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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   19233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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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.

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.

All elections become popularity contests. Why make the senate elected, if the goal is to bring in experienced statesmen.

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.

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.

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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