On the one hand, I am a deracinated individual. I live in a building with about a thousand other people, I don’t know any of them, and I don’t want to know any of them. I am only a little more connected to the city and state that I live in, because I don’t like the city and the state (whereas I simply don’t care about my neighbors in the building). Therefore, I am inclined to count people equally because
communities of place, belief and walk of life
simply don’t exist for me (at least not in the physical world).
On the other hand, I hate being told what to do, and I especially hate it when someone far away feels that his principles entitle him to interfere in my business. The state-level fight for high-density zoning in California is a good example of this. Towns vote against permitting high-density zoning, but people far away who don’t know or care about the residents of those towns want to force the towns to permit that high-density zoning in order to accomplish the things that the people far away want in the abstract but the people living in those towns would actually have to suffer the consequences of. This perspective does lead me to feel that small areas where people with a minority opinion actually form the majority do need to be protected.
I think the ideal solution would be to elect a president via a nationwide popular vote but also to make a deep commitment to libertarian principles of leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit. (I expect that the latter is even less likely than the former.)
I would say a group making a decision that applies to everyone inherently involves some people’s preferences being inflicted on others. All the electoral college does is shift that power from one subgroup to another. You can argue that you prefer that we give more weight to lower population areas to balance their influence via the electoral college, and others could argue that it’s better to maximize overall representation via a popular vote. But neither of you could claim to eliminate “someone far away deciding things” for some people.
I don’t think that the total number of “preferences being inflicted on others” is a constant. The more people leave each other alone, the fewer preferences are being inflicted (unless you count the preference against having preferences inflicted, which I suppose some people would). The electoral college isn’t inherently a libertarian institution, but it does at least keep the national government from acting with effectively no concern for the preferences of people who live in small states. (If only there was a way to protect the people in small states without giving them the outsized influence over the people in big states that the electoral college does…)
I am of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I am a deracinated individual. I live in a building with about a thousand other people, I don’t know any of them, and I don’t want to know any of them. I am only a little more connected to the city and state that I live in, because I don’t like the city and the state (whereas I simply don’t care about my neighbors in the building). Therefore, I am inclined to count people equally because
simply don’t exist for me (at least not in the physical world).
On the other hand, I hate being told what to do, and I especially hate it when someone far away feels that his principles entitle him to interfere in my business. The state-level fight for high-density zoning in California is a good example of this. Towns vote against permitting high-density zoning, but people far away who don’t know or care about the residents of those towns want to force the towns to permit that high-density zoning in order to accomplish the things that the people far away want in the abstract but the people living in those towns would actually have to suffer the consequences of. This perspective does lead me to feel that small areas where people with a minority opinion actually form the majority do need to be protected.
I think the ideal solution would be to elect a president via a nationwide popular vote but also to make a deep commitment to libertarian principles of leaving people alone to live their lives as they see fit. (I expect that the latter is even less likely than the former.)
I would say a group making a decision that applies to everyone inherently involves some people’s preferences being inflicted on others. All the electoral college does is shift that power from one subgroup to another. You can argue that you prefer that we give more weight to lower population areas to balance their influence via the electoral college, and others could argue that it’s better to maximize overall representation via a popular vote. But neither of you could claim to eliminate “someone far away deciding things” for some people.
I don’t think that the total number of “preferences being inflicted on others” is a constant. The more people leave each other alone, the fewer preferences are being inflicted (unless you count the preference against having preferences inflicted, which I suppose some people would). The electoral college isn’t inherently a libertarian institution, but it does at least keep the national government from acting with effectively no concern for the preferences of people who live in small states. (If only there was a way to protect the people in small states without giving them the outsized influence over the people in big states that the electoral college does…)