alt Hacker News When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte,
As every child can tell,
The House of Peers, throughout the war,
Did nothing in particular,
And did it very well;
Yet Britain set the world ablaze
In good King George's glorious days!
Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regularly to converse and debate in a prestigious and historical chamber. Allow them only the power to veto or delay legislation.
Gilbert and Sullivan were satirising but I think their point stands. It is possible to do nothing and to do it very well. While they're busy doing nothing they're not interfering or messing everything else up, even though they probably could outside the chamber.
The fact that heriditary peers are being ejected means nothing beyond the fact that these nobles have lost their inherent power.
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To play devil's advocate:
Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly.
You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.
The purpose of an assembly is to reflect the actual distribution of power in society, not what we'd like it to be.
If interest groups do not feel represented by the system, they will destroy it.
> meet regularly to converse and debate
Senators play a similar role. Their aim is heavily weighted toward oversight and advisory. Gov’t in general is weighted in that direction, because governments govern which is mainly about being a kind of referee, maintaining the social order, and aiding human beings in attaining their end as human beings through legislation.
Without this function, we have activity with little reflection spurred by politicians pandering to the mob.
> these nobles have lost their inherent power
The nobles were the land owners, the business owners, the OG entrepreneurs, they were educated, and their children would grow up to be the same.
Historically the system made sense. But the last 150 years or so have basically taken their power away.
A couple of years ago an estate - that included a 9 bedroom country house, plus an entire village with a population of 100 people, and a church - was sold by noblety near where I grew up. The price was in the low tens of millions, not that much.