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The fundamental problem, which isn't going to get addressed short of the country falling apart, most likely, is that our particular system of government is a bi
by corrral 4y ago
The fundamental problem, which isn't going to get addressed short of the country falling apart, most likely, is that our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it.
Its very shittiness is why we can't realistically fix it. We've been relying on courts really stretching reasoning on the constitution to its breaking point, just to be able to have a mostly-modern state & economy, in terms of function and outcomes, and it's been like that for most of a century. Maybe it would've been better if the courts hadn't done that and had instead forced us to a crisis point much sooner, so we'd have to actually fix our governmental system, but who knows what suffering that might have caused.
Concerted attempts to change the course of the courts might finally bring us that crisis, though. We'll see. If they're maximally successful, I think it'll have to, because the US is gonna go downhill fast if kinda-shaky 20th century rulings supporting broadened federal power are wiped out en masse.
- dvt 4y ago> our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it. I agree that a "Union of States," being profoundly anti-federalist, is a pretty shit way of running a homogeneous world power with a shared language, shared culture, and (for the most part) shared ideals. The US fundamentally changed after the Civil War (which was probably the breaking point of anti-federalism) but unfortunately the Constitution didn't change along with it.
- MockObject 4y agoI can't tell if you're advocating for more centralism, or less.
- mbauman 4y agoThe comment seems to be more descriptive than prescriptive.
- HardlyCurious 4y agoThe US is more akin to the EU than it is to a normal country. I don't think that is necessarily good or bad, it just is. But I don't know if I understand your bit about shared culture, language, and ideas... Would that imply that we should share a govt with the UK and Australia? Or if oceans are the breaking point, at least Canada?
- imbnwa 4y agoBut you can leave the EU without warring for it
- crocodiletears 4y agoI think the intersection of culture and ideals between different regions in the US is too small to merit a description of the country as homogenous. And that intersection is becoming increasingly smaller with the collapse of mass media and the balkanization of media preferences (news and entertainment). We have a shared cultural history, but we can't even come close to a consensus on its interpretation.