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Letting the states make their own decisions on issues not addressed by the constitution is a perfectly viable solution. Not sure why that would be particularly

Letting the states make their own decisions on issues not addressed by the constitution is a perfectly viable solution. Not sure why that would be particularly difficult.

sigzero 5y ago
That is what was supposed to happen. The Federal level has way too much power today.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  Yes, unfortunately "states rights" has become a rallying cry for racism and hatred, but the original framing of this country is that the state's are basically supposed to be much stronger than the Federal government. I don't really know whether we can unwind the federal governments grasp on things without basically destabilizing the whole thing though at this point (and admittedly, I'm not sure the majority would want to).
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    It's worth noting that the original plan was for even less Federal power, and that one fell apart almost immediately. Power has been moving in a central direction ever since.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      Not so much "fell apart" as "intentionally overthrown by capitalists when they didn't agree with policies determined through democracy". Madison and his co-conspirators didn't approve of the deliberate currency depreciation and other measures voted in by farmers who fought, unpaid, for years in a war that benefited rich elites and came home to find their farms repossessed by debtors and tax collectors. So long as the various states operated as competing democracies, they were subject to the wishes of their citizens. The constitution, written in secret by a cabal of rich white men, put an end to all of that, as it was intended to do.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        So long as the various states operated as competing democracies, they couldn't pull together into one country.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        Yeah, that was the original idea. United States would menace the rest of the world a lot less if it weren't truly united.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        Alternate history speculation is a fool's game, but a fun one. ;) It's also extremely likely that the (states that make up the) United States would be the territory of other powers if it hadn't united. It's interesting to speculate on how much of the colonies Britain would have won back in the War of 1812 if it hadn't faced a unified front, or what a powerful France would have done in world history if it had never made the Louisiana purchase sale to the United States because there would have been no United States to make the sale to (or, for that matter, what a powerful Spain would have done if France had made the sale to Spain instead, expanding the Mexican holdings). Or how long slavery would have lasted in North America if there had been no pressure of maintaining a national-scale rule of law to bring disagreements between Northern and Southern states to the point of a military conflict.
  - deertick1 5y ago
    Since when has "states rights" become a rallying cry for racism or hatred? I'm really tired of people saying stuff like this : <insert vaguely conservative stance here> has become a rallying cry for racism and transphobia and bigotry. Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred. My guess is you probably only said what you just said because you've read enough articles by blue-haired liberal arts graduates with a sub 100 IQ.
    - macintux 5y ago
      > Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Faubus#Little_Rock_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Faubus#Little_Rock_crisi... > In a 1985 interview with a Huntsville Arkansas student, Faubus stated that the Crisis was due to an "Usurpation of power" by the Federal Government.
    - voidfunc 5y ago
      > Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_States%27_Rights_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_States%27_Rights_Pa...
    - bloaf 5y ago
      At least since the civil war. > Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union > The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union... > The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#South_Carolina https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
- deelowe 5y ago
  The states really screwed this up when certain ones decided their love for cotton and hatred for brown people was more important than their sovereignty.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    The federal government had no problem with slavery. It was clearly enshrined in the Constitution.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Slave states complained that the feds weren't doing enough to force the free states to abide by the fugitive slave laws, to give one example.
- vmception 5y ago
  Little did they know that all commerce would be interstate commerce by the 20th century The Federal government has subjugated all states, and merely tolerates their grasps at 10th amendment autonomy as it derives power from the collection of states. But it is more well funded, controls the currency, and has more land and resources under its title. States don't matter.
  - chmod600 5y ago
    You're mistaken. Everything is interstate commerce, whether commerce or not.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Haha yes Supreme Court has gone that direction over the last century.
shadowgovt 5y ago
The history of the US has been a history of power centralization for good reason, unfortunately. The experiment of decentralized state level authority has been found wanting to the tune of a civil war and a Great depression, both of which were addressed by centralizing federal power.
- quantumBerry 5y ago
  Power centralization is rarely predicated on reasons that include the benefit of common man. The US doesn't appear much different in that regard, either.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    There were two major events in US history that caused significant Federal power consolidation. Technically three, if you count the collapse of the government that was structured under the Articles of the Confederacy prior to the Constitution because it's lack of tax authority meant that it couldn't deal with the war debts that have been accrued from 1776 onward. The first was the civil war, and federal power consolidated for obvious reasons. Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution. The second was more subtle. The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation. It is a piece of federal power that people can reasonably argue about the virtue of, but in a modern comment deeply interconnected world it's reasonable to believe that the federal government needs limited central economic planning authority for the country to flourish.
    - quantumBerry 5y ago
      >Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution. So instead we have a more centralized federal government that cannot be trusted to protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution ( that same post civil war government interned the Japanese, allows police to search any vehicle with the "signal" of a dog, and instead of enslaving blacks just disproportionately tosses them to wither away in prison instead. Instead of enslaving brown people here, now our kinder gentler federal government just blow them up in foreign countries instead. ) >The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation. That's the first time I've seen the war on drugs used to justify the centralization of power. I suppose we need a new civil war against the "untrustworthy" states that have legalized marijuana so affairs can be run the right way. It's pretty "reasonable" to believe the federal government DOESN't need the authority they currently have.
jltsiren 5y ago
I'm not so sure about that. A federal state as a tight union of autonomous non-sovereign states is viable. We have plenty of examples for that. An EU-style loose union of sovereign states also works, if only barely. However, there is no evidence that a loose union of non-sovereign states would work in the present-day world. It might work, but the question is very complex, and we can't hope for a confident answer without actually trying it.
- xxpor 5y ago
  We tried the latter suggestion back in the day, and it was terrible, even back then.
Texasian 5y ago
* Offer only applies to straight, white men not romantically entangled with a person of color. Offer void where prohibited.
webnrrd2k 5y ago
The U.S. history with slavery and Jim Crow laws tell me that it's not always perfectly viable, and is sometimes very difficult.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Except we have no problem with such diverse policy in other federations like the eu.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The EU is less than 30 and has already lost a member. If you accept membership flexibility then extreme diversity is much easier to accommodate.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      The civil war was all about membership flexibility. Is it any surprise that the losers wanted their 'divetsity' to be accommodated. Frankly we're heading down the path of membership flexibility if the next few years don't bring about significant change.
      - rat87 5y ago
        the civil war was about slavery If anything the federal government was too accommodating and it still wasn't enough for the slave masters who dominated southern politics
        iammisc 5y ago
        Sure it was about slavery as the wedge issue over which to decide whether you can leave the union. This sort of reactionary rhetoric just skirts over the surface. It's not like the confederacy was fighting for slavery and to be part of the union. Both Kentucky and Delaware were happy with the status quo. The confederacy wanted both slavery and to leave the union, which they perceived to be their right. The federal government at the time was much smaller than the current one and much less empowered.
minikites 5y ago
How well did the states do at running their own vaccine programs? How well did it work when some states recognized gay marriage and others did not? Having nationwide consistency is important for many issues.
- Causality1 5y ago
  The gay marriage issue is a great example of exactly the opposite of your point. States one by one recognizing gay marriage and proving that it wasn't going to cause the collapse of society is the only reason it was recognized on a national level. The same process is currently happening with marijuana prohibition.
  - minikites 5y ago
    >States one by one recognizing gay marriage and proving that it wasn't going to cause the collapse of society is the only reason it was recognized on a national level. You're leaving out the massive fights from states that did not want to recognize gay marriage, which could have easily gone the other way. The same process will repeat with marijuana prohibition and the states fighting it may succeed this time. What would have happened if gay marriage stayed as a patchwork of legal statuses? What will happen in the long run when marijuana is legal in many states but continues to send you to prison for decades in others? This is not a stable situation and the exact reason we need the federal government to do things instead of leaving it up to the states.
    - Causality1 5y ago
      Why do you think the federal government is going to make smarter decisions than the average state government? I don't want to roll the dice on the feds making the right call every time. When the government makes a bad call I want the option of leaving and going somewhere less dumb. That's not an option if the dumbassery comes from Washington. It was federal overreach that made DOMA possible in the first place, as well as marijuana prohibition.
      - 5y ago
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
It’s too easy for citizens to move between states. You no longer need to cross the Atlantic in a Conestoga wagon. This freedom of movement punishes states that attempt to increase their quality of life too far above the national average far more than it punishes low-quality states with brain drain.
- sershe 5y ago
  It would only punish the states who would attempt to increase the quality of life for people who don't contribute to said quality. Why would others be worried? The more people move in, the better.
  - techbio 5y ago
    This is the flipside of GP. States that increase their quality of life by sending their problems to the states that would attempt to solve them. Name someone alive who does not contribute to the quality of life.
    - sershe 5y ago
      Is this supposed to be a trick question? For example, if you tax people and build a highway (or a rail line), someone driving on it/riding it but not paying taxes does not contribute to this particular QOL improvement. Generally, there are plenty of people who do not contribute to society in any major way (e.g. even taxes), or even directly harm it.
      - techbio 5y ago
        Not a trick question. The quality of life I am talking about is apparently different from yours.
        sershe 5y ago
        Well, apparently you are using a very exotic definition of "quality of life", especially in the original context (of the states increasing the quality of life). For any specific improvement in quality of life, as it is commonly understood (and whether it's measured for an average person/median person/the most miserable person/...) there's very obviously somebody who doesn't contribute to it. Not literally everyone helps run a homeless shelter, plant a forest, build a highway, or run a non-corrupt judiciary. Similarly, there are quite obviously some people who detract from any particular improvement, either directly (whether it's a corrupt cop decreasing public trust, a burglar decreasing safety, a factory fouling up the air, a hiker littering in the park), or by using up a public resource more than they contribute to it. There's no reason why somebody's combined contribution cannot be a net negative. So, it's very easy to find such a person.

Letting the states make their own decisions on issues not addressed by the constitution is a perfectly viable solution. Not sure why that would be particularly difficult.

sigzero 5y ago

That is what was supposed to happen. The Federal level has way too much power today.

voidfunc 5y ago
Yes, unfortunately "states rights" has become a rallying cry for racism and hatred, but the original framing of this country is that the state's are basically supposed to be much stronger than the Federal government. I don't really know whether we can unwind the federal governments grasp on things without basically destabilizing the whole thing though at this point (and admittedly, I'm not sure the majority would want to).
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It's worth noting that the original plan was for even less Federal power, and that one fell apart almost immediately. Power has been moving in a central direction ever since.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Not so much "fell apart" as "intentionally overthrown by capitalists when they didn't agree with policies determined through democracy". Madison and his co-conspirators didn't approve of the deliberate currency depreciation and other measures voted in by farmers who fought, unpaid, for years in a war that benefited rich elites and came home to find their farms repossessed by debtors and tax collectors. So long as the various states operated as competing democracies, they were subject to the wishes of their citizens. The constitution, written in secret by a cabal of rich white men, put an end to all of that, as it was intended to do.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      So long as the various states operated as competing democracies, they couldn't pull together into one country.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        Yeah, that was the original idea. United States would menace the rest of the world a lot less if it weren't truly united.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        Alternate history speculation is a fool's game, but a fun one. ;) It's also extremely likely that the (states that make up the) United States would be the territory of other powers if it hadn't united. It's interesting to speculate on how much of the colonies Britain would have won back in the War of 1812 if it hadn't faced a unified front, or what a powerful France would have done in world history if it had never made the Louisiana purchase sale to the United States because there would have been no United States to make the sale to (or, for that matter, what a powerful Spain would have done if France had made the sale to Spain instead, expanding the Mexican holdings). Or how long slavery would have lasted in North America if there had been no pressure of maintaining a national-scale rule of law to bring disagreements between Northern and Southern states to the point of a military conflict.
- deertick1 5y ago
  Since when has "states rights" become a rallying cry for racism or hatred? I'm really tired of people saying stuff like this : <insert vaguely conservative stance here> has become a rallying cry for racism and transphobia and bigotry. Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred. My guess is you probably only said what you just said because you've read enough articles by blue-haired liberal arts graduates with a sub 100 IQ.
  - macintux 5y ago
    > Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Faubus#Little_Rock_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Faubus#Little_Rock_crisi... > In a 1985 interview with a Huntsville Arkansas student, Faubus stated that the Crisis was due to an "Usurpation of power" by the Federal Government.
  - voidfunc 5y ago
    > Its really obnoxious and disingenuous. Give me one example of someone using states rights as a call for racism and hatred. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_States%27_Rights_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_States%27_Rights_Pa...
  - bloaf 5y ago
    At least since the civil war. > Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union > The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union... > The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#South_Carolina https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
deelowe 5y ago
The states really screwed this up when certain ones decided their love for cotton and hatred for brown people was more important than their sovereignty.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  The federal government had no problem with slavery. It was clearly enshrined in the Constitution.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Slave states complained that the feds weren't doing enough to force the free states to abide by the fugitive slave laws, to give one example.
vmception 5y ago
Little did they know that all commerce would be interstate commerce by the 20th century The Federal government has subjugated all states, and merely tolerates their grasps at 10th amendment autonomy as it derives power from the collection of states. But it is more well funded, controls the currency, and has more land and resources under its title. States don't matter.
- chmod600 5y ago
  You're mistaken. Everything is interstate commerce, whether commerce or not.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Haha yes Supreme Court has gone that direction over the last century.

shadowgovt 5y ago

The history of the US has been a history of power centralization for good reason, unfortunately. The experiment of decentralized state level authority has been found wanting to the tune of a civil war and a Great depression, both of which were addressed by centralizing federal power.

quantumBerry 5y ago
Power centralization is rarely predicated on reasons that include the benefit of common man. The US doesn't appear much different in that regard, either.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  There were two major events in US history that caused significant Federal power consolidation. Technically three, if you count the collapse of the government that was structured under the Articles of the Confederacy prior to the Constitution because it's lack of tax authority meant that it couldn't deal with the war debts that have been accrued from 1776 onward. The first was the civil war, and federal power consolidated for obvious reasons. Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution. The second was more subtle. The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation. It is a piece of federal power that people can reasonably argue about the virtue of, but in a modern comment deeply interconnected world it's reasonable to believe that the federal government needs limited central economic planning authority for the country to flourish.
  - quantumBerry 5y ago
    >Easily half the states demonstrated that they could not be trusted to run their own affairs and protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution. So instead we have a more centralized federal government that cannot be trusted to protect the rights of the citizens enshrined in the Constitution ( that same post civil war government interned the Japanese, allows police to search any vehicle with the "signal" of a dog, and instead of enslaving blacks just disproportionately tosses them to wither away in prison instead. Instead of enslaving brown people here, now our kinder gentler federal government just blow them up in foreign countries instead. ) >The reinterpretation of the Constitution that occurred during the Great Depression granted the federal government the authority to regulate commerce within States under the interstate commerce clause. This authority drives everything from farm subsidies to drug regulation. That's the first time I've seen the war on drugs used to justify the centralization of power. I suppose we need a new civil war against the "untrustworthy" states that have legalized marijuana so affairs can be run the right way. It's pretty "reasonable" to believe the federal government DOESN't need the authority they currently have.

jltsiren 5y ago

I'm not so sure about that. A federal state as a tight union of autonomous non-sovereign states is viable. We have plenty of examples for that. An EU-style loose union of sovereign states also works, if only barely. However, there is no evidence that a loose union of non-sovereign states would work in the present-day world. It might work, but the question is very complex, and we can't hope for a confident answer without actually trying it.

xxpor 5y ago
We tried the latter suggestion back in the day, and it was terrible, even back then.

Texasian 5y ago

* Offer only applies to straight, white men not romantically entangled with a person of color. Offer void where prohibited.

webnrrd2k 5y ago

The U.S. history with slavery and Jim Crow laws tell me that it's not always perfectly viable, and is sometimes very difficult.

iammisc 5y ago
Except we have no problem with such diverse policy in other federations like the eu.
- Retric 5y ago
  The EU is less than 30 and has already lost a member. If you accept membership flexibility then extreme diversity is much easier to accommodate.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    The civil war was all about membership flexibility. Is it any surprise that the losers wanted their 'divetsity' to be accommodated. Frankly we're heading down the path of membership flexibility if the next few years don't bring about significant change.
    - rat87 5y ago
      the civil war was about slavery If anything the federal government was too accommodating and it still wasn't enough for the slave masters who dominated southern politics
      - iammisc 5y ago
        Sure it was about slavery as the wedge issue over which to decide whether you can leave the union. This sort of reactionary rhetoric just skirts over the surface. It's not like the confederacy was fighting for slavery and to be part of the union. Both Kentucky and Delaware were happy with the status quo. The confederacy wanted both slavery and to leave the union, which they perceived to be their right. The federal government at the time was much smaller than the current one and much less empowered.

minikites 5y ago

How well did the states do at running their own vaccine programs? How well did it work when some states recognized gay marriage and others did not? Having nationwide consistency is important for many issues.

Causality1 5y ago
The gay marriage issue is a great example of exactly the opposite of your point. States one by one recognizing gay marriage and proving that it wasn't going to cause the collapse of society is the only reason it was recognized on a national level. The same process is currently happening with marijuana prohibition.
- minikites 5y ago
  >States one by one recognizing gay marriage and proving that it wasn't going to cause the collapse of society is the only reason it was recognized on a national level. You're leaving out the massive fights from states that did not want to recognize gay marriage, which could have easily gone the other way. The same process will repeat with marijuana prohibition and the states fighting it may succeed this time. What would have happened if gay marriage stayed as a patchwork of legal statuses? What will happen in the long run when marijuana is legal in many states but continues to send you to prison for decades in others? This is not a stable situation and the exact reason we need the federal government to do things instead of leaving it up to the states.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Why do you think the federal government is going to make smarter decisions than the average state government? I don't want to roll the dice on the feds making the right call every time. When the government makes a bad call I want the option of leaving and going somewhere less dumb. That's not an option if the dumbassery comes from Washington. It was federal overreach that made DOMA possible in the first place, as well as marijuana prohibition.
    - 5y ago

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

It’s too easy for citizens to move between states. You no longer need to cross the Atlantic in a Conestoga wagon. This freedom of movement punishes states that attempt to increase their quality of life too far above the national average far more than it punishes low-quality states with brain drain.

sershe 5y ago
It would only punish the states who would attempt to increase the quality of life for people who don't contribute to said quality. Why would others be worried? The more people move in, the better.
- techbio 5y ago
  This is the flipside of GP. States that increase their quality of life by sending their problems to the states that would attempt to solve them. Name someone alive who does not contribute to the quality of life.
  - sershe 5y ago
    Is this supposed to be a trick question? For example, if you tax people and build a highway (or a rail line), someone driving on it/riding it but not paying taxes does not contribute to this particular QOL improvement. Generally, there are plenty of people who do not contribute to society in any major way (e.g. even taxes), or even directly harm it.
    - techbio 5y ago
      Not a trick question. The quality of life I am talking about is apparently different from yours.
      - sershe 5y ago
        Well, apparently you are using a very exotic definition of "quality of life", especially in the original context (of the states increasing the quality of life). For any specific improvement in quality of life, as it is commonly understood (and whether it's measured for an average person/median person/the most miserable person/...) there's very obviously somebody who doesn't contribute to it. Not literally everyone helps run a homeless shelter, plant a forest, build a highway, or run a non-corrupt judiciary. Similarly, there are quite obviously some people who detract from any particular improvement, either directly (whether it's a corrupt cop decreasing public trust, a burglar decreasing safety, a factory fouling up the air, a hiker littering in the park), or by using up a public resource more than they contribute to it. There's no reason why somebody's combined contribution cannot be a net negative. So, it's very easy to find such a person.