Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests...

>How exactly does this make Madison look bad? What flaws do you mean? Are you presupposing that they are bad because you FEEL they are bad or are they actually bad?

He comes off as a guy who only got involved with the revolution because he wants the government to protect his special interests, his right to own slaves and be the feudal lord of a banana (or in this case tobacco) republic, over the wishes of the majority, rather than some high-minded defender of the rights of man.

He was just givng the common opinion at the time, that only landholders have a significant enough stake in the government to be allowed to vote.

If anything history has proven them right, modern elections are a contest between the urban poor and the lumpen proletariat. landholding would no longer work for our society the principle is right.

The common view of people of his class, yes. Don't the urban poor significantly overlap with the lumpen proletariat? how could those be two opposing groups? And you didn't mention the influence of wealthy capitalists on our elections, who have replaced wealthy plantation owners as the wealthy elite in America. I disagree with the principle, our society has only improved as it has gotten more democratic. The wealthy elite have always claimed that the poor don't know what's best for the nation because they are defending their privilege, so it's hard for me to take that argument seriously.

He believes that the citizens with the greatest stake in society should have the greatest say in the actions of the government. The wealthy pay the most in taxes and have the most to lose if things go sour, so they should have the greatest power.

The investor with the most shares of a corporation should have the greatest say in what the corporation does so he can protect his money. Why shouldn't this apply to government?

>Don't the urban poor significantly overlap with the lumpen proletariat
Not in the United States. They are two very distinct groups. This would be even more true in Hamiltons time when urbanity was in its infancy (or even fetal stages).

Yeah, except the wealthy elite always use this political dominance to protect their wealth at the expense of the majority of the people. It's a vicious cycle, and it's undemocratic.

>The investor with the most shares of a corporation should have the greatest say in what the corporation does so he can protect his money.
That isn't so obvious (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory). What about the thousands of employees of the corporation? Or the millions of people whose lives are otherwise affected? They get no voice? Well yes, that is basically how our system works, but I don't think it should work that way.

>Why shouldn't this apply to government?
because the role of the government isn't to maximize profit

fuck off back to

Not the person you replied to, but most people that say shit like that aren't ancaps, at least not consciously. It's a pretty fringe ideology.

I thought the lumpen proletariat is what Marx called the proletariat who had no potential for revolutionary activity? Isn't that most of the urban poor?

I'm not really too familiar with Marxist lingo though

>Isn't that most of the urban poor?
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I can speak for the United States and give you a big fat no. Just look at our news, it's always the urban poor that throw a fucking fit at everything. They are very class conscious. The rural poor in the US, what Marx would define as the lumpenproletariat, fucking hate the urbanites with a passion because more often then not the urbanites drag them into whatever legislation they desire and it's usually bad shit for the rural poor. Marxist theory doesn't really apply very well to the U.S. because the reality is that it wasn't designed for the U.S. It was designed for Western Europe and Marx openly stated that. The U.S. is far too rural and far too complacent (no matter what your actual class, most non-urban-poor people consider themselves "Middle Class") for any sort of Marxist theory to apply in the same way. We just don't fit the mold.

>very class conscious
Eh, how much do the urban poor really identify capitalists and capitalism as the ultimate enemy of their class (sticking with Marxism). The generalized anti-corporate, anti-"one percent" sentiment is something, but it's actually the more middle class people who most believe things like this, not the poor.

>Originalism in our current context is founded upon purposely misinterpreting the foundations of the United States, not actual originalism
Yes, so it's nice to be able to counter-cherrypick quotes whenever you have "originalists". I expect to see cherrypicked quotes from the Federalist Papers in regards to the Electoral college becoming a very big topic soon.

>Eh, how much do the urban poor really identify capitalists and capitalism as the ultimate enemy of their class (sticking with Marxism)
"The Man" and "Whitey" is the urban poors name for capitalists and is seen as their greatest enemy. It's true that these groups are generally vanguarded by the American "Middle Class," but they are joined by the urban poor. See: BLM. It's not a group made up from the middle class. It's largely poor urban blacks with a vanguard of middle class blacks with middle class white allies. Arguing original marxist thought into this equation doesn't work so well either way, since Marxism has been perverted so much.

>The generalized anti-corporate, anti-"one percent" sentiment is something, but it's actually the more middle class people who most believe things like this, not the poor
Also, you mean not the RURAL poor. Again, the American urban poor and the American rural poor are two distinct groups that hate each other for various reasons.

BLM leaders are surprisingly radical, but most supporters are less so. It seems the largest force for the radical left in recent history has been the black movement. It's a shame that racism has prevented the majority of the population from joining these movements. I would like to believe the anti-government and racist rhetoric of much of the rural poor could translate into more anti-business rhetoric and merge with BLM-type rhetoric.

It's never going to happen and I'll tell you why: The United States is sectarian to the point of absurdity. It's amazing that we even function as well as we do in terms of statehood. Contrary to popular belief, it's not even racism that's the real issue between rural areas, which are predominantly white, and urban areas, which tend to be more ethnically diverse. A lot of the resentment between the two is that urbanites drag the rest of their state with them despite wildly differing situations. One common issue is urban areas continually voting for increased property taxes which they think will hurt the 1% types and they generally don't own any property themselves. In reality, it just hurts rural people because despite whatever their class is, they tend to own quite a bit of land. Rural areas also tend to bluntly halt attempts for urban areas to make reforms that might not hurt rural areas, solely for the fact that it disproportionately benefits urban areas. For example, here in CO, much of the anti-marijuana vote rhetoric in 2012 was based on the fact that all of the money was going to state instead of counties which meant it was all going to Denver and Boulder. Because of this, many rural counties overwhelmingly voted no and urbanites balked at the idea that they were going to get the money. Those of us not on the Front Range have not seen a dime of that billion dollar tax industry.

Again, the U.S. does not fit the mold of Marxist revolutionary rhetoric and likely never will.

Giving hicks internet was a mistake.

But user... I'm an urbanite

That doesn't make it any less true.

I think you're mostly joking, but this is part of the reason why the hick despise urban liberals/leftists: they are smug and dismissive of legitimate problems rural people have.

That's pretty interesting. Thanks.
What else is interesting in US politics?

Interstate rivalries and pretty big, regional sectarianism, economic diversity has actually been a large part of conflict here in the West (generally in relation to or in opposition to California), there's always the racial aspects of course, perceptions of America that never were as a guide for what America is supposed to be (on the behalf of the left and right). Lots of stuff. Imagine if the EU was an actual federalized government. That's pretty much what American politics are like.

It really is a wonder you function reasonably well.

There's a reason why urbanites despise hicks too.

I don't think California considers any state in the West to be a rival.

>look how edgy I am!

Sometimes we get whipped up into a nationalistic fervor and proceed to get our shit together. We tend to really get shit done during those periods as well.

>I don't think California considers any state in the West to be a rival.
I didn't claim that. What I meant was that the economic diversity (or lack thereof) between states leads to conflict between them, This is particularly an issue in the West because the states are all majority agrarian, water is limited, and California consumes as much of the water as they can, often usurping water from other states. For example, my state, Colorado (well, Denver and Boulder really), attempted to give some water rights to California a few years ago before being told that they couldn't fucking do that because the water rights belong to Native tribes. It literally took a tribe suing them to get their shit together.

There wasn't any edge in that post.

>There wasn't any edge in that post.
You knew what the answer to your question is and were just trying to hook people with your edgy >implications

There's nothing in that quote that makes Madison look bad.

>Americans are indoctrinated to believe that the founders were infallible gods

It's worse than that. Any conceivable (modern) method is looked upon as not what they intended, both implying (1) that what the founding fathers intended was meant to stretch 200 years into the future, and (2) they foresaw every change that has happened in the past 200 years and decided their course in light of that clairvoyance.

Not to mention they ignore actual change that has already happened that goes against the founding fathers, like what the electoral college now versus what is described in the Federalist Papers.

Didn't the founding fathers expect revolutions like every 50-80 years to redraw the constitution?

Jefferson did. It's difficult to say that anyone else thought so. On top of that, considering that Jefferson demanded strict constitutionalism and then wiped his ass with it when it suited him, I wouldn't take anything he has to say about the constitution as legitimate.