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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

A charitable interpretation of Republican "fundamental ideology", as it were, would be that they prefer more well-functioning social institutions at lower levels of government, closer to the people those institutions are meant to serve.

But that's not what this does. This doesn't do anything to transition power away from the federal government. It just makes it impossible for the federal government to do its job.

That doesn't prove that they're not interested in the well-being of the country, but only because they know this won't succeed. If they thought it could pass, it would be wildly irresponsible. Instead, all we know is that at this moment they've chosen to make a grand and pointless gesture instead of actually governing.

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> instead of actually governing

And what do you suppose should be the priorities for the federal government? What needs actually governing that can't be better done at state and local levels at the moment?

Whether it could, in theory, be done better locally, then at the very least you'd need to plan for that. You can't just turn off the Social Security Administration, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security etc and assume that the states will pick up those jobs tomorrow.

We could have a decent argument about which jobs are better handled by a federal government and which aren't. The notion that the federal government isn't actually doing anything and could just vanish tomorrow is absurd and not worth discussing.

How about the notion that the federal government is doing way more than it should given its remit under the Constitution? That's my point, not that it can and should cease to exist.

I don't actually believe that, because the Constitution is deliberately vague about what the government can and can't do. It exists in its current form as the result of 250 years of evolution, following the rules at each step as best it could.

Even so, I'd be willing to say, "Sure, fine, the government is doing more than it should". That's pretty vacuously true, and also irrelevant. Getting people to agree on which parts are important, and finding a better way to implement them, seems a more germane question.

> It just makes it impossible for the federal government to do its job.

Where do I sign up?

Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia

I'd refer you to their web site, but they don't appear to have one.

If you guys are going to loose your federation then you are going to be less relevant in world stage.

Most of the people I know and care about are within 10 miles of my house. I don't care about my town's relevance on the "world stage," whatever the heck that means to you.

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