8 ms·

This is a pretty grim path to follow. If States are to go bankrupt and subject to federal imposition of what debts must be paid, then it may push States to seek

This is a pretty grim path to follow. If States are to go bankrupt and subject to federal imposition of what debts must be paid, then it may push States to seek further sovereignity. An example being pressure to mint their currency. This is currently banned in the constitution, but if things get dire... they could simply ignore?

eranima 6y ago
The constitution only has power if people are willing or motivated to enforce it.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  In the apocryphal words of president Andrew Jackson: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
seibelj 6y ago
I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. This will limit the see-saw that occurs whenever the president switches parties.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  I wouldn't. There is a comfort that comes from the instability of party switches. The parties don't cooperate, which means less can get done. Anything that puts anyone in an area where one of the gangs of politicians can actually do something, is to be avoided. We've learned that the hard way in Wisconsin. As a general rule, it's always best to split up your government as much as you can.
  - afterburner 6y ago
    Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. The polarization in the US is likely a direct result of the massive deadlock. Your strategy is one guaranteed to ruin your country.
    - jshevek 6y ago
      >Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. This opinion requires a great deal of justification.
      - mikepurvis 6y ago
        Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? The government has basically been in gridlock since 2010, and voters have increasingly rewarded extreme policians who seek to shift the overton window over compromise politicians who work across party lines to find a middle ground. The book American Carnage is a fantastic deep dive on this (and extremely fair and even-handed, despite the bombastic title).
        jshevek 6y ago
        >Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? If "that" is the cause-effect relationship claimed above, no we are not "seeing" this right now. There is a huge difference between events and the narratives, accurate or otherwise, which some people use to explain those events. The system under consideration is insanely complex, with an immense list of causal factors at play. To me, in my opinion, it's obvious that the causal relationship described above is at best a tiny contributor that is, itself, dependent on other factors also being present. At worst, it's completely wrong and a distraction from understanding the real causes.
        streb-lo 6y ago
        This opinion requires a great deal of justification.
        jshevek 6y ago
        Can you be more specific, please? Not all of my comment was mere opinion.
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
  - bjustin 6y ago
    The problem with less getting done is that it applies to all levels of government. Want to change your yard landscaping? Nope! Not when your neighbors, town, county, and state all have to separately approve it.
- notyourday 6y ago
  > I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. No EPA. No DOE. No equality under the law. No EOC. No NLRB. No Amtrak. No federal enforcement of consent decrees. No voting right act. No gay marriage, etc? Edit: Thanks for downvotes. Every single one of these is enforced by federal and not state courts. It is federal court that gave us Roe v. Wade, for example. It is a federal court that prevents Alabama from running its own little fiefdom. It is a federal courts that gave us Brown v. Board of Education.
  - jshevek 6y ago
    The parent suggested a degree of change along a spectrum, you list possible consequences that might occur only if one takes the most extreme form.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I don’t know that I’d put Amtrak on a list of things that I’m thankful we have a federal government to provide...
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Have you ever met a DOE program manager? Have you ever personally dealt with an EOC lawsuit? I've done both, and let me tell you neither of those organizations comes anywhere near what you seem to imply they do. I'm not convinced society wouldn't be better without them.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      A major thing the DOE does is keep track of where the world's plutonium is— it's energy-related, but also a national security matter. Michael Lewis's excellent book The Fifth Risk examines some of these agency functions in the context of what was lost when there Trump administration stepped into power with essentially no transition plan or concept of how to run them.
      - dnautics 6y ago
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Part of that tension is what's led to the the current situation with COVID— the federal government is where the CDC is, so there's an expectation that they're the ones providing centralized coordination and guidance for a measured, unified, national response. If each state has its own version of the CDC (and other similar agencies), then that's fine, but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states whose agencies may have come to differing conclusions about what measures are needed.
  - notyourday 6y ago
    > but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states Commerce Clause of the US Constitution stands in a way. It (the Commerce Clause) has been a bedrock of the federal government pushing through progressive policies onto the states.
    - burner831234 6y ago
      The analogy to keep in mind is very simple. If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically> Yes there is a CDC in every state. It would be utterly ludicrous spend of cash to have an independent, not cooperative CDC in each state attempting to manage and solve the same problems.
      - bhupy 6y ago
        > If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically> This makes sense, but what about one level up? I live in an apartment building, and in our building each family buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner. It does not matter how much you scrimp and save, it is still cheaper on the whole for the building to buy raw ingredients and make dinner for all families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each building buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire city buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each city buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire State to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each State buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire Union to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the States, cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each Union/country buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire world to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the nations, States, cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. We both agree that at some point, this stopped making sense. The question is: is an ideologically divided Union of 330 million people across 50 states with their own Constitutions and governments equivalent to a “house of five”?
- matthewbauer 6y ago
  If we kept a common market, and common currency, you would see lots of failed states like we’ve seen with Greece in the EU.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    Yes but you would also see lots of extremely advanced states like we’ve seen with Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Estonia in the EU
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cmurf 6y ago
  Already tried that, the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The founders quickly discovered the federal government was too weak. But alas, one of those founders, Jefferson, argued we should rewrite the constitution every 19 years. And another founder, Hamilton, argued that ambition must be made to counteract ambition. And that government is a reflection on human nature, most directly its citizens. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Jefferson’s opinions on political processes changed drastically after the French Revolution, by the by.
    - skybrian 6y ago
      What's an example?
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        Personally, it made him cool significantly on France, which is in pretty stark contrast to where he started. He ended up siding with Hamilton on expelling the French diplomat who both threatened American neutrality, and was kind of gearing up to try and overthrow George Washington. And Jefferson hated Hamilton. Politically, it moderated him significantly. He started off as very pro-revolution, pro “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots”, and by the end he ended up regretting France not shifting into a constitutional monarchy. This is after both witnessing The Storming of the Bastille in person (he was an ambassador then), defending the September Massacres[0], and knowing quite a few people who were executed during the terror. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Massacres
londons_explore 6y ago
Surely before being bankrupt, a state would be forced to raise sales/income taxes? At some point, those taxes would be so high, people would start leaving the state, and at the point of bankruptcy, the state would be a ghosttown.
lonelappde 6y ago
States already have sovereignty. They can simply decline to pay back bondholders.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
grappler 6y ago
The train of thought I'm on now is: why was keeping the Union together back in the civil war such a great thing? Now we have this bloc of red states in the South who are backward, racist, intolerant science deniers, and they've managed to get just enough on the winning side of the electoral map to make the advanced, multicultural, cosmopolitan science-respecting blue states' lives miserable. That chunk of states should be a separate country. Then they can go their own way and the rest of us can carry on without them.
- tiles 6y ago
  The abolition of slavery was worth it. But the failure of Reconstruction allowed the south to backside right where they were.
  - grappler 6y ago
    yeah, abolition of slavery is a noble cause, obviously, but the rhetoric at that time put a lot of emphasis on the importance of preserving the union, as if that in and of itself was a valuable thing. I propose that it wasn't, and isn't. Humans are happier if they're grouped together with their own tribe, and not with other neighboring tribes they don't identify with. In this way it's like some of the problems in Africa and the Middle East where the groups there had borders imposed on them that didn't follow this simple principle.
- chao- 6y ago
  The resolution you choose has some stark effects on the narrative that you will allow yourself to be convinced of. The idea of "red state, blue state" is a peculiar consequence of a winner-take-all presidential election system, and does not adequately represent reality. An underlying truth, viewed at another resolution, is that there are red and blue densities moreso than states [0]. The current (and changing) distribution of densities across the states has currently led to what you perceive as the "red state, blue state" situation, when zoomed out and with a blur filter applied For example, take a useful look at CityLab's Congressional Density Indicator [1]. There are zero "pure urban" districts that are represented by Republicans, regardless of the state (red, blue, purple), and there are nearly none among the "urban-suburban mix" districts (again regardless of state). Viewed through yet another lens, by percentage of landmass, Alabama is more is more "blue" than Illinois and Oregon [2]. Your characterization could use a little more thought and refinement. [0] https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wilkinson-Density-Divide-Final.pdf https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wi... (see section beginning page 12) [1] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/citylab-congressional-density-index/575749/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/citylab-congressional... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-201...

eranima 6y ago

The constitution only has power if people are willing or motivated to enforce it.

sangnoir 6y ago
In the apocryphal words of president Andrew Jackson: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

seibelj 6y ago

I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. This will limit the see-saw that occurs whenever the president switches parties.

bilbo0s 6y ago
I wouldn't. There is a comfort that comes from the instability of party switches. The parties don't cooperate, which means less can get done. Anything that puts anyone in an area where one of the gangs of politicians can actually do something, is to be avoided. We've learned that the hard way in Wisconsin. As a general rule, it's always best to split up your government as much as you can.
- afterburner 6y ago
  Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. The polarization in the US is likely a direct result of the massive deadlock. Your strategy is one guaranteed to ruin your country.
  - jshevek 6y ago
    >Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. This opinion requires a great deal of justification.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? The government has basically been in gridlock since 2010, and voters have increasingly rewarded extreme policians who seek to shift the overton window over compromise politicians who work across party lines to find a middle ground. The book American Carnage is a fantastic deep dive on this (and extremely fair and even-handed, despite the bombastic title).
      - jshevek 6y ago
        >Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? If "that" is the cause-effect relationship claimed above, no we are not "seeing" this right now. There is a huge difference between events and the narratives, accurate or otherwise, which some people use to explain those events. The system under consideration is insanely complex, with an immense list of causal factors at play. To me, in my opinion, it's obvious that the causal relationship described above is at best a tiny contributor that is, itself, dependent on other factors also being present. At worst, it's completely wrong and a distraction from understanding the real causes.
        streb-lo 6y ago
        This opinion requires a great deal of justification.
        jshevek 6y ago
        Can you be more specific, please? Not all of my comment was mere opinion.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
- bjustin 6y ago
  The problem with less getting done is that it applies to all levels of government. Want to change your yard landscaping? Nope! Not when your neighbors, town, county, and state all have to separately approve it.
notyourday 6y ago
> I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. No EPA. No DOE. No equality under the law. No EOC. No NLRB. No Amtrak. No federal enforcement of consent decrees. No voting right act. No gay marriage, etc? Edit: Thanks for downvotes. Every single one of these is enforced by federal and not state courts. It is federal court that gave us Roe v. Wade, for example. It is a federal court that prevents Alabama from running its own little fiefdom. It is a federal courts that gave us Brown v. Board of Education.
- jshevek 6y ago
  The parent suggested a degree of change along a spectrum, you list possible consequences that might occur only if one takes the most extreme form.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I don’t know that I’d put Amtrak on a list of things that I’m thankful we have a federal government to provide...
- dnautics 6y ago
  Have you ever met a DOE program manager? Have you ever personally dealt with an EOC lawsuit? I've done both, and let me tell you neither of those organizations comes anywhere near what you seem to imply they do. I'm not convinced society wouldn't be better without them.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    A major thing the DOE does is keep track of where the world's plutonium is— it's energy-related, but also a national security matter. Michael Lewis's excellent book The Fifth Risk examines some of these agency functions in the context of what was lost when there Trump administration stepped into power with essentially no transition plan or concept of how to run them.
    - dnautics 6y ago
mikepurvis 6y ago
Part of that tension is what's led to the the current situation with COVID— the federal government is where the CDC is, so there's an expectation that they're the ones providing centralized coordination and guidance for a measured, unified, national response. If each state has its own version of the CDC (and other similar agencies), then that's fine, but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states whose agencies may have come to differing conclusions about what measures are needed.
- notyourday 6y ago
  > but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states Commerce Clause of the US Constitution stands in a way. It (the Commerce Clause) has been a bedrock of the federal government pushing through progressive policies onto the states.
  - burner831234 6y ago
    The analogy to keep in mind is very simple. If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically> Yes there is a CDC in every state. It would be utterly ludicrous spend of cash to have an independent, not cooperative CDC in each state attempting to manage and solve the same problems.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically> This makes sense, but what about one level up? I live in an apartment building, and in our building each family buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner. It does not matter how much you scrimp and save, it is still cheaper on the whole for the building to buy raw ingredients and make dinner for all families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each building buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire city buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each city buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire State to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each State buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire Union to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the States, cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each Union/country buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire world to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the nations, States, cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically. We both agree that at some point, this stopped making sense. The question is: is an ideologically divided Union of 330 million people across 50 states with their own Constitutions and governments equivalent to a “house of five”?
matthewbauer 6y ago
If we kept a common market, and common currency, you would see lots of failed states like we’ve seen with Greece in the EU.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Yes but you would also see lots of extremely advanced states like we’ve seen with Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Estonia in the EU
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cmurf 6y ago
Already tried that, the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The founders quickly discovered the federal government was too weak. But alas, one of those founders, Jefferson, argued we should rewrite the constitution every 19 years. And another founder, Hamilton, argued that ambition must be made to counteract ambition. And that government is a reflection on human nature, most directly its citizens. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Jefferson’s opinions on political processes changed drastically after the French Revolution, by the by.
  - skybrian 6y ago
    What's an example?
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Personally, it made him cool significantly on France, which is in pretty stark contrast to where he started. He ended up siding with Hamilton on expelling the French diplomat who both threatened American neutrality, and was kind of gearing up to try and overthrow George Washington. And Jefferson hated Hamilton. Politically, it moderated him significantly. He started off as very pro-revolution, pro “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots”, and by the end he ended up regretting France not shifting into a constitutional monarchy. This is after both witnessing The Storming of the Bastille in person (he was an ambassador then), defending the September Massacres[0], and knowing quite a few people who were executed during the terror. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Massacres

londons_explore 6y ago

Surely before being bankrupt, a state would be forced to raise sales/income taxes? At some point, those taxes would be so high, people would start leaving the state, and at the point of bankruptcy, the state would be a ghosttown.

lonelappde 6y ago

States already have sovereignty. They can simply decline to pay back bondholders.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

grappler 6y ago

The train of thought I'm on now is: why was keeping the Union together back in the civil war such a great thing? Now we have this bloc of red states in the South who are backward, racist, intolerant science deniers, and they've managed to get just enough on the winning side of the electoral map to make the advanced, multicultural, cosmopolitan science-respecting blue states' lives miserable. That chunk of states should be a separate country. Then they can go their own way and the rest of us can carry on without them.

tiles 6y ago
The abolition of slavery was worth it. But the failure of Reconstruction allowed the south to backside right where they were.
- grappler 6y ago
  yeah, abolition of slavery is a noble cause, obviously, but the rhetoric at that time put a lot of emphasis on the importance of preserving the union, as if that in and of itself was a valuable thing. I propose that it wasn't, and isn't. Humans are happier if they're grouped together with their own tribe, and not with other neighboring tribes they don't identify with. In this way it's like some of the problems in Africa and the Middle East where the groups there had borders imposed on them that didn't follow this simple principle.
chao- 6y ago
The resolution you choose has some stark effects on the narrative that you will allow yourself to be convinced of. The idea of "red state, blue state" is a peculiar consequence of a winner-take-all presidential election system, and does not adequately represent reality. An underlying truth, viewed at another resolution, is that there are red and blue densities moreso than states [0]. The current (and changing) distribution of densities across the states has currently led to what you perceive as the "red state, blue state" situation, when zoomed out and with a blur filter applied For example, take a useful look at CityLab's Congressional Density Indicator [1]. There are zero "pure urban" districts that are represented by Republicans, regardless of the state (red, blue, purple), and there are nearly none among the "urban-suburban mix" districts (again regardless of state). Viewed through yet another lens, by percentage of landmass, Alabama is more is more "blue" than Illinois and Oregon [2]. Your characterization could use a little more thought and refinement. [0] https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wilkinson-Density-Divide-Final.pdf https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wi... (see section beginning page 12) [1] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/citylab-congressional-density-index/575749/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/citylab-congressional... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-201...