Part of that tension is what's led to the the current situation with COVID— the federal government is where the CDC is, so there's an expectation that they're the ones providing centralized coordination and guidance for a measured, unified, national response.

If each state has its own version of the CDC (and other similar agencies), then that's fine, but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states whose agencies may have come to differing conclusions about what measures are needed.

> but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states

Commerce Clause of the US Constitution stands in a way. It (the Commerce Clause) has been a bedrock of the federal government pushing through progressive policies onto the states.

The commerce clause and related federal growth are all a result from FDR. It's why we have a war on drugs, it's why the government can seem to do anything. It once required amendments for the government to do new things - a government of enumerated powers, now it can do anything.

The analogy to keep in mind is very simple.

If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically>

Yes there is a CDC in every state. It would be utterly ludicrous spend of cash to have an independent, not cooperative CDC in each state attempting to manage and solve the same problems.

> If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically>

This makes sense, but what about one level up? I live in an apartment building, and in our building each family buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner. It does not matter how much you scrimp and save, it is still cheaper on the whole for the building to buy raw ingredients and make dinner for all families. The cost goes down dramatically.

This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each building buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire city buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically.

This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each city buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire State to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically.

This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each State buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire Union to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the States, cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically.

This also makes sense, but what about one level up? If each Union/country buys groceries and cooks dinner for all of their buildings and homes, it does not matter how much they scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole for the entire world to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for all of the nations, States, cities, their buildings and their families. The cost goes down dramatically.

We both agree that at some point, this stopped making sense. The question is: is an ideologically divided Union of 330 million people across 50 states with their own Constitutions and governments equivalent to a “house of five”?

Not only that, if you had to buy groceries through a blind auction, and price gougers knew that you needed the exact same items and were willing to pay whatever price it took, rampant profiteering would happen.

The current system is effectively all 50 states in an eBay-style bidding war over the same limited resources.

Each state does have its own version of the CDC.

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/fsis-content/inter...

> I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government.

No EPA. No DOE. No equality under the law. No EOC. No NLRB. No Amtrak. No federal enforcement of consent decrees. No voting right act. No gay marriage, etc?

Edit: Thanks for downvotes. Every single one of these is enforced by federal and not state courts. It is federal court that gave us Roe v. Wade, for example. It is a federal court that prevents Alabama from running its own little fiefdom. It is a federal courts that gave us Brown v. Board of Education.

The parent suggested a degree of change along a spectrum, you list possible consequences that might occur only if one takes the most extreme form.

I don’t know that I’d put Amtrak on a list of things that I’m thankful we have a federal government to provide...

Have you ever met a DOE program manager? Have you ever personally dealt with an EOC lawsuit? I've done both, and let me tell you neither of those organizations comes anywhere near what you seem to imply they do. I'm not convinced society wouldn't be better without them.

A major thing the DOE does is keep track of where the world's plutonium is— it's energy-related, but also a national security matter. Michael Lewis's excellent book The Fifth Risk examines some of these agency functions in the context of what was lost when there Trump administration stepped into power with essentially no transition plan or concept of how to run them.

You're making my point.

Them having critically important functions that are different from what their names might imply is not at all the same thing as "we'd be better off without them".

I was definitely in the "we don't need this reorg" camp when the DHS was created. Which camp were you in?

Already tried that, the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The founders quickly discovered the federal government was too weak.

But alas, one of those founders, Jefferson, argued we should rewrite the constitution every 19 years.

And another founder, Hamilton, argued that ambition must be made to counteract ambition. And that government is a reflection on human nature, most directly its citizens. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp

Jefferson’s opinions on political processes changed drastically after the French Revolution, by the by.

What's an example?

Personally, it made him cool significantly on France, which is in pretty stark contrast to where he started. He ended up siding with Hamilton on expelling the French diplomat who both threatened American neutrality, and was kind of gearing up to try and overthrow George Washington. And Jefferson hated Hamilton.

Politically, it moderated him significantly. He started off as very pro-revolution, pro “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots”, and by the end he ended up regretting France not shifting into a constitutional monarchy. This is after both witnessing The Storming of the Bastille in person (he was an ambassador then), defending the September Massacres[0], and knowing quite a few people who were executed during the terror.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Massacres

I wouldn't.

There is a comfort that comes from the instability of party switches. The parties don't cooperate, which means less can get done. Anything that puts anyone in an area where one of the gangs of politicians can actually do something, is to be avoided. We've learned that the hard way in Wisconsin.

As a general rule, it's always best to split up your government as much as you can.

Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. The polarization in the US is likely a direct result of the massive deadlock.

Your strategy is one guaranteed to ruin your country.

>Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things.

This opinion requires a great deal of justification.

Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? The government has basically been in gridlock since 2010, and voters have increasingly rewarded extreme policians who seek to shift the overton window over compromise politicians who work across party lines to find a middle ground.

The book American Carnage is a fantastic deep dive on this (and extremely fair and even-handed, despite the bombastic title).

>Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now?

If "that" is the cause-effect relationship claimed above, no we are not "seeing" this right now. There is a huge difference between events and the narratives, accurate or otherwise, which some people use to explain those events. The system under consideration is insanely complex, with an immense list of causal factors at play. To me, in my opinion, it's obvious that the causal relationship described above is at best a tiny contributor that is, itself, dependent on other factors also being present. At worst, it's completely wrong and a distraction from understanding the real causes.

This opinion requires a great deal of justification.

Can you be more specific, please? Not all of my comment was mere opinion.

There are democratic nations with many more parties than we have, and the quality of governance in many of these nations has proven to be as serviceable as the quality of governance in the US. (Some might even argue that many of these nations have displayed superior governance to the US despite the power being split up among so many parties that they need coalitions to accomplish the little they can get done.) I've never really found myself persuaded by the skepticism against split governments.

Now there may be a point of diminishing returns. As in 5 parties are as good as 10, are as good as 15. But that's an academic question, and we're not even at 5 parties yet.

On the other end, maybe 500 parties is self defeating, as you say. But we're nowhere near that either.

It could be argued that governance is better in other countries at least in part because there are more parties. After all, it enables alternative voices to be represented better, and it reduces the power of centralised party structures.

On the other hand, too many parties becomes unwieldy, and I'd argue that 10 is already going to be too many in practice.

Historical experience in the early 20th century led many countries to develop minimum bars, e.g. parties with fewer than 5% of the vote not getting any seats in parliament.

And most of those countries have proportional representation. Good luck changing that in the US.

The government has continued to spend more and more and continue fighting wars around the world; so despite their disagreements in public -- they seem to agree a whole lot.

The problem with less getting done is that it applies to all levels of government. Want to change your yard landscaping? Nope! Not when your neighbors, town, county, and state all have to separately approve it.

If we kept a common market, and common currency, you would see lots of failed states like we’ve seen with Greece in the EU.

Yes but you would also see lots of extremely advanced states like we’ve seen with Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Estonia in the EU