In particular, we’re stuck with the political inequalities built into the U.S. Senate, which have grown more grotesque with time. In 1789, the population ratio between the most and least populous state was 11 to one. Now it’s 66 to one. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton absolutely hated the idea that each state should be entitled to the same number of senators regardless of size. Hamilton was withering on the topic. “As states are a collection of individual men,” he harangued his fellow-delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, “which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition? Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter.” In the end, he and Madison accepted the deal only because without it the pipsqueak states like Rhode Island would have bolted. It gets worse. In the Constitution’s Article V, the one outlining the process for amendments, only one type of amendment is absolutely forbidden: “[N]o State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”