Too Big to Fail: A Call for States’ Rights | Hacker News Reader

Too Big to Fail: A Call for States’ Rights

outlookzen.com

13 pointsnoego5 comments

But we tried that. Before there was the Constitution, the country was governed under a different basic law, the Articles of Confederation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation), which set up a much weaker central government and reserved nearly all power to the states. It only took a decade or so under the Articles for the whole system to begin to collapse.

The reason why there was a Constitutional Convention in 1787 was because by then leaders in many states had come to the conclusion that the Articles were so disastrously flawed they could not be saved by revision. The only way forward was to throw them out altogether, and replace them with a new system that gave the Federal government the ability to do things like levy taxes and conduct foreign policy. And from that we got the Constitution we all know today.

Fast forward 70 years or so, and the states’ rights idea comes back again, this time in the South. They secede from the Union and set up a new government that establishes states’ rights as a core principle. Secession leads to war, and the new Confederate government finds it can’t effectively fight that war because it lacks the power to establish a single national army or efficiently tax its citizens. “If the Confederacy fails,” Confederate President Jefferson Davis moaned, “there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.”

The reason why states’ rights is an abandoned concept in American political thought isn’t because it’s never been tried. It’s because it has been tried, multiple times even, and has always led to disaster.

I don’t know if I’d say that the concept of states rights is abandoned, though it does seem to be discussed less. But it shouldn’t be only central or only federal, but rather a constant friction over where ones power begins and the other ends. That friction we feel from it indicates that things are working. You wouldn’t feel that friction if any one side has all of the power. You’d hear grumbling, but there’d be no court cases about it, no decisions to be made, because the side with all of the power does the deciding.

Both systems, fully centralized and fully decentralized both are flawed, which is why we have the balance at all.

I think what’s happening is that the authoritarians in both sides of the political debate are heard more often and more loudly than before, so they of course want whatever will get them their goals. But the US is still the US, so I’m not sure what this article is even attempting to say? Less federal power? In certain areas, sure, but a EU of North America? That sounds terrible and isolating. It also seems like it would only feed the tribalism that seems to be everywhere.

I have to agree with your overall comment though. Travel, dispersed friends and families, etc guarantee we wouldn’t handle being split like the EU, and it’s crazy, IMHO, that the original author really sees so many differences between states that they outweigh the similarity of vision.

Except that was 200 years ago during a time of dire financial ruin.

There are many countries smaller than most of our states. When you consider that the states wouldn’t have to maintain their own military, there are lots of possibilities here.

The logic of centralization is that if X is a good idea then how could it not be a good idea for everyone? And further if everyone is involved in X then there's no free rider problem. Plus there are fewer resource constraints.

I'm much more of a federalist in these matters but I see why centralization appeals to people. If there really is a correct universal solution then it might be a good thing. I tend to think that that's not the case as often as people think and that we actually are trying to that even less often then that.

Well the idea that a single point can provide the correct response for every part of a nation is a failure. The problem with this thought is that the US federal government is made up of representatives from the states. States with less people have dramatically more say than states with more people simply because there was an arbitrary limit put in place for the number of representatives. Our federal government therefore gives dramatically more power to places that no one wants to live. The best solution is a hub and spoke solution. This doesn't suffer from the local knowledge problem.

Perhaps it's time to divide the United States up into regions as well as states. Similar to how the federal court system already does it. Then the backwards southern states could fail on their own and eat themselves, in a way that allows the sane parts of the country to continue getting along just fine. Then we would put a giant border wall around those regions, especially Florida and turn them into giant penal colonies. Can you imagine the threat of being forced into Florida? Texas would become nothing more than giant flags and slices of bread.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com