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The purpose of senates and similar elder chambers in most bicameral systems is to:
With this in mind and the general American distaste for titles and nobility, the oddities of the American Senate are unsurprising.
Yes Senates are anti-democratic. This is no accident. They are designed by republics to specifically thwart the passions of democracy.
That's why I specifically compared it to other bicameral systems.
Can't slow down a stationary object. The Senate can only limit the power of the house, a house that already moves at snails place. The Executive and Courts wield their power independently.
Works better when people were dying at age 50. When the average age of the Senate is higher than the life-expectancy 100 years ago, you know something went wrong.
All elections become popularity contests. Why make the senate elected, if the goal is to bring in experienced statesmen.
The American system was created for a different America. A white-protestant nation run by proven men who rose up the ranks through merit (college, military achievement). 75% of the Senate had a college degree in 1945, when less than 5% of the nation had gone to college. The need for fund-raising and media-access meant that running for office was exclusively limited to the elites. This meant a high degree of consensus on what America should be. Therefore, they worried about the excesses of democracy.
In 2025, America is a diverse nation with public-office having exceptionally low barriers to entry. Consensus is nonexistent and core values of various groups are at odds with each other. In such a place, the system should encourage compromise. This means giving power back to the house.
If an downstream institution can unilaterally torpedo a bill (Senate filibuster), then the house would never go through the painful process of reaching compromise. The congress can override the president, but not the senate.
I'm not quite sure what killed the ability of Congress to do its job. There are many suspects. Including the filibuster. But I can assure you that if it ever did regain some measure of power, it would still be necessary to have breaks on the car. The history of functional parliaments is full of nice sounding stupid bills that almost became law but for some high chamber pointing at the practical problems with them.
Maybe getting rid of the fillibuster would help, but the American Republic is chockful of vetoes precisely because it's designed to make exercising power difficult. I'm not sure that would be enough to be worth the trouble.
Because one is bigoted against nobility, presumably.
There are alternatives, I like the idea of a random sampling of taxpayers personally, provided the right caveats.
Take it from someone who's having it imposed on them by circumstance: parliamentary regimes are a terrible idea when your country is experiencing factionalism.
I think that devolution/decentralization/"states rights"/localism is a better and more fitting solution to this problem actually.
In the UK we sort of did that (city Mayors, Scottish/Welsh/NI governments) but the result always seems to be hard left nonentities who have very little history of practical achievement (even less than our top-level MPs). I’m not sure if that’s a structural problem or simply what the regions prefer, but implementing localism in a way that doesn’t end up with virtue-signalling parasites constantly invoking ethnic grievances for more money seems like a serious problem.
I know it didn't go very well in the UK, but I think it would be a better fit for the US where there's already some good local institutions per state that actually hold some power and responsibilities (with their own budgets and such).
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American statute is not stagnant. It certainly doesn't line up with what I'd like but plenty gets done.
Wealthy people that cleared the early years never had particularly low life expectancies. The average age in the American Senate at the moment is indeed shameful but it's not a product of medical advances.
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