Is the Constitution Breaking America?

I'm Andres Acevedo, and this is The Market Exit. In this essay, I'm taking a critical look at the U.S. Constitution and I explore four major flaws that are undermining American democracy.

We investigate why a document created over 200 years ago could be causing a crisis in modern U.S. democracy. From the Electoral College that can allow the candidate with fewer votes to win, to a Senate structure that heavily favors small states, and a Supreme Court with life-appointed judges wielding immense power—these structural issues raise questions about fairness, representation, and the future of U.S. governance.

We break down each flaw in depth, analyzing how these foundational rules affect political power, popular representation, and the possibility for reform. In the end, we ask the question: Is it time to rewrite the U.S. Constitution?

Much of the inspiration for this essay comes from Erwin Chemerinsky's brilliant book "No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States". If you want to dive deeper into the topic I discuss in the video, I highly recommend that book.

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📺 Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:23 Chapter 1: The First Flaw: Undemocratic Presidential Elections
04:59 Chapter 2: The Second Flaw: The Undemocratic U.S. Senate
06:25 Chapter 3: The Third Flaw: It's Almost Impossible to Repair
07:55 Chapter 4: The Fourth Flaw: The Unchecked and Unbalanced Supreme Court
11:48 Conclusion: Is it time to get a new bicycle?
13:32 Thank you

How you can SUPPORT me:
💫 Swish (Swe only): 123-333 34 65

Where you can FIND me:

#usconstitution #democracy #constitutionallaw_question_paper

SOME SOURCES AND REFERENCES

Senators representing 25 % can block legislation: Chemerinsky, Erwin. No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States (p. 12).

[pietersrv]

You forgot one important flaw: the way the members of the House are elected. In electoral districts, of which the borders are drawn by politicians. Their main goal is of course to secure their seat, which leads to gerrymandering. 90% of the members of the House are elected in districts that are either overwhelmingly democratic or overwhelmingly republican. So the only election that a politician really has to win is the primary. This leads to the polarization in American politics that we see today.

[GaryParker-tm]

Was it Adolf Eichman who said " You are as I was, you will be as I am". The American Constitution was created after a fight to free the American people from monarchal misrule. However the fatal flaw of the American Constitution is that it expects its' elected representatives to act with integrity, honesty, dignity and to put the best interests of the American people ahead of personal gain.

[JohanDanielsson]

To add to your point of minority rule, most of the USA also use plurality voting, so called "first past the post". This have led to a de facto two party system, where it is very difficult to challenge the two biggest parties. So some Americans vote for one of the two parties, not necessarliy because it is the party they really prefer, but because they see it as the lesser evil, out of the two realistic alternatives.

[brokenrecord]

fifth flaw- gerrymandering, whereby parties get to draw electoral maps in order to select voters, as opposed to the voters selecting parties.

sixth flaw - the equivalence of "spending money" with "free speech", thereby giving the rich and large corporations greater political power than the less well financially endowed.

seventh flaw - the concept of "filibustering" whereby one Senator can effectively sidetrack a bill indefinitely absent a supermajority in favour.

there's more flaws, but dinner's almost ready

[Gabriel]

The Constitution is often called “A Bundle of Compromises.” It was designed to get enough states to ratify it. Thus, it gives 18th century concessions to comparatively less populated states.

[TheRatsintheWalls]

An excellent explanation of our flaws.
Sadly, if we try to buy a new bike now, the people with power will get us a unicycle with a spike for a seat that charges our credit card when we peddle and shocks us if we try to get off. Then they'll sell tickets to watch us to their rich friends and take bets on who falls off first.

[sab]

This was a very well made video. I love how you put your references in the description. I think it's great when content creators do this as it allows the viewer to do their own evaluation. I've subscribed!

[synthstatic]

Americans: we hate our corrupt, inefficient government.

Also Americans: we love the piece of paper that sets our government up to be corrupt and inefficient.

[Apostate]

The Constitution forbids the seditionist from running, but our seditionist-appointed SCOTUS decided otherwise. Our Constitution should ban political parties, private funding of elections, and FPTP voting, but it doesn't.

[renanpinheiro]

I've just got to your channel and already watched some of your videos. What an amazing work, man. Congratulations and, please, keep producing them. Kudos from Brazil.

[rogernull]

The Continental Congress was held hostage by the smaller population states. This was because folks identified with their state first, and as Americans less so.

Making things worse, (less fair) was the three-fifths compromise, where slaves were counted as population which gave the slave states disproportionately more representation.

The next blow was when the # of representatives in The House was capped at 435. Originally, the # of representatives was 1 per 30, 000 inhabitants. By todays population, that would mean 11, 000 representatives!

That number would be impractical, but if we went with, say, 1 representative per 300, 000, we'd have a little fairer representation.

[kendrickcurriculum]

I knew all of these things and teach them, but hearing it all laid out like this shows things in even a worse light than I had feared. Your videos are excellent: thanks for making these!

[tw]

Excellent work on this video. The analysis is spot on, and your metaphor at the end about the big wheeled bicycle got updated with the two wheel bicycle 🚲 is outstanding. Keep up the good work

[MrTimtim]

Just discovered your videos - they are works of art in themselves! Exquisitely put together, very informative and visually delicious! I have no idea how you create these, but they are head-and-shoulders above any other videos of a similar nature. Please keep making them!

[sulimanthemagnificent]

Flaw one is designed that way, feature not a bug, since the system was never really intended as a direct democracy, you select representatives who in turn, represent you (think what you will of it)

Flaw two has only occurred because the number of congressional seats are frozen and not apportioned as they were originally constitutionally delegated, one seat per 20-30 thousand people, *and* most states adopted winner take all, except Maine and Nebraska.

And flaw four is a result of the legislature giving up a lot of its powers either on purpose (so they’re not directly accountable) or by accident, the Supreme Court was never intended to dictate laws, merely dictate the constitutionality of laws.

Side note, if flaw two was rectified as I’m suggesting, there would be 18, 600 electors or there abouts, and a similar number of congressmen, combined with the electoral systems in Maine and Nebraska, it would give rise to third parties (they’d actually win electors and seats in congress) and make presidential elections much fairer.

[hansschnier]

this is by far the best channel i have discovered yet. thank you!

[acmulhern]

Fantastic video, as always. It was very well explained and I love the graphics.

[marcusmoonstein]

As a non-American I was amazed when the electoral college system was first explained to me. It made sense 250 years ago, but it's clearly not what the Americans need now. But there is zero chance of the Constitution changing when when the only people who can change it are benefiting from it NOT changing.

[FlanaFugue]

the red frame in the thumbnail made me think I'd already watched this video and therefore I almost didn't click on it...

[DavidWard-blzj]

Man, this Swedish guy gets it. Good summary of where we are at. I don't see us finishing out the century with the constitution we have.