states.
Tyranny of the Minority, pg. 217

Americans tend to think of the US Constitution as an ideal of completed perfection. It is not; and in fact the very extensive evidence the authors present shows that the US Constitution is greatly in need of reform. The US has become stagnant, relative to other democracies throughout the world, and it is time that the American people were alerted to that fact.

This book and its predecessor are absolutely essential to anyone who wants to understand the place of democracy in the world and in our country. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how best to preserve and extend our democracy.

Book Review: How Democracies Die

How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, was published in 2018. It’s a broad overview of how democracies have died in countries around the world. The authors are professors of government at Harvard University.

The purpose of the book is to answer the question of whether the United States is in danger of losing its democracy. To that end, in Chapter One the authors list four indicators of authoritarian behavior. These are:

Rejection of democratic rules of the game
Denial of the legitimacy of one’s political opponents
Toleration of, or encouragement of, violence
Readiness to curtail the political liberties of opponents and of the media

They provide many specific examples of these behaviors from the historical record of democracies that died in Europe and in South America, including those of Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Poland, and Russia.

Some democracies have died in a palace coup, but over the last several decades the chief method of destroying a democracy has been to weaken in from within, as Hitler did. First, win power through normal democratic means: get elected to office. Then, weaken democratic institutions by:

Capturing referees: Buy off, threaten, or exile judges, internal investigators, monitors– anyone in a position to follow behind-the-scenes machinations, expose them to the public, or bring them to an end.

Sidelining key players: Bring anyone with economic power or political capital to heel, through any means available. Allow business interests to thrive– so long as they don’t interfere with politics. Demand loyalty from popular cultural figures and punish those who fail to comply. Pack the courts and government positions with loyalists to ensure that no one contradicts the goals of leadership.

Changing the rules: If the law limits a leader’s term of office, change the law. If appointments to cabinet positions require the consent of Congress, dissolve Congress. If the Constitution limits the power of the Executive, suspend the Constitution.

These stratagems have succeeded in many countries around the world. They together constitute a standard playbook for wannabe dictators the world over. Be patient and follow these simple rules over the course of several years and your victory is assured.

Is America under threat of losing its democracy? The authors show by example from the public record that Donald Trump exhibited all four of the autocratic behaviors they listed in Chapter One while he was running for office in 2016! The warning signs were available then, and they are even more evident now. If Trump were to return to office he has said that he will be a dictator on Day One– but only on Day One. Sorry, but that’s just not how true dictators roll. Toward the end of his first term of office he entertained Michael Flynn’s idea of declaring Martial Law and of seizing voting machines from around the country. He said that he wanted the US military to shoot protesters, and he wanted the Custom Border Patrol to shoot anyone who approaches the southern border. He even talked openly of suspending the Constitution. And of course ever since November 2020 he has yelled that the election was stolen from him. Trump very definitely exhibits all of the characteristics of a dictator. So YES, America could lose its democracy.

In fact there are many powerful interest groups that have openly declared their opposition to democracy. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is an agenda which they and their alliance of more than 80 conservative organizations expect that the next Republican president will enact. Chief among its objectives is the replacement of the “Deep State” with party loyalists. That is the very essence of the authoritarian principle of “Sidelining key players” described above.

The authors of How Democracies Die have released a book titled Tyranny of the Minority in September of 2023. When I’ve had a chance to read it I’ll post a separate review here.

Trusting Democracy

On many of the major issues of the day the American people can’t get what they actually want from the federal government. Here are some examples:

65% of Americans support keeping abortion legal in all or most cases

(https://www.prri.org/research/abortion-attitudes-in-a-post-roe-world-findings-from-the-50-state-2022-american-values-atlas/?cid=eml_firstread_20230224)

61% of Americans support a ban on sales of assault weapons

77% support a 30 day waiting period

80% support allowing police officers to take weapons away from those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others

80% support mental health background checks for gun purchases

81% support increasing the age for gun ownership to 21

81% support improving enforcement of existing gun laws

87% support requiring criminal background checks on all gun purchases

(https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gun-policy-republicans-ignore-americans-consensus-views-rcna82220)

65% of Americans believe the government is spending too little on education

63% of Americans believe the government is spending too little on health care

62% of Americans believe the government is spending too little on social security

58% of Americans believe the government is spending too little on medicare

53% of Americans believe the government is spending too little on border security

(https://apnews.com/article/spending-budget-poll-biden-cd55f1c3859b62a861cdbdc0cd23bd79)

And yet getting changes to public policy at the national level on any of the above issues is nearly impossible. The federal government just isn’t listening to what Americans actually want.

Why is that? First let’s consider the House of Representatives. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the number of members of the House at 435 (with some very limited exceptions). The Constitution states (in Article I Section 2) that every state must have at least 1 representative. Those two constraints together have resulted in a situation in which states of low population are vastly overrepresented. It has gotten so bad that as of the 2020 Census the state of California has about 28% less representation in the House than it should on the basis of population alone. That is grossly unfair to the people of California, but the same problem affects the voters of every state with more than the average state population.

Then there’s the Senate. As of the 2020 Census there are 9 states that between them have more than 50% of total U.S. population. The residents of those 9 states therefore have only 18% representation in the Senate. The remaining 82% of the power in the Senate is held by states that together contain less than 50% of total population. That, too, is grossly unfair to the voters of the most populous states.

And finally we must discuss the Electoral College. The sole reason why the 2020 election devolved into strident claims of voter fraud is because of the existence of the Electoral College. Joe Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million votes. And yet Trump had only to flip 5,900 votes in Georgia, 10,400 votes in Wisconsin, and 5,300 votes in Arizona to produce an Electoral College tie, and that would have thrown the final decision into the House of Representatives where the Republican Party had a solid majority. Despite his 7 million vote majority in the popular vote Biden was less than 22,000 votes from losing the entire election to Donald Trump. That represents about 0.3% of Biden’s 7 million vote margin.

These disparities are the product of bad governmental design. Our Constitution is not serving us well and it is long past time for drastic reform. And what should that reform look like? I propose that we trust democracy– and the people. The only way to make the federal government more responsive to the needs and desires of the people is to make it more democratic, not less. In pursuit of that end I propose the following principles:

1. The President should be elected solely on the basis of the popular vote. The Electoral College must be abolished.

2. The House should represent all people across the nation equally in proportion to the national population.

3. The Senate should also represent the people, not states. The states have been guaranteed all the rights they require in Article IV of the Constitution. There is no need for states to have separate representation at the federal level.

4. The House and the Senate should have separate responsibilities, and therefore different characters and processes.

5. Both the Senate and House should be capped at a fixed number of members, regardless of the number of states in the union or the size of the nation’s population. This will ensure that neither body grows without bound as the nation grows.

6. The size of each body should be based on the optimal size for a body that must efficiently conduct the affairs of each as defined under Principle # 4 above.

7. The Senate and the House should represent different aspects of the national character, not the character of local within-state regions. This implies that different methods of selection should be used for the members of the two bodies.

8. The methods of selection employed in satisfaction of Principle #7 should be designed to correlate strongly with the separate characters of the two bodies as defined in Principle #4.

Only Principle #4 above is currently guaranteed in the Constitution. All of the remaining principles would require significant changes to the Constitution itself. And should you wonder if it is possible for any system to comply with Principles 1 through 8 above, I can assure you that the answer is Yes. I have a specific proposal for that, but I would be happy to consider any system that fully comports with all of these principles. Let me hear yours.

The Constitution has been amended 27 times thus far. The overall trend over the history of the country has been to expand suffrage to ever greater numbers of people, and to expand the rights of individuals to guarantee and protect their freedoms. If anything the above Principles would strengthen our nation by extending the democratic elements of our government and by turning more power over to the people themselves. Trust the people!

Anonymity and social discord

Hyperbole has long been the political agitator’s weapon of choice. It costs nothing, and for those of the audience who are susceptible to fear it can be very effective. Now technology has given such antagonists an even greater reason to employ exaggeration. The tools of email, text messaging, and social media allow users to adopt aliases by which to disguise their true identities. This possibility means that the cost for employing hyperbole as a weapon is even lower. Whatever is said anonymously cannot be traced back to a person, so the author suffers no penalty for vile and deceitful rhetoric. The result to society has been a ratcheting up of exaggeration and lies. The shield of an alias makes it easier to use coarse language, to insult and demean those with whom one disagrees, and to cast even relatively small issues as evidence of our inexorable slide into the abyss.

There are certainly good reasons for social media platforms to support anonymity. Whistle blowers, for example, should be protected from retaliation, and the best way to allow them to present their evidence without fear is to give them a way to submit their testimonials anonymously. Witnesses to criminal behavior may need the shield of anonymity while those being charged are tried.

But anonymity is not necessary for most discourse. Anonymity is not likely to improve discussion of, say, public transportation policy. In fact, knowing the true identities of all parties to such a discussion is far more likely to result in respectful dialogue and an exchange of gainful ideas.

Spammers and scammers use fake identities to conceal their true purposes– fake names, fake email addresses, fake phone numbers from your own area code. Why do we allow this? What is the value to society to allowing people to use a fake phone number whose only purpose is to trick the person receiving the call into believing that the caller is someone nearby, someone he may know? I can think of no reason why a caller from Mumbai should be allowed to use a phone number that appears to have originated from your own neighborhood. But telecom companies no doubt make a lot of money by offering such “services.”

As for IP addresses, we could demand that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) disallow anonymous connections, that they ensure that every IP address points back to a real person at a real physical address, and that their directories of IP addresses and person names are available to the general public. That would enable any user of the ISP’s services to convert a user’s IP address to a real name, face, and physical address.

The problem with this option is that there are perfectly valid uses for anonymous connections. Users who work from home may need anonymous connections to defend against man-in-the-middle attacks. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) provides anonymous connections, and it ensures that the entire exchange of information between user and host is fully encrypted, end-to-end. VPN appliances are in common use by private citizens, corporations, and government for all of the reasons cited. So even though a VPN can enable the user to connect to servers in other countries to further disguise the true origin of the connection, it’s far too late to claw back those devices now.

Most ISPs provide some variation of a spam blocker, and a way to report spammers. That is certainly a good start, but each ISP has a different method for reporting spammers, and a different URL. Google, for example, has a special form for reporting spam. The Google form is available here: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse. This form forces the user to parse the offending email into separate components: Source email address, Subject, Body, and Headers. But Comcast simply asks the user to forward suspect messages to abuse@comcast.net. These different methods are confusing to the user, and there is little evidence that they are coordinated. If you receive an email at your personal AOL email account that originated from a Hotmail user account, should you report it to AOL, or to Hotmail? In the present state of the market you should report it to Hotmail, since only Hotmail can remove that user from their subscriber database. But if the user forwards the message to AOL rather than Hotmail, will AOL in turn forward it to Hotmail? Answer: probably not.

It would be far easier for users of email clients if they could simply report all spam to one URL, and leave it up to the ISPs to monitor that URL, parse the suspect messages, and assign them to the correct responsible parties. Email clients should make it easy for users to block and report suspect messages, to flag specific email addresses as suspicious, and to whitelist addresses that the user knows are trustworthy. The email clients that are on the market today are by no means uniform in their handling of these use cases.

What about the problem of anonymity? As mentioned above there will always be a need for anonymous connections. But I would suggest that there is also a need for a system that allows users to consciously accept or block anonymous and fake users. When you log into such a system the default would be to block all anonymous and fake users, but you would have the ability to accept such users on a case by case basis. Such a system would put the user in control of the type of information he or she receives. And that is something that is sorely missing in the present market.

No one is a true libertarian

Libertarianism is a philosophy that says, in effect, you take care of you and I’ll take care of me and everything will work out fine. On the surface this philosophy seems perfectly reasonable. As I go through life I am faced with choices that I make every day. When I get paid by my employer I have money in my pocket. I can spend that money on housing, transportation, food, or education– or I can spend it on drink, drugs, or partying. If I make good choices throughout my life I am likely to be rewarded for my good behavior. If I work hard, most employers will recognize that and are likely to give me greater responsibilities, more opportunity, better pay. But if I make bad choices, if I fritter away my money on frivolity and hedonistic pleasures, I am very likely to wind up with no savings, no family, no home, no future. So if I am honest and hard working and if I save money for my future why should I pay to help those who make bad choices? Everyone should be responsible for his or her own livelihood. Those who fail to take responsibility should expect that society will not reward them for their failure.

This is a perfectly reasonable argument, so far as it goes. But it does make some underlying assumptions that aren’t obvious, and that most people don’t actually believe. The first such assumption is that everyone has an employer. The fact is that some people just aren’t employable. Persons with severe physical or mental disabilities generally fall into this category, though the boundary of this group has been eroded by advances in technology and public toleration. For example, Stephen Hawking suffered from a debilitating neurological disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS) and yet he was able to make tremendous contributions to physics and to the public understanding of science generally. But some people, through no fault of their own, are born with conditions that make it impossible for them to work in any capacity whatsoever. Some people develop conditions such as heart disease or stroke that incapacitate them. Most people, myself included, believe that society has a responsibility to care for those who cannot care for themselves.

Another problem with the libertarian view as I have outlined it above concerns the fact that some people are in fact capable of change. I once met a man who was a recovering alcoholic. He told me that he had once been an IBM systems salesman. At that time (the mid-1980s) that would have been a position at the absolute pinnacle of the American workforce. But he was a drinker, and his drinking consumed him. He lost his job, lost his wife and family, his house– everything. Finally– when he had reached rock bottom– he realized that he had to change his life. He joined AA, worked at it, kicked his habit, and got back into the workforce selling PC software. People sometimes can turn their lives around, can decide to remake themselves, to make amends for their poor choices. And sometimes that works. I think that society owes such people a second chance, and a helping hand up.

Mind you, I also recognize that there are some people who can never be changed. Ted Bundy is, to my mind, the quintessential example of this sort of person. He was addicted to killing. He enjoyed it, enjoyed the power he felt over his victims, and he was never going to stop killing until society put him away. Differentiating between those who are earnest in their desire to change and those who will never change is hard. My general rule of thumb is that I’m willing to give anyone a first chance to earn my trust. And I’ll offer most people a second chance, so long as they can demonstrate to me that they’re sincere– but the burden of proof is on them, not me.

Where libertarianism completely falls apart is in the broader context of society generally. Consider pollution. Suppose we have two businesses A and B, both of which manufacture the same product. Suppose further that Business A is mindful of its impact on the environment and disposes of its waste responsibly. But Business B is owned by a true libertarian who believes that businesses should only consider their own interests and profits without giving any consideration to the general condition of society at large. So Business B simply dumps all of its solid and liquid waste into the nearest river or stream and pumps all of its gaseous waste into the atmosphere. Business B will therefore have a lower cost of operation and will therefore be able to undercut Business A on price. And in the long run the market will reward Business B with more sales and profits. The inevitable end result is a race to the bottom in which responsible disposers of waste are forced out of the market and those businesses that remain are the worst polluters.

A libertarian apologist might argue that this is all perfectly reasonable since consumers can choose which products they prefer. If they want clean air and water then they can elect to purchase only from corporations that properly dispose of their wastes. But that assumes that consumers have enough information to make such choices. The fact is that businesses lie, and they have the means to make their lies seem reasonable. Cigarette manufacturers lied for decades about the relationship between tobacco and cancer. They even hired people with advanced degrees to argue that the science on the matter was not definitive. Consumers were confronted with two completely different narratives on tobacco products. The Surgeon General argued that tobacco products increase the risk of getting cancer while the tobacco companies claimed that the science was not conclusive and that cigarette smoking does not cause cancer. Only later was discovered that the tobacco companies had known for decades that everything the Surgeon General had said about their products was true. When consumers have deeply flawed or incomplete information on which to base their purchase decisions they can’t be expected to make sound choices.

No one– not even the most strident libertarian– wants to breathe polluted air or drink poisoned water. There is only one way to prevent businesses from spewing their waste into our rivers, streams, and atmosphere, and that is by enacting and enforcing regulation. Businesses that pollute should be punished for the harm they do to society. The marketplace generally cannot do that and therefore it is the responsibility of society as a whole to provide the punishment that capital markets cannot.

The ultimate problem that libertarianism cannot address is climate change. The planet’s climate is being radically altered by human behavior– that much is now undeniable. Limiting or reducing the adverse effects of climate change is something that will require the cooperative efforts of all societies on the planet. It is not a problem that can be addressed by entrusting each individual to act in their own self interest.

In contemporary discourse libertarians often argue that the regulation of business violates libertarian principles. The libertarian philosophy that applies to individuals, so the reasoning goes, should also apply to businesses as they are simply agglomerations of individuals. That philosophy holds that individuals should be held accountable for their own failings. Since the marketplace holds businesses accountable by punishing mismanagement there is no reason for society– or the government– to impose additional constraints. But that reasoning fails to account for the kinds of problems that can only be solved by moderating social behavior generally. Pollution and climate change are two of the best examples of such problems, though there are others as well. No one– not even the most strident libertarian– wants to breathe polluted air, drink polluted water, or live in a locale that is too hot or too wet for human life. And therefore no one is a true libertarian.

American conservatives are communists

After many decades of observing and participating in American politics I have concluded that American Conservatism is a form of Communism. There simply is no other explanation for the behavior of American Conservatives over the last 30 years. Don’t listen to their beguiling words about limited government and personal responsibility– look at what they do. The first impulse of conservatives, whenever they have gained power, has been to cut taxes. The advocates of this policy have long claimed that tax cuts solve every ill. They stimulate economic growth; they reduce the growth of government; and they return riches wrongly stolen from deserving citizens. Ronald Reagan cut taxes; George W. Bush cut taxes; and Donald J. Trump has recently enacted a tax cut. The only conservative president of the last 30 years who did not cut taxes was George H.W. Bush, and he was excoriated by the leaders of his party for that failure of principle.

Each of those tax cuts was specifically tailored to benefit the super super super rich. The argument in favor of this economic policy is that those with money to burn will invest it in high risk ventures that create innovation and, consequently , jobs.

The most dramatic change in the American economy over the last 30 years has been a massive concentration of income and wealth. The super super super rich have become ever more rich, while the wages of the average American worker have stagnated. The portion of personal income going to the top one percent has increased from 8.9 percent in 1980 to more than 22 percent today. And only the top two quintiles of families have seen their net worth increase between 2000 and 2011. Families in each of the lower three quintiles have actually seen their net worth decline over the same period. See inequality.org for more details.

Conservatives must certainly be aware of this massive shift of economic power. As they have reminded us at every opportunity, conservatives have a deep and abiding understanding of economics, whereas liberals only know how to waste government funds. Certainly they must view this most dramatic shift of the economy as a consequence of their own strivings and machinations.

Conservatives must also know of the revolutions of France, of Russia, and of China. They must be enough aware of historical trends to know that as wealth is concentrated in the hands of an ever diminishing minority of ultra ultra ultra rich plutocrats the masses will turn to the only option available for the redress of their disenfranchisement– revolution.

Conservatives have been advocating tax cuts that have chiefly benefited the rich for the past 30 years. Each time they achieved their goal of passing tax cuts they have claimed victory. They have repeatedly taken credit for the one governmental policy that has most influenced the structure of the American economy. Hence they must approve of the long term impact of this their most favored policy. The only logical conclusion is that conservatives are planning for the long term. They must be arguing for tax cuts because they intend to skew the economy to such an extreme that the masses are forced to rise up in revolt. In short, they must be planning for a communist revolution. American conservatives must be communists.

U.S. Government is NOT democratic

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” Famous and stirring words. But words that leave unanswered an important question: Union of what?

The structure of the sentence is such that you would think that it is the people who are intended to be the chief beneficiaries of that more perfect union. But a careful reading of the document shows that it was really intended to form a union of states.

Article I of the Constitution vests the legislative powers of the government in two bodies– the House of Representatives and the Senate. Senators are apportioned two per state, so they clearly represent states, not the people. (Originally Senators were elected by state legislatures, but the 17th Amendment replaced that method with direct election by the people of each state.)

Members of the House of Representatives are elected directly by the people of each state, so it would seem to be the more democratic of the two institutions. But there are two additional conditions that skew the House toward small states. The first is the requirement, stated in Article I, that each state must have at least one representative. The second concerns The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the size of the House at 435 members. Thanks to these two rules the House of Representatives provides smaller states with disproportionate representation. California has a population that is almost 80 times larger than that of the smallest state, Wyoming, but it only has 53 representatives in the House. So a voter in Wyoming has greater representation in both the House and the Senate than does a voter in California.

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 was intended to keep the House of Representatives fixed at a “reasonable” size. It was felt that if the numbers of representatives were to increase as the population increased it would eventually result in a body too large to achieve any meaningful result.

Our Constitution was chiefly intended to protect the rights and powers of the states, not the people. (The Bill of Rights was added after the Constitution was ratified to protect the rights of citizens.) Because the makeup of the U.S. legislature favors small states over large states it does not represent the citizens of the United States in proportion to their numbers and therefore our government cannot be called a democracy– or even a representative democracy.

Should we regard this as a problem? Or should we just shrug our shoulders and surrender to the weight of history and accept the current order as sufficient for the purposes of government?

The chief problem with the current order is that the people of this country are not getting what they want from their government. Large majorities of the American people favor more gun controls, not less. Large majorities want abortion to be legal, and they want it to be available to those least able to pay for it. Large majorities want more to be done about climate change and about our crumbling civil engineering infrastructure.

But measures to make progress on these issues have repeatedly stalled in the U.S. Senate. And why? Because the people of states with smaller populations often perceive such issues as being inimical to their local culture. There are 9 states that have more than half of total U.S. population. That gives those states only 18 percent representation in the U.S. Senate. That’s just wrong– and it has resulted in a stagnant government that is stuck in the past.

There is only one way that this stranglehold can be broken. And that is by breaking the association between states and the way that senators and representatives are elected. As currently configured the federal government only has one elected person who represents the nation as a whole– and that is the President. All other elected officials represent localities. As a result the President alone represents the will of the people of the nation; all others represent the will of states, or of regions within the states.

I fully accept the principle that if either the Senate or the House were to grow without bound as the population increases they will reach a point where it will be impossible for the two bodies working jointly to govern. That is, there must be an upper bound on the sizes of each of the two bodies. These maximal sizes should be governed by the psychology of group dynamics, rather than by the numbers or geographical dimensions of the several states.

I propose a bicameral system of legislature with a Senate and a House, as we have today– but with the pronounced difference that the Senate would represent the people of the nation as a whole, while the House would represent local regions within the nation. States would continue to have the general protections guaranteed under the Constitution, particularly in Article IV. But the people would directly elect their representatives in the federal government irrespective of state boundaries.

Let us say, for point of argument, that we agree on an optimal number of X Senators and of Y Representatives. For the Senate, I propose that the entire voting population of the United States be divided into X units, call them “Senatorial Blocs.” Each voting citizen would be randomly assigned to one such Bloc, and each Bloc would vote to elect one Senator. This approach accomplishes the following objectives:

It limits the total number of Senators to X, regardless of the numbers of States in the Union, or the number of people in the voting public
It ensures that each Senator is elected by the same number of registered voters
It guarantees that the Senators would represent a national perspective, rather than a local perspective

For the House of Representatives I propose that the entire voting population would be divided into Y geographical groupings, call them “Representative Districts.” Each District would represent a geographical region of the country that contains the same number of registered voters– but these regions would be drawn irrespective of state boundaries. The voters of each District would elect one Representative to the House. The Districts should be configured as contiguous, rather than disjoint, to ensure that each District represents a locality with a distinct identity. However this principle will need to be flexible enough to accommodate special cases like Alaska and Hawaii which are not contiguous with any other geographical parts of the United States.

To see how this would work in practice, let’s suppose that the total number of registered voters in the United States is about 200 million, and that we have decided that there should only be 500 members of the House. Then each Representative District should contain a total of 400,000 voters. For some especially dense urban areas several Representative Districts would be packed in close together, while in more rural areas a region might have to span one or more state boundaries to fully encompass its allotment of 400,000 voters. The New York City metropolitan area with its more than 8 million residents might need 40 or more such districts, whereas the voters of the state of Wyoming would probably need to be grouped with those of another bordering state to form one complete district representing 400,000 voters.

This method of electing Representatives would have the following advantages:

It would limit the total number of Representatives to Y, regardless of the total number of registered voters or the total number of states
It ensures that every voter is represented by exactly one Representative
Each Representative would reflect the views of a geographic region of the country with a corresponding regional identity
Each Representative would be elected by the same number of registered voters

The conditions set forth above ensure that the two resulting legislative bodies would never grow in size beyond X for the Senate and Y for the House. And they further guarantee that the Senate would represent the perspectives of the nation as a whole, while the House would represent geographical regions with local identities. These two perspectives on the nation’s governance will, I believe, add immeasurable benefits to the long term health of the nation.

But most importantly these policies will change our mode of government to that of a truly representative democracy, since each elected Senator or Representative would be represented by the same number of registered voters as for all other Senators or Representatives, respectively.

Policies such as those outlined above could not have been implemented in 1789, as it would have required a national registry of all voters in the nation. And of course such a registry would have to be updated as voters move from one state to another, or change their names, or die, or become convicted of a crime and therefore lose the right to vote. With the technology available in 1789 it would simply have been impossible to build and properly maintain such a registry. But in today’s world of massively parallel computing systems building a registry of every voter in the country would be a relatively straightforward task. In fact, such a system would solve a number of problems that have been plaguing voting systems throughout the country. How and when to purge voters from the voting rolls? How to prevent voters from voting more than once by registering in two or more states? A national registry of all voters is by far the safest, easiest, and best way to resolve these and other security issues.

The Constitution of the United States is a marvelous construct. It represents a bold and daring break from the monarchical past. It enshrined the principle of the rule of law as an antidote to the arbitrary rule of a king. It has served as an inspiration to other nations that sought a democratic future. And in the principle of self-amendment specified in Article V it showed itself to be adaptable to the challenges and needs of the future.

But the Constitution was a product of its time. It didn’t just allow slavery to persist– it was designed to preserve slavery. It didn’t grant women the right to vote. And it was conceived as a protector of the rights of states. Only after it was ratified were the first ten amendments added as a Bill of Rights, almost as an afterthought, to protect the rights of citizens.

The Constitution followed the general pattern of the Articles of Confederation in that it was designed around States. There is certainly no need or reason to dissolve the States, as they are perfectly viable political entities that are well adapted to serving local needs. But the Legislature of the U.S. Government should represent the needs of the people of the nation as a whole, not the states in particular. And for that reason the current method of electing Senators and Representatives must change.

Written 2020-10-26