Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#151

Post by laughing_man » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

kiba wrote: post #83

alexpotato wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly. You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.

It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges. A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will. We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.

The argument isn't that it helps the US create good law. It's that it keeps the US from creating too many bad laws.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#152

Post by Panzer04 » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #143

kennywinker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.

The problem here isn't the temptation to bypass a system intended to require consensus before action can be taken. That temptation is present with any system that provides any checks on autocratic tyranny. The problem is that something like executive orders are being used to bypass that system instead of being prevented from doing so.

The point is that if you can't do the thing the democratic way (because the system is so biased against change as to make it impossible) then people will look for workarounds.

The workarounds are accepted since otherwise nothing would get done at all, and then people are surprised when the workaround gets used in ways they no longer like.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#153

Post by laughing_man » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #108

s_dev wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cool means interesting then yes, it is cool because it's archaic and different but it's not effective. It's the equivalent of a verbal contract. It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one. Irish democracy in contrast uses STV voting and a written constitution and is modeled between the best of what the UK, the US and France had to offer when it was drafted and is a very representative democracy with man…

> duopolies in the US and the UK for better or worse, the duopoly is disappearing in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are getting passed by Reform and the Greens

But it's not that the duopoly is disappearing. It's just that the previous two parties are being eclipsed by two different parities. That's occurred previously in both the UK and US.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#154

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

kbelder wrote: post #87

KK7NIL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're joking, but Athenian democracy had a significant amount of randomness, with candidates being chosen randomly from the top vote winners. Terms were also only 1 year for most positions. These, and other systems, helped prevent any one person from monopolizing power. This is a good video on this: https://youtu.be/pIgMTsQXg3Q

Not joking, although maybe not terribly serious either. I could envision a random (filtered) selection of citizens being given a veto power over legislation, as another check against abuse.

[deleted]

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#155

Post by laughing_man » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:24 AM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #78

mindwok wrote: post #20

British democracy and government is cool. It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution, it's this organic thing that they've stumbled towards over the last ~800 years with small changes like this one gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.

> It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

There's really no way around the possibility that whatever you've written down in your constitution will be ignored in the heat of the moment, or become degraded over time.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#156

Post by laughing_man » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:27 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #89

bartread wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something to be said for your written constitution though: having the fundamental principles on which your nation is founded enshrined in that way should, at least in theory, make it a lot easier to settle arguments (though in practice, and particularly recently, that does seem not to be the case). Constitutional wrangling in the UK is always really fraught though because it's all done by precedent and is th…

Well, SCOTUS sometimes produces really weird Humpty-Dumpty explanations for very common words. Such as that growing marijuana plants in your own home for your own consumption influences interstate commerce and is therefore within powers of the Congress to regulate/ban.

That's ultimately the result of the threats FDR made to pack the court if they didn't do what he wanted.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#157

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:28 AM UTC

pkaodev wrote: post #25

theodric wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides an additional check. Much like a monarch, a noble's interests are tied to the welfare of the country itself. Without the country, they're just a toff with some money and an overinflated sense of self-importance.

This is the most convincing argument for the house of lords/monarchy that I've ever heard. Going to be thinking about this for a while, thanks.

[deleted]

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#158

Post by trimethylpurine » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:33 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #111

kimos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this about Ireland because they are such a young republic. And democratic systems are a technology. Something that we understand better over time, and somewhere new can pick and choose from what is best, where it is _extremely_ hard to change existing systems in established countries.

Yes, it's in my opinion one of the great tragedies of our time that some of our established countries are so hard to change. I don't mean this as the policy needs change, everyone will differ on those. I just mean the technology of government like you're saying. Efficient and more fair ways of voting on laws and electing representatives do exist. For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in ambe…

> "The framers didn't realize that most changes would be blocked by at least one party, out of fear that it would advantage the other guys."

Check out some of the founders' essays. This is no accident, or oversight. It's absolutely intentional and for good reason.

The Constitution grants power to all three branches of government, which is the same as granting power to none of them. The more they disagree, the less power they have. In this way power can only be wielded through cooperation (selflessness).

It's a honey pot for the power hungry.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#159

Post by derriz » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:36 AM UTC

tacticalturtle wrote: post #136

derriz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system. Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictio…

You probably know this - but in most jurisdictions in the US, including federal, charges have to be approved by a grand jury of your peers. There’s an old adage “a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich”* implying that the grand jury is easily mislead - but in my anecdotal experience of serving on a grand jury - this isn’t really true. We definitely said no to overreaches. And you can also see this happening in high…

I'm getting a lot of downvotes for the comment you're responding to so will likely withdraw from this discussion. But to be clear, I deliberately talked of prosecutors threatening charges, not actual indictments.

Conviction through plea-bargaining is almost exclusively a phenomenon in the US. It just doesn't feature in the normal process of public prosecution in countries like Ireland, the UK or Australia. Also as an aside, the grand jury system is exclusively an American feature.

And every common law country (including the US) has a bar in terms of seriousness of the crime, below which you are tried without a jury. Yes the bar is lower in the US (potential sentence of more than 6 months?) but this bar exists nonetheless without sensationalist claims that jury trials have been eliminated - which is what was stated in the comment I originally responded to.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#160

Post by michaelt » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #107

kiba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges. A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will. We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.

I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.

> To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up.

While I agree - this has been an issue long before Obama.

Any reasonable country should be able to decide on the legality of abortion through the normal political process - the public deliberates, they elect representatives, the representatives hammer out the fine print and pass legislation.

But in the American system, the legality of abortion is decided at random, based on the deaths of a handful of lawyers born in the 1930s. If that person dies between ages 68-75, 84-87 or 91-95 abortion is illegal, if they die aged 76-83, or 88-91 it's legal.

Why doesn't America deal with political questions using their political process?