114 karma · joined February 12, 2012
A cap on Ubers/Lyfts + minimum pay will likely increase the price of Ubers/Lyfts. Rich people will be able to afford the new prices, but poor people will not.
This isn't all that different from the EU, a similar union of states with a similar population (500 million), where the vast majority of laws and regulations are passed at the member-state level and not at the EU level. Any American that argues "each state will handle things on its own" is just making the same argument that a European might make when saying "we should enact this healthcare system X, or that pension system Y, or that policy Z in Germany".
This was always the Framers' intent, Hamilton himself was well aware of the perils of the Tyranny of the Majority[1]. The prescription for this was to apply the subsidiarity principle and use concurrent majorities (i.e. "let the states decide"). Federalism was never about the logistics of walking to state lines.
Can you explain what the law on the books currently is, and how the majority opinion "absolutely does not" respect it?
> It completely makes up a reason why this should be considered any different than any other instance where things have changed since a law was enacted.
Things have changed since a law was enacted by legislative fiat. The thesis behind those arguing the intended function of the judiciary is that any instance in the past where the judiciary has actually changed a law since it was enacted is considered abuse and not to be repeated.
But...it does respect the law on the books. Your concern seems to be that the law is bad, and that the judiciary ought to change that law. I don't think there's a lot of disagreement about the former, it's the latter that's more controversial.
From an idealistic standpoint, enacting Federal law is necessarily onerous, owing to the requirement of a strong consensus so as to prevent a marginal majority from shoving Federal laws down the throat of a large minority.
> Okay sure. But don't lose track of reality in your quest for idealism though.
Okay sure, it sounds like you don't care much for the idealistic standpoint, so let's talk pragmatism. If we can't gather this consensus at the Federal level, we have the levers of state legislatures to pass those same laws at a more local level.
Liberal states have the political will, the systems, and (if we're being frank) the majority of businesses that would be affected by Federal law anyway. They just need to have the will and pragmatism to compromise and pass their desired law at the state level until such a time that there's Federal consensus for that law.
I'd argue the exact opposite. The pace of our system is just a reflection of the current ideological polarization. Enacting Federal law requires a strong consensus (to prevent abuse), and the more polarized we are, the more difficult it becomes to shove Federal laws down the throat of a narrow minority.
If we can't gather this consensus at the Federal level, we have the levers of state legislatures to pass those same laws at a more local level.
Liberal states have the political will, the systems, and (if we're being frank) the majority of businesses that would be affected by Federal law anyway. They just need to have the will to compromise and pass their desired law at the state level until such a time that there's Federal consensus for that law.
[1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/04/how-effective...
The US half tries to fund and administer infrastructure at the federal level, state level, as well as local level, depending on the state.
As an American, I find the EU to have phenomenally good infrastructure, but I think that's because decisions aren't being made in Brussels, they're being made concurrently in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, etc.
I feel that the US would do well to emulate the EU, and centralize the funding, regulation, and administration of its respective systems in each member state.
Not once have I noticed the absence of the headphone jack, nor have I felt the need for it.
To outright say that the theft occurs before an official judgement was made seems in poor taste for, well, a judge.
I find it alarming that the judge assumes a "guilty until proven innocent" position. Obviously outsiders like us would take a stance like this, but for a judge on the bench to operate in that manner sets off all kinds of red flags for me.
You seem to make the implicit assumption that federal regulations are somehow better than the same amount of state-level regulations. This simply isn't the case. Today, New York has to participate in the same polity as Florida, and it is for that reason that it does not have a single payer system, despite its citizens being in favor of it. This is unsurprising because you can't create one-size-fits-all solutions for all of our states given how different they and their economies are.
Instead, if we allow them to chart their own path, we can allow them to fail (or succeed) fast. The alternative is the limbo state we are in where nobody is moving forward (or backward) and nobody is happy.
To continue the engineering analogy, this is a divide-and-conquer problem. Denmark and the Nordic countries were able to successfully implement their social systems because they are small, well contained countries. By allowing US states to implement their own systems, we set them up for the same kind of success.
An exchange would be more like a multi-payer system rather than a single-payer system.
I would argue exactly the opposite. The primary criticism that member nations have of the EU is that there are too many regulations imposed at the EU-level. This was the non-xenophobic argument in favor of Brexit.
By enacting what you would propose: total control at the federal level, we would move closer to such an unpopular reality.
Retirees can definitely choose to move to whatever state they want, but they've never been the contributors to social security programs, they've always been the beneficiaries.
The system that I've proposed seems to be working quite well in the EU. Perhaps provide a counter-example to support your assertion that the opposite is true?
EDIT: and I agree with you - let's think about this as engineers. As an engineer, I would approach this problem using divide-and-conquer: by breaking down the problem into multiple sub-problems (i.e. at the state level) of the same or related type, until they become simple enough to be solved directly. We have come to learn that monoliths do not scale, and we have to scale horizontally.
The United States is a federation of self-governing states within which there are open borders and free trade...just like the European Union. The United States has a population of 320 million people, while the EU has a population of a similar order of magnitude: around 500 million. To many voters, the idea of enacting broad social welfare programs in the United States sounds just as infeasible as enacting similar programs in the whole European Union. California is different from Ohio, both of which are different from Georgia.
If we want to use Denmark and the Nordic countries as examples for our policies, we should move towards the republican (small r) idea of decentralization so that the states can enact such systems. Today, I pay roughly 30% of my income in taxes to the federal government, and 10% of my income in taxes to the state government. This should be the other way around - 10% to the Federal government and maybe 30% to my state. Maybe Wisconsin can have a single payer healthcare system, California can have a universal multi-payer system (like Germany), and Texas can have a universal multi-payer system like that in Switzerland.
TL;DR - We could be more like the European Union.
This does not, however, give the government a blank check on an individual or a business's rights. We don't barter our rights for public benefits - we pay for them through taxation.
This whole discussion could also call into question the idea of corporate personhood, but that's another can of worms. :)
I don't think anybody is disputing that regulation is allowed and useful, but we should also be questioning all regulation to ensure that the government isn't overreaching.
Forcing an organization to do something is a big deal because, unless you are specific about when and what kind of data you can force a private company to disclose, it can be abused. This is why such arguments are important.
But if it wants to operate a business on NYC's streets on a (massive) scale -- well, that's a privilege, not a right.
It actually is not a privilege, it is a right. Conducting business is a First Amendment right. In fact, this is a dangerous argument: if conducting business is a privilege, couldn't the government decide which businesses it likes and it doesn't like? The use of New York's streets is indeed a privilege, but that is already paid for by road taxes - anything more than that is just double dipping.
It's called "rule of law", a concept which Uber has demonstrated considerable difficult in understanding thus far.
Let's leave the attacks out of this - replace Uber with any other company and you have the same set of issues to discuss. Instead, let's just focus on the merits of the idea of government coercion of a private company to release data.
If this data was truly beneficial to the public, couldn't the government buy it from the company through a voluntary transaction, paid for by taxpayers? The company can decide whether or not they wish to sell that information. The only reason a company would refuse to sell anonymized information is if they think the data is important to their competitive success.
Why should a government be able to coerce a private organization into providing data? How do you define data? At least in the US, I can think of 2 amendments that would be violated by such action (is data speech? can you be forced to self incriminate?).
There are so many things that the government can force an individual or a business to do in the name of public good, but we can agree that many of those things count as government overreach, why not this?
We've come full circle!
Another thing that I've noticed is that it also optimizes for moderates/centrists, since that's where the Nash Equilibrium is[1].
With the growing polarization in our politics, I think that the political spectrum in the U.S. now looks less like a Gaussian distribution and more like a bimodal distribution. At this point the median voter is becoming a smaller and smaller plurality, and the equilibrium is becoming unappealing to more and more people.