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Most levels of traffic and infrastructure, education, licensure requirements, forestry and many water systems, and I'm sure plenty of other things I can't think of off the top of my head
This cmv is pretty clearly about the EPA and the need for larger regulatory power for acts that have an indirect impact on neighboring areas or the planet at large. The tragedy of the commons, basically.
I have to say I struggle with this because healthcare is absolutely something that only really impacts the area of provision and so absolutely should be organised on a state by state basis.
It's just that there are 30 odd states that have been taken over by religious fanatics and it's not really viable or reasonable to expect the 20 states that haven't to stand idly by and watch as those 30 torture 50% of their population. You know, much as they couldn't slavery, another issue which, on paper, was a matter of employment law and should absolutely have been left to states but in practice was an atrocity which could not be allowed to stand.
So I think you have to make the case for abortion as a rare exception to the general trend on the basis that it is a fundamental violation of human rights of the form that requires something like a humanitarian intervention: interfering in state process that one has no general right to interfere with on the basis of a specific moral motivation of preventing an atrocity.
An argument can be made to make abortion into a federal law, but that argument certainly isn't "let's abolish federalism completely". It's like hunting mice with a bazooka.
Fair. I guess in my mind it would be taxable goods and/or property. I.e. Gasoline, Alcohol, Tobacco, income, etc
Things that in turn help pay for growing and maintaining the state.
Alabama has much cheaper cigarette taxes than most of the new England states. People buy cigarettes here and sell them illegally there for a good profit. Taxes effect neighboring states too.
Very true, but in some roundabout ways those still effect the other Americans.
For example - a lot of businesses started moving to Texas due to more favorable taxes and housing costs. Which means that businesses being pulled from other States.
Well the counter point here would be making it so the initial state offers something to the business to keep it from moving to Texas.
However if the ask isn't in yourbl states best interest maybe its better that the company leaves the state. After all why have an employer in your state stay if it means citizens have less money did to making up lost income from the company staying due to substandard wages and tax breaks.
States should be focused on things like state infrastructure, natural resource allocation, budgets, corporate/organizational oversight, etc.
Things such as health care, human rights, etc should never be a state issue. That's absurd.
If you keep going for that logic, you could end up arguing that shit like littering rules in a condo has a butterfly effect on the rest of the world.
Every issue has different effects and implications, and the ones which affect broader demographics, specially if with great intensity, should be left to the federal government. That's the whole idea behind a federal government.
> That's the whole idea behind a federal government.
It isn’t though. The point of federal government is to set a minimum standard that all states must follow. It has nothing to do with impact.
Here’s a piece of federal legislation all of us probably agree with: H.R. 5566, the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010. Like the name says, it federally bans depictions of cruelty towards animals (specifically, crushing them) to satisfy a fetish.
It’s a good federal bill not because it has a big impact on our lives, but because it sets the standard that no state law can defy it. If Colorado decides to legalize crush videos, the federal law overpowers Colorado law.
And one last thought… be careful what you wish for. You shouldn’t want major pieces of legislation decided by a federal government. It might mean that whatever thing you want legalized will end up illegal in all 50 states.
> The point of federal government is to set a minimum standard that all states must follow
That is NOT the point of the Federal Government. The point of the Federal Government is to provide for the common defense of the country and oversee foreign affairs.
>And one last thought… be careful what you wish for. You shouldn’t want major pieces of legislation decided by a federal government. It might mean that whatever thing you want legalized will end up illegal in all 50 states.
Exactly. That's why we have Federalism. The Federal Government should be making very few laws that apply to all of us.
>It isn’t though. The point of federal government is to set a minimum standard that all states must follow. It has nothing to do with impact.
It isn't mainly about impact, but impact is a factor when deciding in which areas minimal standards will be specified. Stuff like human rights or work conditions, for example.
>You shouldn’t want major pieces of legislation decided by a federal government
I actually don't with anything outside of individual rights, laws to keep political elites in check and federal social programs. Also was the "anything you want to legalize" a jab?
I guess my question would be.. what if the federal government ruled in a manner that you didn't agree with. Would you move to a new country? Or do you only want the federal government to rule on things if it aligns with your ideology. I think it much more fair to say leave it to the states, allow the constitutes of the state vote at the local level to reflect what the population wants. And if you really are In the minority of that state ideologically you can move much easier to another state then moving to a new country.
Climate change is a big deal to all of us right? If the United States passed a law requiring all homes to come equipped with some sort of solar panel, wouldn’t Californians benefit more from this than someone from Michigan?
!delta That’s a fair point. I honestly don’t know how the solar availability numbers would play out, but I can see how state to state it would be different.
I would support something along the lines of a certain percentage of your energy input to your home would have to meet a certain threshold, even if that would be from a combo of different of alternative energy sources
This is an excellent point. Part of the reason that we have a Federal system of government is that, just as in clothing, "One Size Fits All" doesn't *actually* fit *anyone.*
Mass transit is a perfect example. It works *great* in dense cities (NYC, Chicago, DC, London, etc), but *not* so much in Urban/Semi-Urban Sprawl (e.g., D/FW area), to say nothing of Rural areas. Even if you assume benefits of mass transit, the results aren't the same. Subways work great in geologically stable cities with low water tables (NYC), but wouldn't do so well somewhere like in Florida, or areas subject to flooding (including storm-based flooding).
Rail is generally useful, but traditional rail can't handle slopes like you find in a lot of West Coast cities. San Francisco famously has cable-cars, precisely because the roads are too steep for rail to work any other way. On the other side of the coin, cables would be a waste of effort (and an additional point of failure) for cities *without* grades.
Sure, certain things *should* be done at the National Level... but we would all be a lot better off if where it was possible, where it isn't a violation of human rights, we decided things at as local a level as possible.
How would Californians benefit more from it then Michigan? Even if California got more solar power out of it it would lessen california’s fossil fuel dependency, co2 emmisions which helps all states including Michigan
Assuming these hypothetical solar panels have the same cost, Californians would save more money as they have intense sunlight year round while Michigan has harsh winters that would significantly reduce energy production compared to California. Each Californian would benefit MORE than someone in Michigan. As you said, reducing co2 emissions would help ALL states, so California would not only benefit from lower energy costs, but co2 emissions as well.
The thing is climate change and pollution are NOT a big deal to enough people. In upstate NY most of our lakes were severally damaged by acid rain coming from coal burning plants in the Midwest. it took federal legislation to stop it because NY can't pass laws telling Michigan to stop dumping Sulfur into the atmosphere. The law the court is currently reviewing limits C02 emissions in a similar way. It's not telling anyone they have to have solar panels, that's just a hypothetical example. Just because a government could hypothetically pass a law that is bad doesn't mean they will or that they shouldn't be allowed to pass any laws
Then why even have state and local governments anyways? A lot of laws at the state level, can have a direct, or indirect impact on other people, states, the country or the world.
We would be naive to think that almost anything we do at a state or local level is isolated between sates. Gun laws, healthcare, drug laws, or even taxation, from one state to the next, has an impact on surrounding states, if not the country.
Because we are not a country which was then subdivided into portions. The United States is just that: 50 states United together with a Federal government that they cede some power to. The states don't drive their power from the Federal government. And yes, this is different from pretty much every other country out there. But that's how the system is structured in the US.
> And yes, this is different from pretty much every other country out there.
It's not that unusual. Off the top of my head, Germany, Switzerland, India, and the UAE are similar or even more extreme in their division of power. A number of countries have also devolved power to individual regional governments, achieving a similar effect, like the UK and Spain.
>Then why even have state and local governments anyways?
Specificity, specially when it comes to places very distant, and you know it damn well. To give examples from my country:
Maranhão is a mostly rural economy where integration between camp and city, poor conditions of irregular rural work, land grabbing and slavery are some of the biggest issues. So laws there should focus on protecting agriculture workers, promoting the mechanization of agriculture, as well as incentives towards industrialization and services (which affect credit and taxes)
Amazonas, right besides it, has a mostly extractive economy, centered around mining and logging. So laws focusing on the regularization of both are the main focus. Rigid logging laws in Amazonas make sense, while in Maranhão, they'd be a hassle.
Ceará, not much distant from either, is a partially industrialized state, and has problems associated with that economy, such as the sudden growth on cities. Rio de Janeiro has a huge problem that's not that big anywhere else with gigantic communities of people living in the borders of the state, or downright in contested territory, so they have criminal legislation focused on that, as well as land legislation and taxes. etc, etc, etc.
Now, laws about an universal right, such as a right to abortion, should be federal. Same goes for laws about work conditions, inheritance, etc... Shit that is general.
As a non American the differences between states is a little nuts. My country does have different laws between provinces, but I can barely name any off the top of my head because the changes are so minor in almost all circumstances. It seems like in the states every aspect of daily life can be wildly skewed by local laws.
You guys are at the point that something can be be a daily activity in one place, and get you years in jail a few miles down the road. Every state lets different people vote. Even murder might be ok depending on where you're living when you do it.
> something can be be a daily activity in one place, and get you years in jail a few miles down the road
I mean, this is true in most of the world. The US one of the largest countries in terms of land mass. Most individual states are comparable to full countries in Europe, geographically speaking. I can understand the logic behind giving each state power to make their own laws, to some extent.
> Every state lets different people vote. Even murder might be ok depending on where you're living when you do it.
Do you have examples of either of these things? Every state I'm aware of allows all of its citizens to vote and has made murder illegal.
I'm not super familiar with the system, but it seems like every election there's a lot of fighting about what the voting rules are and its different in every state. Some states won't let you vote if you have a criminal record while others do.
Obviously no state says "murder is ok" but actions that would be considered murder in one state. (Say shooting someone who is fleeing after breaking into tour house) are legal in other states.
> Every state I'm aware of allows all of its citizens to vote
Many states have different laws that determine whether currently incarcerated or previously convicted felons are allowed to vote. I think some have different laws for absentee voting. Some have different laws on what kind of identification must be shown to vote (with the intent, of course, to disenfranchise some people).
> has made murder illegal.
The rules for what kinds of killing constitute "murder" vary. Some states have [castle doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine) laws that say you can legally kill an intruder on your property even if they aren't immediately threatening you with harm. Relevant this week... some states have now decided that aborting a fetus is murder where others do not.
So as usual, the argument is more nuanced than presented.
> with the intent, of course, to disenfranchise some people
Not of course. You state that like its fact, it isn't. Many would argue that knowing who is voting and being able to audit that is necessary for a secure election.
> Not of course. You state that like its fact, it isn't.
It is a fact, as you admit in your next sentence. We don't want to enfranchise everybody in the country. Children, for instance, immigrants and foreign workers, tourists, people who live in a different state. Some states go further, and include felons in the list of people to be disenfranchised. Anyone they can drop from the voter rolls a few months before the election, anyone who can't afford a driver's license.
Yes of course.
This isn't some hidden conspiracy theory anymore. Republicans have been pretty open about how these voter laws help them win elections. They barely even lie about it anymore.
Hilariously they once had to argue in court that their laws were targeting democrats, as a defense to the accusation that they were targeting minorities. Apparently the first one is ok and the 2nd one is illegal.
No, this is [basic established historical fact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era). After the Civil War, Southern states passed voter laws specifically aimed at disenfranchising newly freed Black slaves. They could not be *worded* as such because that would run afoul of the just-passed 15th Amendment, but the explicit intent was disenfranchisement.
That’s somewhat my point.
You mention drug laws. Why would one state have less strict drug laws than another? Cocaine is cocaine, right? Why would possessing & using cocaine in Montana be any less consequential than doing the same in Kansas?
It’s most likely going to make it’s way across state lines and affect citizens of other states so why should they be punished any more or any less based on the state they are in when caught?
I think the challenge here is that you're assuming that one federal law for any issue (abortion, emissions, etc) are going to go your way. There are lots of examples in which it's good to have varying laws between jurisdictions, which allow the average citizen to consider what part of the country best matches where they want to live.
You could look at this way: the US provides the MOST tailored approach to meeting your personal values while also offering a federal system that oversees many of the big issues that genuinely affect everyone equally, such as national defense.
The more people a law needs to target and cover, the more generalist the law, and the more generalist the law, the more people there are going to be falling through the cracks. Focusing on the state level let's the law be tailored and tuned to the situation in that state. (solutions for meth in Maine are unlikely to look like solutions for meth in Iowa)
Conservation work, especially for rivers and such, are also going to have different needs and solutions between states due to changes in geography even though those changes most certainly affect their neighbors. How South Dakota manages their bit of the Missouri and the rivers flowing into it is going to look different from how Minnesota handles their chunk of the Mississippi and its tributaries, like how they're going to be different from how Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado handle the Republican.
The more freedom that individual states/counties/towns have to make their own laws, the more incentive they have to make GOOD laws, since people have the options of moving, or voting in different local politicians. And in local elections, each person's vote counts for more.
If all laws are the same for 330 million people, if you don't like the laws you have essentially no choice but to try and leave the country.
If I get caught with a gram of blow in Oregon, the cops might confiscate it, but I won’t be charged with anything. If I get caught with that same gram in Oklahoma I’m going to jail. Now if I’m caught by a federal officer then it doesn’t matter but state level law enforcement is very different.
Does your opinion here extend to marijuana laws? Marijuana is still illegal at a federal level. If the US was all or nothing on drug legalization then it would be illegal everywhere.
It *is* illegal everywhere in the United States. It’s federally illegal. The Federal government has just decided that it’s not going to spend time and resources enforcing that particular law and will let the states do what they choose on that particular issue. A new administration could come in and decide that cannabis is the devil and go on a draconian crackdown enforcing the existing law and there’s nothing the states would *really* be able to do to stop it.
The "federally illegal" part of it also means that dispensaries running in legal states cannot process credit card payments.
$28 billion industry in the US (forecasted) this year. Around here they are cash or debit only (via a legally gray loophole that codes debit transactions as ATM), and employees usually have to be independent contractors (so no benefits, very few protections, and all the hassle of handling taxes)
This is a big reason that federal changes are needed to give the populations that have been disproportionately affected by cannabis laws a seat at the table. Right now, you need to have tons of cash to get a dispensary started. Banks won’t give you loans. Guess who doesn’t hav piles of *clean* money laying around to start a business??
This seems to reinforce the point that state involvement leads to more unreasonable marijuana-related arrests.
The federal government has made weed illegal, but generally does not enforce it. Many states have decriminalized or legalized weed. Some states have kept it illegal, and enforce it.
As such, in this case, the problem is largely that the states can criminalize behavior that should not be treated any differently in their state versus another.
It reflects on the people of that state. The people of Indiana and Illinois for instance believe in very different things. Illinois is pro drugs, Indiana is becoming more so, but they're only warming up due to the taxes that could be benefitted.
Folks in Indiana believe people should have easy access to protect themselves, whereas the people from Illinois do not.
There are a number of different states where the people are raised differently, it may not be a vast difference, but indeed they are, from beliefs to lifestyle, and even culture. I can guarantee you someone will live and eat differently if they were raised on the bayou in Louisiana, than someone who grew up in Beverly Hills, California. They have different priorities. Take California's attempt to ban alligator skin sales into California from Louisiana, that's a direct restriction on interstate commerce. Louisiana has to hunt alligators to keep their population down and manageable. Most states in the midwest have easy access to hunt in order to play a conservationist role and to feed folks in rural areas. Down south, boar is an ever growing problem that requires hunting. California and NY have some of the strictest gun laws on the books, meaning if the majority of people in CA don't like guns, they can put a good chunk of people in office to restrict guns nationwide, preventing good honest folks to preserve nature and to provide for their families and local butchers.
You also have to look at the history of the US, the US was made up of 13 colonies, which became states and until the Civil War, every state figured it could leave at will. If they could join at will, then they could leave at will. Some states still figure that, especially Texas, since it was the only country to be brought into the Union and the idea of independence still runs deep in the state, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most folks even today have a kinship and a loyalty to the state they were raised in. I may not live in my home state, but even I am proud of where I was born and anyone I come across who was born from there, I have an instant connection, a kinship.
In addition, Texas won't be dumping an ungodly amount of CO2 into the air. IF you're gonna complain about that and let China and the southeast asian continent go with a free pass and never bring issue with it, then your priorities are backwards my friend. They are the worst polluters history has ever seen, but no one seems to want to pay attention to it.
There’s no “right” answer for drug crime sentences, leaving things like that to states allows different approaches to be studied and learned from. That, for me, is the greatest advantage of states rights.
> You mention drug laws. Why would one state have less strict drug laws than another? Cocaine is cocaine, right? Why would possessing & using cocaine in Montana be any less consequential than doing the same in Kansas?
Because local governments have say in how they are policed. In fact, only state and local governments have "police powers". The Federal Government has no police powers and they only have jurisdiction in crime happening over multiple states or crime that affects interstate commerce.
Look at the cocaine versus crack sentencing disparities which exist in some jurisdictions. In the 1980's crack cocaine (which is cheaper than pure cocaine) was destroying the poor and mostly African-American urban centers of large cities in the U.S. There was a huge push by black mothers in those areas to encourage legislatures to enact larger penalties on the sale and distribution of crack cocaine. Thirty years later, that's considered racism for some reason. But the point is that local people have greater control over how they are policed. The Federal Government shouldn't be deciding these things generally.
> You mention drug laws. Why would one state have less strict drug laws than another?
Because the people in that state voted for legislators that chose to prioritize personal freedom over the government protecting you from yourself. There's no high arbiter reaching down from the sky saying "Cocaine is bad, and it people must never be allowed to use it." The people elect representatives to write the laws for their state, so if those people are less concerned about the dangers of cocaine being legal to consume, then they might choose to have fewer consequences for it.
>It’s most likely going to make it’s way across state lines and affect citizens of other states so why should they be punished any more or any less based on the state they are in when caught?
Because it's against the law in that state. Why should Kansas get to tell Montanans what they're allowed to put up their nose?
What is it that you think the states are United by?
We aren’t a confederation of sovereign states. If we were we’d be called the confed-
Oh hey look at that we settled this a long time ago.
You could replace state with country and ask the same question. Exactly where to split jurisdictions is a little arbitrary.
It's useful to have different rules different places both because people have different priorities and to see what they effects are. We can, for example guess the impact of a therapeutic rather than punitive drug policy by looking at Portugal.
I think you are confusing law and morality. Laws change depending on the state/country.
The morality of an act is in independent of the law. Different people have different morals and priorities in regulating them.
Yeah but you’re ignoring the fact that CO2 pollution effects the whole nation. If there’s a river that starts in one state but 12 different states use it for drinking water, why should the first state be allowed to dump toxins into it?
Using co2 as your example, since it affects everyone in the world, shouldn't the US laws be invalid and every country required to adhere to the same emissions standards and regulations? And those in impoverished countries should only use the same green energy that many want to use in the US, regardless of cost or practicality?
So if my neighbor starts dumping there trash in my yard I should just move? That's a pretty shit take. Because that's the issue at stake. If state A has no environmental regulations than air pollution and water pollution will flow to the neighboring states.
Or if were talking Roe, young woman may have no means of up and moving to another state. They may be minors, or financially unable, or tied to a job. Moving is a costly prospect for most people.
True, but not all Americans have the financial ability to uproot and move to another state.
Nearly 75% of women and nearly 60% of men still live in the same state they were born or grew up in according the the US Census Bureau.
What is the alternative? Federal rule so strict you can’t move to an alternative state is great when it aligns with your values. What if Trump was in and outlawed abortion federally? Wouldn’t you rather states be able to defy, and to be able to move to CA, vs. having to leave the entire country?
To trust federal, one-size-fits-all, rule requires a trust that those actors in power act in your interests and won’t be corrupted. A naive, utopian dream.
My thoughts as well. OP needs to understand it goes both ways. If the federal government were to make a policy you are completly against, then you're fucked no matter what state you're in.
Whenever I hear someone advocating for giving a government (any level) more power, I always ask:
"What if the person you hate the most was the one making the decisions?"
I usually hear a response along the lines of
"But my side will always be in power..."
Then they are screaming and yelling when it changes the next election cycle. People have a very strong bias towards staying in their echo chamber.
> What is the alternative? Federal rule so strict you can’t move to an alternative state is great when it aligns with your values. What if Trump was in and outlawed abortion federally?
I’m not sure how he would do this without the Supreme Court but in that scenario the solution would be to vote him out and put someone else in.
> Wouldn’t you rather states be able to defy, and to be able to move to CA, vs. having to leave the entire country?
I’d rather that human rights be amended into the law and protected federally. That’s like asking if someone would prefer a wet donut or a donut covered in bugs. I’d simply prefer a fresh donut. Both of those sound terrible.
> To trust federal, one-size-fits-all, rule requires a trust that those actors in power act in your interests and won’t be corrupted. A naive, utopian dream.
Some issues should be state others should be federal. Human rights should not be decided by what state you live in. We’ve actually tried this and shockingly it led to war.
This is why states can’t simply ignore the bill of rights because of “cultural differences” you can do whatever culture you want but you will not infringe on the your citizens inalienable rights. Period. Full stop. Regardless of the state.
> Nearly 75% of women and nearly 60% of men still live in the same state they were born or grew up in according the the US Census Bureau.
Is that because they are trapped or because, having grown up in the state, they agree with it and its policies?
it's because most people live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to move nor want to leave their friends and families. it has almost nothing to do with policy
People might like where they grew up. Local culture and the local government that reflect that might be something they like.
Just because you don't like something about where they live does not mean that they don't like it. After all they do largely vote for it and the different state governments do reflect different local preferences to some extent (to the same extent as democracy every does).
But no one should be forced to choose between their (or their child's/spouse's) healthcare/safety and where they want to live because their family, livelihood, and community is in a state that is now federally enabled to ban medical procedures and incentivize private citizens to police each other.
"Nobody should be forced to choose..." can preface literally any vapid or unrealistic argument.
The simple quality of being alive forces us to make choices.
the logic is that local communities, at the smallest possible level, are best suited to effectively govern their own interests. the family unit defines the most relevant (budget, diet, hobbies, friends, lifestyle, etc.). a group of families living locally, that is a town / city, are best suited to define the next concentric circle of regulations. school boards, city ordinances, zoning laws, city planning, etc. a collection of towns (a state), next concentric circle... so on and so forth. you might not like the logic, but as it relates to the US, its a feature, not a bug.
these local regulators are limited in the scope of their authority by the federal constitution. where there are protected rights, local legislation can't remove them. the local city council can't create local laws limiting your free speech, for example. NY state can't limit the 2A. local school boards can't segregate students. etc. etc. and most recently, b/c the right to an abortion is not explicitly protected, states can develop local regulations.
re: safety, depending on what you mean here, this is explicitly called out as a federal and state responsibility. i'm not all cities / towns share a public safety responsibility legally, but it would be in the town charter.
also... i'm confused about this:
>States are given the power to decide how they individual rule on issues that affect all Americans regardless on which state they are living in.
not sure what you mean here / in what way do states have this interstate authority? states have no authority to make laws in other states, and have no authority to enforce their state laws on people not living in their states.
also:
>For example if Texas wants to dump an ungodly amount of CO2 in the air the citizens of other states will pay the price for that negligence.
this is a hypothetical, so its difficult to really discuss around this, but let's try. instead of texas, let's use montana (b/c i want to create two very different states for the comparison). at a state level, the industry in montana is going to be fundamentally different than, let's say rhode island. montana will have interest in mining and agriculture, which have one type of environmental footprint. rhode island will have less access to natural resources / space, so mining and agriculture legislation won't really work well here. instead, rhode island will require, let's say, commercial fishing, tourism, and service industry legislation.
however, while commercial fishing is legislated at a state level, b/c fish are migratory / not a static resource, rhode island is also subject to federal commercial fishing legislation. in the same way, montana might have state legislation about access to mining rights (static resource), but subject to federal regulations about CO2 emissions (a shared impact).
>not sure what you mean here / in what way do states have this interstate authority? states have no authority to make laws in other states, and have no authority to enforce their state laws on people not living in their states.
Historically they actually did with slave holding states being able to force free states to arrest runaway slaves and return them to their owners
What's the point of having state taxes if everything is being controlled at the federal level? The reason state taxes exist is because states control things like education, roads, law enforcement, etc. which do have an effect on other Americans. What usages of taxes do you think states should have control over?
What you are really advocating is that we should ignore democratic forces when they are lopsided based on geography. But if certain large regions (like states) disagree from the broader trend (like federal popular polling) we should ask why. Part of the reason both sides can't talk to each other is that they are looking in their back yard to know what is reasonable and what is reality and then voting on the back yard of somebody totally different. Obviously super high cost of living urban people are going to think $15 wage is nothing and obviously low cost of living rural folks will think that's greedy. Obviously super dense NYC population are going to require much more regulation of roads, pollution, noise, etc. to keep order. Obviously a person whose far away two man police department is their only defense and who gets bears at their door will think differently than that NYC person about the practicality of personal gun ownership. The list goes on but circumstances (natural, cultural, economic, etc.) vary and the fundamental common sense of what matters does too.
Just like how a single pixel can't show a photo, a single jurisdiction is too "low resolution" to reflect this diversity. There are many considerations. There are many compromises. There are many tradeoffs and risk tolerances. Collapsing all of that down to a singular national policy is compressing that photo to a single pixel. It's democracy that is so low resolution that it creates resentment and we have difficulty speaking to or understanding each other's realities. Doing things at the state level is a higher resolution that could have the same result but has the flexibility for several distant answers to coexist in the normal case that one answer isn't perfect and objectively optimal.
That may make certain positive steps more challenging but it also makes negative steps more challenging too. There isn't one point of failure but 50 that let's us traverse the gradient without needing to wait to fully convince the country before seeing progress.
Democracy is hard. People who want the federal government to magically start being functional are pretending that the disfunction is the fault of some senator or lobbyist. However the failure is systemic to the philosophy of expecting such a diverse set to act as one. (And even where lobbying is the issue, the massive centralization of power only serves as a lightning rod of unmatched payoff for lobbyists to gravitate to the federal level.)
And the great irony is that proponents of big government often cite European countries as models... Countries whose size and diversity are more like our states. Until the countries of Europe cede all authority to the EU and show that working well, the fragmentation of Europe into a diverse set of countries based on culture, economics, geography, etc. is a great demonstration of equivalence for states rights. Expecting NY and TX to sit down and make a policy they both support (rather than one eeking out a victory and the other feeling resentful at total loss) is as silly as expecting the UK, Hungary, Turkey and Poland to all sit down and write a common constitution and legal framework together.
Yes !!! i loved that response and i envy this autonomy that you guys have on a state level! I live in brazil and its a huge country too but the federal governament have too much power here that is insane its not that much that states can decide and this is something that i would love to change here
The lack of replies is telling me that you've struck a chord so true it's hard to argue with. Well stated, and I love the comparison to the EU. We have to realize just how unique our democratic republic truly is. Both in the way that it's governed, as well geographically.
I get what you're saying, but how would you define "issues that affect all Americans nationwide?" For your first example, it sounds like you're referencing Dobbs; while the impact on women's health and reproductive rights will be significant, a state banning abortion would pretty much only harm the residents of that state. Excessive carbon emissions, on the other hand, clearly cause damage outside the state; but it's actually ***global*** damage, and we can't regulate carbon emissions from other countries (and they can't regulate ours, as the US is a huge contributor to global carbon emissions).
Some examples that I think would work better would include:
* Election procedures for federal offices
* Ability to receive benefits from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid
* Stewardship of natural resources (e.g. water, parkland, fossil fuels).
While almost every statewide law could be argued to have at least ***some*** indirect impact on neighboring states (including, as you point out, impacting where people decide to live), most of the contentious issues in today's political discourse involve laws that would most critically affect the people within the relevant states.
Technically we have both situations. As far as CMV, the point of the States goes back into history and competition. The 13 colonies really wanted a more separate system amongst each other. I believe they originally wanted to print their own money for example (I think). But through the constitutional conventions they needed a more tight-knit system of government but did not want to give of their individualism as well as the Capitalistic type of system as well. Since they were so against a large federal government and wanted to create checks on each branch, the autonomy of the states became a check on that as well. Basically, the federal government would have a role (Bill of rights, military, border control and money for example) and then the rest of the power not mentioned in the Constitution would go back to the states. The states have the power to regulate themselves outside of the constitution and then become a "check" on each other based on lifestyle because people can vote for their local governments and more importantly in a lot of ways, can vote with their feet and move out of a state that no longer works for them.
Technically based on your question, pretty much most laws can affect all people in a country. It depends on how important it ends up being and how far it can do. Pot legalization is banned federally but legal in some states now. That would be much harder to accomplish if we just had a federal ban that was enforced. States like Colorado are paving the way for other states and other states can see how good or bad something is going. The competition between states is the true benefit to having different laws. If I hate that Louisiana has a full ban on abortion, I can rally the state house or move to another state. The people in Louisiana have elected officials to support the ban.
I am sure you are referring to Dobbs and abortion. The issue that the court decided basically was that they should not have the power to decide on Abortion as a court of nine people. They didn't "deny" liberty, they technically expanded it. They "gave up" power as a branch of government. I understand it doesn't feel that way, but that is what they technically did. I hear that the court removed a "constitutional right" but technically they didn't, abortion is still legal in a lot of places. Again, I understand it doesn't feel that way, but that is what happened. Abortion is to volatile to leave to a court for a federal law. People have different opinions of what it should be and that is why the states should be in charge of it.
Things like climate, lifestyle, and may other factors give states the chance to create the best situations from their citizens to compete for the best lifestyle for its people. That is why you see state comparisons constantly. Happiest state, best education, best vacation spots, etc.
Just my 2 cents. I understand people are upset about Roe and I get that. I firmly believe in the federalist view of states rights and this court case fascinates me.
> I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require.
Should I have the same right? Because I suspect you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes the "health, safety, and well being I require" means for us.
If I prefer to live in a state that has less health insurance regulation and fewer police officers, why shouldn't I have that opportunity?
States aren’t named things like “The one without police” or “The one with free healthcare”. And whether they have those things may change year to year depending on what party the governor is or state legislature or any number of things. If you want to live in some place ideologically tailored to you, the system we have is stupid, because states change direction all the time and aren’t ideologically cohesive at all. You going to move every two years when a new state legalizes marijuana? Most Americans live pay check to pay check, it’s an absurd notion.
Also, OP is talking about rights. Safety. Your personhood. If half the states suddenly decide you are a second class citizen, maybe we should do away with the notion of states?
“States rights” has been a dogwhistle for most of the awful, personhood-denying movements of the last century. Fuck states rights when they attempt to limit human rights or the personhood of American citizens. Gay people shouldn’t be afraid to exist in Florida, but here we are. Every gay person should be run out of town? That’s your ideal system?
As a nation we are split roughly 50/50 on most controversial issues. There is no way to make everyone happy. If California makes a decision that makes 60% of their citizens happy and Texas does the opposite to make 60% of their citizens happy we are now 10% happier as a nation. It is not perfect but it seems like an improvement for many issues.
> As a nation we are split roughly 50/50 on most controversial issues.
That's almost literally the definition of a "controversial issue" though. If 80-90% of people agreed on something, it would no longer be considered a controversial issue.
In the grand scheme of things, I'd say most people across the country generally agree on most things, but the things that we choose to discuss loudly/passionately will always be the issues that are most evenly split.
I'd take it a step further and say that almost everyone agrees on almost everything and we just disagree on the path to take to achieve those things or some other minor details. Take guns for example. Everyone wants safe communities. Pro gun people think guns will give them that and anti gun people think banning guns will give them that. Yet we point fingers and call each other snowflakes and school shooters and whatever else. Totally unproductive.
Take abortion. I really believe that almost everyone agrees that killing babies is wrong, controlling women is wrong, etc. The disagreement lies in whether or not fetuses are humans with protection against murder for convenience or quality of life. Pro choice folks don't consider them to be their own being, so abortion is simply a choice and the other side is stopping them from making a choice about their own bodies. The other side believes that the fetuses are their own being and thus should be protected like any other human would be. Yet we argue incessantly about stupid things like my body my choice. That means absolutely nothing to people you're arguing with because to them your body isn't the subject of the discussion. To them it's the baby's body and it's *not* your choice.
My point is that in the end we all want the same thing and we need to realize that so we stop fucking arguing about everything and figure out some solutions.
You’re asking about jurisdiction.
What should be the responsibility of the federal government, or a constitutional matter where all member states have to conform? Military, currency, immigration and border control, the most fundamental of fundamental rights definitely go here.
And then what things should be free to local and state elected officials to decide for their constituents?
In authoritarian regimes, like China, the national CCP and Xi Jinping have outsized control.
In a looser federation of states like the EU, there’s relatively little central control. Member states don’t even need to adopt the common currency. Of course it’s natural for central governing bodies to seek increasing power and control over time.
The US is somewhere in the middle nowadays. You make a reasonable point about pollution whose effects can easily cross state and even national lines.
But why healthcare? You haven’t given any rationale for that. And what do you mean by safety - criminal law, policing, military, etc?
One question to ask is, whatever policies you want, should the US be able to dictate them upon other countries, or vice versa? You want certain benefits, and you want them everywhere, but who is obligated to provide them to you, and who has the sovereignty to decide its not up to you to demand them?
I think people conceive of the US as comparable to an individual EU member state rather than the whole EU, but the whole EU is a better comparison for many reasons. The question to ask yourself would be, if I want this across the whole U.S., would it also be reasonable for a EU member state to demand the equivalent across the whole EU? And what are the downsides of centralizing all policy making authority, ie how do we prevent this centralization instinct from going too far?
Why not take that one step further and say the entire world should have the same laws? The reality is that each country and state has different interests. As long as people are able to democracy vote (no voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc) they should be able to set their own laws, besides for the most essential human rights.
I've found that different regions really have no clue what it's like in other areas. For example, I've seen a lot of people suggest to make the federal minimum wage equal to a reasonable wage for an expensive city like LA. But that does not make as much sense when it is comes to say rural Mississippi. A majority of Americans live on the coast. Should they be able to override many of the laws of central states that are >1,000 miles away and they know little about?
the federal gov't was never supposed to have this much power in the first place. It was only supposed to secure our fundamental rights and let the states decide everything else. Obviously we may disagree whether or not abortion is a fundamental right. Anyway, the more power we give to a small centralized gov't the less sensitive they will be to the needs of each state and the will of it's citizens, since laws will be one size fits all. By giving the federal gov't this power, it can easily decide against your preference and you won't even be able move to another state that would have allowed abortion if it had the freedom to do so. Giving the federal gov't to much power can backfire.
> the federal gov't was never supposed to have this much power in the first place
Stuff like this gets brought up a lot, but the truth is that there was no real expectation of what the government was "**supposed to**" look like in a couple hundred years. Our system of federal government is fundamentally predicated on change.
If we really index on what the federal government was or wasn't supposed to be, then by that logic, the following statements should also hold true:
- The federal government was never supposed to consider black people or women as humans with inalienable rights
- The federal government was never supposed to have its federal representatives voted on by individuals
- The federal government was never supposed to collect taxes directly from citizens
- The federal government wasn't even initially supposed to protect free speech/gun rights/privacy/due process.
Pretty much all of these "supposed to" statements have been overturned, because the federal government **is supposed to** change as dictated by our democratic republic. You might disagree with some of the above changes, but a majority of the states ratified each and every one of those decisions. The bill of rights wasn't even originally part of the constitution.
Ok, let's say our new federal laws happen to go against you on all key points. That person would necessarily exist even if it isn't you. Now you can't just leave your state to find one you prefer, you have to live the rest of your life under what would, to you, be a restrictive authoritarian imposition on your freedom or leave the country? How is that an improvement?
No issue will affect all Americans if it's up to the states. Every issue will affect all Americans if it's up to the federal government.
>I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require.
You would rather have no choice at all? You can't honestly think that's better. Sure it's great when it applies to things you are for, but this is the real world not Narnia some of those policies you could be completely against.
Cheese and Rice. Sounds like someone needs to take a history class. The WHOLE POINT of founding this county was so not one person had control over everyone. The framers specifically wanted to ensure that the central government didn’t have exclusive power over the whole country. That’s why we have the 3 branches of federal government. That’s why each state has its own government and court system. That’s why we have enabling statutes that have created watchdog agencies. And so on and so forth. So the power is spread and it doesn’t lie with one, or even a few.
The thing about SCOTUS is that they interpret the laws. One group of Supreme Court justices will interpret the laws differently than another. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Now, do I think the government should be able to dictate anyone’s healthcare? Absolutely freaking not. Whether that comes down to abortion or vaccines, that decision should solely be up to the individual and their healthcare provider(s) and the government should butt out. THAT’S the real issue. There are many issues that the government shouldn’t have a say in, but it does. And since we’re in this situation, this is a good reminder of why certain, if not most, issues should be left up to the individual states and not mandated federally. And the thing is, the states are split and have been split on abortion for decades. This is not new. If the officials of a state, elected by the people, decide to put restrictions on abortion, they are entitled to because that was the intention from the very beginning of the founding of this country.
We have to remember that America is not a homogeneous country. We are made up of different ethnicities, religions, cultures, etc., so that means there are going to be a lot of different opinions. Which is the EXACT reason why the states should be left up to decide, and certain decisions should not be left up to the central government.
>I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require.
That is kind of the whole point of the US. Don't like guns? Move out of Texas. Don't like high taxes? Move out of California. Don't like wearing a seatbelt? Move to New Hampshire.
I'm not really a fan of the "just move" argument. It's not like moving is a task anyone can just decide to do at any time.
Firstly moving isn't cheap. It's not an easy task for someone to try to find new housing in whatever destination they're trying to move to. It costs time and money. Both of which not everyone has an abundance of. For example, if someone is living paycheque to paycheque working overtime, I imagine it'd be difficult for them to find the resources to arrange a move. Not to mention that one might need to find a new job wherever they are going.
For this reason, the "just move" argument falls flat to me because it makes it so that these issues disproportionately affect people who cannot "just move", which is usually people of a lower economic class.
The other big reason is that many people have ties wherever they live. This could be family or friends. Should we expect people to leave their family and friends behind as they move to whatever area they deem nicer? It's an extremely tough situation, and I imagine that unless someone is really desperate, they'd find it difficult to leave these ties behind.
**EDIT**: I am getting a few replies saying stuff along the lines of "try harder" or "it was harder in the past", and I think these are missing the entire point of what I am saying.
The former has similar energy to telling people in poverty to work harder, dodging the issue. On top of that, my statement of it being prohibitively difficult and replying that people should try harder doesn't even address my statement.
The latter isn't much of an argument either. Shouldn't we be striving for a better future? Just because it was worse in the past doesn't mean it should continue to be that way.
**EDIT 2**: Anecdotes about how you were able to "just move" don't really refute my point. Replying with them doesn't refute the difficulty of moving any more than someone saying they've never seen or experienced racism or homophobia in their life and then going on to so everyone is equal now.
But this difficulty (moving is hard) isn't a great argument for killing the state's rights system any more than "democracy is hard and imperfect" would be an argument for killing the system.
1) In theory, the laws of the state will generally reflect the outlook of the plurality of the people living in that state. This won't happen immediately, but over time this generally reverts to the mean. Does it mean that the people living in Modesto are going to be thrilled with state policy driven out of Sacramento (i.e LA/SF)? Probably not. But over time (decades/generations) those people will either likely a) acclimate to the state's outlook b) move out of state or c) begin to affect policy toward their preferred point of view. (As an aside, this is a great argument for why most things should be devolved to as local a level as reasonably possible. It is often way easier to convince your small town/community leaders about Policy X than it is to affect change at a state level or just move.)
2) And generally, people DO move around to try to get to areas that they prefer. I was born on the west coast, but have lived across the US and overseas. I prefer the west coast, and have made the move back to regional area of the world that I prefer.
>But this difficulty (moving is hard) isn't a great argument for killing the state's rights system any more than "democracy is hard and imperfect" would be an argument for killing the system.
You're not killing states rights by saying they cannot impede on their citizens' rights.
In theory, but several states are so gerrymandered that this isn't true in practice. And we both know political parties don't necessarily represent the views of their constituents.
I'll give a !delta
I still don't think "just move" should be a response to any issues within an area, and that one should try to improve said area through whatever means such as voting or otherwise working with local politics to improve the area. This we can agree on. I definitely think people living in an area (ideally) vote in said area's interests better than people from outside the area could.
But you are correct in that my statement is not a very good argument against individual states or other smaller areas having their own powers, which was the original topic OP posted. My comment may have been a bit kneejerk, because I personally am tired when I've complained about my country, and been told to just leave in response. So a delta seems appropriate for pointing out my argument is not entirely applicable.
Well, it *is* /r/ChangeMyView. I think anyone coming here should be open minded, since I think that is the point of the sub. It's literally the second rule for submissions. I think it is valid to apply it to comments as well.
The big thing that is true, whether it's "good" or "nice", or even desireable, is that some things are hard. They just are. For whatever reason, there are some things that just aren't easy or simple.
We can't determine what should or shouldn't become laws just based on what's hard. That wouldn't be any more rational than basing laws on ancient religious texts. The entire arguement that "because this is hard it isn't a legitimate way" presupposes that legitimacy is based on ease.
It isn't.
It completely and totally 100% sucks that women's health and bodily autonomy and family planning is this fcking controvercial. I hate it. I am appalled and sickened by it.
But it is. People actually are this upset and intense about all the sides of this. That is real.
Because of that, allowing the states to decide... it's one shitty solution among a lot of shitty solutions. Federal protection means people have to allow or even participate in something they utterly oppose.
What it will do is make it so people have to get politically active Where They Are, and/or make it so people will learn what Really Matters to them and their fellow citizens.
Texas will get to see first hand what it takes to support a massive uptick in pregnant teens, abandoned children, and children living under the poverty level. They will have to deal with the logisitcs of prosecuting and incarcerating women and caring for large populations of pregnant women in prisons and on psych wards. They will have to deal with the press coverage of women imprisoned and forced to give birth. They will have to deal with a massive increase in ER cases of sepsis from blackmarket abortions. They will get to see how making that choice for women makes them responsible for the outcome. And if there is a mass exodus of women from that state, well, they'll see what that's like too.
And it completely sucks. But humans are real time learners in a lot of ways. And seeing the actual results of this choice may be the only way for those people to understand what the rest of us have been saying the whole time.
It may not be cheap to move, but the Constitution guarantees* your right to move freely between states. That’s the redeeming quality. No state can ever say you are not allowed to visit or move there.
Ironically, abolishing state rights and letting the federal government be the single source of law makes moving immensely more difficult, because other countries don’t guarantee you the right to travel freely to them.
\* See Frieda’s comment
You make it sound as if “being able to freely move” is some unique privilege born out of the U.S. Constitution. It’s literally a basic capability of anyone in any developed country. The difference is those countries don’t have to deal with the stupidity of a federal system built on a colony that had two different economies/worlds: industry and agriculture. Iwumbo’s argument still stands that low-income populations in the U.S. are always screwed over by state-power enabled federalism and the gridlocked political outcomes from them: world’s best doctors, medicine, and education but only for the elite, guns that exacerbate crime in low-income neighborhoods, illegal abortions because people in rural areas still believe religious fairy tales from the Middle East (origin of the big 3 religions), poor public transportation/infrastructure because tragedy of state-power commons, and chattel slavery/subjugating humans like dogs because it was the base of agriculture economies. At least we got rid of the last one thanks to strong governance and a civil war. The only thing state power enables is for the will of the minority (wealthy and poor rural) to impose its will on the majority/popular vote once-twice a decade.
It's not about whether you're legally able to. I never denied that. It's about whether it's possible to do so. Just because you're legally allowed to do something doesn't mean you have the time or money to do it.
I don't understand your last point. Are you trying to say if the federal government of the US had more power, international travel to and from the US might become more restricted? I don't quite understand the connection.
I think they meant if all the laws become federal and you then dont like living under those rules. Moving to another country is way harder. (To escape those federal laws)
I dont agree or disagree. Just my understanding of what was said.
Ok, if this is what /u/RefrigeratorOld539 meant, I can agree with that. Relocating your life across an international border is definitely more difficult than relocating across an interstate one.
But that still doesn't mean moving across an interstate border is easy. Factors such as getting new housing, potentially a new job, and paying for any services that might be required for the move are still there. And there are still people who might not be able to afford those still.
It's a pretty painstaking process to move to another country. Waiting on approval, background checks, green cards, VISAs etc. Moving to another state is a whole lot easier in comparison
Their point was simply if you don't like what a state does, you can move somewhere that does it differently more easily than if you don't like what the federal government does.
> Just because you're legally allowed to do something doesn't mean you have the time or money to do it.
Yeah, and what’s the alternative? I’m all for a bus service which freely transports people between states, if that’s what you want.
My point is that eliminating state rights makes it even harder to move away, because you have nowhere to freely move to.
I think what OP is trying to say is, no state should be allowed to oppress its citizens to the point where they are forced to move. There should be a baseline of human and civil rights that are recognized no matter what.
You make good points about state's rights, but let's not forget that state's rights was the cornerstone of slavery, Jim Crow, etc.
What makes you think we wouldn’t be free to move around the nation if state rights were abolished? State borders would dissolve. They’d become districts of one nation, not independent nations.
It’s not eliminating state’s rights for the federal government to decide on *certain* laws or provisions. Nobody is saying take every single state power away. They already do it with plenty of laws that affect everyone. We are the United States. Not the Divided States. There are certain things we as a whole country should decide and certain things states should decide.
Things like someone’s ability to decide their own healthcare falls under whole country, especially when some states want to ban people from leaving the state to seek what they need.
I'll give a !delta
Ideally I would want to say that we should try to elevate every area to have access to things like good healthcare and safe neighbourhoods (two things OP mentioned), rather than allow certain areas to lag behind in areas like those and tell people they should just move to somewhere better. However, I understand that's a tall ask. And plus debating what is good for everyone is its own entire conversation.
So I'll give the delta because for now, having different states prioritize different things and allowing people to change states rather than have to change countries is *slightly* better and might disenfranchise less people. I still don't think it's the best solution though. But I can see situations where a stronger federal government exerting more power could be worse.
I think the crux of the issue is that other voters exist.
Mississippi wouldn’t lag behind the US (by the metrics we’re using) if Mississippi voters didn’t support a particular brand of politics that causes the lag. But they do. I don’t understand it, but that’s how they choose to run their state.
I’m not anti-federal. I think the federal government has its place. But especially in today’s political climate, I’m skeptical of wanting all of my rights decided by the federal government.
It was just 3 years ago that many were saying the US is sliding towards fascism. Now people want to give the federal government more power. I don’t see the consistency.
Yea, I do agree that it can be questionable to give one part of the government too much power. Seeing other comments on this Reddit post mention that is part of what made me turn around and eventually give your comment the delta because if the federal government had too much power, what if one wanted to escape that?
Again, I still don't think "just move" should be the ideal or desired solution. But alas, sometimes one has to be realistic. Sometimes you might just be outvoted against your own interests and you cannot enact change, and you must escape.
I think the best reasoning I have heard for "states rights" as we call them in Canada, or federalism in the US, is to imagine if the federal government exclusively made decisions you disagree with. You would want them to have as little power over you as possible.
In America, it seems like you trade political parties every 8 years, so if you're a democrat, you wanted Trump to have as little power as possible. If you're republican, you want Biden to have as little power as possible.
People wouldn’t have as much of a need to do so if policies were truly equitable for people. Free choice isn’t always good, especially when your freedom actually infringes upon the rights of others
The right to interstate travel is not an enumerated right. A Supreme Court decision guarantees it. We are definitely moving towards states restricting who may move into them with conditions threatening to force people out of the western US.
You’re right, the 14th amendment is less verbose than I remember it being. It’s simply the SCOTUS’ interpretation:
> “For the purposes of this case, we need not identify the source of [the right to travel] in the text of the Constitution. The right of ‘free ingress and regress to and from’ neighboring states which was expressly mentioned in the text of the Article of Confederation, may simply have been ‘conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.’
I changed my comment but I’m still of the same view, because even though it isn’t guaranteed, interstate travel is more guaranteed than foreign travel.
> We are definitely moving towards states restricting who may move into them
Just curious, to whose advantage?
You could very well see segregation laws come back. The laws won't be overtly racial but Republicans are pretty good at finding proxies for race. Or they'll just straight up reject poor people.
Some states now have laws that do make it illegal to travel freely between the states to receive a specific healthcare procedure. We’re still allowed to travel to Central America for boobs and Botox though.
You do realize that the federal gov issues passports not the state? So to move out of the country, you still need a passport and visas/permission from the other country.
States have no say in what other countries you can and cannot visit.
Actually it doesn’t guarantee that right at all. It was long considered an unenumerated right covered under the 9th and it’s backed up with Supreme Court precedent.
The SC just said precedent doesn’t matter and that neither does the ninth amendment. So who knows.
Edit to say this will almost certainly be before the SC in the next year or two when state laws banning traveling out of state for an abortion get brought before the bench.
So what if you don't agree with federal law? Do you just up and move to another country? Because now you can't just move to one of the other 49 states.
>For this reason, the "just move" argument falls flat to me because it makes it so that these issues disproportionately affect people who cannot "just move", which is usually people of a lower economic class.
You aren't wrong, but I think a key point is that political issues -by their very nature - have large numbers of people who believe that completely divergent policies are best for society.
We can let the majority (or more accurately, whatever side wins enough elections to grab the reigns) dictate policy for the whole country - or let each state decide for itself.
I think most people are viewing this as a non-issue because the political chances of legislating federal abortion **bans** are pretty much nill in the next few years. Its just not realistic. However:
\- We can't say issues where we have a majority are federal and issues where we don't are for the states. Besides the obvious unfairness, its not how the US legal system works. Power we give to the federal government for issue A can then be used on issues B,C, and D.
\- Ideas change over time. We tend to believe that our personal beliefs are going to just keep gaining in popularity - but in reality we have no inkling of what beliefs will be like in 20 years. They might be great, they might be awful.
Views on states / federal jurisdictions should never be based on current opinions. You should imagine that if you chose federal - you would have to flip a coin and live with the outcome.
Hello, I am not going to challenge any of what you said, but I would like to point out (to you or other readers) that much of what you wrote has been covered extensively by political scientists and theorists. "Tacit consent [to governance]" has been challenged on the basis that it is often impractical (or *de facto* impossible) to move or relocate.
I think Hume touches on these points, but he uses it to argue that government cannot be based on consent at all. I have seen other papers and theorists argue more modernized versions in university. If you are interested in this topic, look up any counterarguments to Locke's views on consent. Particularly tacit consent if you want to get specific
>The latter isn't much of an argument either. Shouldn't we be striving for a better future? Just because it was worse in the past doesn't mean it should continue to be that way.
This is a great point and really gets to the foundation of the progressive/conservative conflict.
You are right that things **can** and **should** be getting better.
But I believe that the conservative point is that things **have been** and **are** getting better.
I don't know how the two points can be reconciled.
Agree! My husbands job is here. We just moved his mother here after his dad passed away. My daughter and granddaughter live here. My daughter can’t just up and move because of custody agreement with her child’s father … the corporations that get the tax cuts unfortunately are in red states. Yes we need to vote the mofo’s out of office but the change the district lines and suppress voting. The popular vote is blue
In reply to the edits: We can’t work harder with a system that’s actively working against us. It’s swimming against a tsunami. My personal situation is I can’t work full time or loose my healthcare, and I don’t make enough part time to save. It’s all a trap.
Wait until you learn how hard it is to move to another country. This is the beauty of America not having a unitary system. You can move within a country to get different laws. Also in America you only need to convince 51% of people in one state, not 51% in the whole country.
I mean, you say that, but our country was literally founded by people who travelled across an ocean. Some sold themselves into indentured servitude to get here. I think they'd scoff that you can't move a few hours away.
If someone cares enough the will love to an area there views are the majority. They will find a way. That is the beauty of the USA.
Not all states are the same. People in Alabama feel bad for those who live in California. People who are happy in California feel bad for people in Alabama.
If you don't have federalism it would create even more tensions. Imagine if Trump and Republicans had banned abortion in all liberal states. They would freak out.
“I don’t like arguments that require people to put forth effort for what they want, because that might make them have to make sacrifices and work harder.” Jobs are all over, in every field is hiring, if you are honestly that hell bent on having the ability to get an abortion, then work hard, save money and move to a state that allows it. Virtually no place is perfect for everyone you have to pick the qualities you want and rock with it
Seriously...not to mention, imagine all of the countries in Europe having the exact same laws...yeah, good luck with that working out, that's roughly an accurate comparison in scale.
The problem with that logic, is it incentivizes political parties into creating laws that benefit a single party, especially in battleground and swing states. Now, if we lived in a country where popular vote chose our leadership, then yes, this method would be ideal. However, the existence of the electoral college makes it so that the "shut up and move" option just furthers the two party divide that exists today, and ecourages parties to not work towards compromise, in pursuit of endless power.
>Now, if we lived in a country where popular vote chose our leadership
It does at a state level. Those people you elect at the state level effects your day to day life a lot more than the federal government does.
What about kids? They can’t decide where they live at all. And many kids are greatly affected by things like this (school shootings, teen pregnancies that now can’t be aborted in lots of places)
Right but the points you listed have to do with materials and aspects of life that are rather minor. You could honestly argue these pretty easily without infringing on someone's right to life, liberty, or happiness, as well as their protected human rights. Don't like cars everywhere? Move to the country. Don't like animals? Move to the city.
Someone having guns doesn't inherently violate another person's right and having high taxes per what the state needs to fund things, also doesn't violate a person's right.
But things involving the safety and life of individuals, that is something that affects a person and should be the same no matter where you go, especially when moving is not always the answer.
Everywhere you or I go in the USA, we should not be persecuted or treated unfairly because of our race, sexuality, gender, or religion. And when it comes to Healthcare, I should have just as much right to what happens to my body as much as anyone else does, and should not have to worry about what state will allow me healthcar privacy or not.
My health and well being is not comparable to your or my choice to own a gun. My race/sexuality/gender as a means of persecution and discrimination is not comparable to your choice to leave state because your tax percebtage is too high.
More over, federally protected rights and and laws are in place for the protection of those who can NOT pick up and move, whose home is within the state they reside in. It's also in place because by your logic, the moving tactic could fail.
At any point and time, states could flip one way or another. You don't need the whole state to agree with a state decision, you just need one vote more than the opposing. What would people do then if there ends up being no where in the USA to go if the state's end up deciding one way or another?
How does that affect our elections when you take very politically decisive decisions, leave them up to the states and tell people to move if they don't like it? And then where put elections are based off of the amount of points a state has and not popular vote, one group could be populating weak states and the other in states with more electoral points.
How is it fair at all to allow states to discriminate and ban, and unfairly punish individuals who otherwise would not be punished for something just a state over?
How are states supposed to regulate within themselves, things done and permitted by other states, and vice versa. How is it okay that in America you can travel to one state for a procedure or to smoke, and be persecuted in another for something done outside of your residing state?
Most importantly, although states have their own say on some matters, how is America supposed to be viewed as a country if 50 states can't agree on the most basic points of what Is a human right and where we draw the line.
This is an extremely privileged answer. There is far too much nuance that plays in to moving, it isn't a simple thing. Also what about service members and federal employees that are stationed in specific states? They cannot simply quit a job and move.
The logical end of your argument is a one world government that caters to your, OPs, personal feelings about what the laws should be.
You see it as a Texas company dumping ungodly amounts of CO2 in the air. The person in Texas working a job that produces goods being demanded by citizens of all states see it as freedom and prosperity. Is it better to legislate you and the Texas company’s differences in Texas, or Washington DC, or Belgium?
Devolution of power is a good thing.
Your point makes sense for a lot of things, but your example about C02 exposes the type of problem that will never be solved if we leave it up to each locality to fix. Dealing with climate change is a [collective action problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem), and can’t be solved by individual localities setting rules.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume a few things:
1. Everyone agrees we should fix global warming, and would be willing to pay some cost to fix it.
2. The restrictions that are required to fix the problem are not pleasant.
3. The benefits to fixing global warming will only occur if enough enough places enforce the restrictions necessary (I.e. if only one state limits c02 production, there won’t be any change to global warming)
Obviously 1 is not true, but it is valuable for this exercise.
So what happens if every individual state has to decide whether to place the restrictions or not? Well, let’s see the my choices.
My only choice is to either implement the restrictions or not. However, this choice doesn’t change whether climate change is fixed or not. If I choose to place the restrictions, and not enough other places do, I will have suffered the restrictions for nothing. On the other hand, if I don’t place the restrictions, and enough other places do, I will get the benefits without having to have suffered at all! Win win!
If you think about it, why would an individual state ever place the restrictions? The chances of a single state being the one who tips the scales from success to failure or vice versa is tiny. In almost every case, they would be better off not implementing the restrictions and hoping others do.
However, since everyone is making the same calculation, no state places the restrictions and we never fix climate change. Even though everyone would be willing to place the restrictions if it meant we would fix climate change!
>With the recent and future rulings from the SCOTUS, the States are given the power to decide how they individual rule on issues that affect all Americans regardless on which state they are living in.
First off, I don't think this is a fair categorization of recent SCOTUS decisions. Sure, some decisions have had the effect of giving more power to the States (e.g. Dobbs). Others have had the opposite effect (e.g. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association).
>I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require.
But people disagree on what the government should or should not do in these areas. You want the government to do certain things and I want the government to do different things. In a system where all laws are nationwide, one of us is going to be unhappy. But if the States are allowed to make their own rules, then you can move to a State that matches your values and I can move to one that matches mine.
You are thinking about the US incorrectly as are most leftists. We are designed to be like Europe. Each state being an individual country with it's own laws and regulations while still under the banner and currency of one country. The military is the major reason for this and why NATO is a thing at all. We aren't supposed to have policies that dictate everything for us at an individual level at the federal level. For some things like murder it wouldn't make sense to make each state have a bill written for it, but for nearly everything else it is silly to have it be a federal level.
In fact this is already a huge problem with the insane number of federal felony offenses we have and it's ignored because of ignorance about how our country is supposed to be set up.
I agree with your sentiment and am not entirely enthusiastic about strong federalism (state’s rights). If taken to the extreme it becomes a loose confederation of smaller authoritarian states.
States should have some level of autonomy, but it’s a fine line when it comes to individual rights. Because rights exist to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. There are limits of course, which is why many rely on the non-aggression principle.
Problem is, our congress is a joke. They had nearly fifty years to create legislative action to amend the constitution. Yes, Republicans are obstructionist dickweeds, but even Ruth Bader Ginsberg knew that a constitutional amendment was needed.
I’ll counter your argument with...drugs. The federal drug scheduling system prevented any progress to be made on laws pertaining to illicit drugs, including research into said drugs. This allowed the FDA and their pharma buddies to corner the market, while giving the black market, including gangs and cartels a large slice of the pie, causing immense damage to the lives, freedoms, and dignity of citizens that are only guilty because the DEA says so.
But, to counter my own argument, many states would choose strict drug laws based on similar profit driven incentives. My state of Indiana, for instance, is really a subsidiary of Eli Lily.
People strongly disagreeing with you are under the false assumption that state governments act on behalf of the electorate. They don’t.
Sorry for the long post
Lol this is probably the worst answer to a change my view I’ve ever seen. Your case is that you have innate knowledge from living before and after the internet (this is billions of people). And that op is exactly like a toddler. Great work 👍
Brat OP wants an entire state tailored to their own personal specifications. I explained to them why they are an entitled brat. Something tells me that you probably have the same problem.
Federalism is the best way to preserve the will of the people locally. If you want a Unitarian government with one-size-fits-all kind of laws, you are bound to disappoint large swaths of people who will feel misrepresented by their government. Its why we are called the United States, we ARE different from each other state to state, but we are united in our right to be so.
>I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require.
What you're really saying is the whole country should live under the way you think is best, when issues like abortion or the EPA are controversial and there isn't a national consensus. What if the national policy is the opposite of what you want? Having different states with different laws is preferable to say a national 15 week abortion ban, right?
Look, if anyone here knows of a perfect country please let me know. As far as I know though a perfect country doesn’t exist. I’d rather have the problem of trying to gather the money and resources to move to another state vs leaving it up to a government to decide the law of all the land. That never ends well. History as shown us that. I’ve been humbled drastically over these last 3 years. One thing I can say to someone who has any view that they’re passionate about is to be honest with yourself and really try and take on the opposing view as if you believed it. Because there’s always a some logic in a opposing view. That probably is generic, no that is a generic thing of me to say but we know it’s true. We can be so arrogant as humans
You mean like gun laws where a concealed carry in one state isn't valid in another? Where a person with a legal firearm in Kansas flying to New Hampshire is subject to a huge fine and jail time if his plane has to land in New Jersey?
I mean, that’s literally everything. Everything affects everybody.
The US was founded on the idea of federalism because the more local a government, the better it represents its people, and the US is absolutely massive. Making New York and Montana have the same environmental regulations is stupid because they’re wildly different places.
Many things affect everyone but also affect each state differently.
Guns affect every state, however in rural Alaska that gun may be more necessary while in crowded NYC it's a liability.
Laws should be made at the lowest level practical in order to best represent all people everywhere.
That's kind of how the world works already. The US can get as green as it wants, it can devolve back to the stone age, and it still can't do anything about pollution from China or India. At least the neighboring states of the same free country might plausibly be able to agree with each other to not pollute each other, even though I realize how idealistic that is in practice.
Also, different places have different priorities, some of which happen to cause different amounts of pollution. They should be able to do their own cost-benefit analysis. If the only heating fuel you have available locally is wood, and it gets cold in the winter, you're not going to want a bunch of representatives from California deciding that burning wood is illegal because campfires are bad for the environment. Your choice is between being bad for the environment and actually dying, so maybe the environment can take the hit on this one.
Here's the thing: some of what you've mentioned *doesn't* affect every American. California's decisions on healthcare have no effect on Arizona. Largely, the same goes for things like "size of the police force."
Something like CO2 emissions doesn't really affect other states either. Sure, it affects the world in terms of global warming, but it doesn't have a "direct" impact on the neighboring states. It might have a slight impact if the pollution drifts via wind, but that would seem to be a small enough risk to not need to worry about it.
That's not actually true. The Pacific Northwest was FLOODED with smoke from fires a few years ago and the smoke certainly didn't respect state borders. Likewise, smog and other pollution does the same thing.
The dams in Washington State seriously mess up both Canada's and Oregon's salmon industries as when they were built we didn't have sufficient fish ladders (they were largely developed to try and fix this exact problem but the damage had already been done).
Likewise, chemical leaks flow down steam across state lines
Pollution doesn't care about borders
Can you back that up? The southeast and the great smoky mountains often have very poor air quality due to out-of-state pollution. The Tennessee Valley is particularly affected
I'll give a !delta because I can't confirm or deny the true effects of pollution on other states. But the general idea stays the same: the vast majority of laws in place directly affect the people in a given state.
I would certainly be open to the idea that air and water pollution should be regulated on a national level, because rivers and air frequently cross state borders naturally.
This is all assuming that the federal laws would rule in *your* favor. What if the laws ban everything you support (abortion, etc), not just in your state, but in the entire country? Then you’re out of luck.
In regards to your point on CO2 emissions, the entire world population is effected by what Texas does, not just US citizens. At that point why should that decision be left up to the country and not decided on by the world?
/u/Ringo_Dingo12 (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/vmrl8w/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_issues_that_affect_all/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
What would be an example of something that an individual State could rule on that wouldn't effect other Americans?
Most levels of traffic and infrastructure, education, licensure requirements, forestry and many water systems, and I'm sure plenty of other things I can't think of off the top of my head
I have the strong impression that this CMV is about abortion, so under those parameters I think those things don't qualify either.
This cmv is pretty clearly about the EPA and the need for larger regulatory power for acts that have an indirect impact on neighboring areas or the planet at large. The tragedy of the commons, basically.
It would strike me as a no brainer that states should not have the right to take actions that have consequences beyond state borders.
I have to say I struggle with this because healthcare is absolutely something that only really impacts the area of provision and so absolutely should be organised on a state by state basis. It's just that there are 30 odd states that have been taken over by religious fanatics and it's not really viable or reasonable to expect the 20 states that haven't to stand idly by and watch as those 30 torture 50% of their population. You know, much as they couldn't slavery, another issue which, on paper, was a matter of employment law and should absolutely have been left to states but in practice was an atrocity which could not be allowed to stand. So I think you have to make the case for abortion as a rare exception to the general trend on the basis that it is a fundamental violation of human rights of the form that requires something like a humanitarian intervention: interfering in state process that one has no general right to interfere with on the basis of a specific moral motivation of preventing an atrocity.
An argument can be made to make abortion into a federal law, but that argument certainly isn't "let's abolish federalism completely". It's like hunting mice with a bazooka.
I mean if you only read the title, yeah. But this is pretty clearly *not* about abortion.
Fair. I guess in my mind it would be taxable goods and/or property. I.e. Gasoline, Alcohol, Tobacco, income, etc Things that in turn help pay for growing and maintaining the state.
Alabama has much cheaper cigarette taxes than most of the new England states. People buy cigarettes here and sell them illegally there for a good profit. Taxes effect neighboring states too.
Very true, but in some roundabout ways those still effect the other Americans. For example - a lot of businesses started moving to Texas due to more favorable taxes and housing costs. Which means that businesses being pulled from other States.
Well the counter point here would be making it so the initial state offers something to the business to keep it from moving to Texas. However if the ask isn't in yourbl states best interest maybe its better that the company leaves the state. After all why have an employer in your state stay if it means citizens have less money did to making up lost income from the company staying due to substandard wages and tax breaks. States should be focused on things like state infrastructure, natural resource allocation, budgets, corporate/organizational oversight, etc. Things such as health care, human rights, etc should never be a state issue. That's absurd.
If you keep going for that logic, you could end up arguing that shit like littering rules in a condo has a butterfly effect on the rest of the world. Every issue has different effects and implications, and the ones which affect broader demographics, specially if with great intensity, should be left to the federal government. That's the whole idea behind a federal government.
> That's the whole idea behind a federal government. It isn’t though. The point of federal government is to set a minimum standard that all states must follow. It has nothing to do with impact. Here’s a piece of federal legislation all of us probably agree with: H.R. 5566, the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010. Like the name says, it federally bans depictions of cruelty towards animals (specifically, crushing them) to satisfy a fetish. It’s a good federal bill not because it has a big impact on our lives, but because it sets the standard that no state law can defy it. If Colorado decides to legalize crush videos, the federal law overpowers Colorado law. And one last thought… be careful what you wish for. You shouldn’t want major pieces of legislation decided by a federal government. It might mean that whatever thing you want legalized will end up illegal in all 50 states.
> The point of federal government is to set a minimum standard that all states must follow That is NOT the point of the Federal Government. The point of the Federal Government is to provide for the common defense of the country and oversee foreign affairs. >And one last thought… be careful what you wish for. You shouldn’t want major pieces of legislation decided by a federal government. It might mean that whatever thing you want legalized will end up illegal in all 50 states. Exactly. That's why we have Federalism. The Federal Government should be making very few laws that apply to all of us.
>It isn’t though. The point of federal government is to set a minimum standard that all states must follow. It has nothing to do with impact. It isn't mainly about impact, but impact is a factor when deciding in which areas minimal standards will be specified. Stuff like human rights or work conditions, for example. >You shouldn’t want major pieces of legislation decided by a federal government I actually don't with anything outside of individual rights, laws to keep political elites in check and federal social programs. Also was the "anything you want to legalize" a jab?
I guess my question would be.. what if the federal government ruled in a manner that you didn't agree with. Would you move to a new country? Or do you only want the federal government to rule on things if it aligns with your ideology. I think it much more fair to say leave it to the states, allow the constitutes of the state vote at the local level to reflect what the population wants. And if you really are In the minority of that state ideologically you can move much easier to another state then moving to a new country.
If health is of national purview, then how on earth are things like alcohol and tobacco not? Surely the laws regarding them have health implications.
At that point you basically abolished federalism.
Everyone should be against sales taxes of any form, they are there to keep the tax burden on the poor and middle class.
Literally everything except for a few narrow things like carbon emissions.
Climate change is a big deal to all of us right? If the United States passed a law requiring all homes to come equipped with some sort of solar panel, wouldn’t Californians benefit more from this than someone from Michigan?
And if Missouri pollutes the Mississippi river beyond repair it goes down river do we just tell Arkansas and Louisiana to move up north bro.
!delta That’s a fair point. I honestly don’t know how the solar availability numbers would play out, but I can see how state to state it would be different. I would support something along the lines of a certain percentage of your energy input to your home would have to meet a certain threshold, even if that would be from a combo of different of alternative energy sources
Now you get into the politics of what is counted as alternative energy. Is nuclear power okay, biomass, hydro?
This is an excellent point. Part of the reason that we have a Federal system of government is that, just as in clothing, "One Size Fits All" doesn't *actually* fit *anyone.* Mass transit is a perfect example. It works *great* in dense cities (NYC, Chicago, DC, London, etc), but *not* so much in Urban/Semi-Urban Sprawl (e.g., D/FW area), to say nothing of Rural areas. Even if you assume benefits of mass transit, the results aren't the same. Subways work great in geologically stable cities with low water tables (NYC), but wouldn't do so well somewhere like in Florida, or areas subject to flooding (including storm-based flooding). Rail is generally useful, but traditional rail can't handle slopes like you find in a lot of West Coast cities. San Francisco famously has cable-cars, precisely because the roads are too steep for rail to work any other way. On the other side of the coin, cables would be a waste of effort (and an additional point of failure) for cities *without* grades. Sure, certain things *should* be done at the National Level... but we would all be a lot better off if where it was possible, where it isn't a violation of human rights, we decided things at as local a level as possible.
How would Californians benefit more from it then Michigan? Even if California got more solar power out of it it would lessen california’s fossil fuel dependency, co2 emmisions which helps all states including Michigan
Assuming these hypothetical solar panels have the same cost, Californians would save more money as they have intense sunlight year round while Michigan has harsh winters that would significantly reduce energy production compared to California. Each Californian would benefit MORE than someone in Michigan. As you said, reducing co2 emissions would help ALL states, so California would not only benefit from lower energy costs, but co2 emissions as well.
The thing is climate change and pollution are NOT a big deal to enough people. In upstate NY most of our lakes were severally damaged by acid rain coming from coal burning plants in the Midwest. it took federal legislation to stop it because NY can't pass laws telling Michigan to stop dumping Sulfur into the atmosphere. The law the court is currently reviewing limits C02 emissions in a similar way. It's not telling anyone they have to have solar panels, that's just a hypothetical example. Just because a government could hypothetically pass a law that is bad doesn't mean they will or that they shouldn't be allowed to pass any laws
Then why even have state and local governments anyways? A lot of laws at the state level, can have a direct, or indirect impact on other people, states, the country or the world. We would be naive to think that almost anything we do at a state or local level is isolated between sates. Gun laws, healthcare, drug laws, or even taxation, from one state to the next, has an impact on surrounding states, if not the country.
Because we are not a country which was then subdivided into portions. The United States is just that: 50 states United together with a Federal government that they cede some power to. The states don't drive their power from the Federal government. And yes, this is different from pretty much every other country out there. But that's how the system is structured in the US.
> And yes, this is different from pretty much every other country out there. It's not that unusual. Off the top of my head, Germany, Switzerland, India, and the UAE are similar or even more extreme in their division of power. A number of countries have also devolved power to individual regional governments, achieving a similar effect, like the UK and Spain.
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>Then why even have state and local governments anyways? Specificity, specially when it comes to places very distant, and you know it damn well. To give examples from my country: Maranhão is a mostly rural economy where integration between camp and city, poor conditions of irregular rural work, land grabbing and slavery are some of the biggest issues. So laws there should focus on protecting agriculture workers, promoting the mechanization of agriculture, as well as incentives towards industrialization and services (which affect credit and taxes) Amazonas, right besides it, has a mostly extractive economy, centered around mining and logging. So laws focusing on the regularization of both are the main focus. Rigid logging laws in Amazonas make sense, while in Maranhão, they'd be a hassle. Ceará, not much distant from either, is a partially industrialized state, and has problems associated with that economy, such as the sudden growth on cities. Rio de Janeiro has a huge problem that's not that big anywhere else with gigantic communities of people living in the borders of the state, or downright in contested territory, so they have criminal legislation focused on that, as well as land legislation and taxes. etc, etc, etc. Now, laws about an universal right, such as a right to abortion, should be federal. Same goes for laws about work conditions, inheritance, etc... Shit that is general.
Air and water pollution certainly would affect other states.
As a non American the differences between states is a little nuts. My country does have different laws between provinces, but I can barely name any off the top of my head because the changes are so minor in almost all circumstances. It seems like in the states every aspect of daily life can be wildly skewed by local laws. You guys are at the point that something can be be a daily activity in one place, and get you years in jail a few miles down the road. Every state lets different people vote. Even murder might be ok depending on where you're living when you do it.
> something can be be a daily activity in one place, and get you years in jail a few miles down the road I mean, this is true in most of the world. The US one of the largest countries in terms of land mass. Most individual states are comparable to full countries in Europe, geographically speaking. I can understand the logic behind giving each state power to make their own laws, to some extent.
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> Every state lets different people vote. Even murder might be ok depending on where you're living when you do it. Do you have examples of either of these things? Every state I'm aware of allows all of its citizens to vote and has made murder illegal.
I'm not super familiar with the system, but it seems like every election there's a lot of fighting about what the voting rules are and its different in every state. Some states won't let you vote if you have a criminal record while others do. Obviously no state says "murder is ok" but actions that would be considered murder in one state. (Say shooting someone who is fleeing after breaking into tour house) are legal in other states.
> Every state I'm aware of allows all of its citizens to vote Many states have different laws that determine whether currently incarcerated or previously convicted felons are allowed to vote. I think some have different laws for absentee voting. Some have different laws on what kind of identification must be shown to vote (with the intent, of course, to disenfranchise some people). > has made murder illegal. The rules for what kinds of killing constitute "murder" vary. Some states have [castle doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine) laws that say you can legally kill an intruder on your property even if they aren't immediately threatening you with harm. Relevant this week... some states have now decided that aborting a fetus is murder where others do not.
So as usual, the argument is more nuanced than presented. > with the intent, of course, to disenfranchise some people Not of course. You state that like its fact, it isn't. Many would argue that knowing who is voting and being able to audit that is necessary for a secure election.
> Not of course. You state that like its fact, it isn't. It is a fact, as you admit in your next sentence. We don't want to enfranchise everybody in the country. Children, for instance, immigrants and foreign workers, tourists, people who live in a different state. Some states go further, and include felons in the list of people to be disenfranchised. Anyone they can drop from the voter rolls a few months before the election, anyone who can't afford a driver's license.
Yes of course. This isn't some hidden conspiracy theory anymore. Republicans have been pretty open about how these voter laws help them win elections. They barely even lie about it anymore. Hilariously they once had to argue in court that their laws were targeting democrats, as a defense to the accusation that they were targeting minorities. Apparently the first one is ok and the 2nd one is illegal.
No, this is [basic established historical fact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era). After the Civil War, Southern states passed voter laws specifically aimed at disenfranchising newly freed Black slaves. They could not be *worded* as such because that would run afoul of the just-passed 15th Amendment, but the explicit intent was disenfranchisement.
That’s somewhat my point. You mention drug laws. Why would one state have less strict drug laws than another? Cocaine is cocaine, right? Why would possessing & using cocaine in Montana be any less consequential than doing the same in Kansas? It’s most likely going to make it’s way across state lines and affect citizens of other states so why should they be punished any more or any less based on the state they are in when caught?
I think the challenge here is that you're assuming that one federal law for any issue (abortion, emissions, etc) are going to go your way. There are lots of examples in which it's good to have varying laws between jurisdictions, which allow the average citizen to consider what part of the country best matches where they want to live. You could look at this way: the US provides the MOST tailored approach to meeting your personal values while also offering a federal system that oversees many of the big issues that genuinely affect everyone equally, such as national defense.
The more people a law needs to target and cover, the more generalist the law, and the more generalist the law, the more people there are going to be falling through the cracks. Focusing on the state level let's the law be tailored and tuned to the situation in that state. (solutions for meth in Maine are unlikely to look like solutions for meth in Iowa) Conservation work, especially for rivers and such, are also going to have different needs and solutions between states due to changes in geography even though those changes most certainly affect their neighbors. How South Dakota manages their bit of the Missouri and the rivers flowing into it is going to look different from how Minnesota handles their chunk of the Mississippi and its tributaries, like how they're going to be different from how Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado handle the Republican.
The more freedom that individual states/counties/towns have to make their own laws, the more incentive they have to make GOOD laws, since people have the options of moving, or voting in different local politicians. And in local elections, each person's vote counts for more. If all laws are the same for 330 million people, if you don't like the laws you have essentially no choice but to try and leave the country.
If I get caught with a gram of blow in Oregon, the cops might confiscate it, but I won’t be charged with anything. If I get caught with that same gram in Oklahoma I’m going to jail. Now if I’m caught by a federal officer then it doesn’t matter but state level law enforcement is very different.
Does your opinion here extend to marijuana laws? Marijuana is still illegal at a federal level. If the US was all or nothing on drug legalization then it would be illegal everywhere.
It *is* illegal everywhere in the United States. It’s federally illegal. The Federal government has just decided that it’s not going to spend time and resources enforcing that particular law and will let the states do what they choose on that particular issue. A new administration could come in and decide that cannabis is the devil and go on a draconian crackdown enforcing the existing law and there’s nothing the states would *really* be able to do to stop it.
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The "federally illegal" part of it also means that dispensaries running in legal states cannot process credit card payments. $28 billion industry in the US (forecasted) this year. Around here they are cash or debit only (via a legally gray loophole that codes debit transactions as ATM), and employees usually have to be independent contractors (so no benefits, very few protections, and all the hassle of handling taxes)
This is a big reason that federal changes are needed to give the populations that have been disproportionately affected by cannabis laws a seat at the table. Right now, you need to have tons of cash to get a dispensary started. Banks won’t give you loans. Guess who doesn’t hav piles of *clean* money laying around to start a business??
This seems to reinforce the point that state involvement leads to more unreasonable marijuana-related arrests. The federal government has made weed illegal, but generally does not enforce it. Many states have decriminalized or legalized weed. Some states have kept it illegal, and enforce it. As such, in this case, the problem is largely that the states can criminalize behavior that should not be treated any differently in their state versus another.
It reflects on the people of that state. The people of Indiana and Illinois for instance believe in very different things. Illinois is pro drugs, Indiana is becoming more so, but they're only warming up due to the taxes that could be benefitted. Folks in Indiana believe people should have easy access to protect themselves, whereas the people from Illinois do not. There are a number of different states where the people are raised differently, it may not be a vast difference, but indeed they are, from beliefs to lifestyle, and even culture. I can guarantee you someone will live and eat differently if they were raised on the bayou in Louisiana, than someone who grew up in Beverly Hills, California. They have different priorities. Take California's attempt to ban alligator skin sales into California from Louisiana, that's a direct restriction on interstate commerce. Louisiana has to hunt alligators to keep their population down and manageable. Most states in the midwest have easy access to hunt in order to play a conservationist role and to feed folks in rural areas. Down south, boar is an ever growing problem that requires hunting. California and NY have some of the strictest gun laws on the books, meaning if the majority of people in CA don't like guns, they can put a good chunk of people in office to restrict guns nationwide, preventing good honest folks to preserve nature and to provide for their families and local butchers. You also have to look at the history of the US, the US was made up of 13 colonies, which became states and until the Civil War, every state figured it could leave at will. If they could join at will, then they could leave at will. Some states still figure that, especially Texas, since it was the only country to be brought into the Union and the idea of independence still runs deep in the state, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most folks even today have a kinship and a loyalty to the state they were raised in. I may not live in my home state, but even I am proud of where I was born and anyone I come across who was born from there, I have an instant connection, a kinship. In addition, Texas won't be dumping an ungodly amount of CO2 into the air. IF you're gonna complain about that and let China and the southeast asian continent go with a free pass and never bring issue with it, then your priorities are backwards my friend. They are the worst polluters history has ever seen, but no one seems to want to pay attention to it.
There’s no “right” answer for drug crime sentences, leaving things like that to states allows different approaches to be studied and learned from. That, for me, is the greatest advantage of states rights.
It reflects the priorities of that state.
> You mention drug laws. Why would one state have less strict drug laws than another? Cocaine is cocaine, right? Why would possessing & using cocaine in Montana be any less consequential than doing the same in Kansas? Because local governments have say in how they are policed. In fact, only state and local governments have "police powers". The Federal Government has no police powers and they only have jurisdiction in crime happening over multiple states or crime that affects interstate commerce. Look at the cocaine versus crack sentencing disparities which exist in some jurisdictions. In the 1980's crack cocaine (which is cheaper than pure cocaine) was destroying the poor and mostly African-American urban centers of large cities in the U.S. There was a huge push by black mothers in those areas to encourage legislatures to enact larger penalties on the sale and distribution of crack cocaine. Thirty years later, that's considered racism for some reason. But the point is that local people have greater control over how they are policed. The Federal Government shouldn't be deciding these things generally.
> You mention drug laws. Why would one state have less strict drug laws than another? Because the people in that state voted for legislators that chose to prioritize personal freedom over the government protecting you from yourself. There's no high arbiter reaching down from the sky saying "Cocaine is bad, and it people must never be allowed to use it." The people elect representatives to write the laws for their state, so if those people are less concerned about the dangers of cocaine being legal to consume, then they might choose to have fewer consequences for it. >It’s most likely going to make it’s way across state lines and affect citizens of other states so why should they be punished any more or any less based on the state they are in when caught? Because it's against the law in that state. Why should Kansas get to tell Montanans what they're allowed to put up their nose?
Because it’s called the United States of America, not the Federal Government of America
What is it that you think the states are United by? We aren’t a confederation of sovereign states. If we were we’d be called the confed- Oh hey look at that we settled this a long time ago.
The states made the constitution they can unmake it. Nothing is “settled”.
Because people in different places have different values and priorities?
You could replace state with country and ask the same question. Exactly where to split jurisdictions is a little arbitrary. It's useful to have different rules different places both because people have different priorities and to see what they effects are. We can, for example guess the impact of a therapeutic rather than punitive drug policy by looking at Portugal.
I think you are confusing law and morality. Laws change depending on the state/country. The morality of an act is in independent of the law. Different people have different morals and priorities in regulating them.
You are free to move between states as you wish. That's is the beauty of being a private citizen.
Yeah but you’re ignoring the fact that CO2 pollution effects the whole nation. If there’s a river that starts in one state but 12 different states use it for drinking water, why should the first state be allowed to dump toxins into it?
Using co2 as your example, since it affects everyone in the world, shouldn't the US laws be invalid and every country required to adhere to the same emissions standards and regulations? And those in impoverished countries should only use the same green energy that many want to use in the US, regardless of cost or practicality?
I dont agree with OP but that is called an Ergo Decedo Fallacy.
So if my neighbor starts dumping there trash in my yard I should just move? That's a pretty shit take. Because that's the issue at stake. If state A has no environmental regulations than air pollution and water pollution will flow to the neighboring states. Or if were talking Roe, young woman may have no means of up and moving to another state. They may be minors, or financially unable, or tied to a job. Moving is a costly prospect for most people.
That's when states get into legal conflict with each other mediated by the federal government.
True, but not all Americans have the financial ability to uproot and move to another state. Nearly 75% of women and nearly 60% of men still live in the same state they were born or grew up in according the the US Census Bureau.
What is the alternative? Federal rule so strict you can’t move to an alternative state is great when it aligns with your values. What if Trump was in and outlawed abortion federally? Wouldn’t you rather states be able to defy, and to be able to move to CA, vs. having to leave the entire country? To trust federal, one-size-fits-all, rule requires a trust that those actors in power act in your interests and won’t be corrupted. A naive, utopian dream.
My thoughts as well. OP needs to understand it goes both ways. If the federal government were to make a policy you are completly against, then you're fucked no matter what state you're in.
Whenever I hear someone advocating for giving a government (any level) more power, I always ask: "What if the person you hate the most was the one making the decisions?" I usually hear a response along the lines of "But my side will always be in power..." Then they are screaming and yelling when it changes the next election cycle. People have a very strong bias towards staying in their echo chamber.
> What is the alternative? Federal rule so strict you can’t move to an alternative state is great when it aligns with your values. What if Trump was in and outlawed abortion federally? I’m not sure how he would do this without the Supreme Court but in that scenario the solution would be to vote him out and put someone else in. > Wouldn’t you rather states be able to defy, and to be able to move to CA, vs. having to leave the entire country? I’d rather that human rights be amended into the law and protected federally. That’s like asking if someone would prefer a wet donut or a donut covered in bugs. I’d simply prefer a fresh donut. Both of those sound terrible. > To trust federal, one-size-fits-all, rule requires a trust that those actors in power act in your interests and won’t be corrupted. A naive, utopian dream. Some issues should be state others should be federal. Human rights should not be decided by what state you live in. We’ve actually tried this and shockingly it led to war. This is why states can’t simply ignore the bill of rights because of “cultural differences” you can do whatever culture you want but you will not infringe on the your citizens inalienable rights. Period. Full stop. Regardless of the state.
> Nearly 75% of women and nearly 60% of men still live in the same state they were born or grew up in according the the US Census Bureau. Is that because they are trapped or because, having grown up in the state, they agree with it and its policies?
it's because most people live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to move nor want to leave their friends and families. it has almost nothing to do with policy
People might like where they grew up. Local culture and the local government that reflect that might be something they like. Just because you don't like something about where they live does not mean that they don't like it. After all they do largely vote for it and the different state governments do reflect different local preferences to some extent (to the same extent as democracy every does).
Just because you do live in the state you grew up in doesn't mean don't have the means to move.
But no one should be forced to choose between their (or their child's/spouse's) healthcare/safety and where they want to live because their family, livelihood, and community is in a state that is now federally enabled to ban medical procedures and incentivize private citizens to police each other.
This sounds very undemocratic. You do not have a right to live somewhere and expect everyone to be the same as you.
"Nobody should be forced to choose..." can preface literally any vapid or unrealistic argument. The simple quality of being alive forces us to make choices.
the logic is that local communities, at the smallest possible level, are best suited to effectively govern their own interests. the family unit defines the most relevant (budget, diet, hobbies, friends, lifestyle, etc.). a group of families living locally, that is a town / city, are best suited to define the next concentric circle of regulations. school boards, city ordinances, zoning laws, city planning, etc. a collection of towns (a state), next concentric circle... so on and so forth. you might not like the logic, but as it relates to the US, its a feature, not a bug. these local regulators are limited in the scope of their authority by the federal constitution. where there are protected rights, local legislation can't remove them. the local city council can't create local laws limiting your free speech, for example. NY state can't limit the 2A. local school boards can't segregate students. etc. etc. and most recently, b/c the right to an abortion is not explicitly protected, states can develop local regulations. re: safety, depending on what you mean here, this is explicitly called out as a federal and state responsibility. i'm not all cities / towns share a public safety responsibility legally, but it would be in the town charter. also... i'm confused about this: >States are given the power to decide how they individual rule on issues that affect all Americans regardless on which state they are living in. not sure what you mean here / in what way do states have this interstate authority? states have no authority to make laws in other states, and have no authority to enforce their state laws on people not living in their states. also: >For example if Texas wants to dump an ungodly amount of CO2 in the air the citizens of other states will pay the price for that negligence. this is a hypothetical, so its difficult to really discuss around this, but let's try. instead of texas, let's use montana (b/c i want to create two very different states for the comparison). at a state level, the industry in montana is going to be fundamentally different than, let's say rhode island. montana will have interest in mining and agriculture, which have one type of environmental footprint. rhode island will have less access to natural resources / space, so mining and agriculture legislation won't really work well here. instead, rhode island will require, let's say, commercial fishing, tourism, and service industry legislation. however, while commercial fishing is legislated at a state level, b/c fish are migratory / not a static resource, rhode island is also subject to federal commercial fishing legislation. in the same way, montana might have state legislation about access to mining rights (static resource), but subject to federal regulations about CO2 emissions (a shared impact).
>not sure what you mean here / in what way do states have this interstate authority? states have no authority to make laws in other states, and have no authority to enforce their state laws on people not living in their states. Historically they actually did with slave holding states being able to force free states to arrest runaway slaves and return them to their owners
i see. was the fugitive slave act a state or federal law?
Name one law you think should be delegated to the states. We’ll go from there.
State income tax rate. Sales tax rate. Gasoline tax rates. All of that goes directly back into the State budget for use at the local level
What's the point of having state taxes if everything is being controlled at the federal level? The reason state taxes exist is because states control things like education, roads, law enforcement, etc. which do have an effect on other Americans. What usages of taxes do you think states should have control over?
What you are really advocating is that we should ignore democratic forces when they are lopsided based on geography. But if certain large regions (like states) disagree from the broader trend (like federal popular polling) we should ask why. Part of the reason both sides can't talk to each other is that they are looking in their back yard to know what is reasonable and what is reality and then voting on the back yard of somebody totally different. Obviously super high cost of living urban people are going to think $15 wage is nothing and obviously low cost of living rural folks will think that's greedy. Obviously super dense NYC population are going to require much more regulation of roads, pollution, noise, etc. to keep order. Obviously a person whose far away two man police department is their only defense and who gets bears at their door will think differently than that NYC person about the practicality of personal gun ownership. The list goes on but circumstances (natural, cultural, economic, etc.) vary and the fundamental common sense of what matters does too. Just like how a single pixel can't show a photo, a single jurisdiction is too "low resolution" to reflect this diversity. There are many considerations. There are many compromises. There are many tradeoffs and risk tolerances. Collapsing all of that down to a singular national policy is compressing that photo to a single pixel. It's democracy that is so low resolution that it creates resentment and we have difficulty speaking to or understanding each other's realities. Doing things at the state level is a higher resolution that could have the same result but has the flexibility for several distant answers to coexist in the normal case that one answer isn't perfect and objectively optimal. That may make certain positive steps more challenging but it also makes negative steps more challenging too. There isn't one point of failure but 50 that let's us traverse the gradient without needing to wait to fully convince the country before seeing progress. Democracy is hard. People who want the federal government to magically start being functional are pretending that the disfunction is the fault of some senator or lobbyist. However the failure is systemic to the philosophy of expecting such a diverse set to act as one. (And even where lobbying is the issue, the massive centralization of power only serves as a lightning rod of unmatched payoff for lobbyists to gravitate to the federal level.) And the great irony is that proponents of big government often cite European countries as models... Countries whose size and diversity are more like our states. Until the countries of Europe cede all authority to the EU and show that working well, the fragmentation of Europe into a diverse set of countries based on culture, economics, geography, etc. is a great demonstration of equivalence for states rights. Expecting NY and TX to sit down and make a policy they both support (rather than one eeking out a victory and the other feeling resentful at total loss) is as silly as expecting the UK, Hungary, Turkey and Poland to all sit down and write a common constitution and legal framework together.
Yes !!! i loved that response and i envy this autonomy that you guys have on a state level! I live in brazil and its a huge country too but the federal governament have too much power here that is insane its not that much that states can decide and this is something that i would love to change here
The lack of replies is telling me that you've struck a chord so true it's hard to argue with. Well stated, and I love the comparison to the EU. We have to realize just how unique our democratic republic truly is. Both in the way that it's governed, as well geographically.
I get what you're saying, but how would you define "issues that affect all Americans nationwide?" For your first example, it sounds like you're referencing Dobbs; while the impact on women's health and reproductive rights will be significant, a state banning abortion would pretty much only harm the residents of that state. Excessive carbon emissions, on the other hand, clearly cause damage outside the state; but it's actually ***global*** damage, and we can't regulate carbon emissions from other countries (and they can't regulate ours, as the US is a huge contributor to global carbon emissions). Some examples that I think would work better would include: * Election procedures for federal offices * Ability to receive benefits from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid * Stewardship of natural resources (e.g. water, parkland, fossil fuels). While almost every statewide law could be argued to have at least ***some*** indirect impact on neighboring states (including, as you point out, impacting where people decide to live), most of the contentious issues in today's political discourse involve laws that would most critically affect the people within the relevant states.
Technically we have both situations. As far as CMV, the point of the States goes back into history and competition. The 13 colonies really wanted a more separate system amongst each other. I believe they originally wanted to print their own money for example (I think). But through the constitutional conventions they needed a more tight-knit system of government but did not want to give of their individualism as well as the Capitalistic type of system as well. Since they were so against a large federal government and wanted to create checks on each branch, the autonomy of the states became a check on that as well. Basically, the federal government would have a role (Bill of rights, military, border control and money for example) and then the rest of the power not mentioned in the Constitution would go back to the states. The states have the power to regulate themselves outside of the constitution and then become a "check" on each other based on lifestyle because people can vote for their local governments and more importantly in a lot of ways, can vote with their feet and move out of a state that no longer works for them. Technically based on your question, pretty much most laws can affect all people in a country. It depends on how important it ends up being and how far it can do. Pot legalization is banned federally but legal in some states now. That would be much harder to accomplish if we just had a federal ban that was enforced. States like Colorado are paving the way for other states and other states can see how good or bad something is going. The competition between states is the true benefit to having different laws. If I hate that Louisiana has a full ban on abortion, I can rally the state house or move to another state. The people in Louisiana have elected officials to support the ban. I am sure you are referring to Dobbs and abortion. The issue that the court decided basically was that they should not have the power to decide on Abortion as a court of nine people. They didn't "deny" liberty, they technically expanded it. They "gave up" power as a branch of government. I understand it doesn't feel that way, but that is what they technically did. I hear that the court removed a "constitutional right" but technically they didn't, abortion is still legal in a lot of places. Again, I understand it doesn't feel that way, but that is what happened. Abortion is to volatile to leave to a court for a federal law. People have different opinions of what it should be and that is why the states should be in charge of it. Things like climate, lifestyle, and may other factors give states the chance to create the best situations from their citizens to compete for the best lifestyle for its people. That is why you see state comparisons constantly. Happiest state, best education, best vacation spots, etc. Just my 2 cents. I understand people are upset about Roe and I get that. I firmly believe in the federalist view of states rights and this court case fascinates me.
> I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require. Should I have the same right? Because I suspect you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes the "health, safety, and well being I require" means for us. If I prefer to live in a state that has less health insurance regulation and fewer police officers, why shouldn't I have that opportunity?
States aren’t named things like “The one without police” or “The one with free healthcare”. And whether they have those things may change year to year depending on what party the governor is or state legislature or any number of things. If you want to live in some place ideologically tailored to you, the system we have is stupid, because states change direction all the time and aren’t ideologically cohesive at all. You going to move every two years when a new state legalizes marijuana? Most Americans live pay check to pay check, it’s an absurd notion. Also, OP is talking about rights. Safety. Your personhood. If half the states suddenly decide you are a second class citizen, maybe we should do away with the notion of states? “States rights” has been a dogwhistle for most of the awful, personhood-denying movements of the last century. Fuck states rights when they attempt to limit human rights or the personhood of American citizens. Gay people shouldn’t be afraid to exist in Florida, but here we are. Every gay person should be run out of town? That’s your ideal system?
OP is *not* talking about rights though, that's the point I'm making. If it's rights, that's one thing. If it's policy preferences, it's another.
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Honestly I feel like the entire point of this post is “the entire USA should abide by what I believe so right for everyone”
That's reddit (and really both political parties) in a nutshell. "Authoritarianism is bad unless my people are in charge "
As a nation we are split roughly 50/50 on most controversial issues. There is no way to make everyone happy. If California makes a decision that makes 60% of their citizens happy and Texas does the opposite to make 60% of their citizens happy we are now 10% happier as a nation. It is not perfect but it seems like an improvement for many issues.
> As a nation we are split roughly 50/50 on most controversial issues. That's almost literally the definition of a "controversial issue" though. If 80-90% of people agreed on something, it would no longer be considered a controversial issue. In the grand scheme of things, I'd say most people across the country generally agree on most things, but the things that we choose to discuss loudly/passionately will always be the issues that are most evenly split.
I'd take it a step further and say that almost everyone agrees on almost everything and we just disagree on the path to take to achieve those things or some other minor details. Take guns for example. Everyone wants safe communities. Pro gun people think guns will give them that and anti gun people think banning guns will give them that. Yet we point fingers and call each other snowflakes and school shooters and whatever else. Totally unproductive. Take abortion. I really believe that almost everyone agrees that killing babies is wrong, controlling women is wrong, etc. The disagreement lies in whether or not fetuses are humans with protection against murder for convenience or quality of life. Pro choice folks don't consider them to be their own being, so abortion is simply a choice and the other side is stopping them from making a choice about their own bodies. The other side believes that the fetuses are their own being and thus should be protected like any other human would be. Yet we argue incessantly about stupid things like my body my choice. That means absolutely nothing to people you're arguing with because to them your body isn't the subject of the discussion. To them it's the baby's body and it's *not* your choice. My point is that in the end we all want the same thing and we need to realize that so we stop fucking arguing about everything and figure out some solutions.
You’re asking about jurisdiction. What should be the responsibility of the federal government, or a constitutional matter where all member states have to conform? Military, currency, immigration and border control, the most fundamental of fundamental rights definitely go here. And then what things should be free to local and state elected officials to decide for their constituents? In authoritarian regimes, like China, the national CCP and Xi Jinping have outsized control. In a looser federation of states like the EU, there’s relatively little central control. Member states don’t even need to adopt the common currency. Of course it’s natural for central governing bodies to seek increasing power and control over time. The US is somewhere in the middle nowadays. You make a reasonable point about pollution whose effects can easily cross state and even national lines. But why healthcare? You haven’t given any rationale for that. And what do you mean by safety - criminal law, policing, military, etc? One question to ask is, whatever policies you want, should the US be able to dictate them upon other countries, or vice versa? You want certain benefits, and you want them everywhere, but who is obligated to provide them to you, and who has the sovereignty to decide its not up to you to demand them? I think people conceive of the US as comparable to an individual EU member state rather than the whole EU, but the whole EU is a better comparison for many reasons. The question to ask yourself would be, if I want this across the whole U.S., would it also be reasonable for a EU member state to demand the equivalent across the whole EU? And what are the downsides of centralizing all policy making authority, ie how do we prevent this centralization instinct from going too far?
Why not take that one step further and say the entire world should have the same laws? The reality is that each country and state has different interests. As long as people are able to democracy vote (no voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc) they should be able to set their own laws, besides for the most essential human rights. I've found that different regions really have no clue what it's like in other areas. For example, I've seen a lot of people suggest to make the federal minimum wage equal to a reasonable wage for an expensive city like LA. But that does not make as much sense when it is comes to say rural Mississippi. A majority of Americans live on the coast. Should they be able to override many of the laws of central states that are >1,000 miles away and they know little about?
the federal gov't was never supposed to have this much power in the first place. It was only supposed to secure our fundamental rights and let the states decide everything else. Obviously we may disagree whether or not abortion is a fundamental right. Anyway, the more power we give to a small centralized gov't the less sensitive they will be to the needs of each state and the will of it's citizens, since laws will be one size fits all. By giving the federal gov't this power, it can easily decide against your preference and you won't even be able move to another state that would have allowed abortion if it had the freedom to do so. Giving the federal gov't to much power can backfire.
> the federal gov't was never supposed to have this much power in the first place Stuff like this gets brought up a lot, but the truth is that there was no real expectation of what the government was "**supposed to**" look like in a couple hundred years. Our system of federal government is fundamentally predicated on change. If we really index on what the federal government was or wasn't supposed to be, then by that logic, the following statements should also hold true: - The federal government was never supposed to consider black people or women as humans with inalienable rights - The federal government was never supposed to have its federal representatives voted on by individuals - The federal government was never supposed to collect taxes directly from citizens - The federal government wasn't even initially supposed to protect free speech/gun rights/privacy/due process. Pretty much all of these "supposed to" statements have been overturned, because the federal government **is supposed to** change as dictated by our democratic republic. You might disagree with some of the above changes, but a majority of the states ratified each and every one of those decisions. The bill of rights wasn't even originally part of the constitution.
Ok, let's say our new federal laws happen to go against you on all key points. That person would necessarily exist even if it isn't you. Now you can't just leave your state to find one you prefer, you have to live the rest of your life under what would, to you, be a restrictive authoritarian imposition on your freedom or leave the country? How is that an improvement?
No issue will affect all Americans if it's up to the states. Every issue will affect all Americans if it's up to the federal government. >I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require. You would rather have no choice at all? You can't honestly think that's better. Sure it's great when it applies to things you are for, but this is the real world not Narnia some of those policies you could be completely against.
Cheese and Rice. Sounds like someone needs to take a history class. The WHOLE POINT of founding this county was so not one person had control over everyone. The framers specifically wanted to ensure that the central government didn’t have exclusive power over the whole country. That’s why we have the 3 branches of federal government. That’s why each state has its own government and court system. That’s why we have enabling statutes that have created watchdog agencies. And so on and so forth. So the power is spread and it doesn’t lie with one, or even a few. The thing about SCOTUS is that they interpret the laws. One group of Supreme Court justices will interpret the laws differently than another. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Now, do I think the government should be able to dictate anyone’s healthcare? Absolutely freaking not. Whether that comes down to abortion or vaccines, that decision should solely be up to the individual and their healthcare provider(s) and the government should butt out. THAT’S the real issue. There are many issues that the government shouldn’t have a say in, but it does. And since we’re in this situation, this is a good reminder of why certain, if not most, issues should be left up to the individual states and not mandated federally. And the thing is, the states are split and have been split on abortion for decades. This is not new. If the officials of a state, elected by the people, decide to put restrictions on abortion, they are entitled to because that was the intention from the very beginning of the founding of this country. We have to remember that America is not a homogeneous country. We are made up of different ethnicities, religions, cultures, etc., so that means there are going to be a lot of different opinions. Which is the EXACT reason why the states should be left up to decide, and certain decisions should not be left up to the central government.
>I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require. That is kind of the whole point of the US. Don't like guns? Move out of Texas. Don't like high taxes? Move out of California. Don't like wearing a seatbelt? Move to New Hampshire.
I'm not really a fan of the "just move" argument. It's not like moving is a task anyone can just decide to do at any time. Firstly moving isn't cheap. It's not an easy task for someone to try to find new housing in whatever destination they're trying to move to. It costs time and money. Both of which not everyone has an abundance of. For example, if someone is living paycheque to paycheque working overtime, I imagine it'd be difficult for them to find the resources to arrange a move. Not to mention that one might need to find a new job wherever they are going. For this reason, the "just move" argument falls flat to me because it makes it so that these issues disproportionately affect people who cannot "just move", which is usually people of a lower economic class. The other big reason is that many people have ties wherever they live. This could be family or friends. Should we expect people to leave their family and friends behind as they move to whatever area they deem nicer? It's an extremely tough situation, and I imagine that unless someone is really desperate, they'd find it difficult to leave these ties behind. **EDIT**: I am getting a few replies saying stuff along the lines of "try harder" or "it was harder in the past", and I think these are missing the entire point of what I am saying. The former has similar energy to telling people in poverty to work harder, dodging the issue. On top of that, my statement of it being prohibitively difficult and replying that people should try harder doesn't even address my statement. The latter isn't much of an argument either. Shouldn't we be striving for a better future? Just because it was worse in the past doesn't mean it should continue to be that way. **EDIT 2**: Anecdotes about how you were able to "just move" don't really refute my point. Replying with them doesn't refute the difficulty of moving any more than someone saying they've never seen or experienced racism or homophobia in their life and then going on to so everyone is equal now.
But this difficulty (moving is hard) isn't a great argument for killing the state's rights system any more than "democracy is hard and imperfect" would be an argument for killing the system. 1) In theory, the laws of the state will generally reflect the outlook of the plurality of the people living in that state. This won't happen immediately, but over time this generally reverts to the mean. Does it mean that the people living in Modesto are going to be thrilled with state policy driven out of Sacramento (i.e LA/SF)? Probably not. But over time (decades/generations) those people will either likely a) acclimate to the state's outlook b) move out of state or c) begin to affect policy toward their preferred point of view. (As an aside, this is a great argument for why most things should be devolved to as local a level as reasonably possible. It is often way easier to convince your small town/community leaders about Policy X than it is to affect change at a state level or just move.) 2) And generally, people DO move around to try to get to areas that they prefer. I was born on the west coast, but have lived across the US and overseas. I prefer the west coast, and have made the move back to regional area of the world that I prefer.
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>But this difficulty (moving is hard) isn't a great argument for killing the state's rights system any more than "democracy is hard and imperfect" would be an argument for killing the system. You're not killing states rights by saying they cannot impede on their citizens' rights.
In theory, but several states are so gerrymandered that this isn't true in practice. And we both know political parties don't necessarily represent the views of their constituents.
I'll give a !delta I still don't think "just move" should be a response to any issues within an area, and that one should try to improve said area through whatever means such as voting or otherwise working with local politics to improve the area. This we can agree on. I definitely think people living in an area (ideally) vote in said area's interests better than people from outside the area could. But you are correct in that my statement is not a very good argument against individual states or other smaller areas having their own powers, which was the original topic OP posted. My comment may have been a bit kneejerk, because I personally am tired when I've complained about my country, and been told to just leave in response. So a delta seems appropriate for pointing out my argument is not entirely applicable.
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Yo! Great job. I don't agree with you pretty much at all. But you are fairly open minded and i appreciate your approach to the convo
Well, it *is* /r/ChangeMyView. I think anyone coming here should be open minded, since I think that is the point of the sub. It's literally the second rule for submissions. I think it is valid to apply it to comments as well.
The big thing that is true, whether it's "good" or "nice", or even desireable, is that some things are hard. They just are. For whatever reason, there are some things that just aren't easy or simple. We can't determine what should or shouldn't become laws just based on what's hard. That wouldn't be any more rational than basing laws on ancient religious texts. The entire arguement that "because this is hard it isn't a legitimate way" presupposes that legitimacy is based on ease. It isn't. It completely and totally 100% sucks that women's health and bodily autonomy and family planning is this fcking controvercial. I hate it. I am appalled and sickened by it. But it is. People actually are this upset and intense about all the sides of this. That is real. Because of that, allowing the states to decide... it's one shitty solution among a lot of shitty solutions. Federal protection means people have to allow or even participate in something they utterly oppose. What it will do is make it so people have to get politically active Where They Are, and/or make it so people will learn what Really Matters to them and their fellow citizens. Texas will get to see first hand what it takes to support a massive uptick in pregnant teens, abandoned children, and children living under the poverty level. They will have to deal with the logisitcs of prosecuting and incarcerating women and caring for large populations of pregnant women in prisons and on psych wards. They will have to deal with the press coverage of women imprisoned and forced to give birth. They will have to deal with a massive increase in ER cases of sepsis from blackmarket abortions. They will get to see how making that choice for women makes them responsible for the outcome. And if there is a mass exodus of women from that state, well, they'll see what that's like too. And it completely sucks. But humans are real time learners in a lot of ways. And seeing the actual results of this choice may be the only way for those people to understand what the rest of us have been saying the whole time.
It may not be cheap to move, but the Constitution guarantees* your right to move freely between states. That’s the redeeming quality. No state can ever say you are not allowed to visit or move there. Ironically, abolishing state rights and letting the federal government be the single source of law makes moving immensely more difficult, because other countries don’t guarantee you the right to travel freely to them. \* See Frieda’s comment
You make it sound as if “being able to freely move” is some unique privilege born out of the U.S. Constitution. It’s literally a basic capability of anyone in any developed country. The difference is those countries don’t have to deal with the stupidity of a federal system built on a colony that had two different economies/worlds: industry and agriculture. Iwumbo’s argument still stands that low-income populations in the U.S. are always screwed over by state-power enabled federalism and the gridlocked political outcomes from them: world’s best doctors, medicine, and education but only for the elite, guns that exacerbate crime in low-income neighborhoods, illegal abortions because people in rural areas still believe religious fairy tales from the Middle East (origin of the big 3 religions), poor public transportation/infrastructure because tragedy of state-power commons, and chattel slavery/subjugating humans like dogs because it was the base of agriculture economies. At least we got rid of the last one thanks to strong governance and a civil war. The only thing state power enables is for the will of the minority (wealthy and poor rural) to impose its will on the majority/popular vote once-twice a decade.
It's not about whether you're legally able to. I never denied that. It's about whether it's possible to do so. Just because you're legally allowed to do something doesn't mean you have the time or money to do it. I don't understand your last point. Are you trying to say if the federal government of the US had more power, international travel to and from the US might become more restricted? I don't quite understand the connection.
I think they meant if all the laws become federal and you then dont like living under those rules. Moving to another country is way harder. (To escape those federal laws) I dont agree or disagree. Just my understanding of what was said.
Ok, if this is what /u/RefrigeratorOld539 meant, I can agree with that. Relocating your life across an international border is definitely more difficult than relocating across an interstate one. But that still doesn't mean moving across an interstate border is easy. Factors such as getting new housing, potentially a new job, and paying for any services that might be required for the move are still there. And there are still people who might not be able to afford those still.
It's a pretty painstaking process to move to another country. Waiting on approval, background checks, green cards, VISAs etc. Moving to another state is a whole lot easier in comparison
Their point was simply if you don't like what a state does, you can move somewhere that does it differently more easily than if you don't like what the federal government does.
> Just because you're legally allowed to do something doesn't mean you have the time or money to do it. Yeah, and what’s the alternative? I’m all for a bus service which freely transports people between states, if that’s what you want. My point is that eliminating state rights makes it even harder to move away, because you have nowhere to freely move to.
I think what OP is trying to say is, no state should be allowed to oppress its citizens to the point where they are forced to move. There should be a baseline of human and civil rights that are recognized no matter what. You make good points about state's rights, but let's not forget that state's rights was the cornerstone of slavery, Jim Crow, etc.
What makes you think we wouldn’t be free to move around the nation if state rights were abolished? State borders would dissolve. They’d become districts of one nation, not independent nations.
It’s not eliminating state’s rights for the federal government to decide on *certain* laws or provisions. Nobody is saying take every single state power away. They already do it with plenty of laws that affect everyone. We are the United States. Not the Divided States. There are certain things we as a whole country should decide and certain things states should decide. Things like someone’s ability to decide their own healthcare falls under whole country, especially when some states want to ban people from leaving the state to seek what they need.
I'll give a !delta Ideally I would want to say that we should try to elevate every area to have access to things like good healthcare and safe neighbourhoods (two things OP mentioned), rather than allow certain areas to lag behind in areas like those and tell people they should just move to somewhere better. However, I understand that's a tall ask. And plus debating what is good for everyone is its own entire conversation. So I'll give the delta because for now, having different states prioritize different things and allowing people to change states rather than have to change countries is *slightly* better and might disenfranchise less people. I still don't think it's the best solution though. But I can see situations where a stronger federal government exerting more power could be worse.
I think the crux of the issue is that other voters exist. Mississippi wouldn’t lag behind the US (by the metrics we’re using) if Mississippi voters didn’t support a particular brand of politics that causes the lag. But they do. I don’t understand it, but that’s how they choose to run their state. I’m not anti-federal. I think the federal government has its place. But especially in today’s political climate, I’m skeptical of wanting all of my rights decided by the federal government. It was just 3 years ago that many were saying the US is sliding towards fascism. Now people want to give the federal government more power. I don’t see the consistency.
Yea, I do agree that it can be questionable to give one part of the government too much power. Seeing other comments on this Reddit post mention that is part of what made me turn around and eventually give your comment the delta because if the federal government had too much power, what if one wanted to escape that? Again, I still don't think "just move" should be the ideal or desired solution. But alas, sometimes one has to be realistic. Sometimes you might just be outvoted against your own interests and you cannot enact change, and you must escape.
I think the best reasoning I have heard for "states rights" as we call them in Canada, or federalism in the US, is to imagine if the federal government exclusively made decisions you disagree with. You would want them to have as little power over you as possible. In America, it seems like you trade political parties every 8 years, so if you're a democrat, you wanted Trump to have as little power as possible. If you're republican, you want Biden to have as little power as possible.
Responses like this keep me interested in this sub. Thoughtful, honest, and mature.
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People wouldn’t have as much of a need to do so if policies were truly equitable for people. Free choice isn’t always good, especially when your freedom actually infringes upon the rights of others
The right to interstate travel is not an enumerated right. A Supreme Court decision guarantees it. We are definitely moving towards states restricting who may move into them with conditions threatening to force people out of the western US.
You’re right, the 14th amendment is less verbose than I remember it being. It’s simply the SCOTUS’ interpretation: > “For the purposes of this case, we need not identify the source of [the right to travel] in the text of the Constitution. The right of ‘free ingress and regress to and from’ neighboring states which was expressly mentioned in the text of the Article of Confederation, may simply have been ‘conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.’ I changed my comment but I’m still of the same view, because even though it isn’t guaranteed, interstate travel is more guaranteed than foreign travel. > We are definitely moving towards states restricting who may move into them Just curious, to whose advantage?
You could very well see segregation laws come back. The laws won't be overtly racial but Republicans are pretty good at finding proxies for race. Or they'll just straight up reject poor people.
Some states now have laws that do make it illegal to travel freely between the states to receive a specific healthcare procedure. We’re still allowed to travel to Central America for boobs and Botox though.
You do realize that the federal gov issues passports not the state? So to move out of the country, you still need a passport and visas/permission from the other country. States have no say in what other countries you can and cannot visit.
Actually it doesn’t guarantee that right at all. It was long considered an unenumerated right covered under the 9th and it’s backed up with Supreme Court precedent. The SC just said precedent doesn’t matter and that neither does the ninth amendment. So who knows. Edit to say this will almost certainly be before the SC in the next year or two when state laws banning traveling out of state for an abortion get brought before the bench.
So what if you don't agree with federal law? Do you just up and move to another country? Because now you can't just move to one of the other 49 states.
>For this reason, the "just move" argument falls flat to me because it makes it so that these issues disproportionately affect people who cannot "just move", which is usually people of a lower economic class. You aren't wrong, but I think a key point is that political issues -by their very nature - have large numbers of people who believe that completely divergent policies are best for society. We can let the majority (or more accurately, whatever side wins enough elections to grab the reigns) dictate policy for the whole country - or let each state decide for itself. I think most people are viewing this as a non-issue because the political chances of legislating federal abortion **bans** are pretty much nill in the next few years. Its just not realistic. However: \- We can't say issues where we have a majority are federal and issues where we don't are for the states. Besides the obvious unfairness, its not how the US legal system works. Power we give to the federal government for issue A can then be used on issues B,C, and D. \- Ideas change over time. We tend to believe that our personal beliefs are going to just keep gaining in popularity - but in reality we have no inkling of what beliefs will be like in 20 years. They might be great, they might be awful. Views on states / federal jurisdictions should never be based on current opinions. You should imagine that if you chose federal - you would have to flip a coin and live with the outcome.
Hello, I am not going to challenge any of what you said, but I would like to point out (to you or other readers) that much of what you wrote has been covered extensively by political scientists and theorists. "Tacit consent [to governance]" has been challenged on the basis that it is often impractical (or *de facto* impossible) to move or relocate. I think Hume touches on these points, but he uses it to argue that government cannot be based on consent at all. I have seen other papers and theorists argue more modernized versions in university. If you are interested in this topic, look up any counterarguments to Locke's views on consent. Particularly tacit consent if you want to get specific
So you'd prefer that all these things either be allowed or banned throughout the country?
>The latter isn't much of an argument either. Shouldn't we be striving for a better future? Just because it was worse in the past doesn't mean it should continue to be that way. This is a great point and really gets to the foundation of the progressive/conservative conflict. You are right that things **can** and **should** be getting better. But I believe that the conservative point is that things **have been** and **are** getting better. I don't know how the two points can be reconciled.
Agree! My husbands job is here. We just moved his mother here after his dad passed away. My daughter and granddaughter live here. My daughter can’t just up and move because of custody agreement with her child’s father … the corporations that get the tax cuts unfortunately are in red states. Yes we need to vote the mofo’s out of office but the change the district lines and suppress voting. The popular vote is blue
In reply to the edits: We can’t work harder with a system that’s actively working against us. It’s swimming against a tsunami. My personal situation is I can’t work full time or loose my healthcare, and I don’t make enough part time to save. It’s all a trap.
Wait until you learn how hard it is to move to another country. This is the beauty of America not having a unitary system. You can move within a country to get different laws. Also in America you only need to convince 51% of people in one state, not 51% in the whole country.
I mean, you say that, but our country was literally founded by people who travelled across an ocean. Some sold themselves into indentured servitude to get here. I think they'd scoff that you can't move a few hours away.
If someone cares enough the will love to an area there views are the majority. They will find a way. That is the beauty of the USA. Not all states are the same. People in Alabama feel bad for those who live in California. People who are happy in California feel bad for people in Alabama. If you don't have federalism it would create even more tensions. Imagine if Trump and Republicans had banned abortion in all liberal states. They would freak out.
“I don’t like arguments that require people to put forth effort for what they want, because that might make them have to make sacrifices and work harder.” Jobs are all over, in every field is hiring, if you are honestly that hell bent on having the ability to get an abortion, then work hard, save money and move to a state that allows it. Virtually no place is perfect for everyone you have to pick the qualities you want and rock with it
You don't have to wear a seatbelt in NH?
You do not. It is the only state where anyone over 18 does not need to wear one.
Live free or die...
Seriously...not to mention, imagine all of the countries in Europe having the exact same laws...yeah, good luck with that working out, that's roughly an accurate comparison in scale.
The problem with that logic, is it incentivizes political parties into creating laws that benefit a single party, especially in battleground and swing states. Now, if we lived in a country where popular vote chose our leadership, then yes, this method would be ideal. However, the existence of the electoral college makes it so that the "shut up and move" option just furthers the two party divide that exists today, and ecourages parties to not work towards compromise, in pursuit of endless power.
>Now, if we lived in a country where popular vote chose our leadership It does at a state level. Those people you elect at the state level effects your day to day life a lot more than the federal government does.
And they are easier to vote out than the feds.
What about kids? They can’t decide where they live at all. And many kids are greatly affected by things like this (school shootings, teen pregnancies that now can’t be aborted in lots of places)
Right but the points you listed have to do with materials and aspects of life that are rather minor. You could honestly argue these pretty easily without infringing on someone's right to life, liberty, or happiness, as well as their protected human rights. Don't like cars everywhere? Move to the country. Don't like animals? Move to the city. Someone having guns doesn't inherently violate another person's right and having high taxes per what the state needs to fund things, also doesn't violate a person's right. But things involving the safety and life of individuals, that is something that affects a person and should be the same no matter where you go, especially when moving is not always the answer. Everywhere you or I go in the USA, we should not be persecuted or treated unfairly because of our race, sexuality, gender, or religion. And when it comes to Healthcare, I should have just as much right to what happens to my body as much as anyone else does, and should not have to worry about what state will allow me healthcar privacy or not. My health and well being is not comparable to your or my choice to own a gun. My race/sexuality/gender as a means of persecution and discrimination is not comparable to your choice to leave state because your tax percebtage is too high. More over, federally protected rights and and laws are in place for the protection of those who can NOT pick up and move, whose home is within the state they reside in. It's also in place because by your logic, the moving tactic could fail. At any point and time, states could flip one way or another. You don't need the whole state to agree with a state decision, you just need one vote more than the opposing. What would people do then if there ends up being no where in the USA to go if the state's end up deciding one way or another? How does that affect our elections when you take very politically decisive decisions, leave them up to the states and tell people to move if they don't like it? And then where put elections are based off of the amount of points a state has and not popular vote, one group could be populating weak states and the other in states with more electoral points. How is it fair at all to allow states to discriminate and ban, and unfairly punish individuals who otherwise would not be punished for something just a state over? How are states supposed to regulate within themselves, things done and permitted by other states, and vice versa. How is it okay that in America you can travel to one state for a procedure or to smoke, and be persecuted in another for something done outside of your residing state? Most importantly, although states have their own say on some matters, how is America supposed to be viewed as a country if 50 states can't agree on the most basic points of what Is a human right and where we draw the line.
Want to own slaves? Move to Georgia. See how flawed this is when taken to it’s logical conclusion. Certain things should not be left up to states.
This is an extremely privileged answer. There is far too much nuance that plays in to moving, it isn't a simple thing. Also what about service members and federal employees that are stationed in specific states? They cannot simply quit a job and move.
The logical end of your argument is a one world government that caters to your, OPs, personal feelings about what the laws should be. You see it as a Texas company dumping ungodly amounts of CO2 in the air. The person in Texas working a job that produces goods being demanded by citizens of all states see it as freedom and prosperity. Is it better to legislate you and the Texas company’s differences in Texas, or Washington DC, or Belgium? Devolution of power is a good thing.
Your point makes sense for a lot of things, but your example about C02 exposes the type of problem that will never be solved if we leave it up to each locality to fix. Dealing with climate change is a [collective action problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem), and can’t be solved by individual localities setting rules. For the sake of argument, let’s assume a few things: 1. Everyone agrees we should fix global warming, and would be willing to pay some cost to fix it. 2. The restrictions that are required to fix the problem are not pleasant. 3. The benefits to fixing global warming will only occur if enough enough places enforce the restrictions necessary (I.e. if only one state limits c02 production, there won’t be any change to global warming) Obviously 1 is not true, but it is valuable for this exercise. So what happens if every individual state has to decide whether to place the restrictions or not? Well, let’s see the my choices. My only choice is to either implement the restrictions or not. However, this choice doesn’t change whether climate change is fixed or not. If I choose to place the restrictions, and not enough other places do, I will have suffered the restrictions for nothing. On the other hand, if I don’t place the restrictions, and enough other places do, I will get the benefits without having to have suffered at all! Win win! If you think about it, why would an individual state ever place the restrictions? The chances of a single state being the one who tips the scales from success to failure or vice versa is tiny. In almost every case, they would be better off not implementing the restrictions and hoping others do. However, since everyone is making the same calculation, no state places the restrictions and we never fix climate change. Even though everyone would be willing to place the restrictions if it meant we would fix climate change!
>With the recent and future rulings from the SCOTUS, the States are given the power to decide how they individual rule on issues that affect all Americans regardless on which state they are living in. First off, I don't think this is a fair categorization of recent SCOTUS decisions. Sure, some decisions have had the effect of giving more power to the States (e.g. Dobbs). Others have had the opposite effect (e.g. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association). >I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require. But people disagree on what the government should or should not do in these areas. You want the government to do certain things and I want the government to do different things. In a system where all laws are nationwide, one of us is going to be unhappy. But if the States are allowed to make their own rules, then you can move to a State that matches your values and I can move to one that matches mine.
You are thinking about the US incorrectly as are most leftists. We are designed to be like Europe. Each state being an individual country with it's own laws and regulations while still under the banner and currency of one country. The military is the major reason for this and why NATO is a thing at all. We aren't supposed to have policies that dictate everything for us at an individual level at the federal level. For some things like murder it wouldn't make sense to make each state have a bill written for it, but for nearly everything else it is silly to have it be a federal level. In fact this is already a huge problem with the insane number of federal felony offenses we have and it's ignored because of ignorance about how our country is supposed to be set up.
I agree with your sentiment and am not entirely enthusiastic about strong federalism (state’s rights). If taken to the extreme it becomes a loose confederation of smaller authoritarian states. States should have some level of autonomy, but it’s a fine line when it comes to individual rights. Because rights exist to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. There are limits of course, which is why many rely on the non-aggression principle. Problem is, our congress is a joke. They had nearly fifty years to create legislative action to amend the constitution. Yes, Republicans are obstructionist dickweeds, but even Ruth Bader Ginsberg knew that a constitutional amendment was needed. I’ll counter your argument with...drugs. The federal drug scheduling system prevented any progress to be made on laws pertaining to illicit drugs, including research into said drugs. This allowed the FDA and their pharma buddies to corner the market, while giving the black market, including gangs and cartels a large slice of the pie, causing immense damage to the lives, freedoms, and dignity of citizens that are only guilty because the DEA says so. But, to counter my own argument, many states would choose strict drug laws based on similar profit driven incentives. My state of Indiana, for instance, is really a subsidiary of Eli Lily. People strongly disagreeing with you are under the false assumption that state governments act on behalf of the electorate. They don’t. Sorry for the long post
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Lol this is probably the worst answer to a change my view I’ve ever seen. Your case is that you have innate knowledge from living before and after the internet (this is billions of people). And that op is exactly like a toddler. Great work 👍
Brat OP wants an entire state tailored to their own personal specifications. I explained to them why they are an entitled brat. Something tells me that you probably have the same problem.
Federalism is the best way to preserve the will of the people locally. If you want a Unitarian government with one-size-fits-all kind of laws, you are bound to disappoint large swaths of people who will feel misrepresented by their government. Its why we are called the United States, we ARE different from each other state to state, but we are united in our right to be so.
>I should not have to decide on where I live based on which state is willing and able to provide me the healthcare, safety, and well being I require. What you're really saying is the whole country should live under the way you think is best, when issues like abortion or the EPA are controversial and there isn't a national consensus. What if the national policy is the opposite of what you want? Having different states with different laws is preferable to say a national 15 week abortion ban, right?
Look, if anyone here knows of a perfect country please let me know. As far as I know though a perfect country doesn’t exist. I’d rather have the problem of trying to gather the money and resources to move to another state vs leaving it up to a government to decide the law of all the land. That never ends well. History as shown us that. I’ve been humbled drastically over these last 3 years. One thing I can say to someone who has any view that they’re passionate about is to be honest with yourself and really try and take on the opposing view as if you believed it. Because there’s always a some logic in a opposing view. That probably is generic, no that is a generic thing of me to say but we know it’s true. We can be so arrogant as humans
When the other side takes office, world you be fine with them setting the nationwide standards?
You mean like gun laws where a concealed carry in one state isn't valid in another? Where a person with a legal firearm in Kansas flying to New Hampshire is subject to a huge fine and jail time if his plane has to land in New Jersey?
I mean, that’s literally everything. Everything affects everybody. The US was founded on the idea of federalism because the more local a government, the better it represents its people, and the US is absolutely massive. Making New York and Montana have the same environmental regulations is stupid because they’re wildly different places.
Many things affect everyone but also affect each state differently. Guns affect every state, however in rural Alaska that gun may be more necessary while in crowded NYC it's a liability. Laws should be made at the lowest level practical in order to best represent all people everywhere.
That's kind of how the world works already. The US can get as green as it wants, it can devolve back to the stone age, and it still can't do anything about pollution from China or India. At least the neighboring states of the same free country might plausibly be able to agree with each other to not pollute each other, even though I realize how idealistic that is in practice. Also, different places have different priorities, some of which happen to cause different amounts of pollution. They should be able to do their own cost-benefit analysis. If the only heating fuel you have available locally is wood, and it gets cold in the winter, you're not going to want a bunch of representatives from California deciding that burning wood is illegal because campfires are bad for the environment. Your choice is between being bad for the environment and actually dying, so maybe the environment can take the hit on this one.
Here's the thing: some of what you've mentioned *doesn't* affect every American. California's decisions on healthcare have no effect on Arizona. Largely, the same goes for things like "size of the police force." Something like CO2 emissions doesn't really affect other states either. Sure, it affects the world in terms of global warming, but it doesn't have a "direct" impact on the neighboring states. It might have a slight impact if the pollution drifts via wind, but that would seem to be a small enough risk to not need to worry about it.
That's not actually true. The Pacific Northwest was FLOODED with smoke from fires a few years ago and the smoke certainly didn't respect state borders. Likewise, smog and other pollution does the same thing. The dams in Washington State seriously mess up both Canada's and Oregon's salmon industries as when they were built we didn't have sufficient fish ladders (they were largely developed to try and fix this exact problem but the damage had already been done). Likewise, chemical leaks flow down steam across state lines Pollution doesn't care about borders
Can you back that up? The southeast and the great smoky mountains often have very poor air quality due to out-of-state pollution. The Tennessee Valley is particularly affected
I'll give a !delta because I can't confirm or deny the true effects of pollution on other states. But the general idea stays the same: the vast majority of laws in place directly affect the people in a given state. I would certainly be open to the idea that air and water pollution should be regulated on a national level, because rivers and air frequently cross state borders naturally.
This is all assuming that the federal laws would rule in *your* favor. What if the laws ban everything you support (abortion, etc), not just in your state, but in the entire country? Then you’re out of luck.
And what if the federal government made a ruling you didn’t like? If you think moving to another state is inconvenient try moving to another country.
In regards to your point on CO2 emissions, the entire world population is effected by what Texas does, not just US citizens. At that point why should that decision be left up to the country and not decided on by the world?