ConCon
tgirsch has a fun little exercise on re-vamping the constitution. Admits general welfare doesn’t cover specific welfare. We’ve had these thought experiments before, here and here.
Seems one thing that libertarians, conservatives and liberals who are not in office can agree on is gerrymandering is bad. I think gerrymandering should be punishable death. Discuss.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
Gerrymandering: there ought to be some sort of math formula to limit the length of a district’s border in proportion to the district’s area. Some of the districts I have seen, and I believe they were in North Carolina, were intended to consolidate two areas of African-American voters. In order to do this the court ran the border of the district down the median of the Interstate and back for ten miles! So the map of the district looked like a barbell. That’s an outrage, no matter how high-minded the objective.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:44 am
The problem is that too many people would like theft to be a constitutional right. You can be nice and call it a ‘safety net’, but taking X from person A and giving to person B because person B has run into some bad luck is theft, pure and simple. Doesn’t matter how ‘moral’ it is, doesn’t matter how many people agree, it’s still theft.
Of course, I’ll be called a heartless asshole for letting children die on the streets without the consideration that just because I don’t agree with the government doing the work that it doesn’t mean I don’t think the work needs to be done at all, but that requires a bit of thought.
I’d like to see the third amendment modified to state that the government has no right to your possessions rather than just soldiers in your house. That includes money. This doesn’t mean you can’t tax me – my existence puts some financial burden on the state and due to the usage of those services, compensation is due, but you have to prove that I directly benefit from such services. Easy to do with cops, fire departments, and the road, not so easy to do with welfare checks, grants to an artist to construct a GW Bush memorial from cow dung, and the billions of other projects my tax money is used on.
I’d love to see the 2nd Amendment clarified, but that’ll never happen.
Finally, unlike Tom who seems to want to use it to give the government permission to do things, I’d like it stripped down to the bare necessities that simply remind the government that they are nothing more than a minor part in the American way of life and that the rights enumerated in the BoR are a stark reminder to leave us the f*** alone.
You want welfare and safety nets? I would not dream of stopping you from banding together with your like minded brethren and using your money to do just that. But don’t claim that using the coercive power of the state (backed up with guns) to force me to finance your campaign is somehow ‘moral’ and ‘just’.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:51 am
You could think of gerrymadering as getting all the [pick your favorite minority] into one place so they do not ______ up your district’s election. Who cares if we elect one [pick your favorite minority] representative as long as twenty-five others have safe seats?
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
Modifying the Constitution seems a waste of effort to me. Pretty much everyone in government just ignores its limitations anyways.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
And my comment at tgirsch is “awaiting moderation”. I wonder what I said wrong:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Uncle:
Admits general welfare doesn’t cover specific welfare.
I admit no such thing. I you look at my suggestions, most of them involve making more explicit certain powers and protections which I already believe to be either implicit, or insufficiently explicit. My call for an explicitly-protected right to privacy, for example, doesn’t mean that I don’t think any such right exists today.
nk:
Your comment is up now. I have no idea why the moderation filter acts as it does, but there were about 5 completely benign comments locked up in there.
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
uh uh:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Robb:
The “taxation = theft” argument is old, tired, and total BS, unless you happen to live in the District of Columbia, in which case you might have more of a case. Please note that both the budget and the tax code are enacted by a democratically-elected legislature and signed/approved by a democratically-elected executive, so it’s hardly the same thing as some thug coming up to you, forcibly taking your wallet, and giving the money directly to somebody else.
I also find utterly uncompelling the argument that taxation for these purposes (e.g., social welfare) constitutes theft, while taxation for those other purposes (e.g., War in Iraq, road building, whatever) doesn’t.
Now, we can agree to disagree about whether such programs are justifiable or in any way a good idea, but to argue that they’re somehow “theft” is four or five bridges too far.
Finally, like it or not, the pre-New Deal way of life in the US sucked for an incredibly large percentage of the populace.
Actually, one more thing:
You want welfare and safety nets? I would not dream of stopping you from banding together with your like minded brethren and using your money to do just that.
We did. That’s how representative government works. I don’t get to beg out of paying for a war I don’t support or a road I don’t use, and you don’t get to beg out of paying for social programs you don’t support, either.
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Uncle:
What part of “Explicitly allow” is confusing to you?
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
which implies that it currently does not.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
“General welfare” means the greatest good for the greatest number, in my mind. It can be troubling to libertarians because then we need to look for limited enumerated rights instead of of limited enumerated powers.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
But not necessarily even that.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Unless you fail to pay your taxes in which case they send men with guns to take you away.
Or, if you’re a Democrat – Offer you a job.
Personally, I love watching the whole Proposition 8 brouhaha in California since that’s your beloved democracy in action. 51% or more consider queers to be icky, nasty things undeserving of certain rights, well then just suck it up you homos because that’s DEMOCRACY!
And the difference between paying for a war is vastly different than paying for some crack whore to get an abortion. The war benefits nobody disproportionately. If you’re able to, lay aside your disdain for the war the Democrats signed up for in Iraq and just look at it from a defense standpoint. Just like I owe the police for providing service even though I haven’t been robbed, it’s there when I need it regardless if I live in the slums or in a nice mansion.
The war that the Democrats voted for that you are against may be a crap war (you might want to not vote for those guys again to show your displeasure), however we all benefit and / or suffer from the effort.
The crack whore who can’t manage her own life gets benefits that I do not even though I put more effort into managing my own affairs. That is theft, democratically voted on or not.
The problem with your argument is that you seem to ignore the economies of scale. If it were just feeding the homeless, I could see where taxation to do so would benefit all of society. Less dead hobos in the street is a good thing. Alas, it’s not just that. It’s paying for school lunches, shots for the underprivileged, abortions for whores, clean needles for drug addicts, paint for the slums, college degrees for Hispanics, eyeglasses for nearly blind left handed dentists with heart palpitations, so forth and so forth and so forth.
Eventually, people like my wife, who works to help abused children, start seeing OVER 50% OF HER PAY TAXED and realize it’s almost not worth it any more. You see, when added into my salary, what we owed in additional taxes with her pay was OVER 50% of what she made. We’re considering having her quit because it’s not enough money to compensate for her time.
How is that beneficial?
You would benefit greater from my proposal than I benefit from yours. Allow me to keep the vast majority of my money. Lower the size and scale of the federal government (take up much of the slack at the local lever) to pre 1800 levels. The wars you hate so much will cease to be fightable as the costs of such wouldn’t be supportable. Alas, all these taxes you love so dearly for the children rarely see the children (see tobacco settlements and their complete raping by government for other uses).
I, being able to keep more of my money, will be naturally more inclined to charity. Charities will pick and choose the most deserving to give their money to instead of the blanket checks given by faceless bureaucrats.
Well, pre America sucked for a lot of populace. Then again, pre-wheel sucked as did pre-fire. If you’re insinuating that without the New Deal we’d have languished forever, I’ll just sit here and chuckle at you. You’ve got a LOT of faith in a government that fights wars you disagree with and can’t even keep the roads paved or a whorehouse open.
American ingenuity is what made us great, not because of our government, but in spite of it. People willing to take the risk of great rewards vs. great failures. You can’t mitigate the risk of failure without also lowering the possible reward.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Also, t, I’d like to point out something since it seems to happen with every conversation we have. I am not attacking you. In fact, from my discussions with Uncle, you’d be a good guy to sit and have a beer with.
Keep in mind I have a 3″ little box to type in without the benefit of instant feedback like in conversation, plus add in the fact that I have a job that requires my attention, so I am rushed at times or distracted.
Shoot holes in my logic all you want, I don’t take it personally and I like the discussion. I’m trying to do the same within the limited communication provided via the Interweb tubes.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Uncle
which implies that it currently does not.
Right. Not explicitly. Like the right to privacy, which is also not explicitly listed. The constitution allows and protects lots of things that aren’t explicitly listed. Is the Air Force unconstitutional because the government isn’t explicitly granted the authority to run it?
Robb:
Unless you fail to pay your taxes in which case they send men with guns to take you away.
I still fail to see how that makes it “theft,” or how it’s okay if they haul you off for failing to pay taxes that go toward road building, but not okay if they haul you off for failing to pay FICA. Men with guns can haul you off for failing to report for jury duty, too. Does that mean jury duty = kidnapping?
It’s a patently stupid argument. All rules and obligations are ultimately enforced by, well, by force; that doesn’t make the establishment or enforcement of those rules somehow criminal or morally wrong.
And the difference between paying for a war is vastly different than paying for some crack whore to get an abortion.
Odd that you’d use that particular example. For one thing, the cost of giving government-paid abortions to every crack whore who has ever gotten one in the history of government-provided crackwhorebortions probably adds up to about a minute or two worth of costs in Iraq. For another, I’d have pegged you as a guy who’d rather not have another crack baby on the streets… And that doesn’t even address the whole “welfare queens in Cadillacs” baloney that’s at the heart of such examples.
The war benefits nobody disproportionately.
Bullshit. Utter bullshit. Do the names “Halliburton” and “Blackwater” ring a bell? The recipients of lucrative no-bid contracts didn’t “benefit disproportionately?” You know better. It was a windfall for them.
And make no mistake: I don’t give the Democrats a free pass for supporting the war. One of the many reasons I supported Obama over rivals like Clinton was because he was an outspoken opponent from the outset. Then again, notwithstanding somebody like a Ron Paul, it’s not as if I had a wide range of antiwar Republican alternatives to choose from. Most of my choices, especially in 2004, were between bad (Democrats) and worse (Republicans).
Eventually, people like my wife, who works to help abused children, start seeing OVER 50% OF HER PAY TAXED and realize it’s almost not worth it any more.
I’m always highly skeptical of numbers like this. People often make claims like this, but they’re almost always crap. It’s rare, and you have to make A LOT of money, to see even a third of your income go to taxes, and that’s assuming you count all forms of taxation (property, sales, income, cap gains, etc.). Almost nobody paid 50+% of their income in taxes even under Reagan, when the top tax rate was 50%.
You would benefit greater from my proposal than I benefit from yours. Allow me to keep the vast majority of my money. Lower the size and scale of the federal government (take up much of the slack at the local lever) to pre 1800 levels.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to revert to a time when only white male landowners had any appreciable rights. I don’t even want to go back to the first half of the 20th century, when poverty was epidemic among the 50+ crowd.
You’ve got a LOT of faith in a government that fights wars you disagree with and can’t even keep the roads paved or a whorehouse open.
It’s not so much that I have faith in government — if anything, I want a shitload more meaningful oversight than we have today. It’s just that I recognize that there are certain objectives that can only realistically be accomplished by government. You may think that health care and education ought to be privileges of wealth rather than basic human needs, but I disagree. And there’s just no natural profit incentive to provide health care and education to people who don’t have any money.
American ingenuity is what made us great, not because of our government, but in spite of it. People willing to take the risk of great rewards vs. great failures. You can’t mitigate the risk of failure without also lowering the possible reward.
I think it’s a little of both, actually. I’ve said many, many times, that I think capitalism and socialism need to exist in a constant state of tension. When either one gains too much influence over the other, you wind up with remarkably similar results: a wealthy, corrupt elite oppressing (economically or otherwise) a substantial minority. So in my perfect world, the two exist side by side, and we apply the appropriate tool to the appropriate task. Where markets work, we let them do their thing. Where they don’t, government steps in. I don’t really think that’s a terribly radical proposition.
In fact, from my discussions with Uncle, you’d be a good guy to sit and have a beer with.
I’m a great guy to sit and have a beer with! Or to go shoot with. 🙂 In any case, despite our past differences, I generally try not to take things too personally, and appreciate that you do the same. (As I recall, my major beef in the past wasn’t so much you attacking me as you attacking positions I’ve never held as if I did hold them. But again, I realize that’s often unintentional.)
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
We did. That’s how representative government works. I don’t get to beg out of paying for a war I don’t support or a road I don’t use, and you don’t get to beg out of paying for social programs you don’t support, either.
No, you didn’t. You banded together with like minded bretheren and used your money, and everyone elses against their will, to do that.
As for whether some taxes are theft and others aren’t because *we* support the latter but not the former misses the point completely.
It isn’t about whether “We the People” support those programs, but whether those programs support “We the People”.
The cops don’t ask if you are rich or poor, they protect everyone equally. The military doesn’t care if you are black or white you receive the benefits of their presence just the same. The roads don’t care if you are a starving artiste with a message that needs to be heard.
Those things support *all* of us. Not just a segment of us that will sell our votes to a political party.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Yu-Ain:
To the extent that’s true, it’s true for every single dollar the government ever spends on anything at all. It’s by no means unique to social welfare programs, and that’s my point. It’s either theft for all of it, or theft for none of it. I aim for the latter.
It isn’t about whether “We the People” support those programs, but whether those programs support “We the People”.
That’s just it, though: I contend that social welfare programs do support “We the People.” Just because you don’t need them right now doesn’t mean you’ll never need them. And even if you never need them, that doesn’t mean you don’t receive ancillary benefits from the fact that they exist. Without those programs, I guarantee that you’d have a less stable society, with much more poverty and crime. They’re the price we pay for a modicum of stability.
The cops don’t ask if you are rich or poor, they protect everyone equally.
Man, I hope you wrote that yesterday, because that’s the most divorced-from-reality statement I’ve heard in a very, very long time. This blog alone is littered with examples of all manner of police discrimination and other types of not-at-all-equal treatment/protection.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Do the names “Halliburton” and “Blackwater” ring a bell? The recipients of lucrative no-bid contracts didn’t “benefit disproportionately?” You know better. It was a windfall for them.
And in WWII it was the Big 3, BFD. Pointing out that the military buys more stuff from Ford than that dude that painted The Virgin Mary in cow dung doesn’t mean, well, shit.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Man, I hope you wrote that yesterday, because that’s the most divorced-from-reality statement I’ve heard in a very, very long time. This blog alone is littered with examples of all manner of police discrimination and other types of not-at-all-equal treatment/protection.
You mean the police aren’t perfect? OMG I had no idea! I guess it just goes to show what happens when you let people in.
Dude, that’s the most stupid counter argument I think I’ve heard today.
The point is the police system is not purposefully built to protect one segment only. Examples of such are examples of aberrant and abhorent behavior.
Welfare, on the other hand, is set for the express purpose of benefiting one group of people over the other. That is it’s whole reason for existance.
That is the difference.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
“For one thing, the cost of giving government-paid abortions to every crack whore who has ever gotten one in the history of government-provided crackwhorebortions probably adds up to about a minute or two worth of costs in Iraq.”
The US government spends 3x as much on entitlements per year as it has for the entire Iraq War to date. The idea that military and entitlement spending are roughly comparable in size is complete and total hogwash.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
The same thing can be said of Corporate Welfare. It’s nothing more than a system specifically designed to benefit one entity (usually one which has the ability to help get a politician re-elected) at the expense of everyone else.
Lenin (or Stalin) is reputed to have said of Capitalists that “They would sell us the rope we will hang them with”, but socialists will gladly accept the gift of the rope by which they will hang.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
“Too many political junkies and blogger-types are excessively reverent of the Constitution for its own sake, rather than for whether something in it is actually a good idea.”
100% erroneous. And wrong.
So now I’m a “junkie” if I want to protect the American principles of liberty. I just do it for the thrill, or for the distraction– because there’s something wrong with me.
Define “blogger-type”. Be specific. Take all the time you want.
The solutions offered seem to be rooted more in the moment rather than a deep understanding of human nature and of history.
One thing that does not seem to be understood; Human nature does not change with the seasons– governments tend to accumulate power, not matter what.
Our Constitution is the Supreme Law of The Land. Some people bring it up all the time because it’s pretty damned good, and it’s being violated, not because they like it due to its old age or due to their simple-mindedness.
That which is “old” is not necessarily wrong, outdated, or questionable on that point alone, as implied.(“Old” an entirely relative term, not taking into account that human nature is vastly older still and will be around long after the U.S. is gone)
I’d add education along with religion in the First Amendment, and eliminate the 16th Amendment.
The language in the 2nd, and others, is fine, if you happen to know the language and know your history. Otherwise, see my first proposal in the previous paragraph.
The Founders warned us that the country and the constitution they handed us would only work for an educated and moral people. They were of course spot on.
There is no mere constitution that can save us from ourselves. Evidence of that is the fact that our current one is not being enforced– there’s “too much at stake” and all that rot, to be encumbered by it. Never mind that we were given a means by which it can be amended– we don’t bother with that any more.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Well, that just goes to show how little you know then. I’ll give you some fake numbers.
I made 1,000 last year. Tax time comes and my take home was $800 before I counted my wife’s money. She made 40 and when that is added into my taxes, now my take home is $775. The combination of her pay and mine made her working almost not worth it.
Had she paid taxes alone, it would have been nowhere near that, I’m sure. But the fact is OVER 50% of what she earned (when combined with my earnings) went to taxes. If you’d like, I’d be more than happy to show you my tax returns with a wager that you pay the amount she lost in taxes if I’m right.
You’ll appreciate as I say the same thing you try to say to me and inform you that is a straw man you built out of something I never said. “Levels” doesn’t mean “same as”. I didn’t say revert the government to using 1800 technology either, so good try, but wrong.
Why stop with health care and education? Do I have the right to food? Does that right require you to grow it for me? Do I not have the right to shelter? Does that right require you to build my house?
Your logic fails at economics. Health care & education are scarce resources. There are only so many doctors with a finite number of offices and limited time. Care MUST be rationed, one way or the other, be it via who has money, or by reducing the total amount anyone can receive.
Human nature is to work on incentives. If I do well and work hard, I have a better chance at making money – money I can use to pay for health care, education, or a new tattoo on my scrotum.
When the government rations health care, it does so by supposedly determining who needs the care the most and extracting the money out of others to pay for it. This can be via taxes or limiting the amount of compensation a doctor can receive. Doctors have a rough job. Lots of school and lots of responsibility. If you force them to take less pay, fewer people will be willing to do the job. Then, the amount of care will lessen.
To do so by taxes assumes that everyone now has access to the health care (since they’ve already paid for it). So, because there is a limit on the number of people who can be seen at one time, some bureaucrat will make the decision as to who needs it the most.
The good things about bureaucrats is that they are incorruptible and always make the right decisions because they have all the information available to them. They would never use their role as the decider of health care to their own advantage and the system will remain fair and impartial.
You and I both know that’s horse shit. Even if they were perfectly honest, they cannot know the medical history of each and every person and make the best judgment based on that info. Each individual has the most information about themselves to make the best choices.
My view in politics is that a system that give the individual the most control over his or her life is the best. The federal government fails because it is too big to be able to make the kinds of decisions that suit individuals the best. It is too intrusive, too unwieldy, and too beholden to those who can afford to game the system. Reduce it’s size and scope (not to nothing, even I am not dumb enough to think anarchy actually works) and allow local governments to do their job closer to the source of the governed.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Yu-Ain:
My point with the Halliburton example as well as with the police example is that you made blanket generalizations that are clearly false. They don’t even pass the laugh test. It doesn’t matter if there was also disproportionate benefit in WWII, or if the inequality in police protection is the result of some imperfection. The point is that those disproportionate benefits and inequalities clearly do exist despite your assertion to the contrary, and are often quite stark. Where I come from, how things actually work is at least as important as how they’re supposed to work in theory.
Even setting aside no-bid contracts and that sort of corruption, you still can’t make the argument that stuff like the War in Iraq benefits everyone equally, because let’s face it, Saddam Hussein was absolutely, positively NEVER a threat to Cedar Rapids, IA or Maryville, TN. Never mind al-Qaeda (let’s not open THAT can of worms here).
Jeff the Baptist:
The US government spends 3x as much on entitlements per year as it has for the entire Iraq War to date.
“Entitlements” != “Abortions for Crack Whores,” last I checked. And in any case, your number is inflated. The entitlement programs will cost $1.28 trillion in 2009, against about $650-700 billion in direct costs in Iraq so far (not counting the indirect costs). So about double, not three times. And better than half of that $1.28 trillion is paid for by the regressive FICA tax, so it’s not a case of taking from the wealthy to support the poor.
Lyle:
My point was that I’ve seen many people — liberals, conservatives, and libertarians — argue that something that’s in the constitution is a good idea because it’s in the constitution. I’d be surprised if you’ve never encountered anyone making an argument like that. For example, church/state separation advocates often throw up the first amendment and the writings of Madison and Jefferson as if those somehow justify the policy, rather than merely establishing it. I’ve seen plenty of gun rights advocates do similar for 2A. My general response is to ask them if their opinion on the matter would change if the constitution didn’t say those things, and the answer is always “Of course not.” Well, then the mere fact that something is in the constitution doesn’t make it right and good and proper, then, does it? All it means is that you currently have the constitution on your side; it doesn’t mean that your position is the best one.
If you’re reading anything more into it than that, then you’re reading too much in.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Robb:
Your numbers still don’t make sense. Suppose you’re exceptionally well-to-do, making $400K+/year. That puts you in the top current tax bracket, 35%, for your marginal income.
Suppose your wife works a part-time job at a low rate of pay. Maybe 10 hours per week at $8 per hour. That’s $80/week in gross income. Because of your high income, her income is marginal, and gets taxed at the top rate — 35%. Factor in an additional 7.65% for FICA, and you’re up to a little less than 43%. Given all those pretty unrealistic assumptions, you’d have to be subject to a state top marginal rate of at least 7.35% to hit or exceed 50%. That rate exists in ten states, plus the District of Columbia. But here’s the kicker: if you’re doing that well, then your wife almost certainly isn’t working for the money. Whether she’s taking home $39 of her $80/week or all $80 of it, she’s still not even accounting for 1% of your income. And, as I said, you have to be in about the top 1% of incomes to even approach that level.
Why stop with health care and education? Do I have the right to food? Does that right require you to grow it for me? Do I not have the right to shelter? Does that right require you to build my house?
Your slippery slope doesn’t frighten me, sorry. Let’s take it in the opposite direction, shall we? Why guarantee any rights to anyone? Because as soon as we do that, we’ll all be forced to guarantee all rights to everyone! Auuuugh! The horror! *Jumps out window*
Your logic fails at economics. Health care & education are scarce resources. There are only so many doctors with a finite number of offices and limited time. Care MUST be rationed, one way or the other, be it via who has money, or by reducing the total amount anyone can receive.
It amuses me how libertarian types believe economics isn’t a zero-sum game, except when it’s politically more convenient for them if it is. 🙂 Are you seriously arguing that the education and health care pies can’t be grown?
In any case, nobody’s arguing that we won’t have to ration those things. It’s just a matter of how strictly you ration them, and HOW you ration them. Unless you want generational poverty to be even more pronounced, I don’t see how “give it to whoever has money” is a good way to do this.
Now there are certainly many possible ways to skin the health care cat. And some ideas are better than others. My preference is to do health care in much the same way that we do education — there’s a public system, free to everyone (with certain restrictions), and which everyone pays for, and a separate private system that is open to those with the means and desire to bypass the proverbial line. As for how to manage it, should look to other systems across the world, and pick and choose what works, while scrapping what doesn’t.
As far as bureaucrats are concerned, care to tell me how that differs substantially from the health care we have today? Unless you’re extremely well-off and can afford to pay out-of-pocket for all of your health care needs, you’re probably dealing with an insurance company bureaucrat who isn’t answerable to the public, only to his shareholders. And you’re probably tied to that particular insurance company because it’s the only one your employer offers. Sure, you could go out and buy your own health plan at double or triple the cost, but that assumes you can afford to do so, and that the new insurance company would be better than the old one. I fail to see how a government bureaucrat, ultimately answerable to We the People, would be any worse in practice. And again, we could take care to put in a system of checks and balances and have an appeal process for denied claims, etc. These are problems, sure, but they’re not fatal flaws.
My view in politics is that a system that give the individual the most control over his or her life is the best. The federal government fails because it is too big to be able to make the kinds of decisions that suit individuals the best. It is too intrusive, too unwieldy, and too beholden to those who can afford to game the system. Reduce it’s size and scope (not to nothing, even I am not dumb enough to think anarchy actually works) and allow local governments to do their job closer to the source of the governed.
That’s one of those stances that looks really good on paper, but hasn’t worked out all that well in real life. I’ve heard the “it hasn’t really been tried” excuse a dozen times, but the fact that no ideologically pure version of it hasn’t been tried doesn’t mean that the principles haven’t been tested and found wanting. The whole “let Wall Street police itself” attitude of the last decade or so ought to be proof of that.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Fuck proportionality. The real issue is that war is one of the few areas where collectivism is truly inevitable. We’re either all at war with Country X or none of us are. Not so crack whores. They’ve made their own beds, let them sleep in them, if they can.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
tgirsch,
I don’t know about you, but all the way over here in Memphis, I was effected by 9/11 even though the attacks were in NY and DC.
I’m not saying Saddam was behind 9/11. Far from it. But an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Not everyone, everywhere lost lives. But families can be rather widespread and economic impacts even wider.
And of course pupose matters. Even a dog knows the difference between being stepped on and being kicked even though the pain is the same. You do not correct one mistaken inequality by by purposefully making another.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
It is not just a long current conversation, but one that started in 1787. At the time the dividing line of Federalist and Anti-Federalist is not what we think it is today, and many of the Anti-Federalists brought up problems with the Constitution often on federalist grounds. On gerrymandering the problem is not districting, per se, but the fact that you have little to no chance to actually know your Representative and be represented by them. This was a major problem brought up by multiple people and there were solutions proposed at the time for this.
The first was to not let Congress set its own size and have the people pass an amendment to change Congressional sizing. Thus you start out at 1:30,000 and then see how that works out, and the public can decide if they want to change representation. The fact that Congress can pass a law to set its size and then move from proportion to fixed size was not something that was a pleasant thought at the time of the founding by Anti-Federalists. This was prone to abuse… of which gerrymandering is one of the problems.
Part of the problem of ‘money in politics’ stems just from this fact. It is not the amount of money involved, given the size of the Nation, but how FEW Representatives there are. Going up to something at 1:30000 would remove all incentives to ‘pay off’ Representatives (for one vote in 10,000?) and that individual would be held far more accountable by that small population in which a few hundred votes one way or another determines who stays in office. There is a stark difference between the no-name Representatives we have today and someone who lives a few streets down from you. By most standards at the founding we no longer have representative democracy in a republic for the House, but a set of Aristocrats who cannot be removed save for extraordinary means.
That single, solitary change would make these massive spending bills impossible. Ditto tax bills. We bemoan the size of these documents, and yet, divide the pages up by 10,000 and the things become very amenable to distributed review. And after a day or two of that the movement to pass plain laws that are simple comes to the forefront: if you need oodles of pages to outline something it is too big to start with.
This would also put the Senate in check as ‘reconciliation bills’ would be a nightmare as any attempt to add sweetners has to re-pass that vast House. Bills from the Senate that would be over-large go into the shredder of the House.
Representative democracy is not supposed to be: neat, efficient, timely, swift. If you want those, get a dictatorship. It is the most inefficient, slow, argumentative process known to mankind when it is properly representing populations with fine granularity.
To get rid of Big Government you must return representation to the House for small population sizes.
Unless you like Aristocrats, like we have today.
But we were supposed to do something different in this Nation, not re-invent the ‘tell you what to do’ class in government. We kicked that to the side once, and need to again.
Then we can look at getting rid of the proportional taxation amendment and directly electing Senators. But first return the House back to the people so we can start shredding this government. To get small government you need a large House. Because we sure aren’t represented as it stands today.
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Yu-Ain:
We were all affected by 9/11. That doesn’t mean we were legitimately threatened by it. We’ve now had almost half again as many Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as were killed in those attacks themselves, and that doesn’t begin to count enemy casualties and innocent civilians. And I guaran-damn-tee you that our Iraq adventure hasn’t prevented another 9/11.
As for “mistaken inequalities,” you’re undermining your own arguments. How do we justify “purposefully making” such inequalities with no-bid war contracts, etc.? Are they okay because they’re ostensibly in the service of national security.
Finally, I, too, am in Memphis. We should grab a beer sometime and argue about this in person.