[tim333]

>“This is an experiment,” Shumlin says. “And we’re not going to really know the results for a while.”

Good stuff. I really wish those in power would more often try a scientific/engineering approach to see what works rather than politicians shouting about war on whatever.

[clarkmoody]

This is a fantastic argument for strong states' rights and less-overbearing / centralized policy from Washington.

Let the states be compared against one another and measure the results: if heroin abuse skyrockets in Vermont, then other states could avoid their policy mistakes. If something works incredibly well in a couple states, then it would be appropriate to implement broad, federal rules codifying the success in those states for the whole union.

As it stands, the federal government piles an increasing amount of legislation and regulation down on the states, leaving less room for this type of innovation and experimentation.

[zanny]

You are detailing a consequence of an international crisis, not so much some novel concept in the US.

This problem is also starting to show up in the EU, since there is pressure to adopt monolithic policies across member states.

But the concept is not complicated - you should give people mobility, so that they can go wherever there are policies they most agree with. That is it.

The problem is that international mobility is crippled by bureaucratic immigration policies in addition to the classic cultural and language barriers. Thus, postulating that states should be more independent in their policies is right, but it needs to acknowledge that fundamentally it does not matter if it is states in a country or individual countries or something like city states or homesteading, all that is required is the ability for individuals to migrate where their ideologies and the states match.

And the modern world is often simultaneously the best and worst time for such mobility. In terms of real physical barriers, there are pretty much none - flight has advanced sufficiently it is not prohibitive in cost for many people in the world to realistically save up enough to fly anywhere else. Simultaneously, in the past it was much easier to just "cross boarders", where the bureaucracy and monitoring of citizenship was much reduced.

Hopefully we progress to minimize or remove the latter, because it is the best outcome for everyone except those who want to prevent mobility to hold power over groups of people who would not stay if they had a choice.

[yarrel]

I thought states' rights was just a code phrase for racism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States'_rights#Controversy

[gshubert17]

Not in every case. In some cases [0] states' rights means a willingness to accept less centralized authority and more autonomy. A 1932 Supreme Court decision contained the phrase "laboratories of democracy" to describe how a "state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratories_of_democracy

[clarkmoody]

I hope you will think differently in the future :-)

[jasonwocky]

Vermont is just about the most pragmatic state in the union that I know of, and it took them this long to finally try this approach out. Give it time.