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Germany is not America. I'm not making the argument Federal power is bad, the people who benefit from it the most are, and are grifting the system by intentiona

Germany is not America. I'm not making the argument Federal power is bad, the people who benefit from it the most are, and are grifting the system by intentionally subverting anything that would improve their people's situation. Look at the build back better plan, they screwed that up and most of our highways are out of their operating life spans by more than double the original life time. Germany also was given a huge leg up after WW2 when all of FDR's constitution writers went over and basically gave you all the worker protections FDR wanted for the USA.

rayiner 4y ago
> Germany is not America. Different groups of people wanting to cooperate to some extent but not be micromanaged by other groups of people isn’t unique to Germany. Federalism keeps recurring because it solves a recurring human problem. > I'm not making the argument Federal power is bad, the people who benefit from it the most are, and are grifting the system by intentionally subverting anything that would improve their people's situation. I like to assume that people are acting rationally in their interest given their values and priorities. People disagree about what would “improve” their situation,” or what will be the real outcome of efforts undertaken to “improve the situation.” Last I checked people are moving from California to Texas, not the other way around. Let’s assume at the very least people rationally appreciate the trade offs of that. > Look at the build back better plan, they screwed that up and most of our highways are out of their operating life spans by more than double the original life time. And why do you assume that Build Back Better would address that problem? I used to be a transit fan. I dutifully road Amtrak and Metro and MARC to work for years. And you know what? I gave up, moved to the exurbs, and bought a big SUV. Because we can’t actually do infrastructure and we shouldn’t even try. My change of heart was bitterly confirmed true when I saw the BBB proposal for Amtrak (which last I checked planned to blow tens of billions of dollars without building any new track). Being from Bangladesh, I don’t actually believe that all cultures equally good at all things. Clearly Americans just can’t do things that require large scale coordination. Instead of beating our heads against the wall about it, we should just try to restructure our society to avoid those weaknesses.

rayiner 4y ago

> Germany is not America. Different groups of people wanting to cooperate to some extent but not be micromanaged by other groups of people isn’t unique to Germany. Federalism keeps recurring because it solves a recurring human problem. > I'm not making the argument Federal power is bad, the people who benefit from it the most are, and are grifting the system by intentionally subverting anything that would improve their people's situation. I like to assume that people are acting rationally in their interest given their values and priorities. People disagree about what would “improve” their situation,” or what will be the real outcome of efforts undertaken to “improve the situation.” Last I checked people are moving from California to Texas, not the other way around. Let’s assume at the very least people rationally appreciate the trade offs of that. > Look at the build back better plan, they screwed that up and most of our highways are out of their operating life spans by more than double the original life time. And why do you assume that Build Back Better would address that problem? I used to be a transit fan. I dutifully road Amtrak and Metro and MARC to work for years. And you know what? I gave up, moved to the exurbs, and bought a big SUV. Because we can’t actually do infrastructure and we shouldn’t even try. My change of heart was bitterly confirmed true when I saw the BBB proposal for Amtrak (which last I checked planned to blow tens of billions of dollars without building any new track). Being from Bangladesh, I don’t actually believe that all cultures equally good at all things. Clearly Americans just can’t do things that require large scale coordination. Instead of beating our heads against the wall about it, we should just try to restructure our society to avoid those weaknesses.