5 ms·

> Amendments to the Constitution have become practically nonexistent. It seems that you're taking this as a sign that the Constitution isn't still relevant. I'

> Amendments to the Constitution have become practically nonexistent. It seems that you're taking this as a sign that the Constitution isn't still relevant. I'd ask you to consider that this might be a sign of the exact opposite, and that we can't get broad buy-in on the things that some groups see as obvious additions. If the MLB were trying to update the rules of baseball to make it more exciting, and one camp wanted to do that by increasing the number of home runs while the other wanted to do it by increasing the number of strike-outs, it makes sense that they should sort out which approach is best before passing rules (or allowing flip-flopping every year) > The Constitution never benefited the country as a whole For citizens, this is so demonstrably false that I feel like I must be misinterpreting you here.

lapcat 3y ago
> I'd ask you to consider that this might be a sign of the exact opposite, and that we can't get broad buy-in on the things that some groups see as obvious additions. Polls show that we do have broad buy-in on a number of issues, sometimes across partisan lines, but the way the system is designed, a small minority can block almost any action. Also, the leaders of both major political parties often act against the desires of their own "supporters", by which I mean voting supporters rather than their financial supporters. > For citizens, this is so demonstrably false that I feel like I must be misinterpreting you here. Here's what I said: "The founders weren't omniscient, benevolent gods. They were just wealthy landowners looking out for their own interests — it's crucial to note that they ignored over half the population of the colonies, i.e., women and black people". How exactly are you interpreting that?
- lockhouse 3y ago
  How many of these issues need to be legislated on a federal level? Why not tackle these issues at lower levels instead where representatives are more beholden to their constituents?
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Why? State lines are arbitrary. I've lived in 3 different states over my life so far, and many people have lived in more. I'd rather not have the laws change radically as I cross the border. Moreover, leaving things to the states is how slavery was allowed before the Civil War, and how black people continued to be oppressed even after they were technically freed. (Remember that poll taxes for example were not prohibited until 1964.) So no, I'm not particularly interested in leaving things to the states. To take a much more recent example, why should a woman's right to get an abortion depend on where she stands relative to some arbitrary state line? I think it's silly and counterproductive to behave as if we have 50 separate countries, united only by "national" defense, or whatever one thinks the minimal requirements are. And we can see how the UK shot itself in the foot by stupidly leaving the EU. Local rule is not necessarily better rule.
    - gameman144 3y ago
      > I'd rather not have the laws change radically as I cross the border. This is a fair preference, but many people prefer the exact opposite. For instance, people leaving high-tax states for lower-tax ones, or people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > but many people prefer the exact opposite > people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones It's incorrect to claim that people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones have the opposite preference to me. My preference, and I'd guess their preference in most cases, is to not allow any state to outlaw abortion. The idea that a woman leaving her own state to get an abortion has the preference of allowing states to decide to outlaw abortion sounds pretty absurd to me. Furthermore, polls show that the majority of Americans support abortion rights, nationwide. "A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy." "A 61% majority of Americans think overturning Roe v. Wade, thus ending constitutional protection for abortion rights and returning the matter to the states, was a “bad thing" https://news.gallup.com/poll/506759/broader-support-abortion-rights-continues-post-dobbs.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/506759/broader-support-abortion... Here's a funny thing (funny as in hypocritical, not funny as in amusing): I've seen too many instances where advocates of "local control" suddenly impose restrictions on local control when they happen to achieve broader power and are able to implement their policy goals. It was never really about local control, it was about winning by any means available.
- gameman144 3y ago
  > but the way the system is designed, a small minority can block almost any action. Again, this is a feature, not a bug. If over three-quarters of states or representatives can agree, then an amendment can get passed. If over a quarter of states or representatives don't want to codify something in the constitution, that is not a small minority. > How exactly are you interpreting that? I'm not interpreting that portion at all -- I disagree that the founders were only looking out for their own interests, but that's fine to disagree on that bit. I'm responding specifically to "The Constitution never benefited the country as a whole", which is the demonstrably false bit. Every single person in the US today has the benefit of freedom of speech, for instance (despite the fact that historically this was definitely not the case).
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > If over a quarter of states or representatives don't want to codify something in the constitution, that is not a small minority. I'd say that 25% of states is a small minority of states, but in any case that's ignoring the population of states, which vary dramatically (California 39M, Wyoming 580K). 25% of the states is not necessarily 25% of the US population; it's possibly much smaller than 25%. > Every single person in the US today has the benefit of freedom of speech, for instance Except that our beloved Supreme Court (which has been revealed to be blatantly corrupt) has decided that money is speech, thereby allowing the wealthy to simply purchase our elected representatives.
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      Just because a state’s population is lower doesn’t mean their needs are less important. Would you apply a similar standard to the LGBT community? They are approximately 7% of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite...
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > Just because a state’s population is lower doesn’t mean their needs are less important. > Would you apply a similar standard to the LGBT community? They are approximately 7% of the population. You're mixing up rights and voting. The LGBT community doesn't get to pass or veto any laws. A person has rights. A state is not a person. Corporations are not people, my friend. I don't believe in the concept of state's rights, so I don't accept the analogy. A state is just an arbitrary set of lines on a map. It doesn't have needs. In the case of voting, I think the majority should decide rather than the minority, otherwise it's not really democratic. If the 7% LGBT community ruled the country, that would also be a tyranny, not a democracy.
tnecniv 3y ago
This is an aside but the MLB has been actively modifying rules the past few years. Some of them have been quite good, but others seem to contradict each other in purpose and leave me wondering what they actually want. For example, they have attempted to increase action on the bases by increasing base size and banning the shift, but they also deadened the ball so that it travels a few feet less on average. The latter decreased home runs (at least early in the season last year, I forget end of season results), but just turns them into boring fly outs. It also didn’t really increase base running, since it wasn’t dead enough to cause most players to change their approach (mainly, try and hit a home run). I’m unsure how the ball has been this year but it’s seemed to carry more based on my casual viewing, and the MLB has been suspected of tampering with the ball for seasons / games for a few years now without discussing it (e.g., putting juiced balls in big games and tweaking the formula season to season for one reason or another). They also mandated motion capture cameras be present in every stadium to collect data for teams and push that data to both teams and viewers, yet bemoan that baseball has become too analytics driven. Manfred (the commissioner) has complained about decisions like starting pitchers facing fewer batters, pitchers being too good in general, the shift before it was banned, and more, but these tactics have largely come about due analyzing the data. As an organization, they generally seem confused about what they want and how to achieve it. I’m not sure if that’s due to factions within the ownership group (maybe you can draw some political parallels there), or something within the MLB leadership.

lapcat 3y ago

> I'd ask you to consider that this might be a sign of the exact opposite, and that we can't get broad buy-in on the things that some groups see as obvious additions. Polls show that we do have broad buy-in on a number of issues, sometimes across partisan lines, but the way the system is designed, a small minority can block almost any action. Also, the leaders of both major political parties often act against the desires of their own "supporters", by which I mean voting supporters rather than their financial supporters. > For citizens, this is so demonstrably false that I feel like I must be misinterpreting you here. Here's what I said: "The founders weren't omniscient, benevolent gods. They were just wealthy landowners looking out for their own interests — it's crucial to note that they ignored over half the population of the colonies, i.e., women and black people". How exactly are you interpreting that?

lockhouse 3y ago
How many of these issues need to be legislated on a federal level? Why not tackle these issues at lower levels instead where representatives are more beholden to their constituents?
- lapcat 3y ago
  Why? State lines are arbitrary. I've lived in 3 different states over my life so far, and many people have lived in more. I'd rather not have the laws change radically as I cross the border. Moreover, leaving things to the states is how slavery was allowed before the Civil War, and how black people continued to be oppressed even after they were technically freed. (Remember that poll taxes for example were not prohibited until 1964.) So no, I'm not particularly interested in leaving things to the states. To take a much more recent example, why should a woman's right to get an abortion depend on where she stands relative to some arbitrary state line? I think it's silly and counterproductive to behave as if we have 50 separate countries, united only by "national" defense, or whatever one thinks the minimal requirements are. And we can see how the UK shot itself in the foot by stupidly leaving the EU. Local rule is not necessarily better rule.
  - gameman144 3y ago
    > I'd rather not have the laws change radically as I cross the border. This is a fair preference, but many people prefer the exact opposite. For instance, people leaving high-tax states for lower-tax ones, or people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > but many people prefer the exact opposite > people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones It's incorrect to claim that people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones have the opposite preference to me. My preference, and I'd guess their preference in most cases, is to not allow any state to outlaw abortion. The idea that a woman leaving her own state to get an abortion has the preference of allowing states to decide to outlaw abortion sounds pretty absurd to me. Furthermore, polls show that the majority of Americans support abortion rights, nationwide. "A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy." "A 61% majority of Americans think overturning Roe v. Wade, thus ending constitutional protection for abortion rights and returning the matter to the states, was a “bad thing" https://news.gallup.com/poll/506759/broader-support-abortion-rights-continues-post-dobbs.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/506759/broader-support-abortion... Here's a funny thing (funny as in hypocritical, not funny as in amusing): I've seen too many instances where advocates of "local control" suddenly impose restrictions on local control when they happen to achieve broader power and are able to implement their policy goals. It was never really about local control, it was about winning by any means available.
gameman144 3y ago
> but the way the system is designed, a small minority can block almost any action. Again, this is a feature, not a bug. If over three-quarters of states or representatives can agree, then an amendment can get passed. If over a quarter of states or representatives don't want to codify something in the constitution, that is not a small minority. > How exactly are you interpreting that? I'm not interpreting that portion at all -- I disagree that the founders were only looking out for their own interests, but that's fine to disagree on that bit. I'm responding specifically to "The Constitution never benefited the country as a whole", which is the demonstrably false bit. Every single person in the US today has the benefit of freedom of speech, for instance (despite the fact that historically this was definitely not the case).
- lapcat 3y ago
  > If over a quarter of states or representatives don't want to codify something in the constitution, that is not a small minority. I'd say that 25% of states is a small minority of states, but in any case that's ignoring the population of states, which vary dramatically (California 39M, Wyoming 580K). 25% of the states is not necessarily 25% of the US population; it's possibly much smaller than 25%. > Every single person in the US today has the benefit of freedom of speech, for instance Except that our beloved Supreme Court (which has been revealed to be blatantly corrupt) has decided that money is speech, thereby allowing the wealthy to simply purchase our elected representatives.
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    Just because a state’s population is lower doesn’t mean their needs are less important. Would you apply a similar standard to the LGBT community? They are approximately 7% of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite...
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > Just because a state’s population is lower doesn’t mean their needs are less important. > Would you apply a similar standard to the LGBT community? They are approximately 7% of the population. You're mixing up rights and voting. The LGBT community doesn't get to pass or veto any laws. A person has rights. A state is not a person. Corporations are not people, my friend. I don't believe in the concept of state's rights, so I don't accept the analogy. A state is just an arbitrary set of lines on a map. It doesn't have needs. In the case of voting, I think the majority should decide rather than the minority, otherwise it's not really democratic. If the 7% LGBT community ruled the country, that would also be a tyranny, not a democracy.

tnecniv 3y ago

This is an aside but the MLB has been actively modifying rules the past few years. Some of them have been quite good, but others seem to contradict each other in purpose and leave me wondering what they actually want. For example, they have attempted to increase action on the bases by increasing base size and banning the shift, but they also deadened the ball so that it travels a few feet less on average. The latter decreased home runs (at least early in the season last year, I forget end of season results), but just turns them into boring fly outs. It also didn’t really increase base running, since it wasn’t dead enough to cause most players to change their approach (mainly, try and hit a home run). I’m unsure how the ball has been this year but it’s seemed to carry more based on my casual viewing, and the MLB has been suspected of tampering with the ball for seasons / games for a few years now without discussing it (e.g., putting juiced balls in big games and tweaking the formula season to season for one reason or another). They also mandated motion capture cameras be present in every stadium to collect data for teams and push that data to both teams and viewers, yet bemoan that baseball has become too analytics driven. Manfred (the commissioner) has complained about decisions like starting pitchers facing fewer batters, pitchers being too good in general, the shift before it was banned, and more, but these tactics have largely come about due analyzing the data. As an organization, they generally seem confused about what they want and how to achieve it. I’m not sure if that’s due to factions within the ownership group (maybe you can draw some political parallels there), or something within the MLB leadership.