[clarkmoody]

Since we're living around like-minded individuals but subjected to top-down centralized lawmaking, there is a large disconnect between what's happening in our backyard, in the state capital, and in Washington. Often the City Council office is out of touch with one part of the city or another, imposing rules on all that about half disagree with.

The federal system in America is supposed to emphasize differences in the states, and to some extent it still does. But Washington has been taking more power away from the states for the last ~100 years or so. This leads to large Washington-imposed mandates forced upon the states and upon the people, which leads to hostility.

Perhaps it's time to embrace the burbclave model from Snow Crash?

[AnthonyMouse]

I still think one of the causes of the federal over-expansion was to make Senators popularly elected rather than appointed by state legislatures.

The point of the Senate was to create a check by the states on federal power. Now it's just an incentive for lower population states to expand the federal government since they have disproportionate representation in directing who the expansion benefits.

[_delirium]

I think there are a few other reasons:

1. National businesses in many cases (though not all) want uniform regulations to ease doing business. So they lobby for federal preemption of state regulations. For example, car manufacturers don't want to have to meet 50 separate safety codes in order to sell cars nationwide, so they successfully lobbied for a federal code with express state preemption. Advocates of tort reform often have similar motivations: a key proposal of tort reform is to federalize product liability, because manufacturers dislike the current system where litigation will always end up being initiated in the most plaintiff-friendly county of the most plaintiff-friendly state.

2. The last time state vs. federal power came to the point of an outright test of strength, the federal government won. And what's worse for the states, its victory has in retrospect been very popular, which has done quite a bit to boost the popularity of federalization and stigmatize the slogan "states' rights". JFK sent troops to Alabama in 1963, removed the governor's control over the state national guard, and imposed federal law by force; and nowadays most people think he did the right thing.

3. People move around a lot, which makes it increasingly impractical to deal with things like social security or Medicare at the state level, when you might be born in one state, work in three others, and retire in a fifth. (This one is becoming a problem in Europe, too, and will probably lead to some kind of EU-standardized "portable pension" scheme in the medium-term future. An EU-wide health card has already been created, though its terms are not yet standardized.)

[AnthonyMouse]

> National businesses in many cases (though not all) want uniform regulations to ease doing business. So they lobby for federal preemption of state regulations.

Very few of the regulations in that nature are the ones people are complaining about. The objectionable things largely fall into the categories of things that cost a lot in blood and treasure, put poor and middle class people in prison or erect regulatory barriers to competition and entrepreneurship.

> The last time state vs. federal power came to the point of an outright test of strength, the federal government won.

The federal government always wins. They have more soldiers than anyone else. Winning and being right are not the same thing and being right sometimes is not an excuse to claim unchecked power.

> People move around a lot, which makes it increasingly impractical to deal with things like social security or Medicare at the state level, when you might be born in one state, work in three others, and retire in a fifth.

Problem solved by internet. There is no reason that four states can't deposit the retirement income you're due into your bank account in a fifth. And people retiring in a place far from where than they've lived is something to be discouraged from a social welfare standpoint in any event.

[_delirium]

> erect regulatory barriers to competition and entrepreneurship

Ah, so federal preemption is okay when it's good for businesses' profits (e.g. overriding state environmental and product-safety laws), but bad when it's bad or businesses' profits (e.g. imposing environmental or product-safety laws)? Sounds like policy-biased "federalism", not principled federalism.

[AnthonyMouse]

You're just talking about two different things. The purpose of the commerce clause is to allow the federal government to preempt protectionist state laws, but that doesn't exempt the federal regulations from having to be reasonable and not impede competition or entrepreneurship.

Allow me to make an important distinction. Environmental regulations can be expensive, because you might have to pay more for energy if you can't burn dirty fuels. Environmental regulations can be expensive, because a small business may need to hire a team of lawyers they can't afford, or fulfill bureaucratic requirements that make no logical sense. The first cost may be inevitable if we want to be able to breathe clean air. The second cost is totally inexcusable and is to be exterminated whenever discovered.

[mahyarm]

> Now it's just an incentive for lower population states to expand the federal government since they have disproportionate representation in directing who the expansion benefits.

Wouldn't they have the same incentive then?

[AnthonyMouse]

> Wouldn't they have the same incentive then?

The incentive was tempered by the fact that state legislators don't like expanding federal power since it interferes with the exercise of their own power.

[clarkmoody]

Absolutely agree. Repeal the 17th is at the top of my restore-America wish-list.

[cbd1984]

> But Washington has been taking more power away from the states for the last ~100 years or so.

Yes, and there are very good reasons for that, beginning with us having to fight a Civil War because the South felt the need to keep slavery and continuing on to us having to fight the South to get it to enforce the laws preserving Civil Rights for black people and other minority groups.

Shifting power back to local governments doesn't mean the locals in general get more say. Historically, it's meant that the most violent and richest of the locals got to lord it over everyone else in the region until the Feds stepped in to clean things up.

> This leads to large Washington-imposed mandates forced upon the states and upon the people, which leads to hostility.

Fine. Hostility is better than lynchings.

[clarkmoody]

Ah yes, the old "states' rights are bad because slavery" chestnut.

So should we repeal the 9th and 10th Amendments?

[cbd1984]

No. Should we repeal the 14th?

And, just to make it clear to everyone else, slavery isn't the only problem the Feds had to step in to solve. The KKK, Jim Crow, company stores, and pretty much every other type of institutionalized bigotry had to be handled at the Federal level because the local governments weren't even trying.