1. I grew up in a small town, and occasionally ask my parents how mayoral/city council politics is going there. (Or, I check out the latest drama on Facebook about it). My good friend's uncle was our mayor for a long time, etc. People might know personalities, but they're still not following national policy positions. Not to mention that people would be voting purely for personalities/clan/ethnic affiliations, and again not policy- we have a term for that in poly sci, personalism
2. A country of 340 million people with an elected representative from every small town would have an unrealistic number of representatives. 1 for every 5k citizens would be 68,000 reps in the House
I get that you're fetishizing hyper-localism to the exclusion of all else, but it's just a bad basis to run a modern society. This is not a realistic vision
alt Hacker News
1. I grew up in a small town, and occasionally ask my parents how mayoral/city council politics is going there. (Or, I check out the latest drama on Facebook about it). My good friend's uncle was our mayor for a long time, etc. People might know personalities, but they're still not following national policy positions. Not to mention that people would be voting purely for personalities/clan/ethnic affiliations, and again not policy- we have a term for that in poly sci, personalism
2. A country of 340 million people with an elected representative from every small town would have an unrealistic number of representatives. 1 for every 5k citizens would be 68,000 reps in the House
I get that you're fetishizing hyper-localism to the exclusion of all else, but it's just a bad basis to run a modern society. This is not a realistic vision