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[wierd]

4) how does that apply to this conversation?

Why, when you suggested this, of course

Eventually, assuming that they are a nationwide minority, they would be forced to leave the country. Ergo, you are promoting the very monoculture that you are trying to fight!

It was to point out how your point of contention does not meet with the muster of reality. Where 99% of the population is effectively shut down by 1% who has lots and lots of power, in the form of their money.

The majority decision in the US is done by the majority of votes in the congress and senate, not the majority of the wishes of the US population.  One is supposed to represent the other, but this is not the case, as evidenced by the undue influence of the 1%s.

Do I have to draw all the lines for you?

1) Your personal inability to participate in the election is notwithstanding to the issue described.
2) Population and population distribution being disparate just boils down to an alternative metric of ascribling strength of one group of people over another. It is also significantly less meaningful in a state primacy setting: people live in a single geographic area. If their politics are conserved to that geographic area, then how densely populated they are there matters not a single bit to the their neighbors, who operate under their own legislature.
3) It limits it to within individual state bounds, where the burdens of relocations are easier to overcome.

[wierd]

Rolls eyes.

Here, I know anectdote does not equal evidence, but here's some food for thought for you.  My own state representative outright told his state's constituency that he was going to vote yes for NAFTA, despite the fact that the majority of his state population was against, because he personally thought it was a good idea.

1%er does not mean what you are trying so hard to make it mean.

[Rose]

Ipsil, you forgot the first rule of sanity:  never argue with a libertarian.

[wierd]

The definition of "1%er", is literally "The 1% of the population that owns and controls 99% of the resources."

A senator in the US shares his status with however many senators are permitted based on the state's population. This number is very small. Typically no more than 3. In comparison, there are many hundreds of thousands of people living in that state. Those people do not get to vote on these issues. The 3 senators do. They control the 99% of the power, and are less than 1% of the population.  They are a kind of 1%er. The resource is voting power.

There are also financial 1%ers, who get undue influence through lobbyist groups. There is more than one way to skew a senator's vote. Controlling the exposure to information, or disguising the nature of the message are other such means, and are exactly what organized lobbying does. (When the senator hears nothing but how wonderful proposal X is, because the opponents of proposal X lack the resources to put up such an organized message, the senator is more likely to vote for than against. The senator only has so much time to invest in research.)

Again, your understanding of what and how the 1% control things is what is dubious here.

[wierd]

Ipsil, you forgot the first rule of sanity:  never argue with a libertarian.

What makes you think I am libertarian?  Also, by what magical means do you make such a clearly absurd utterance? The implications of such a statement alone have more logical fallacies attached than I can easily enumerate. Guilt by association, Bandwagon fallacy, Strawman fallacy.. where to begin!

[wierd]

Sadly, it is a joke that many people don't see as a joke. (IE, many people actually do summarily discount people's views, based exclusively on their political affiliation, with liberarians getting a very bad rap. "Libtards" being a particularly nasty appellation.)  If it was a joke, it was skirting very close to poe's law.

[wierd]

Certainly. You will find that I have already responded in a prior edit.

[wierd]

2) You misunderstand. The commerce clause prevents one state imposing economic sanction against, or prohibiting the flow of goods, people, etc from one state to another. That is its purpose, and was created expressly to prevent the painful fracturing of the nation through economic strong-arming. Thus, however more dense a specific state is populated compared to another state, has no bearing on the laws of one state being imposed upon another.  With a centralized power structure, that goes away. It is attempted to be mitigated through re balancing the number of electors (and representatives), but that does not resolve the problem of more populated states overwhelming less populated states on the legal level via the central government.  EG, "Both the east and west coast states all are for-- you heartland yokels just need to STFU."  That would not happen with state primacy. The power of those coastal states ends at their borders in such matters.

3) Given sufficient transmigration, it would not matter how they gerrymandered inside their state. Eventually, the vast majority of dissenting constituents would have migrated, leaving only the dissenters that were raised there and have yet to move.  Given sufficient levels of flagrant corruption, there might even develop migration aid support organizations to facilitate relocation.  The act of relocation itself can be a very powerful form of political protest. (See the attempted succession of the southern states from the US, and the resulting civil war, and tensions that have persisted to this very day.)

[wierd]

Pardon the double post, but I should probably actually make a true argument against state primacy in regards to laws. This will be somewhat anecdotal, but easily researched should you want direct information.

The problem I have with your solution of simply making each state have far more control over its laws is that... states can have widely varying laws. For a good example, let's look at pilot car laws (the cars that follow either in front of or behind oversized (either length, height, or width) transportations) across states, since they are already state-controlled without federal regulation (as far as I can tell). They differ widely, from the color of the flags required to the permits for working a load. Size of vehicles differ, certain equipment requirements differ, color of vehicle requirements differ; everything changes per state to some degree. This creates a situation where, say, a load traveling along the US 287 out of Amarillo to Sterling would have to pass through Oklahoma briefly in order to cross from new Mexico into Colorado. If the pilot car laws in Oklahoma require specifically that each pilot car carry two fire extinguishers in the vehicle at all times while Texas and Colorado only require one, and should the pilot car driver not be aware (trust me when I say that the law postings can be outdated or incredibly hard to find), the entire load could get shut down (oversized loads cannot travel without a pilot should state law require; state law on that also differs between states) over something as simple as not having a second fire extinguisher. If you expand this kind of issue to far more laws than what current states' laws already cover, this can result in a hell of a lot of other issues, such as homosexual couples' significant other not being called in the case of an emergency should they get in a car accident while driving from Memphis to Carbondale because while Tennessee and Illinois recognize gay marriage, Missouri doesn't, and therefore primary health care providers cannot call the couple's significant other because they can only call spouse, family, and next of kin. Medical decisions might be made that would be against their wishes as a result, creating a hell of a clusterfuck.

As for point 3, since it's 1 AM and I do need to sleep:

3) You're still assuming that the rational response to an opposed law is to pack up and leave.

2) The increased variety of expression of laws is exactly the goal, you are complaining that it causes this! WTF! Taken to its extreme, you are arguing for world government to have totally homogenized and standardized everythings, damn the consequences.

3) It is, when your options are either "Abandon your beliefs, or go to jail" as the alternatives.

Here, let's flip this around:  Let's assume that the SCOTUS ruled that marriage is "Only between a man and a woman", instead of the ruling we actually got.  Now, you have lots of gay people that had previously gotten married, living together happily, in states that had permitted those marriages, suddenly being told "Nope, totally not married now. SCOTUS says so."  Do you still claim that you are married, and then risk going to jail-- or do you move someplace with less officious laws?

[wierd]

The state level is already a compromise!!!

The united states of america is very much like the eurozone.  At inception, all states were intended to operate as mostly autonomous nations, federated loosely under a common trade network and common currency.

This is opposed to say, radical law conflicts within states by individual cities, or districts.

You are just pointing to a different point on the slope, and saying "I like it there better-- for reasons."

If you look back about 10 posts, you will see that I expressly said that state primacy was such a compromise.

[wierd]

That is because the federal government was not ceded that power.

(and there is a reason it was not ceded that power.  Take the extreme evolution of centralized government: The one world government. Let's assume that we have our 'regressive' outcome I postulated previously, except now it is global.  There are no other nations to move to. To move away from the problem, you have to literally move off the planet.  Now-- Do you risk going to jail, to continue claiming your spouse-- OR, do you go underground, and in public tow the line, and live in a repressive environment?  To prevent that happening, and to ensure that there is always some place to move to, state primacy needs to exist.)

[wierd]

I have not, no.  The issue of state primacy is itself a compromise!

It is a compromise between the need for some kind of over-reaching legal doctrines within a federated network of sub-nations, and the need to prevent the abuses of power that a central authority represents.

It is ITSELF a compromise. 

[wierd]

Who's arguing slippery slopes now?

This is very much why the constitution explicitly laid out what powers what governments had, where they started, and where they stopped. Who controlled what, and how.


I am just taking your trend toward central authority, and exposing its faults with an argument ad absurdium.

The world is a vastly more culturally rich place with multiple sovereign nations engaging in trade agreements than it is operating under a unified world government. State primacy operates only slightly differently than that.

[Dutchling]

What's wrong with a unified world government? I mean, you guys would have to learn Dutch of course, but other than that it's not a big deal imo.

[wierd]

It is the ultimate progression along the argument path you have laid.

"We have shipping containers from different countries that dont follow uniform sizes, capacities, and color codes!"  Only really viable solution? World government.

"We have all these different systems of weight and measure, how can we have standards that mean something globally!?" Only really viable solution: World government.

Etc. etc.

Those are logical extrapolations from your "pilot car" rhetoric.