You guys are every lawyer's dream. Yes, please, continue believing you're following some great American tradition of strong local government by submitting to the whims of your local Boss Tweed and the five judges in your county, I play golf with them once a month. Oh, you have a legal problem and need to navigate the rats nest of weird local laws? Great, you can choose from one of three tax attorneys that know the local tax regime as it applies to your business. I play golf with them too, and (coincidentally) we all bill $1,100 an hour.
When companies decide the complexity is too high, they sometimes just have to target the most stringent law that they can reasonably cover, e.g. car companies meeting CA emission standards can make CA the defacto national standard. A buyer in Texas is presumably paying a higher price for a car designed to meet a law in another state. It would be more democratic if there was just a national standard.
Besides the fact that the reduced cost of compliance you mention comes at the expense of the localities freedom to govern themselves, federal laws make it more convenient for these companies to manipulate the system to their advantage. A large company can bribe a couple hundred federal politicians to get their way instead of having to bribe many thousands across so many state legislatures or even more at a municipal level.
What makes you think that only large companies operate across many jurisdictions?
The idea of the feds choosing poorly, or being corrupted, and deciding on one set of regulations for everyone scares me sometimes. Health care didn't turn out so great, the ACA put a stop to several states that had interesting plans and implementations of their own, and is basically a subsidy for the health care industry as it currently exists, whose lobbyists apparently crafted the text of that bill. Another example is privacy rights - the feds aren't doing much, and I'm glad that some states are.
Why should I care that companies get uniform laws more than I care about these issues that matter to me?
I'm not saying that we can't have federal regulations, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having local regulations even if companies are inconvenienced, especially for evolving industries.
That is to say: Conduct business, if you get fined or penalized for it then note it down for future reference. It's cheaper than hiring an entire legal department to trove through cryptic manuscripts only relevant to regions measured in tens of square miles. Usually.
Obligatory IANAL.
Like maybe the voters would prefer human police officers as opposed to armed drones, even if the drones were cheaper. Or maybe the voters don't want to be tracked by cameras everywhere they go, given how this data can be abused, even if it costs them $x more per year to shop.
We already have large companies with legions of lawyers who have the resources to manipulate federal and state politicians in their favor, using regulatory capture and other means to avoid competition. There's a cost associated with that, too.
Universal laws with no nuance or adjustments for local conditions are just so awesome I am trembling in anticipation.
If we're lucky, they might even outlaw these evil lawyers that you lampoon so effortlessly.
Literally nobody except criminals would disagree with this. That's what makes is of limited value in a discussion like this. It's like saying "Good speech should be disseminated everywhere." Yes. We already agree, to the point where the argument is that protections for good speech aren't really needed.
The difficulty is getting a handle on what is a "good law". This is difficult, in part, because we can't always understand the effects down the causal chain. We also can't always get people to agree on the definition. Is a "good law" one that prioritizes safety over personal freedom or is it the other way around? I dunno, but this is even harder in a democracy, where everyone (theoretically, at least) has a voice.
Good for whom? Supermajority, sure. Anything less should be at the state and local level.
You think a law is good if you think it's good. You preference is then for it to be applied as widely as possible. Maybe other people disagree, and so should want it applied nowhere. Now you get to fight with them, using whatever power you have and are willing to use. Whoever has the most power to bring to the fight will win it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/kamikaze-drones-new-we...
That video is pure propaganda, but I would support the CEO if he wanted to sit in the passenger seat and try and take out a dummy next to him.
However, in this case:
- The US federal government already has and has used drones as weapons overseas, including to kill US citizens. This now includes smaller/cheaper drones.
- The US federal government has materially supported the militarization of police forces, including by giving them military equipment.
- Federal law enforcement agencies operate everywhere in the country, and IIUC their behavior isn't limited by those state laws (e.g. the state of CA can't pass a law that removes the CBP "100-mile border zone" and restricts them to only operating at borders and ports), and IIUC the FBI already flies surveillance flights (though the facial recognition prohibition likely doesn't apply here).
at a most fundamental level what's debated is if civilians and police should be demilitarized as much as possible or not. Who benefits and who doesn't if all legislation strives for a civic society without deadly force? that's the "Elefant in the room".
The counter-argument to a demilitarized civic society usually is that you couldn't possibly control the bad guys. The empirically sound ground truth is that it takes 1-2 generations to get there, and that you will get there if only you want to get there, as a nation, as evidenced by a number of countries who wanted to essentially get rid of everyday knives and nunchucks and tonfas, let alone firearms, and who in fact essentially did get rid of them.
The US, as a civic society, needs to discuss which kind of a civic society they want to be.
the answer to "shall police have gun drones" flows from that. just like the answer to "shall school students need gun drills".
Applying a consistent process is what gives the population continuing faith in the system. Laws that are universally supported will sail through the process with ease, so what's the rush? Laws that prove to be more contentious, regardless of reason, will be negotiated and refined across small regions--either indefinitely or until common ground can be found.
As an exercise try writing down the name of all the politicians you can off the top of your head. Then consider if you like and agree with them or not. Then ask yourself if you really want an agile federal government.
Thinking only the laws you like will make it to a federal law free of unintended side effect is naive fantasy at best. The laboratory of democracy is working. Please, lobby your representatives, get involved, but don't confuse lack of federal law for malfunction.
However, your insistence that "it doesn't depend on the law" makes me view your whole stance more critically; the answer in complex areas is very rarely "it doesn't depend". There's a bunch of domains where stuff just happens across state lines so frequently that a patchwork would only create confusion. It would be really disruptive if NY made it illegal to drive on gas you bought in NJ b/c NY officials hadn't specifically tested it to confirm that all additives were acceptable; it's easier if we just have federal standards.