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A comment on The United States’ Unamendable Constitution. Parent comment

Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by closeparen on Thursday October 27, 2022 @12:00AM (#33352916)
The economy turns out to be a pretty big deal, and Commerce Clause aside, states by design have little leverage over it: their borders being open, capital can always just head next door. Small federal government is basically equivalent to right-libertarian economic policy. In an alternate universe you might see liberals content to build welfare states at state level, but in this one it's not really an option.

The framers were well before the Industrial Revolution; if they intended a right-libertarian bias, the economy they wanted unchecked was a smaller and tamer beast than this one. But anyway, they did give us the Commerce Clause.

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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by DebtDeflation on Thursday October 27, 2022 @07:30AM (#33356034)
>The framers were well before the Industrial Revolution

They were well before radio, TV, internet, trains, automobiles, airplanes, nuclear power, and many other things that do not strictly respect state lines. "Leave most decisions to the states" made a lot of sense in 1789 but we live in a different world now.

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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by rayiner on Thursday October 27, 2022 @07:41AM (#33356106)
I don’t really buy this. Somehow Europe manages pretty well with much smaller and more granular country level decision making units.
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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by closeparen on Thursday October 27, 2022 @02:43PM (#33362083)
The EU famously makes a lot of policy!
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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by xyzzyz on Thursday October 27, 2022 @09:15PM (#33366293)
Only barely more than half of the European countries are in EU, and 20 years ago, less than a third was.
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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by rayiner on Thursday October 27, 2022 @10:54PM (#33367038)
Not compared to what democrats want the US federal government to do. EU countries have their own gun laws, separate healthcare, retirement, and unemployment systems, separate housing and labor laws, etc. Separate laws on abortion, same sex marriage, and other social issues.
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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by tptacek on Friday October 28, 2022 @06:34PM (#33378833)
This is weird, because you're crediting sovereign states for having their "own" national health care, retirement, unemployment, and housing systems, and in the wildest dreams of the Democratic party we wouldn't have a national system for all of these things.

It makes sense if you sort of skim over the idea that Germany, Sweden, and Spain are just "states" in a federation. But obviously, they are not.

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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by rayiner on Friday October 28, 2022 @08:26PM (#33379693)
@debtinflation was making a pragmatic argument: that modernity renders these granular state lines obsolete. My point is that the EU manages to keep chugging with all these little sovereign states of 5-10 million people managing their own healthcare and retirement systems

Maybe a US state is something legally different than an EU country, maybe not. I would say the two weren’t intended to be different, and whatever trends have produced such a difference were a mistake. Either way, that doesn’t address the practicality question.

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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by DebtDeflation on Saturday October 29, 2022 @08:45AM (#33383576)
Look at the specific examples I provided. European countries closely coordinate their regulation of radio spectrum, air traffic control, nuclear power, and pollution through the EC even if individual countries have separate national regulators on paper.
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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by rayiner on Saturday October 29, 2022 @09:26AM (#33383849)
Sure. Obviously the US does stuff. But that’s very limited compared to what happens (and people want to happen) at the federal level US.
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Re:The United States’ Unamendable Constitution by prottog on Thursday October 27, 2022 @09:19AM (#33357066)
We do have to acknowledge that the Commerce Clause has been twisted to federally regulate things that are probably outside what the framers intended. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court gave the federal government authority to fine a farmer for growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm! Neither interstate nor commerce involved. Or Gonzales v. Raich, or any number of other cases.
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