What's the point of states?

[Mouthwash]

They...

1. Were arbitrarily drawn by 19th-century colonial bureaucrats.

2. Don't really correspond to any sort of social, geographical, or political entity.

3. Prevent any sort of civic consciousness; everybody within this dotted line stuffed together!

4. Allow the Senate (by definition an anti-democratic institution) to force the government of a confederacy onto a federation, essentially "checking and balancing" the vote of the people. Which is not to say that the House works- the United States being held hostage for sixteen days by an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell the elected representatives of sixty-three of its congressional districts should have made that abundantly clear. Still, it's the principle of the thing.

I think we are in need of immediate constitutional reform, with the hope of totally abolishing the States as well as the Senate. Unfortunately this aspect of our history is criticized the least; college kids may find it edgy to debunk Civil War myths, but don't care about the fascists who now wield about as much power as it is possible to have in this country without violently overthrowing the government.

As for the Founding Fathers and their dear departed Vision For America, I don't think it's possible to make a better refutation than our current state of affairs. Nothing and nobody is to blame for taking us off of their course- if the Constitution was worth a damn, it wouldn't have allowed it to happen at all! Must I point out, in fact, that that is the entire point of constitutions?

Nobody will take serious action until we reach a crisis.

 

[warpus]

The jump from municipal to federal is often just too damn high. A middlething is needed.

 

[Hygro]

I dunno, but California #1 all you other staters can step off

 

[bhsup]

I do not approve of this thread.

 

[Antilogic]

Don't worry, VR, I object to the OP's characterization of the states as being drawn by 19th century bureaucrats.

Spoiler :

Some of them were arbitrarily drawn by 17th and 18th century royal/corporate charters.

 

[Mouthwash]

The jump from municipal to federal is often just too damn high. A middlething is needed.

I accept the need for provincial governments, but it could surely have been done better than this.

 

[Tee Kay]

Federalism or some other kind of formal regional autonomy is necessary to prevent power from being overly concentrated in one or two national centres of power.

US federalism might be broken in all the ways you listed but they are important. A country as large and diverse as the United States cannot survive as a unitary polity. Even China, a nominally unitary state, has elements of de facto federalism.

 

[sophie]

2. Don't really correspond to any sort of social, geographical, or political entity.

California is bound by the Colorado river in the south, the Sierra Nevada Mountain range in the east, the Cascade Mountain Range in the north, and the Pacific ocean in the west. Those are all geographical entities.

California also corresponds to the fairly unique dialect that its residents speak. Of course there's also the 150-year long shared history and government. California, at least, is a lot more cohesive than the picture you (and Elon Musk) paints.

Are states arbitrary? Are nationalities also mostly arbitrary? Yes. A nationality is really just a state which has existed long enough for a sense of shared identity to develop. I'd argue that this has happened in many, if not all of the states in the Union.

 

[bhsup]

Actually, Mouthwash has a point in that the condition we're in now, States really are almost pointless. Here is how I would fix it...

• Remove the popular election of Senators and go back to having them appointed by the State government. Make them again beholden to the State as an entity and not to the popular masses across the nation, which is what we have now. The Senate is basically House 2, which sucks donkey butt.
• Alter the Electoral College so that each State only gets one vote in the college. Each State is an equal sovereign willful member of this voluntary union and I fail to see why Missouri should have more say than Wyoming, or less than California, in the selection of the leader of the Federal (federal, not national, there is supposed to be a difference) executive branch.
• Make it a capital crime for any judge to declare anything "interstate commerce" which isn't really direct transfer of commerce across State lines.
• Actually, just make it a capital crime to be a judge or lawyer. Appoint me to interpret the Constitution.

 

[Farm Boy]

4. Allow the Senate (by definition an anti-democratic institution) to force the government of a confederacy onto a federation, essentially "checking and balancing" the vote of the people. Which is not to say that the House works- the United States being held hostage for sixteen days by an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell the elected representatives of sixty-three of its congressional districts should have made that abundantly clear. Still, it's the principle of the thing.

The principle of the thing could also easily be defined as: "Enforcing the will of the majority while preserving the rights of the minority." As structured, the Senate makes things harder to do without a broader consensus of different geographic regions, regions that often have differing interests. The stymieing of efficient enactment of the majority will used to irritate me more than it does now, due to as you say the principle of the thing. Anymore though I'm not sure speedy enactment of the will of the popular majority is always so benign. I trust the judiciary to protect the minority less than I used to.

 

[warpus]

I accept the need for provincial governments, but it could surely have been done better than this.

I do not disagree, the autonomy your states get seemingly prevents your country from adopting such things as education standards, worker protection standards, healthcare standards, and so on. It ends up hurting people in the end, and all for the notion of "provincial rights".

What country would you say is closest to your vision to what a state/province should be?

 

[Harv]

I do not disagree, the autonomy your states get seemingly prevents your country from adopting such things as education standards, worker protection standards, healthcare standards, and so on. It ends up hurting people in the end, and all for the notion of "provincial rights".

What country would you say is closest to your vision to what a state/province should be?

What do you mean by autonomy?

Is there anything similar to this in the US constitution?

Section 33.

(1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15.

(2) An Act or a provision of an Act in respect of which a declaration made under this section is in effect shall have such operation as it would have but for the provision of this Charter referred to in the declaration.

(3) A declaration made under subsection (1) shall cease to have effect five years after it comes into force or on such earlier date as may be specified in the declaration.

(4) Parliament or the legislature of a province may re-enact a declaration made under subsection (1).

(5) Subsection (3) applies in respect of a re-enactment made under subsection (4).

 

[Antilogic]

Actually, Mouthwash has a point in that the condition we're in now, States really are almost pointless. Here is how I would fix it...

• Remove the popular election of Senators and go back to having them appointed by the State government. Make them again beholden to the State as an entity and not to the popular masses across the nation, which is what we have now. The Senate is basically House 2, which sucks donkey butt.
• Alter the Electoral College so that each State only gets one vote in the college. Each State is an equal sovereign willful member of this voluntary union and I fail to see why Missouri should have more say than Wyoming, or less than California, in the selection of the leader of the Federal (federal, not national, there is supposed to be a difference) executive branch.
• Make it a capital crime for any judge to declare anything "interstate commerce" which isn't really direct transfer of commerce across State lines.
• Actually, just make it a capital crime to be a judge or lawyer. Appoint me to interpret the Constitution.

Alternatively, we could not do that.

 

[uppi]

Remove the popular election of Senators and go back to having them appointed by the State government. Make them again beholden to the State as an entity and not to the popular masses across the nation, which is what we have now. The Senate is basically House 2, which sucks donkey butt.

You are not going far enough here: The requirement to have an appointee is a requirement of past centuries. These days, there is nothing preventing the senate to be composed of the state government themselves. That way they are robbing themselves of power when they agree to a federal power grab.

Alter the Electoral College so that each State only gets one vote in the college. Each State is an equal sovereign willful member of this voluntary union and I fail to see why Missouri should have more say than Wyoming, or less than California, in the selection of the leader of the Federal (federal, not national, there is supposed to be a difference) executive branch.

Very bad idea. Any central government needs to be legitimized by all the people. Otherwise you are replacing tyranny of the majority with tyranny of the minority.

Forget about the sovereignty of the states. They are not sovereign and cannot be under a federal states. If you want a sovereign states, you need to have a confederacy like the European Union.

Make it a capital crime for any judge to declare anything "interstate commerce" which isn't really direct transfer of commerce across State lines.
Actually, just make it a capital crime to be a judge or lawyer. Appoint me to interpret the Constitution.

If you want to enforce your vision of the state you should alter or rewrite your constitution instead of reinterpreting and bending an 18th century document to fit your vision.

 

[tetley]

I have said it before, but it's all about the corruption, not the system. Good people can make any system work. And indeed, a benevolent dictatorship is the single best system of government. Corrupt people can find their way to twist and screw up any system you give them, be it confederacy, federal, monolithic, whatever. If the national leaders are corrupt, then I want a weak national government. If the provincial leaders are corrupt, then I want a strong national government. If they're all corrupt, then I start liking anarchy. It's not the system, it's the people.

 

[uppi]

Corrupt people do not magically appear on important positions. They get there through the system. and that system can encourage or discourage corruption by either blocking or boosting corrupt people.

If your system is a contest who can collect the most money from donors, then there it should be no surprise that the people put in power by that system are loyal to their donors.

 

[warpus]

What do you mean by autonomy?

I am talking about the notion of "states rights", that is so commonly referenced in American political discourse. (At least it seems to be)

 

[tetley]

We have a chicken-or-the-egg question here: does corruption (or the [fortunate] lack of it) come from the system, or the system from the corruption? I am unequivocally taking sides on that one: it's the latter.

 

[Harv]

I have said it before, but it's all about the corruption, not the system. Good people can make any system work. And indeed, a benevolent dictatorship is the single best system of government. Corrupt people can find their way to twist and screw up any system you give them, be it confederacy, federal, monolithic, whatever. If the national leaders are corrupt, then I want a weak national government. If the provincial leaders are corrupt, then I want a strong national government. If they're all corrupt, then I start liking anarchy. It's not the system, it's the people.

There is a lot in this statement I agree with, and very little (not worth mentioning, if anything) I disagree with.

The last statement resonates. We are not just talking about the people in power. We are also talking about the people who vote and participate in the system - or not. It sounds like, "take a look in the mirror!"

 

[Mouthwash]

California is bound by the Colorado river in the south, the Sierra Nevada Mountain range in the east, the Cascade Mountain Range in the north, and the Pacific ocean in the west. Those are all geographical entities.

California also corresponds to the fairly unique dialect that its residents speak. Of course there's also the 150-year long shared history and government. California, at least, is a lot more cohesive than the picture you (and Elon Musk) paints.

California is essentially the entire southwestern United States. The Cascade Mountains seem like a natural border to the north, but it's somewhat disingenuous to argue that California was a product of sensible statesmanship when the other three borders are Desert Wasteland, Ocean Coast, and Foreign Country.

(You might also be interested in this.)

Now, can you explain to me what business Wyoming and Utah have in existing? Or what about such silly entities as Delaware? If I travel between South Carolina and Georgia, by what purpose am I falling under a different sovereignty? They and all their cities are one geographical entity. If Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama were one state than that would make some measure of sense.

Look at Germany. Every province is literally forged out of history. Americans don't perceive the ridiculousness of the states not only because states are irrelevant to their lives, but because huge distances and a low population density create the impression of endless frontier.

States do make sense if we are settling the entire western half of a continent and need some form of organization.

Are states arbitrary? Are nationalities also mostly arbitrary? Yes. A nationality is really just a state which has existed long enough for a sense of shared identity to develop.

Not really. You can essentially predict the fortunes and cohesiveness of states by their geographical locations. It's not very hard to realize that what happens on the Nile River is going to be different than the Levant.

I'd argue that this has happened in many, if not all of the states in the Union.

No, the opposite happened. The expansion across North America was basically the largest scale human migration in history. People settled down in various places, built communities, and religions and dialects spring up. Globalization has destroyed all that. Look at Atlanta! There is no Atlanta, just a conglomerate of buildings surrounded by miles and miles of suburbs.

Another curiosity is the retention of culture across these eras. The Nolan Batman trilogy had to tie itself into knots to squirm some sense into itself- why would a city be the focus of a patriotic crusade for justice? It had to reframe the villains as terrorists or whatever and provide a coherent explanation for why people couldn't just up and leave.

What country would you say is closest to your vision to what a state/province should be?

I dunno. I'm not an expert on federations.