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As the Founding Fathers of the USA intended: establish minimal governance to facilitate polite commerce, and otherwise stay the he11 out of each others' busines

As the Founding Fathers of the USA intended: establish minimal governance to facilitate polite commerce, and otherwise stay the he11 out of each others' business.

ryanmarsh 6y ago
I wonder how such an anemic federal govt could avoid becoming the client state of a major world power in the modern complex world where the stakes are so high, the opponents are playing the long game, and the oligarchs have no national loyalty.
- krapp 6y ago
  It couldn't. obviously, if the US were actually founded as a libertarian minarchy and kept that way without a strong Federal government it would simply have dissolved into a fractious set of nations and eventually been consumed by European and Russian powers. Or New York. But most libertarians just want to be able to smoke weed, shoot guns and never pay taxes, and they don't think it through.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It's the other way around. If you bind their hands (e.g. constitutionally reduce the power of the central government and have the states and cities take over what it currently does) then oligarchs have to fight in every state and town instead of in one place for everyone. Then sometimes they lose, instead of the status quo where a federal government controlled by oligarchs has its hand in everything.
plainOldText 6y ago
Too bad HN doesn’t have double votes. Also, self organization is an important feature of a complex system.
vulcan01 6y ago
The Founding Fathers (save one) also intended that slavery would exist. All of them were very rich. All of them were men, too (as their collective name suggests). The problem with appealing to the Founding Fathers is that they were profoundly uninterested in equality of opportunity, due to who they were. It is a useful exercise to consider what they would have done — that does not itself demonstrate anything.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  That the founders were flawed as human beings, is not an argument against limited government or more broadly the ideals that comprise the US Constitution.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
  - pm90 6y ago
    It is an argument against their deification and to appeal to their way of thinking.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  The Founding Fathers intended the elimination of slavery, and banned it to a meaningful degree during establishment of the new nation, but had to compromise lest the fragile Union break before it could form. Slavery eventually eliminated (before most other nations), at tremendous cost not appreciated by many benefiting from that payment.
  - imbnwa 6y ago
    France, Spain, and England all abolished slavery in their colonies at least 30 years before the American Civil War.
    - true_religion 6y ago
      Slavery in colonies is functionally different from American slavery. Colonial slavery oppressed conquered people's on their local soil where they were the majority. This is hard to keep up for a global power constantly at war with its neighbors. American slavery oppressed ethnic minorities ripped from their homeland and taken to a different continent. Slaves had a harder time coordinating rebellions as they were not a single conquered peoples, and were in the minority so couldn't count on winning battles of attrition. American slavery, like the Roman version it was patterned against, could have continued for hundreds of years if not for the Civil War. Colonial slavery though was a lost battle from the start. Colonial powers needed to develop their colonies, but the moment you do that you increase the chance of successful rebelion. The only way to defuse it is to reduce the oppression.
refenestrator 6y ago
The founding fathers of the USA hacked out a patchwork of compromises to put together a government. Great work, some of the ideas aged well. But they weren't prophets and they weren't building a plan for the cyberpunk future we're finding ourselves in.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  The fetish for “founding fathers” as infallible superheroes is really weird.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    Mmmh, here's my take: they are not infallible superheroes. They were fallible human beings. Are there better people, today, who could lead the country? Of course. Will they ever actually be elected to do so? Sadly, no. America in the late 1700s was a weird moment in history where educated, forward-thinking intellectuals (not nobility, not just the moneyed elite — actually a lot of men who (mostly) deserved to be called intellectual) actually had a chance to make the rules. They made pretty good ones. Some flawed rules, but good ones. We're not going to get that again. The real-time feedback of TwitterDemocracy would prevent us from ever getting a document as general yet meaningful as the Bill of Rights, with basically unfettered rights to speech and assembly. So until I see a viable path to put people in charge who actually surpass them in wisdom and foresight, I'm going to stick to what they put forward. It has aged and worked amazingly well, and have 0 confidence that the politicians of today, if starting from scratch, would do better.
    - tomrod 6y ago
      You might be interested in reading on many of the other democracies out there that update their constitutions frequently.
      - bpodgursky 6y ago
        There are no other democracies out there that have the almost-unfettered rights to assembly and speech that the US has. This is important to me. And FWIW, there are (by most measures) no other democracies out there which have gone as long under peaceful rule of law as the US. Every other democracy (save by some measures the UK) has fallen to coup or revolution in less than this duration. Their latest constitutions may work to keep them stable as long as the US has managed. Or they may not. Time will tell.
A12-B 6y ago
A shame what this has caused.
gumby 6y ago
That's why we are on constitution 2.27: they found that 1.0 was too minimal. The Confederacy tried to walk back in that direction a bit and found that it made their ability to run their "country" much harder (in addition to their other self-defeating pathologies).
gilbetron 6y ago
That's a heck of a stretch of history. They wanted gov powers "limited" as opposed to "unlimited", but the concept that the US was set up with almost no government is a (false) Libertarian talking point. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/colonial-complaints-u-s-founding-fathers-wanted-activist-government/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/colonial-complai...

As the Founding Fathers of the USA intended: establish minimal governance to facilitate polite commerce, and otherwise stay the he11 out of each others' business.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

I wonder how such an anemic federal govt could avoid becoming the client state of a major world power in the modern complex world where the stakes are so high, the opponents are playing the long game, and the oligarchs have no national loyalty.

krapp 6y ago
It couldn't. obviously, if the US were actually founded as a libertarian minarchy and kept that way without a strong Federal government it would simply have dissolved into a fractious set of nations and eventually been consumed by European and Russian powers. Or New York. But most libertarians just want to be able to smoke weed, shoot guns and never pay taxes, and they don't think it through.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
It's the other way around. If you bind their hands (e.g. constitutionally reduce the power of the central government and have the states and cities take over what it currently does) then oligarchs have to fight in every state and town instead of in one place for everyone. Then sometimes they lose, instead of the status quo where a federal government controlled by oligarchs has its hand in everything.

plainOldText 6y ago

Too bad HN doesn’t have double votes. Also, self organization is an important feature of a complex system.

vulcan01 6y ago

The Founding Fathers (save one) also intended that slavery would exist. All of them were very rich. All of them were men, too (as their collective name suggests). The problem with appealing to the Founding Fathers is that they were profoundly uninterested in equality of opportunity, due to who they were. It is a useful exercise to consider what they would have done — that does not itself demonstrate anything.

throwawayboise 6y ago
That the founders were flawed as human beings, is not an argument against limited government or more broadly the ideals that comprise the US Constitution.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
- pm90 6y ago
  It is an argument against their deification and to appeal to their way of thinking.
ctdonath 6y ago
The Founding Fathers intended the elimination of slavery, and banned it to a meaningful degree during establishment of the new nation, but had to compromise lest the fragile Union break before it could form. Slavery eventually eliminated (before most other nations), at tremendous cost not appreciated by many benefiting from that payment.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  France, Spain, and England all abolished slavery in their colonies at least 30 years before the American Civil War.
  - true_religion 6y ago
    Slavery in colonies is functionally different from American slavery. Colonial slavery oppressed conquered people's on their local soil where they were the majority. This is hard to keep up for a global power constantly at war with its neighbors. American slavery oppressed ethnic minorities ripped from their homeland and taken to a different continent. Slaves had a harder time coordinating rebellions as they were not a single conquered peoples, and were in the minority so couldn't count on winning battles of attrition. American slavery, like the Roman version it was patterned against, could have continued for hundreds of years if not for the Civil War. Colonial slavery though was a lost battle from the start. Colonial powers needed to develop their colonies, but the moment you do that you increase the chance of successful rebelion. The only way to defuse it is to reduce the oppression.

refenestrator 6y ago

The founding fathers of the USA hacked out a patchwork of compromises to put together a government. Great work, some of the ideas aged well. But they weren't prophets and they weren't building a plan for the cyberpunk future we're finding ourselves in.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
The fetish for “founding fathers” as infallible superheroes is really weird.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Mmmh, here's my take: they are not infallible superheroes. They were fallible human beings. Are there better people, today, who could lead the country? Of course. Will they ever actually be elected to do so? Sadly, no. America in the late 1700s was a weird moment in history where educated, forward-thinking intellectuals (not nobility, not just the moneyed elite — actually a lot of men who (mostly) deserved to be called intellectual) actually had a chance to make the rules. They made pretty good ones. Some flawed rules, but good ones. We're not going to get that again. The real-time feedback of TwitterDemocracy would prevent us from ever getting a document as general yet meaningful as the Bill of Rights, with basically unfettered rights to speech and assembly. So until I see a viable path to put people in charge who actually surpass them in wisdom and foresight, I'm going to stick to what they put forward. It has aged and worked amazingly well, and have 0 confidence that the politicians of today, if starting from scratch, would do better.
  - tomrod 6y ago
    You might be interested in reading on many of the other democracies out there that update their constitutions frequently.
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      There are no other democracies out there that have the almost-unfettered rights to assembly and speech that the US has. This is important to me. And FWIW, there are (by most measures) no other democracies out there which have gone as long under peaceful rule of law as the US. Every other democracy (save by some measures the UK) has fallen to coup or revolution in less than this duration. Their latest constitutions may work to keep them stable as long as the US has managed. Or they may not. Time will tell.

A12-B 6y ago

A shame what this has caused.

gumby 6y ago

That's why we are on constitution 2.27: they found that 1.0 was too minimal. The Confederacy tried to walk back in that direction a bit and found that it made their ability to run their "country" much harder (in addition to their other self-defeating pathologies).

gilbetron 6y ago

That's a heck of a stretch of history. They wanted gov powers "limited" as opposed to "unlimited", but the concept that the US was set up with almost no government is a (false) Libertarian talking point. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/colonial-complaints-u-s-founding-fathers-wanted-activist-government/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/colonial-complai...