A lot of that gets to the question of what are we optimizing our k-clusters for?
The idea of geography-based representation spurs from the ideal that a representative should be able to "shake hands" with everyone they represent, right? That a townhall with one's representative might be isomorphic with one's "neighborhood meeting"?
In those cases things like "compact" serve a purpose in going back towards that "neighborhood" ideal (which arguably has never existed in US practice).
But it's 2021 and is geography and the "neighborhood" ideal still useful for us in selecting representatives? When was the last time you shook hands with your representative? When was the last time you had a neighborhood meeting where the representative just swung by for an impromptu townhall?
Maybe we should find a better optimization for our k-means clustering that isn't geography because gerrymandering seems to imply that we'll never fix geographic clustering? With tools like TV and the internet, geography may not even matter like it did to 18th century Americans. A Zoom call isn't a handshake, of course, but we have more tools for virtual shared interest groups than ever before and don't necessarily need to remain tied to the vagaries of geography.
I don't necessarily have good answers for what those metrics/optimizations could be/should look like beyond geography. All I know is that it would be hard to impossible to find good ones under the current two party system and as with most things, the blame for a lot of our problems continues to be directly on the two party system.
The important thing about geography is that cultures tend to develop along with it. That matters a little less today than in the past, but someone in Fresno is still going to have more in common with someone from Los Angeles than someone from Louisiana.
We also already have systems of representation along other lines that feed into geographically-representative government - consumer groups, interest groups, lobbyists, etc.
> someone in Fresno is still going to have more in common with someone from Los Angeles than someone from Louisiana
I question this. Someone from San Francisco is likely to have much more in common with someone from Portland or even NYC or London than they would someone from Bakersfield or Shasta. You can see that in lots of different areas, from migration patterns to election results to what they do on Sunday morning to which media people consume.
We have not shaken hands with our representatives because we capped the size of the House of Representatives because they felt it would be awkward to have so many Representatives in a single hall, or some such. Hard af disagree for me. I want to know my Representative, and in the modern era, there is no reason why we can't have a house of 1,000s of members, or some such. Our congressional districts are much too big.
The idea of geography-based representation spurs from the ideal that a representative should be able to "shake hands" with everyone they represent, right? That a townhall with one's representative might be isomorphic with one's "neighborhood meeting"?
In those cases things like "compact" serve a purpose in going back towards that "neighborhood" ideal (which arguably has never existed in US practice).
But it's 2021 and is geography and the "neighborhood" ideal still useful for us in selecting representatives? When was the last time you shook hands with your representative? When was the last time you had a neighborhood meeting where the representative just swung by for an impromptu townhall?
Maybe we should find a better optimization for our k-means clustering that isn't geography because gerrymandering seems to imply that we'll never fix geographic clustering? With tools like TV and the internet, geography may not even matter like it did to 18th century Americans. A Zoom call isn't a handshake, of course, but we have more tools for virtual shared interest groups than ever before and don't necessarily need to remain tied to the vagaries of geography.
I don't necessarily have good answers for what those metrics/optimizations could be/should look like beyond geography. All I know is that it would be hard to impossible to find good ones under the current two party system and as with most things, the blame for a lot of our problems continues to be directly on the two party system.