[BongoMcCat]

Why?

I live in a country where I pick a party to represent me in the national government, not a local person, and it seems to work just fine.

[adastra22]

If I am having some problem with the federal government, I can call up my local representative and their office will help me sort it out. If it's a situation where I'm being treated unfairly or not according to the law, a sternly written letter from the representative usually sorts things out. If it is a case of the law being unjust, they might get the law changed, if it's not a politically difficult problem.

You might find it surprising that this actually happens in a country of 330M people and just 435 representatives, but it does. In part because only a small percentage of people need this service, but everyone benefits from having it as a contingency plan. Helping a single constituent can pay big dividends at election time as they tell their friends, family, and social media about your help. Likewise, not helping can cause great harm as you alienate your voter base.

[defrost]

Scaling - you live in a country the size of California with a quarter of that states population ( ~10 million ).

Large countries have different issues in areas that for you would be two or three whole European countries distant, and countries with larger populations have many multiples of your entire population to represent.

[donkeyd]

Those problems should be solved locally and often have no right to be influential on the national level. The fact that some areas are heavily invested in fossil fuel shouldn't cause the nation to stop a transition to renewables, but that's what seems to be happening a lot in the US.

In stead, at a national level, a transition can be started and budget can be created to support the states that will be negatively affected. The way that budget is handled locally will then depend on local politicians who can be voted on and need to show that they're actually doing the right thing locally.

Right now, national level politicians can get reelected locally because they're just obstructionists that want nothing to ever change. They'll never actually have to do anything except fund raise and pretend to care about their constituents by blocking anything those constituents don't like. It's a great way for a couple of people to make lots of money while killing the country.