Part of the reason the issue has gotten out of hand is the relative weakness of states to enforce the cost of negative externalities on business. As soon as one state passes regulations, it’s too easy for many companies to pack up and leave for ‘greener’ pastures where the politicians would rather tout economic improvement at the expense of those negative externalities. As a result, problems like this often end up hoisted to the next level of government to solve issues in a more equal manner.
Just look at the ways cities were tripping over themselves to look attractive to Amazon for HQ2 to see this phenomenon in action.
OTOH, if that is the key problem, then why not make feds an arbiter specifically for such externalities? i.e. they'd be the ones establishing whether something negative is actually happening, measuring the impact, and imposing some remedy (either cease and desist or compensation, depending on which one is appropriate).
If we're talking about AGW, say, and carbon tax, then let's have the feds tax the states proportionally to their total carbon output. The states can then pass those carbon taxes onto their residents in various ways - and how exactly they are allocated is then a matter of state policy - but it has to add up.
To what extent do we actually need to have all states do exactly the same? It's a common argument, but there are many independent sovereign states out there that are smaller than many of US states, and they're doing fine solving their national problems despite their size. Sometimes - quite often - that happens with cooperation with other states, but such cooperation does not require an overarching government entity.
Sure, that means that US would not be a state in a sense that, say, France is a state, with a strong national identity and uniform politics. But does it have to be? I would argue that there is no truly democratic way to rule 300 million people from a single center, and decentralization is key to real democracy. Conversely, I don't see why my ideas and values have to be pushed on someone in the opposite corner of the country, but not, say, across the border into Canada.
> As the saying goes, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Whose saying? Last time I remember hearing that everywhere, it was to justify stuff like the PATRIOT Act and other post-9/11 abuses.
> Our Constitution wasn't written with the management of 50 states and citizens numbering nearly 350 million in mind. Our founding fathers expected that there would have been multiple constitutional conventions by this time. It's easy to see the dilution of individual voices[0]. Our founding fathers though that one representative for every 40,000 individuals was inadequate, and changed it to be closer to one for every 30,000. Today, it's one for every 700,000 on average.
The even bigger difference is that those representatives then go and vote on far more issues than they did when the system was originally devised, which increases the dilution of individual voices, by bringing more important issues to the level where their vote is at it most diluted - as opposed to state level. Of course it's going to be overwhelmed.