Turns out, when you allow any one person to have massive amounts of power (money in the case of capitalism), they will do everything possible to seize more power.
You can also consider the fact that elitism was a massive part of the founding of the US, which is why we have situations like the Senate where land votes more than people, the Electoral College which does the same thing, not banning slavery from day 1 which we’re still seeing the effects of to this day, not having any method for federal direct ballot initiatives, etc.
The issue is capitalism itself, as individuals are still allowed to hold power over other people one way or the other.
You can also consider the fact that elitism was a massive part of the founding of the US, which is why we have situations like the Senate where land votes more than people, the Electoral College which does the same thing
To be fair, (a) at the time, that was considered to be an improvement over an upper legislative chamber made out of actual hereditary aristocracy, and (b) the US was designed to be a confederation of sovereign individual States, more closely resembling how the EU works today.
(I wonder how many folks here who are sharply critical of how ‘undemocratic’ the US Senate is would get mad at me if I, in turn, advocated for abolishing the European Commission and Council of Ministers, so that Germany could be even more dominant over Greece etc. than it already is.)
a) Improvement doesn’t necessailly mean good or effective in the long term.
b) The design ceases to matter when the execution doesn’t match. Actions speak louder than words. We have also given the federal executive branch much more power than necessary, and they have continuously ceased more power, whether that be through intelligence agencies acting extrajudicially and unconstitutionally (NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.), waging war on drugs (and therefore, the American people) and militarizing the police, the president having immunity for all crimes that are “official acts”, etc.
There is also the undemocratic Supreme Court, who with Marbury v Madison, gave themselves the ability to essentially unilaterally enact laws.
I can’t comment on EU politics because I don’t know much about it.
Also, to be fair to Jefferson (whether or not he deserves it), he was deluded enough to have a vision of a pastoral America, in which each family would have a decent-sized plot of land to live on and farm. (I say “deluded,” because even in his time the actual, urban U.S. was taking shape, in the form of big cities like Boston.) You can see a concrete example of this in his township-and-range system, which was the basis of the Public Land Survey System which has shaped so much about U.S. geography. At least in his reckoning, future Americans would have had a lot more control of their lives by owning a big chunk of land that they and their families could fuck off to and make a living independently, should the political situation become disagreeable.
Also, pertinently, the distribution of voters was supposed to be a lot more even among the states. (Which means they should’ve scrapped the Constitution already in 1807 once the Lewis and Clark expedition reported back to him about the landscape of the interior.)
Turns out, when you allow any one person to have massive amounts of power (money in the case of capitalism), they will do everything possible to seize more power.
You can also consider the fact that elitism was a massive part of the founding of the US, which is why we have situations like the Senate where land votes more than people, the Electoral College which does the same thing, not banning slavery from day 1 which we’re still seeing the effects of to this day, not having any method for federal direct ballot initiatives, etc.
The issue is capitalism itself, as individuals are still allowed to hold power over other people one way or the other.
To be fair, (a) at the time, that was considered to be an improvement over an upper legislative chamber made out of actual hereditary aristocracy, and (b) the US was designed to be a confederation of sovereign individual States, more closely resembling how the EU works today.
(I wonder how many folks here who are sharply critical of how ‘undemocratic’ the US Senate is would get mad at me if I, in turn, advocated for abolishing the European Commission and Council of Ministers, so that Germany could be even more dominant over Greece etc. than it already is.)
a) Improvement doesn’t necessailly mean good or effective in the long term.
b) The design ceases to matter when the execution doesn’t match. Actions speak louder than words. We have also given the federal executive branch much more power than necessary, and they have continuously ceased more power, whether that be through intelligence agencies acting extrajudicially and unconstitutionally (NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.), waging war on drugs (and therefore, the American people) and militarizing the police, the president having immunity for all crimes that are “official acts”, etc.
There is also the undemocratic Supreme Court, who with Marbury v Madison, gave themselves the ability to essentially unilaterally enact laws.
I can’t comment on EU politics because I don’t know much about it.
Also, to be fair to Jefferson (whether or not he deserves it), he was deluded enough to have a vision of a pastoral America, in which each family would have a decent-sized plot of land to live on and farm. (I say “deluded,” because even in his time the actual, urban U.S. was taking shape, in the form of big cities like Boston.) You can see a concrete example of this in his township-and-range system, which was the basis of the Public Land Survey System which has shaped so much about U.S. geography. At least in his reckoning, future Americans would have had a lot more control of their lives by owning a big chunk of land that they and their families could fuck off to and make a living independently, should the political situation become disagreeable.
Also, pertinently, the distribution of voters was supposed to be a lot more even among the states. (Which means they should’ve scrapped the Constitution already in 1807 once the Lewis and Clark expedition reported back to him about the landscape of the interior.)