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Comment by MeImCounting | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this was definitely an important shift. Before these changes the US wasnt really a country in the same way it is now. Antisocial elements in many states was dragging the rest of the country down and due to increasing federal power we were able to override them. Due to broader application of federal law and the bill of rights we were able to give more and more rights to the people denied them in the past. Due to broader application of federal power we were able to do away with things like state churches and gun bans. This is all good.

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>Antisocial elements in many states was dragging the rest of the country down and due to increasing federal power we were able to override them.

Not to pick on you, but I want to point this out: this sort of thinking is a vulnerability which can and does get exploited in politics. It is a fallacy that Progress is inevitable and that The Right Thing always plays out, and that the one holding a perspective on this always was born in the fully legitimate and righteous branch of events. Nature is not just; nature simply is.

It has obviously increased rights in some areas, but the federal government has also stripped rights because of their increased power. I don't know if there could be a way to determine if more or less rights have been given due to this change.

The nice thing about centralized democratic governments is that they can be changed based on the desires of the constituents. This doesnt always work perfectly but it does work more and more if broader sections of the populace spend more time being educated about policy and advocating for things they believe in. See civil rights as a primary example. In contrast decentralized governments without the failsafes of things like the bill of rights to prevent them from descending into tyranny tend to do just that. Whether its the tyranny of the majority in one region or the tyranny of the rich and powerful, thats a quick route to having human rights trampled, oligarchs put into place and anti-social movements gain power. This may become less of a risk as education becomes more widespread in a populace and indeed statelessness is an admirable ideal but I dont think we are there yet technologically or ethically and certainly not in the 1790s.

> The nice thing about centralized democratic governments is that they can be changed based on the desires of the constituents.

States are centralized democratic governments. They are just smaller than the federal government. If you want to make the argument that having more people under a government is better then do you advocate for a single worldwide government? Why not go all the way?

> This doesnt always work perfectly but it does work more and more if broader sections of the populace spend more time being educated about policy and advocating for things they believe in.

I don't follow how having a centralized government means people are going to be more educated on policies? If the majority of politics happened on a state level why would people be less informed than if it occurred at the federal level. It seems like you are advocating for a more informed populace, which may be beneficial, but it doesn't seem relevant.

>See civil rights as a primary example.

While this may be an example right now, it wasn't always the case.

The federal government (pre civil war) required states that did not have slavery to return runaway slaves back to slave states.

If you want an example of post civil war, look at the Japanese internment camps.

Like I said in my previous post, I don't think it is really possible to determine if rights have actually been expanded since the federal government started getting more involved.

The federal government constantly violates rights.

> In contrast decentralized governments without the failsafes of things like the bill of rights to prevent them from descending into tyranny tend to do just that. Whether its the tyranny of the majority in one region or the tyranny of the rich and powerful, thats a quick route to having human rights trampled, oligarchs put into place and anti-social movements gain power.

I think most, if not all, of the states have a constitution that protects the rights of the residents. Why are you suggesting otherwise?

Maybe they aren't perfect, but the same can be said about the federal constitution.

> This may become less of a risk as education becomes more widespread in a populace and indeed statelessness is an admirable ideal but I dont think we are there yet technologically or ethically and certainly not in the 1790s.

What do you mean by statelessness? Are you advocating for anarchy? That hardly seems like a way to protect rights.

Actually yeah I do think a global democratically elected constitutional government might be fine save for the issues of scaling that come with that much size. Probably something that various technological innovations could help with

Access to education has been supported by the federal government where individual districts lagged behind more wealthy areas. Without the federal aid poor districts would be much worse off as far as education goes.

Yes the federal government has long violated rights and done terrible things. We could go on listing the atrocities committed by the feds domestically and abroad for days e.g. forced sterilization, internment camps, vietnam, iraq, residential schools and the various iffy things the intelligence community did relating to drugs and black nationalism last century. I am not arguing that federal power is universally good or that increased federal power only resulted in good things but rather that its been a net improvement. You say its impossible to determine if we have more or less rights post civil war than before but I would posit it is very clearly more.

Yeah statelessness is a cool idea in theory. Like I said an ideal to aspire to as a society. The less coercion/threat of violence we have and the more freedom and empathy we have in society the better. Its just an ideal and not something we can achieve now IMO but still something inspiring to think about in conversations about state power or otherwise.

I have to say it's really weird to see someone advocating for every-growing larger centralized governments and advocating for statelessness as a means to freedom.

Do you see how these ideas are diametrically opposed? How does farther-removed, more powerful federal governments lead to freedom compared to close, small governments staffed by people who live right next to you?

I think the big problem with historical anarchist discourse is that it ignores bad actors, edge cases and economics and where it does deal with those things its solutions usually look a lot more like totalitarianism or mob rule than some anarchist ideal.

The reason I think classically liberal economic and political values push us towards greater freedom is because I believe the following two things to be evident: 1. Freedom is related to wealth. 2. In the US we are for the most part more free than any other society in history.

Obviously there are exceptions to these but I think they are generally true. The reason I dont see statelessness and large democratic governments to be opposite ideals is because I see statelessness as an idealized result of freedom and democracy as the means to get ever closer to that ideal. This isnt really a unique perspective save for the fact that I think the idealized form of a free society doesnt have people forcing other people to do things.

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