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Comment by maest | Hacker News Reader

> It was illegal for farmers to grow wheat above a certain amount... on their own land... to feed their own animals...

I don't find that surprising or scandalous. Wheat is (approximately) fungible, so if you produce more for yourself, you're decreasing the marginal demand for wheat in the market. Besides, barring everyone from overproducing wheat makes more sense than only banning people who somehow intend to sell the wheat:

1. Intent is hard to prove or judge

2. By not applying a blanket ban, you're unfairly hurting net consumers of wheat, or farmers who can't internalise their wheat consumption and rewarding those who can.

I'm having a hard time seeing how the blanket ban was wrong in any way.

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> I'm having a hard time seeing how the blanket ban was wrong in any way.

Before this decision, the federal government did not have the "right" to compel a property owner what (not) to do with his land. The framers of the Consitution were pretty clear about states' rights, and limits of federal power. Prior to this decision, a reasonable reader of the Constitution and case law would have concluded "yea, the federal gov't cannot compel the property owner in this way".

The (court decision) and ban is wrong because A) it's essentially a Constitutional rewrite without the amendment process and B) the Federal gov't does not have the moral authority to mandate how a property owner interacts with his own property. The intent from the 1790 text is pretty clear about the hierarchy of individual rights > state rights > federal rights.

To be clear: I'm not arguing against federal regulation of interstate commerce. The Constitution defined that as "commerce [...] between the states". There needed to be an Amendment to formally redefine (or clarify) that section. There was no Amendment process for this expansion of gov't power.

Imagine being a poor starving farmer in the worst economic depression in this history of your country, and being told you cannot grow wheat on your land to feed your family. When you ask why, you get a lot of handwaving about how food prices are too low, despite people starving.

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