[bhups]

"By what possible stretch of the imagination is the system working well in the EU? The EU has been on the brink of breaking apart since 2008, and Britain just voted to leave the EU this summer. The EU is even more federated than the USA, and they have suffered even more problems with federation. Both the USA and the EU must eventually move toward consolidated governments."

I would argue exactly the opposite. The primary criticism that member nations have of the EU is that there are too many regulations imposed at the EU-level. This was the non-xenophobic argument in favor of Brexit.

By enacting what you would propose: total control at the federal level, we would move closer to such an unpopular reality.

[lkrubner]

"total control at the federal level, we would move closer to such an unpopular reality."

Surely that isn't true? If we abolish all local and regional regulations, then there is an absolute reduction of regulations. Many of the criticisms that I've read have been about the conflict between regional and EU directives. For instance, regulations regarding milk and cheese, in Wales, regulations that had been in place for centuries, and which came into conflict with the EU directives. Those kinds of problems go away if you simply abolish all the local and regional directives and consolidate things at the top level.

To put this in engineering terms, I've often been part of the debate regarding where Exceptions should be handled in software. Some programmers feel that Exceptions should be handled as close to the source of the problem as possible. Others argue that it's idiocy to allow Exceptions handling code to be scattered throughout the code base, and therefore its best to consolidate error handling at a single top level. Depending on the project, I've been on both sides of that debate, but I've never argued that the decentralized approach lead to less code. The consolidated approach certainly involves less code.

Also, I'll point out the "we keep local control" is the most illusionary of the claims made by those opposed to the EU. Consider the case in England. As long as England has trade with the continent, then England will face long-term pressure to harmonize it's economy with its major trading partners. Look at what's happened over the last 200 years. All of Britain eventually accepted the metric system, even though it was developed in Revolutionary France, who Britain fought against. Leaving the EU doesn't save England from the pressure to harmonize its economy with the EU, it only undermines England's negotiating position.

[bhups]

"If we abolish all local and regional regulations, then there is an absolute reduction of regulations. "

You seem to make the implicit assumption that federal regulations are somehow better than the same amount of state-level regulations. This simply isn't the case. Today, New York has to participate in the same polity as Florida, and it is for that reason that it does not have a single payer system, despite its citizens being in favor of it. This is unsurprising because you can't create one-size-fits-all solutions for all of our states given how different they and their economies are.

Instead, if we allow them to chart their own path, we can allow them to fail (or succeed) fast. The alternative is the limbo state we are in where nobody is moving forward (or backward) and nobody is happy.

To continue the engineering analogy, this is a divide-and-conquer problem. Denmark and the Nordic countries were able to successfully implement their social systems because they are small, well contained countries. By allowing US states to implement their own systems, we set them up for the same kind of success.

[lkrubner]

I try to limit how much I write on sites other than my weblog, so I wrote a reply and posted it to my weblog:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-advantage-of-cent...