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.Dd January 1, 1970
.Dt demus phil
.Os Runxi Yu
.Sh NAME
.Nm demus
.Nd Democracy: The United States (Unfinished)
.Sh INTRODUCTION
.Pp
When people talk about democracies, it's common to think of the US
Constitution as the "defining point of democracy". While the US is the
first modern democracy, its is far from perfect. I will briefly go
through the following.
.Sh CORRUPTION
.Pp
A study shows that "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic
elites and organized groups representing business interests have
substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent
influence."
.Lk https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/S1537592714001595a.pdf/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens.pdf (Source)
.Pp
A near-ideal democracy would have a roughly linear positive correlation
between the fraction of voters who support a policy and the possibility
of the policy being passed in the legislature. But in the US, the line
is flat at about 30%. A representative democracy wouldn't have a
perfect correlation, because the general public is unable to be informed
on all topics; fluctuations are normal. But *a flat line* means that the
opinions of the people don't matter at all. This does not make sense in
any type of democracy.
.Pp
According to the study, the influence of economic elites and business
interest groups on politics is rather high with a rough positive
correlation as opposed to the flatline for the general public, making
the US an oligarchy rather than a democracy. Mass-based interest groups
have discernible impact on policies, but are still trivial compared with
economic elites and businesses. About three billion dollars are spent
yearly by large "politically active" businesses to bribe politicians
to pass policies for their interest. While businesses should have a say
in legislation, it is unacceptable that they have superior dominance
over public opinion.
.Sh THE SENATE
.Pp
The Senate of the USA consists of 100 members, with 2 from each state.
Two senators from California represent 39 million people while the two
from Wyoming represent 500 thousand people. The founding fathers never
could have imagined such a huge a difference between the population of
states.
.Pp
Some people believe that the Senate helps against populism as opposed to
the House. Although the number of Senators for each state do indeed not
correspond to the population, this has no correlation whatsoever with
preventing populism and doesn't serve an obvious purpose. It only
"helps" by giving completely unproportional voting powers to people
based on their location, period.
.Pp
The Senate also suffers from the fillibuster. Passing a bill in the
Senate has a few steps: Firstly the Senators must *agree to vote*,
passed at a supermajority. Then the Senators actually vote on the bill.
Those who are against the bill will just disagree to vote altogether,
effectively requiring all bills to have a supermajority support to pass
which is nearly impossible as the two dominant political parties almost
always oppose each others' bills and neither have a supermajority in
the Senate.
.Sh The Electoral College
.Pp
The electoral college makes it possible to win an federal election
without winning the national popular vote. It also, similarly but not as
badly as the Senate, represent the people of each state
disproportionally as each state has two extra electoral votes regardless
of their population.
.Pp
A subtle but serious problem with the electoral college is that
electors' listening to the votes of the people is only a *tradition*.
Legally, electors can vote however they want, meaning that the US is not
theoretically a democracy. This hasn't happened before, but this is one
more to the list of problems in the constitution, and is a potential for
disaster.
.Sh Plurality Voting
.Pp
Single-winner elections in the US uses what's called "plurality
voting", where each voter casts one vote to their favorite candidate
and the candidate with the most votes win. This contributes to the
partisan dualopoly (not an actual word, but it basically means
"monopoly" but with two rather than one) as voters who support smaller
parties will undergo the decision of choosing their honest favorite or
one of the two big parties that most closely ressembles their favorite.
As it's hard to gather votes for smaller parties, and thus there's a
small chance of them actually winning the electron, many voters
strategically vote for the big party in order to not be "taken over"
by the big party that they oppose more.
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