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Comment by sjaak | Hacker News Reader

Our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it."

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From what we've since discovered about logical complexity and system design, such an attitude today would be appropriately described as cavalier malpractice. Yet the Founders have been practically deified, while it's continually implied the problem is merely that we're not following their simplistic prescriptions well enough.

> it's continually implied the problem is merely that we're not following their simplistic prescriptions well enough

Is this wrong? America was founded to be a federal republic composed of sovereign states sharing their power with a small central government with clearly delineated powers; now we have a massive central government that takes in two-thirds of all taxation[0] and spends 38.5% of GDP as of last count[1], and somehow decided that it had the authority to regulate a farmer growing feed for his own animals[2].

[0]: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-breakdown...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

[2]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111

Yes - analysis of "just follow the rules harder" is generally wrong, which is why we've moved on to blameless postmortems. I agree with your criticism of the current state of the system. The problem is the lack of mechanisms that encourage convergence towards the desired state. Without them, divergence continually adds up, creating the well known ratchet effect. If Filburn itself had been decided differently, the Supreme Court would have eventually justified the federal government power grab at a later time. Slower progression would mean we'd be in a better state today, but we'd still be headed towards the same place.

It seems like the weak central government model ceased to function around the 20th Century doesn't it? It was (and to some extent continues to be) a time of cold and hot conflict between superpowers, and a small government seems antithetical to superpower.

It ceased when the US constitution was ratified and replaced the looser Articles of Confederation

That’s not what the third continental congress that cobbled together our constitution said or thought.

Your small confederacy was what the Articles of Confederation had wrought and it lasted all of a decade. States rapidly enacted laws against their fellow states, it was a mess. We had religious laws, not a good scene.

Basically you should read A) the US Constitution B) historical accounts of the third continental congress

There is a huge difference between the federal government stepping in to regulate/mediate between states that cannot agree amongst themselves, and the federal government asserting authority to regulate activities within a single state or within multiple states that can agree amongst themselves.

The Founders actually did a really good job. The extreme level of separation of powers in the US (2 coequal legislative branches, presidency, Supreme Court and lower courts, all the state governments with their own divisions, local governments, etc) makes it really, really hard for one faction to fully dominate government, even today. This feature of the US is pretty much unique in the world, even among even democracies. But no system of government can be perfect, or protect against all eventualities without regular maintenance and upgrades. We've had three major overhauls so far: Civil War reconstruction, the New Deal, and the 60s civil rights movement. Arguably, we are due for a fourth.

Seems like an unstable equilibrium.

Indeed; like all human systems it operates solely through the behaviors of the humans involved.

Practically an organism itself that is born, lives and eventually dies.

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