[Spivak]

I think it's horribly bad application of law but a good ruling in practice. The federal government is the last desk in situations where coordinated action between or restrictions on states is needed to avoid bad outcomes and prisoner's dilemmas for everyone. If the federal government had only one power I think it should be that.

I wish they would apply it to ban the sweetheart deals states give companies so that we can end the race to the bottom where states have to suck ceos off to get them to set up shop.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The federal government is the last desk in situations where coordinated action between or restrictions on states is needed to avoid bad outcomes and prisoner's dilemmas for everyone.

That kind of regulation is the core of the central planning fallacy. If people know how much demand for wheat there would be next year or what crop yields would be then farmers would know how much to plant before it would become unprofitable and you wouldn't need anyone to order them to. If that information isn't available then it isn't available to the government either and they're not going to make any better a decision, and in most cases it will be worse because they'll have less information than the people actually doing it or less reason not to be careless or hidebound because it's not their livelihood on the line.

The purpose of the interstate commerce clause is that sometimes the victims of a misdeed are in a different state than the perpetrators and then the victims have to be able to go somewhere for redress that has jurisdiction over the perpetrators. But that only applies when the commerce is actually inter-state.

> I wish they would apply it to ban the sweetheart deals states give companies so that we can end the race to the bottom where states have to suck ceos off to get them to set up shop.

The sweetheart deals aren't a race to the bottom, they're corruption. If the state wanted to attract business generally then it would create a generally favorable environment with low administrative overhead or quality infrastructure etc., not create weird exceptions for one specific corporation. Those one-company deals never actually work out because their true purpose is to steal from the taxpayer.

[Spivak]

Look, in this particular instance you might be right but the idea is more general. The FCC is a good example of coordination that benefits everyone but isn't really interstate commerce in rules-as-written.

> The sweetheart deals aren't a race to the bottom, they're corruption.

Call it what you want but large businesses planning to do large buildouts collect bids from states for favorable tax breaks and other incentives. In my state there are two whole departments at the statehouse dedicated to just this. Having the federal government step in and tell every state all at once that the practice is now outlawed eliminates this source of legal corruption and levels the playing field so states that want to attract business must do exactly what you lay out.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Look, in this particular instance you might be right but the idea is more general.

The problem is more general too.

> The FCC is a good example of coordination that benefits everyone but isn't really interstate commerce in rules-as-written.

Most of what the FCC does actually is inter-state commerce. They're regulating communications networks that cross state lines and radio products that are sold not just inter-state but internationally.

In principle they shouldn't be able to stop you from building a radio within your own state and then using it there at power levels that don't cross state lines, but why would they need to? Your state could do that if they wanted to.

> Call it what you want but large businesses planning to do large buildouts collect bids from states for favorable tax breaks and other incentives.

The bids are a competition between corrupt government officials in different states to see who is willing to offer the most taxpayer money in exchange for having their pockets lined. The problem here is that taxpayers fail to vote out anyone who does this.

> Having the federal government step in and tell every state all at once that the practice is now outlawed eliminates this source of legal corruption and levels the playing field so states that want to attract business must do exactly what you lay out.

The fact that they haven't done this rather illustrates the point. If the population doesn't want it then they'll vote for politicians who don't do it at the state level. If they don't care enough to, as seems to be the case at present, then no federal rules exist either.