[mjamesaustin]

Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair, would be unhappy if we transitioned to a system where all voters have an equal amount of political power.

This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones. Our current system is a crazy double standard, and inherently unfair.

[giantg2]

"Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair,"

Who determines what is fair? Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representation?

"This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones."

The urban ones have more power in the house as that chamber is designed to represent the people. The rural states have equal power in the Senate. It might just happen that there are more rural states (just as in the House some states happen to have more people).

[cthalupa]

The problem with this argument is the Permanent Apportionment Act. The House is more representative of the people than the Senate, but capping the size means that as it stands lower population states still receive an outsized amount of power per capita in the House vs. more populous states. As electoral votes are based on Congressional representatives across the two chambers, this also means they have outsized impact on Presidential elections as well.

The deck is stacked in favor of rural states in too many places for it to be balanced. Repeal the PAA and I am much more sympathetic to the idea that the Senate as it stands is fine.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you conceive of democracy as a mechanism to allow individuals to have a role in choosing their leaders (and thus policy decisions), then any part of that mechanism that allows some individuals to have more of a role than others is inherently undemocratic, and thus (if you consider democracy to be good) unfair.

If instead you consider our system of government to just be a bunch of hacks to come up with leaders and policy decisions, with those hacks there to satisfy people who believe that there are interests than just people, then sure, the system we have is as fair as any other.

For myself, the idea that "the state of Wyoming" deserves any sort of political representation above and beyond what the individual residents of Wyoming deserve is obviously non-sensical. But then I believe in democracy ...

[tbrownaw]

> Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representation?

Some people aren't used to thinking of states as relevant sovereign entities.

[mring33621]

The problem is that the number of house members per state is capped, which results in more-populous states having less influence per-capita than less-populous states. So, in a way, more-populous states are disadvantaged in both the house and senate.

[krapp]

What "urban concerns" and "rural concerns" are we talking about, specifically?

[hattmall]

Is it not obvious why this is the case. If rural dwellers are cut off from the outputs of a city their lives are mostly unchanged and not impacted. If the city dwellers are cut off from the output of rural areas their existence is wildly constrained. How much food / energy / and raw materials do cities typically produce? Obviously there has to be a balance but you have to look at it logically and recognize that one is far more critical than the other.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Could be true (*)

But none of that justifies giving the tiny numbers of people who live in truly rural American outsize power over everyone else.

(*) but probably not ... I'm a rural dweller and my own and my neighbors' dependence on our cities is pretty absolute. Most rural dwellers these days are not subsistence farmers.