3 ms·

>I like how the U.S. Founders tried to approximate a solution: a group of federated states The Founders didn't design that. The colonies, started by various p

>I like how the U.S. Founders tried to approximate a solution: a group of federated states The Founders didn't design that. The colonies, started by various people or groups for differing purposes, existed long before the Founders were even alive, they just wanted to group them into a confederation for trade and mutual defense purposes. This isn't unique in history at all. >We eventually should have ended up with 50 separate, concurrently-running, dynamic experiments competing with each other for residents. Our current federalism prevents this from happening, though We tried this before, and it didn't work. Go read about the "Articles of Confederation", which governed the US before the Constitution was adopted in 1789. It was a disaster; the central government wasn't strong enough to get anything done because the colonies couldn't agree on anything. Not only was this bad for defense from outside invaders (i.e. the British), it was bad for trade because the colonies got into trade wars with each other. You're not going to have a functioning nation when the different regions are at war with each other; just look at pre-EU Europe for an example of what happens when you have a continent full of very small and diverse nations that get into trade wars with each other. It's not pretty. The other problem with your "competing states" idea is how you handle interstate commerce issues. Without a strong federal government, it's hard enough, but what happens when you have actual cities spanning multiple states, as we have with DC, NYC, Louisville, Philly, etc.? It's bad enough the way we have it now, but in your system it'd be a complete disaster.

mac01021 9y ago
I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but we shouldn't think that the current system and the articles of confederation are the only two possible systems. There may be a way to transfer a significant amount of the federal government's authority to the states without incurring the sort of chaos seen by the confederacy in the 18th century. Or maybe not, but at least it's not obvious. Either way, the current system leaves most of us disenfranchised in a lot of ways that a less centralized system would not.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  We're disenfranchised in the current system for other reasons. One is that the country is simply too big, and two is that there's a huge rural/urban divide in culture, and it's growing. Giving power back to the states isn't going to fix that. First of all, the states' borders are not drawn to reflect different groupings of people. I already mentioned how many modern cities span multiple states. NYC spans at least 3 states! Giving more power to Illinois isn't going to appease the rural voters there, because now the Chicago voters will have even more power over what happens in rural IL; if anything, they're going to be much angrier. The Federal government, by design, gives disproportionate power to rural states, so rural voters everywhere benefit from this, to the detriment of city-dwellers. If you really want something closer to a confederacy, the first step is eliminating all 50 states and redrawing all the state borders. But this isn't going to work well either, because then the rural people will want their own, separate states. But then after a while, they'll find out that their states have no economic power at all, and can't even provide basic services, because there's insufficient population and tax base to do so. So they'll effectively turn into 3rd-world countries, and people will empty out of them even more into the cities, if the city-states don't clamp down on immigration. If you want to see examples of countries where they have both urban and rural populations, and very little internal strife, these places exist now. They're in Scandinavia. They don't need to separate the urban and rural people into semi-autonomous regions to get along. But they aren't big countries with hundreds of millions of people either. And they're very culturally homogeneous, something we just don't have here, and likely will not any time soon, even if you just look at the dominant caucasian population: there's very little similarity between the cultures of Trump-voting white nationalists and urban liberal Millennials, and the two actively despise each other and want completely different things as far as government policy.

mac01021 9y ago

I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but we shouldn't think that the current system and the articles of confederation are the only two possible systems. There may be a way to transfer a significant amount of the federal government's authority to the states without incurring the sort of chaos seen by the confederacy in the 18th century. Or maybe not, but at least it's not obvious. Either way, the current system leaves most of us disenfranchised in a lot of ways that a less centralized system would not.

gorkonsine 9y ago
We're disenfranchised in the current system for other reasons. One is that the country is simply too big, and two is that there's a huge rural/urban divide in culture, and it's growing. Giving power back to the states isn't going to fix that. First of all, the states' borders are not drawn to reflect different groupings of people. I already mentioned how many modern cities span multiple states. NYC spans at least 3 states! Giving more power to Illinois isn't going to appease the rural voters there, because now the Chicago voters will have even more power over what happens in rural IL; if anything, they're going to be much angrier. The Federal government, by design, gives disproportionate power to rural states, so rural voters everywhere benefit from this, to the detriment of city-dwellers. If you really want something closer to a confederacy, the first step is eliminating all 50 states and redrawing all the state borders. But this isn't going to work well either, because then the rural people will want their own, separate states. But then after a while, they'll find out that their states have no economic power at all, and can't even provide basic services, because there's insufficient population and tax base to do so. So they'll effectively turn into 3rd-world countries, and people will empty out of them even more into the cities, if the city-states don't clamp down on immigration. If you want to see examples of countries where they have both urban and rural populations, and very little internal strife, these places exist now. They're in Scandinavia. They don't need to separate the urban and rural people into semi-autonomous regions to get along. But they aren't big countries with hundreds of millions of people either. And they're very culturally homogeneous, something we just don't have here, and likely will not any time soon, even if you just look at the dominant caucasian population: there's very little similarity between the cultures of Trump-voting white nationalists and urban liberal Millennials, and the two actively despise each other and want completely different things as far as government policy.