Limits to Growth

 

Taking A Chance on Love

I thought the cards were a frame-up
I never would try.
But now I'm taking the game up
And the ace of hearts is high.

Things are mending now;
I see a rainbow blending now;
We'll have our happy ending now
Taking a chance on love.

It is good to play the game, but hopefully it is NOT a zero-sum game.

There is a difference between the limits of growth and limits to growth. The first applies to a zero-sum game. It assumes that there never will be any additional growth. The second applies to any game, which recognizes the limits at the current time but recognizes that those limits can change, and even grow.

For example when the size of the US House of Representatives was set at 435 members in 1911, there were 46 states and a population of 93,863,000. The size of US Senate was by contrast was set at 2 senators per state. Thus in 1911 there were 82 Senators, while in 2024 there are 100 Senators, because the number of states has increased to 50 while the population of the United States has increased to 341,814,420. The current dysfunction in the House is arguably because of treating its size as a zero-sum game.

In 1867, the number of justices on the Supreme Court was set at nine because they were at that time 9 circuit courts of appeal. There are currently 13 circuit courts of appeal but the number of justices on the Supreme Court has not increased.

I have argued that the size of the House should follow the Wyoming Rule, which mandates that after every constitutionally required decennial census, the lowest state by population gets the constitutionally required one representative and every other state receives a number of  representatives based on the ratio of its population compared to the population of that lowest state (currently Wyoming). The Supreme Court should thus have 13 justices, one for each circuit court. The addition of a circuit court should automatically trigger an increase in the number of seats on the Supreme Court. These are both limits to growth, the Wyoming rule or equal to the number of circuit courts, not limits of growth, fixed at 435 or 9.