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The role of the government has certainly evolved since the 18th century, and thank goodness we're not stuck with a union with a weak central government. Do you

The role of the government has certainly evolved since the 18th century, and thank goodness we're not stuck with a union with a weak central government. Do you really look at the balkanized, fractious EU and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? IMHO the New Deal didn't go nearly far enough.

goialoq 9y ago
Do you look at the balkanized fractious USA and think to myself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? Endless wars, being rules by people who live thousands of miles away and don't understand your states' needs?
int_19h 9y ago
Not OP, but I actually do wish that, yes. I think a lot of the problems we're having with political deadlock on the federal level these days boil down to pulling too many divisive issues onto that level, where the resolution, whichever way it goes, applies to over 300 million people - so you end up with a large dissatisfied minority more often than not. Specific issues aside, it doesn't strike me as particularly democratic, either; and I'm not sure representative democracy can even meaningfully scale to the point where legislators ostensibly "represent" millions of people at once. OTOH, if we had more federalism, I think the West Coast states might have been implementing their own full-fledged public healthcare system right now, instead of trying to come up with some compromise that the other half of the country can maybe accept (like ACA). All that said, I don't see a problem with national ID. It's just as useful to the states as it is to the feds, and it's clear that something like that can only be run by the feds.
kobeya 9y ago
> Do you really look at the balkanized, fractious EU and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? That sounds pretty nice actually.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? No I think "why the hell didn't they put a sunset provision in all those bills?" As an aside, one could construct a pretty good argument that the new deal was the result of all the Europeans who got off the boat in the prior decades throwing away freedom they really hadn't come to appreciate in exchange for the government playing the role of a lord who has some responsibility to prevent his peasants from hitting rock bottom (lest they revolt) with the catch being that said lord also has a ton of control over their freedom.

goialoq 9y ago

Do you look at the balkanized fractious USA and think to myself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? Endless wars, being rules by people who live thousands of miles away and don't understand your states' needs?

int_19h 9y ago

Not OP, but I actually do wish that, yes. I think a lot of the problems we're having with political deadlock on the federal level these days boil down to pulling too many divisive issues onto that level, where the resolution, whichever way it goes, applies to over 300 million people - so you end up with a large dissatisfied minority more often than not. Specific issues aside, it doesn't strike me as particularly democratic, either; and I'm not sure representative democracy can even meaningfully scale to the point where legislators ostensibly "represent" millions of people at once. OTOH, if we had more federalism, I think the West Coast states might have been implementing their own full-fledged public healthcare system right now, instead of trying to come up with some compromise that the other half of the country can maybe accept (like ACA). All that said, I don't see a problem with national ID. It's just as useful to the states as it is to the feds, and it's clear that something like that can only be run by the feds.

kobeya 9y ago

> Do you really look at the balkanized, fractious EU and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? That sounds pretty nice actually.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>and think to yourself, "Gee, I wish we had that"? No I think "why the hell didn't they put a sunset provision in all those bills?" As an aside, one could construct a pretty good argument that the new deal was the result of all the Europeans who got off the boat in the prior decades throwing away freedom they really hadn't come to appreciate in exchange for the government playing the role of a lord who has some responsibility to prevent his peasants from hitting rock bottom (lest they revolt) with the catch being that said lord also has a ton of control over their freedom.