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And now for something completely different.
Ever feel like democracy's got you down? Ever read enough of Plato's Republic (or listened to people who claim they have ready Plato's Republic) to realize that Democracy always leads to a Tyranny? Afraid that you might be in a Tyranny right now?
You may be entitled to... course correcting your constitution via the process the founders prepared for us! Seriously, the US has gone a freakishly long time since our last amendment. It seems like the process is broken somewhere. Maybe a lot of somewhere.
But when many people propose a constitutional amendment they run into the trap of trying to enshrine their political cause of the day into the constitution, which is never going to work. What we need are structural adjustments that do not favor either side but rather incentivize more deliberative, rational, non-polarized decision making. And what better way to do it than updating the Senate!.
The Senate was never meant to be Democratic. It was meant to be the mirror to the House of Lords in it's day, just not hereditary. It was meant to check, correct, and slow down the work of the more populist House. The Senate was meant to be filled with the wisest and best of each State who serve the public interest without being beholden to popular opinion.
Originally each U.S. senator was elected directly by the legislature of their home state. This changed because state elections started to become proxies for Senate elections, so we passed the 17th amendment and now they are elected separately (though with how common it is to vote all of one party on a ballot, the effect of this change is minimal.)
This turned the US Senate from the original deliberative body to a highly polarized mess that is just like the US House but less representative. It solved one problem, but failed us in many ways.
What if we returned to the spirit of the 17th, with some tweaks to prevent the State Senate elections from turning into proxies for the US Senate again?
DeCivitate (who was featured in ACX a while ago) has been proposing some Constitutional Amendments that try to address the more structural issues with the government, without falling into the trap of "What can I enshrine in the Constitution that makes my side win forever?"
For the Senate, he has proposed a few possibilities:
First, no matter what, let's reduce the number of US Senators down to qty 1 per State. 100 is too many to have a close group of people deliberating together.
Second, let's change the way Senators are selected. Let's require that a senator needs to be a member of their State Senate (defined as the least numerous branch of the state legislature thereof, being composed of at least ten members, and whose concurrence is necessary for any act of the state legislature to become law. so no gaming that!)
From there, we have a couple options:
Use a FORTRAN algorithm that determines based on past votes who are the most moderate members of the State Senate and then allows the State Senate to pick from them. Plus: almost impossible to game. Minus: Requires putting a specific computer algorithm into the US Constitution, which might be a plus to some people but might also come with its own vulnerabilities.
Have the Senate vote based on a Condorcet method plus a group veto power to help steer a more normal-looking nomination practice into a moderate candidate.
The articles for each algorithm are worth reading, as each shows a strong consideration for all the nuances for each method and a focus on understanding why we got to this point and avoiding the pitfalls that steered us towards where we are now.
The goal is to have Senators who are serious people who solve problems instead of clapping back on social media. The goal is to have a Senate comprised of people representative of the median of each State, opposed to partisans of the majority party in each state. I think people of both major parties plus people of the minor parties would prefer this to what we have going on now. So... Let's have a Constitutional Convention!
The classical trap of modern secularist/rationalist, who thinks that values can be gleamed from laws of nature and of course that their preferred current values are the most carefully deliberated and rational ones. What are the things that should be rationally deliberated on? How to increase GDP per capita? How to bring about communist paradise ASAP? How to maximize "human rights" as they are decided by UN councils led by countries like China?
I mean it for real. How does rational deliberation deliver on hot topics such as immigration, abortion, police violence, foreign wars, fertility crisis, second amendment, affirmative action & DEI or basically any number hot issues also discussed here? These topics are perceived as polarizing, because they are in fact hotly contested based on moral grounds not on some lack of deliberation.
By the way we already have something like that in EU where unelected caste of bureaucrats churn out directives that are slavishly implemented by member states to extent that since Lisbon treaty over 50% of legislation of member countries is delivered by this enlightened body. EU commissars and their enlightened helpers were supposed to be these serious "experts" who use power of science, deliberation and rationality to improve the continent with their migration policy, net zero agenda, AI and social media regulation and other enlightened very serious ideas. It does not look that well so far, their legitimacy is tanking by the day and many people are actually asking why they are put into this position.
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