I am not tied to the arbitrary boundaries which now define the states. In fact, there are several states that would function much better if broken up into smaller chunks—California being at the top of the list.

What one person calls ‘contentious’, someone else might call ‘vigourous’. Politics is the domain of un-agreed-upon questions. But to Connor, the fact that we have an ongoing national debate at all is evidence that it’s time to bust up the Union!

Vigorous debate is perfectly fine, so long as both parties are willing to find middle ground and come to a consensus. There are certain topics being pushed at the federal level, though, that are political dealbreakers for many people, including myself. There are some moral issues that people do not want to capitulate on, and if left to communities/states, it would be far easier to shape public policy according to the general consensus of those choosing to live near one another.

Because of course you can’t have a country unless everyone agrees on everything, just like in the old days.

This is a mischaracterization of my argument. I am not arguing for some Utopian state sans diversity. Rather, I am arguing for moving the creation and enforcement of domestic policy to where the people themselves can have an influential say. Individual influence and federal government are hardly synonymous.

But the really odd thing about this post is Connor’s discussion of open questions in the national discourse. What one person calls ‘contentious’, someone else might call ‘vigourous’. Politics is the domain of un-agreed-upon questions. But to Connor, the fact that we have an ongoing national debate at all is evidence that it’s time to bust up the Union! Because of course you can’t have a country unless everyone agrees on everything, just like in the old days. What a weird thing to say, what a strange view of history, and really what a telling indicator of the hostility that authoritarians feel toward people whose actions they can’t control.

You take New York City that is broken up into boroughs. That is because the city has so many citizens that even the city government is somewhat detached from the voice of the people. So in this megalopolis, there should even be some “borough rights”.

The point is that people need to have a voice. Whatever mechanism is in place to give the people a voice, then the governing body with such mechanism should have power to effect individuals to a somewhat equal degree to which the individual has power to effect the government.

When the individual is one voice in 700k. And that representative is only one voice in hundreds. Additionally, the methods employed by the political parties today tend to decrease the actual voice people have in the voting booth.

Thus the individual doesn’t have much power to influence government. So, the government shouldn’t have such power to influence the individual. The role at that point is only to protect the country from foreign invaders and protect the rights of individuals from the abuse from other governmental bodies.

The lower levels of government will have analagous duties until you get down to a level where the individual has enough of a voice to work WITH government to make policies that make sense for all in that jurisdiction.

You implied Prop 8 as a contradiction. While we work towards the above ideal, we don’t live in that now. So, we have to fight a two front war. Sometimes this seems contradictory. But it is really the practical response to fighting a two front war.

For instance, the ideal would be for government to stay out of marriage entirely. But it is already meddling with marriage. So while we work for government to get out of marriage, we also have to fight the battle against government corrupting the idea of traditional marriage.

I don’t care if some gay couple wants to call themselves “married”. The reason why this is an issue at all is that government meddles with marriage. Individuals can’t really corrupt traditional marriage (at least it would take a lot of individuals). Government can corrupt it with the opinions of a very few.

Look, I get that you’re in favour of keeping power in the hands of states. But the argument in this post is kind of strange. At what point does a country become too big to manage with a strong federal government? Have you done the math on this? Show your work. Otherwise, your size limit seems very arbitrary indeed. Will we see people arguing that their state is too big to reflect their interests, and the subsequent rise of “cities’ rights”?

I’m not concerned about that though. I’m naïve enough to think that American principles are strong and flexible enough to govern absolutely all Americans. And key among those principles are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So in your example:

As just one example, while many citizens of San Francisco may agree with each other on gay marriage, their common values stand at odds with those shared by people living in Provo, Utah.

then the people of Provo, Utah will just have to live their own lives and not try to direct the lives of people living in San Francisco. Or, indeed, gay people in Provo, Utah. You don’t allow people to vote away the rights of a minority. More liberty, not less, even if restricting liberty is popular with some people.

I’d say a strong federal government can be an agent for positive change.

You can’t isolate actions and extrapolate the net effect of something. Pretty much anything predominantly evil or destructive can have “positive change”. It’s like saying that the war in Iraq is a good thing because some military engineers have developed a better electricity infrastructure in some Iraqi towns. Ignoring all the other bad stuff to simply focus on one small ray of “positive change” is dangerous.

I once related to a conservative friend of mine, the concern I had with government getting bigger and more socialistic. He asked me the question,”What’s the difference between a Capitalist Republic run by corrupt politicians and a Socialist Republic run by corrupt politicians?”

I didn’t have an immediate answer for that. It was obvious that if those in power are corrupt, it doesn’t matter what system you have,

Then it occurred to me that he was asking the wrong question. The more enlightening question is,”What is the difference between a Capitalist Republic run by GOOD men and a Socialist Republic run by GOOD men?”

There are two differences:

1) Power corrupts. ’nuff said.
2) Capitalism is a mechanism that works. You just need to keep rules in place that keeps people honest. That is the key to capitalism — honesty. Socialism by nature degrades the bigger it gets. No one has the know how to regulate huge economies in an efficient manner. It is better to let market forces work.

Commentary:

Honesty is more than telling the truth or living up to contracts. It is an attitude of making sure everyone knows what is going on. It is an attitude of fair play. But it does not mean anyone gets a free ride (rich OR poor).

If everything were completely known with the right perspective, I believe 100 unbiased, common sense individuals would overwhelmingly come to the same conclusions.

If allowed to run freely and honestly, companies that get too large would eventually get so inefficient that they would fail on their own. The primary reason big companies survive little ones is because large companies get lots of breaks not available to little companies.

You want to get rid of big business? You don’t need to give an unfair advantage to the little guy. Just even the playing field.

Back to the topic at hand: If a country gets too big, it is time for it to fail. But if there are atificial mechanisms in place to prop it up, it can stay long past its natural expiration date. And it will not be pleasant.

Should the states have been left to themselves to do things in their own sweet time? I’d say a strong federal government can be an agent for positive change.

I’ve been wondering lately about the number of people per representative. I had thought about the chaos that would have ensued if we had approximately 10,000 representatives in the House (if we were still working with the 30,000 citizens rule). Where would they even meet?

Even if the logistics of meeting was provided for, you’d still have the virtually impossible listening to each representative’s point of view on each topic.

The only way to save such a thing would be to give up more power from the Federal government (and thus responsibility) to the States. The States then having more power from federal would have to give up more power to the local governments.

Any other idea I came up with would lead to either dissolution, or monarchy. Since we haven’t dissolved, nor have states started to secede (yet) I certainly see lots of evidence that we’ve been moving towards a monarchy.

The meaning of the post title is rather subtle: “Too Big, To Fail” means that the centralized government is too big and it will fail. Heck, it’s failing already. Once these morons get their centralized health care in place, it will take a horribly broken system (largely because of existing governmental regulation) and make it completely unusable. I count it as a long term good thing: things will get so bad that many will have to find a real solution rather than limping along with what we have now. Sometimes things have to get much worse before they will get better.

(edit: Looks like Conner got to the meaning of the title as I was typing my comment.)

Just one minor thing:

And so now I return to the theme of the post, “Too big to fail.”

The title of this post is actually a slight play on the “too big to fail” mantra. You’ll notice I inserted a comma, thus implying that America is both too big and will (unless something changes) fail.

“May you live in interesting times” doesn’t imply that they will be fun and exciting, just interesting.

Indeed.

Unfortunately the only way that revolutionary acts occur are through revolutionary means. I am not advocating nor condoning any kind of violent uprising, but my point is that we are not going to simply “evolve” into a better structure, something big has to happen to drive that change. By big I mean, disruptive to the status quo and the day to day operations and expectations affecting the majority of the population. Something like the current financial meltdown and the Federal Government’s poor attempt to stave it off combined with things going on internationally have that potential.

And so now I return to the theme of the post, “Too big to fail.” One way I interpret that rhetoric is that if these institutions that are “too big to fail” do in fact fail, then the status quo will be disrupted. It certainly won’t be pretty or fun, but sooner or later it may prove inevitable due to well-meaning leaders trying to hold back a tidal wave of personal and corporate greed and lack of planning for the future.

“May you live in interesting times” doesn’t imply that they will be fun and exciting, just interesting.

And empires do fail.