Government: Centralized vs. Decentralized

[Distind]

I can't imagine that being too big a help in today's world. The risk of civil war is much less than the risk of stagnation.

You don't have Texas to deal with.

[Askold]

USA could benefit from ending the states and just concentrating the power to federal goverment. Leave the cities and counties or whatever you have to deal with the local stuff.

Or maybe put some more representatives of the regions to the federal goverment since the goverment will already be reduced greatly without the need for separate states to have their minigoverments.


I don't see how you would get those changes passed though.

hmmm... Maybe if you market it to the tea partiers and tell them that it is the ultimate small goverment since it would be one goverment instead of over 50 goverments in one country.

[Art Vandelay]

I can't imagine that being too big a help in today's world. The risk of civil war is much less than the risk of stagnation.

You don't have Texas to deal with.

Hey, if Texas really wants to get utterly curb stomped by the US military, I say let them. It'll be a good excuse to fix their school system at any rate.

[dpareja]

I know that up here, I wish health and education were federal responsibilities. But that's the sensibilities of 1867 for you.

[Captain Jack Harkness]

USA could benefit from ending the states and just concentrating the power to federal goverment. Leave the cities and counties or whatever you have to deal with the local stuff.

Or maybe put some more representatives of the regions to the federal goverment since the goverment will already be reduced greatly without the need for separate states to have their minigoverments.


I don't see how you would get those changes passed though.

hmmm... Maybe if you market it to the tea partiers and tell them that it is the ultimate small goverment since it would be one goverment instead of over 50 goverments in one country.

So you don't think there's any useful function of the state level of government?  How about roads, for starters?  A lot of the roads in a state aren't really appropriate for towns to handle because of their length, and yet the sheer number of roads and their scope mean they likely can't be handled at the federal level efficiently.

[Askold]

USA could benefit from ending the states and just concentrating the power to federal goverment. Leave the cities and counties or whatever you have to deal with the local stuff.

Or maybe put some more representatives of the regions to the federal goverment since the goverment will already be reduced greatly without the need for separate states to have their minigoverments.


I don't see how you would get those changes passed though.

hmmm... Maybe if you market it to the tea partiers and tell them that it is the ultimate small goverment since it would be one goverment instead of over 50 goverments in one country.

So you don't think there's any useful function of the state level of government?  How about roads, for starters?  A lot of the roads in a state aren't really appropriate for towns to handle because of their length, and yet the sheer number of roads and their scope mean they likely can't be handled at the federal level efficiently.

I'm confused. Why couldn't the federal goverment handle the roads? The roads cross the borders between the states too and I'm sure USA has some federal functions that operate in every state already.

Besides I'm just impressed that your states have so much rights and power. Reducing those powers (wouldn't even have to go as far as I suggested) woud be helpful. I mean you have governors saying that they will not accept laws made by Obama and wasn't there a governor who threatened to have his state seccede? (I know that some lower ranking politician at least made that threat.)

[Lt. Fred]

The Commerce Clause, in particular, has resulted in the US federal government having a lot more power than the Framers probably ever envisioned*,

Not really. This was an area of disagreement between the framers, particularly Madison and Hamilton. Eventually Madison lost in the Supreme Court (Maryland v McCulloch, one of the most consequential court decisions in American history). Madison also realised why his imagined government couldn't work when he tried it out. He very quickly changed his mind.

That said, can anyone imagine a more broad enumerated power than to 'Promote the General Welfare'? It has general in it!

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2011/05/27/9610/the-fake-james-madison/

[Distind]

I'm confused. Why couldn't the federal goverment handle the roads? The roads cross the borders between the states too and I'm sure USA has some federal functions that operate in every state already.

Besides I'm just impressed that your states have so much rights and power. Reducing those powers (wouldn't even have to go as far as I suggested) woud be helpful. I mean you have governors saying that they will not accept laws made by Obama and wasn't there a governor who threatened to have his state seccede? (I know that some lower ranking politician at least made that threat.)

Despite the claims they don't actually have the power to do any of that. They can not fund enforcement of something, but then they don't get funds for it from the fed. Eventually the fed starts tying other funds into it, and the states cave.

And yeah, the last one was Texas, if there's a politician in Texas who HASN'T threatend to secede I don't know of them.

Edit: Yeah yeah, they threatened that too.

[Jack Mann]

Threatened to succeed?  I don't think anyone's ever worried about them showing competence...

[mellenORL]

It'll take forever to happen, but I'd like to see an efficient, intelligent merger of local autonomy and streamlined interregional cooperation on things like commerce and transportation and infrastructure, health care, education and environmental management, business/industry development, etc. I'm an old social anarchist a bit still, in that I think concentrating too much power into too few hands, especially when those authorities are figuratively and literally far-removed from the people and places they rule over is just inviting despotism or massive misery through incompetence.

The only way it would really work would be if elected officials must have professional qualifications such as civil engineers only to be allowed to have say on roads/infrastructure projects, degreed educators only to be allowed to serve on school boards, criminal psychologists only to be allowed to write and pass criminal code and oversee correctional services and prison rehab centers, etc.

But, hey it just makes too much sense to allow only experts to be elected to run the machinery of society, and not just allow the biggest, loudest, richest, most egoistic people to take all the power, like it is mostly done now, and since civilization dawned.

[Distind]

The problem is even someone qualified to actually DO something may be completely incompetent at managing the process associated with it. Kinda like how someone can know how to do something and completely suck at teaching others how. It's a different skill set. It does take a fairly major degree of bullshitting to keep people working together, one screw up and you get to watch people turn on eachother like animals as they'll get held responsible for whatever they can't do thanks to someone else's fuck up.

I say this coming from the software industry, I wouldn't tell your average programer to lead a programming project and expect good results. I can dig up the statistics to back this, as it's was a rather significant part of my major in college. The entire software industry largely floats by on utterly incompetent management, massive overruns and disgusting amounts of over time on major projects. Mostly because the people in charge of it either don't understand what they're asking for(management) or people don't know how to manage the production(programmers). Don't get me started on project estimations. The exceptions to this are generally praised and rarely repeatable.

[Captain Jack Harkness]

USA could benefit from ending the states and just concentrating the power to federal goverment. Leave the cities and counties or whatever you have to deal with the local stuff.

Or maybe put some more representatives of the regions to the federal goverment since the goverment will already be reduced greatly without the need for separate states to have their minigoverments.


I don't see how you would get those changes passed though.

hmmm... Maybe if you market it to the tea partiers and tell them that it is the ultimate small goverment since it would be one goverment instead of over 50 goverments in one country.

So you don't think there's any useful function of the state level of government?  How about roads, for starters?  A lot of the roads in a state aren't really appropriate for towns to handle because of their length, and yet the sheer number of roads and their scope mean they likely can't be handled at the federal level efficiently.

I'm confused. Why couldn't the federal goverment handle the roads? The roads cross the borders between the states too and I'm sure USA has some federal functions that operate in every state already.

Besides I'm just impressed that your states have so much rights and power. Reducing those powers (wouldn't even have to go as far as I suggested) woud be helpful. I mean you have governors saying that they will not accept laws made by Obama and wasn't there a governor who threatened to have his state seccede? (I know that some lower ranking politician at least made that threat.)

While it's true that some states are being a bit overzealous about it, there are issues that are best handled at the hierarchical level between local and federal.  I think that where I live, hunting and fishing laws would qualify as "state issues" that are best handled by the state.  Sure, federal may have a say, but I do believe at it's core it can most efficiently be handled by state officials.

The major problem with state laws is that states contradict each other so much.  Then again, this is a good thing as well as one state can pressure a neighboring state to do something.  Many states doing something can help make such a thing more standard across the country, as people may be more willing to accept something coming to their state that worked in other states rather than having the thing imposed by the feds.  The first few states could be considered "testing grounds," if you will.

[Canadian Mojo]

...such as civil engineers...

Oh fuck no. "But this big book of x says we can do it this way..."

What do you call a Canadian P. Eng. with a clue?
Either retired or an immigrant.

I get to deal with these guys on a regular basis, and while they may have a high level of technical knowledge and can make pretty pictures on a computer, they are sadly lacking in how one turns those pictures into reality. Recent highlights include welding the inside circumference of an 18" diameter pipe -- 5'5" in. spec'ing a 20' long 5/8" fillet weld on something that has 5/8 horizontal and vertical lands (welding standards say to stay back 1/8" from the edges of the lands) and using a material call-out in the construction that was already 1/32" shorter than the machining finish called for, dusting old drawings off, adding an extra outlet and a note to trim whatever is in the way to suit, and not even being able to settle on a standardized way to present the drawings.

That was just this weeks adventures in welding. 

[mellenORL]

Devil's in the Details was never better described, mojo. If I followed you correctly, What they really want is a robot welder with  crazy long arms, and then they'll draw up a schedule that causes it to weld itself into a tomb, just from following the commands they program for the job.

[Canadian Mojo]

Don't even get me started on welding robots. We've got one that collects dust because it was faster and cheaper to give us the work than it was to have us fix the stuff the robot made and another high speed production machine that keeps a crew of 5-6 guys constantly employed fixing missed /substandard welds. The latter one is actually reasonable given the nature of the product, but it was sold as a way to completely eliminate the need for humans.