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Unitary states are poo poo, so of course the US should remain a federation. That was easy.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:03
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HorseLord posted:It would be cool if the US stopped being a federation, and was instead abolished. Oh look it's the unironic Stalinist who's upset his favorite pseudofederation got abolished. Locke Dunnegan posted:It should have been obvious by now but I meant the initial post to be taken as a straightforward request for information relating to the topic of discussion. I don't quite get how it could have been taken as a tongue-in-cheek "take that, atheists" type of post, but here we are. I'd like to assume you all are just raring for a good roast on a random dude you can make assumptions and stereotypes about as a retarded edgy echo chamber clusterfuck, but considering only a couple posters have deigned to give me anything resembling a proper response and the shitposterest of shitposts haven't been probated or anything, I think I just hosed up somewhere. It was a sloppy first post but it was meant to be in good faith, I'm sorry if I offended anyone or made people think I had ulterior motives. I'm sorry dude but federalization is one of the few things the United States has undoubtedly correct. And there's more than 2 centuries of infrastructure and interdependence laid down that will fall the gently caress apart if any sort of breakup is done.
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Apr 14, 2015 02:02
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Typo posted:I think the US should be reassembled as the United Soviet States of America. The UK system is horrible poo poo, what would make you think any of it would work?
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Apr 14, 2015 02:57
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Typo posted:Why? The UK system of half assed devolution is horribly broken, as is the life time appointment upper house. Furthermore they maintain FPTP despite being a parliamentary system, which basically is awful. There is no reason to reduce the US to a system where the majority of the country uses the congress for what are state level laws now, with the residents of the remaining states maintaining state government also voting on the national congress' issues for the un-state-ified remainder. Bel Shazar posted:Proportional* Congress could expand itself at any time to address this, they just need to pass a new reapportionment bill.
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Apr 14, 2015 03:03
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Typo posted:You don't have to copy the feature precisely, you can have the senate as oppose to the house of lords being the upper house for instance. I don't understand what you think we need from the British system then. Parliamentary systems don't really work correctly when you have FPTP, and once you replace FPTP a presidential republic works just fine. Honestly both the Canadian and British systems are super broken, and it's lunacy to demand them in whole or in part.
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Apr 14, 2015 03:10
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Bel Shazar posted:Look, if you want to keep things as close to the way they are written, I'm all for enforcing Article 1 Section 2 and having 2 U.S. Code § 2a subsection (a) declared unconstitutional, but an 11k House might bring its own problems. Uh what does that have to do with the way it's written? Noone's saying we need to hit the no more than one rep per 30,000 limit that the constitution has, and the law that says "we're not going to bother beyond 435" can be overturned with a simple majority, much like all the routine reapportionment bills before 1920 worked. The current House facilities can fit 1100-1200 Reps easily, and that would, by making sure each state has at least 2 reps, heavily combat disproportianism.
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Apr 14, 2015 03:27
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Incidentally one of the hugest problems many states have are ridiculous things the voters approved of, like prop 13, the general TABOR (taxpayer bill of rights) laws and balanced budget amendments. All of these things cripple any ability to plan for the future.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:01
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:I hate to ask a question I could research myself but I'm at work. How does say France or Germany organise the state? How about Australia? Something like that may work better since I don't think any of thier subdivisions or "states" were ever sovereign entities. France is semi-unitary. Germany and Australia are federations, with Australia leaving a whole lot more powers directly to the states (for example when they enacted their famous gun restrictions, their constitution has it illegal for the federal government to regulate guns, meaning all the states had to pass their own versions of the same bill).
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Apr 14, 2015 14:58
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Locke Dunnegan posted:Popping in to say that pretty much all the pot shots at me as OP are unfounded, incorrect straw men. Maybe that's the joke, but I don't get it. It's more that your beliefs are indistinguishable from parody.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:49
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Venom Snake posted:If you want an honest answer the wealthy states with the biggest cash flow would just build armies to take over the poor states and thus we would be back to the Union once again. Also what happens to the U.S. Military and all our nuclear weapons? Also most of the large and even middling states already have substantial state forces. Hell, the NYC PD could probably project force in the Midwest with their arsenal alone.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:21
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enraged_camel posted:
Among other things it would help ensure they continue to get power and water made possible by the Hoover Dam (they'd probably make sure to hold the Arizona side of the Colorado River too) as well as seizing the income potential of Vegas' attractions. Not to mention that Nevada has rich mining resources - $8 billion dollars in gold and silver mining alone for 2013. The state produces 75% of America's mined gold. Why wouldn't they want to seize Nevada, especially when it'd be poorly defended? Locke Dunnegan posted:The beliefs you think I have are the straw men. That's the point I made. Once again, I was asking honestly because I DIDN'T KNOW, not that I was trying to sneak in some agenda. Please don't ever try to teach. No they aren't. Every belief you've outright described having is akin to parody.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:33
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I worded my argument wrong, then. It's more an issue of special interest co-opting legislation that should be in the best interest of the people. I figured that diluting power to multiple smaller governments would make it more difficult to have such a strong influence over a nation as big as the US but as has been said before it would probably cause more harm than good. Never did I say "rawr big government is intrinsically bad", I said that there are problems with our centralized government and was wondering what would happen if it was set up different. It was a thought experiment for discussion, not a loving call to arms to overthrow the gubmint. Uh, it's way easier for special interests to co-opt multiple small entities that don't have an overlying government than it is for them to co-opt an entire government. Jesus christ, have you never been to a city/town/county council meeting or followed state politics? Your thought experiment is stupid because it relies on having no understanding of the status quo.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:03
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Locke Dunnegan posted:See now, we're getting somewhere. You make an actual point as rebuttal for the thread's topic, but you gently caress up any chance of continued on topic responses from me by continuing to be a prick. Dude, you're the prick for whining about how people make fun of your bad ideas. Look, you're spouting off on stuff that I already learned as bogus in 9th grade government classes. Jerry Manderbilt posted:Yeah OP, for real, look at the screwjob happening in places like North Carolina (where plutocrat Art Pope singlehandedly bought the GOP legislative majorities in both houses), Kansas (home turf of the Koch brothers, currently reeling after tax cuts passed by the governor and teabag-dominated state legislature) and Wisconsin (need I say anything about Scott Walker?); special interests can pack state legislatures and do much more damage there. Or hell, how West Virginia barely ever punishes all the industries that dump toxic chemicals into the water supply.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:13
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Anyway my high school government teacher was a cool dude. He explained how easy it was to influence local government by using his own side career as a landlord for an example - his buddy on the county Board of Chosen Freeholders (county legislature) got him some property tax deferred when he was starting to expand from just renting out his old house.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:20
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I may have too much faith in the American public, but I don't buy in to the idea that the states would turn on each other if they were independent. Not everyone's a power hungry politician. If my home state was attempting to annex Arkansas I sincerely doubt there would be a majority supporting it. But the politicians who run the states ARE power hungry politicians dude. It doesn't matter if a majority of the public supports it, you just need a majority in the government to support it. Like seriously there'd be no point to not taking over nearby states if they couldn't defend themselves. Especially since so many current metro areas cross state lines.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:47
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Typo posted:No, he's right about this. Being condescending is a lot less effective than actually arguing your points. No, he isn't right. He's just making excuses for why he can't put up an argument (it's because his ideas are incoherent and baseless).
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Apr 14, 2015 20:24
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Johnny Cache Hit posted:let's play a game: try to pick a federal agency you could put in there in place of the EPA, but that wouldn't make you look incredibly clueless. The Office Of War Information. 
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Apr 14, 2015 21:28
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Typo posted:FPTP doesn't get rid of the amount of veto power that's available to congress, the courts, the executive over each other, and state governments over the federal government (and vice-versa) or the tendency to either screw around with federal agencies for political purposes or neuter them altogether. Those are built into the US system on a level more fundamental than FPTP as part of checks and balances. It would be a move in the right direction though. Those are all very good things to have. I don't understand why you'd want to get rid of them. Removing them would only let things get screwed over more.
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Apr 14, 2015 22:13
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Locke Dunnegan posted:No one is coming up to you out of the blue and demanding anything. You are holding your own input in discussion hostage until someone takes the time to find, acquire, and read an entire textbook, but you are missing the part where no one gives a gently caress what you think when you pull stupid poo poo like that. There's only a certain amount of acceptance in asking someone to read up on something so you can have a discussion with common knowledge, and an entire physical textbook is a bit past that point when the discussion is the vitriolic clusterfuck that is this thread. I appreciate what you are trying to do, though, but if there isn't a shorter and more accessible way to access your input I don't have enough interest. I admit that is in part personal failing, but only the amount of personal failing that happens when I don't read the terms and conditions of a piece of shareware. Everyone else told you what was up, he deigned to give you a book link that would explain it in full course detail, dude.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:09
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Locke Dunnegan posted:Is that seen as a good start by a lot of people? There didn't seem to be anyone else supporting his choice in literature so it came across as a random dude pimping an old textbook and then sitting there tapping his foot until I did what he wanted. When the level is discourse is as lovely as it has been anyone not in the in crowd knows who to trust to not be an elaborate troll. Trolling is useless and fucks things up for people on all sides of debate which is why I'm not excited about continuing discussion. Just trying to get my view across as best I can. I haven't trolled you once. By the way you still didn't respond to my simple example of how easy local corruption is.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:18
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Typo posted:D&D is not a mathematics symposium. I don't think expecting people to have understood middle and high school level government/social studies classes is such a high bar to be quite honest.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:20
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Typo posted:OTOH OP actually seems to be willing to learn and doesn't think of himself as smarter than everyone else. If he was so willing to learn he wouldn't pitch a fit like a baby and go "I'm not going to chat because you guys were SO MEAN". Typo posted:
Tell me more about ethics in leftist journalism.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:26
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I don't want to assume you don't know this, especially given how much of an elitist prick you've been the whole thread, but it's either that or you are being intellectually dishonest in the claim that public school education is adequate in making informed citizens. Especially when it comes to American history and politics, it's not too crazy to think that an otherwise intelligent individual wasn't given a good basis on positives and negatives of interplay between state and federal checks and balances. It's not being elitist to expect people to understand a) why the Confederation failed b) why the Confederate States would have been broken even if they managed to not start/not lose the civil war. Typo posted:But that's the thing though. If you can't handle new D&D then I suggest you go hang out in BYOB for your political discussion you whiny little cliffer. It's acceptable to just abandon the thread after complaining, or to make your complaint and then move on, but constantly bringing it up is just dumb and makes people doing it look dumb. Locke Dunnegan posted:Being excessively lovely to someone asking honest questions because you jumped to conclusions about their reasoning behind it and then refuse to back down for a long time can indeed affect their interest in both the discussion and the topic as a whole. Perhaps you should have paid attention in high school psychology or communications???? It'd be great if you lost interest in this topic because your interest is completely misfounded, to be quite frank
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Apr 15, 2015 00:32
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Typo posted:Or you can stop taking this forum so seriously and adhere to this belief that hostile internet posting environment amounts to some sort of machoism. Dude you're the one taking this forum seriously by ranting about ethics in lefitst journalism and how mean people are to whatever apparently dumb views you apparently have are. Here's an idea: stop making whiny tone arguments and start making actual arguments. Same goes for the OP.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:37
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Typo posted:I never said anything about leftist journalism Congrats on not getting jokes, guy who whines that everyone else takes things too seriously. If you think and believe dumb things you deserve to be made fun of if you can't adequately defend them, and apparently you can't. Demanding everyone be civil is honestly the coward's way and suited for like boring high school debates rather than an interesting posting experience. I have no idea what the things you apparently get made fun of for are. Yeah I don't bother talking to the weird ranty people who yell about how everyone else is so mean in real life, mostly because they're weirdos.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:44
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Locke Dunnegan posted:That's not the point you're being elitist about I'm not being elitist about anything, kid. Stop making tone arguments, start making actual arguments. People have actually discussed the consequences of various forms of your loose thesis but you barely have.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:50
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Hey, dude, it doesn't matter why you want to make a tone argument, it simply never is going to work out for you. Ever. Much like the principles of the Articles of Confederation.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:02
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Locke Dunnegan posted:Nah, it probably won't in this case, at least. You seem pretty against the ideas of humility or respect when guarded by anonymity. Half this forum knows my in real life name and face, kid. You're one to talk about anonymity. Tone arguments don't work, period.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:12
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Avalanche posted:If a confederation was to come about, you can sure as poo poo be certain that the regions that dominate with food harvesting/production and natural resources are going to extort the ever living gently caress out of other regions since there is no one to stop them from doing so. And that's how wars happen and lots of people die. Well no, the ones that already have huge militaries will seize the farming states and jealously guard their conquests.
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Apr 15, 2015 06:14
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Popular Thug Drink posted:probably the southeast and northwest are self sufficient. southwest/cali and northeast can't feed themselves, the north lacks fossil fuels, and the midwest isn't developed enough to have its own internal industrial economy The north has a lot of hydro and nuclear power proportionately as well as significant refinery capacity. Also there's still a decent grip of coal to spread around and a bunch of decent natural gas fields, and a lot of coal if you include places like Montana and Wyoming in the North.
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Apr 15, 2015 06:47
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Shbobdb posted:What the gently caress does that even mean? When I move to a new area, the friends I make (people like me) tend to be within 20 miles of where I am living. Where I move after that basically triangulates and the distance narrows. Pretty common to have neighbors that simply refuse to talk with you but are more than happy to socialize with the guys two streets over and so on.
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Apr 22, 2015 06:53
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Shbobdb posted:Not really. You'll always have some potential for fuckery around the edges of a district, which is why better districting is important. Otherwise you've got people self segregating by socioeconomic class as well as race and creed. There should ideally still be a distribution of political opinions as well as people being people (sorry your neighbors don't like you Fishmensch). I fail to see how that is a problem. No I was talking about how the neighbors at the last place were pretty racist towards the black people living in the apartment above us.
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Apr 22, 2015 16:31
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down with slavery posted:the federal government doesn't prevent mississippi from becoming less bigoted, it prevents vermont from instituting universal healthcare Agreed friend, it prevents Mississippi from becoming more bigoted. Glad you agree.  Series DD Funding posted:Mississippi was forced into accepting interracial marriage and will be forced into accepting same-sex marriage soon. Vermont's UHC plan died because it was a single tiny state, not federal opposition. Also because Vermonters themselves freaked out over it when push came to shove.
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Apr 22, 2015 17:33
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down with slavery posted:bottom line is the federal government prevents progress in as many ways as it helps it, it just makes things slower Actually no, this is false as all hell.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:05
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down with slavery posted:you're right, the federal government is the fast track to getting something done effectively and efficiently, like ensuring drug policy is reasonable, keeping an eye on those pesky financiers and continuing to murder foreign nationals It is though. Also state financial regulations are usually quite easily evaded by simply basing out of another state, kid. You just keep whining about your insanity-driven delusions of how the federal government is to blame for people hating drugs and foreigners though! That's surely constructive.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:21
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Hey down with slavery you realize that no states are even thinking about legalizing any drug other than weed right? So it's a bit silly to claim states are successfully fighting back on the drug war when they won't even legalize LSD and MDMA.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:42
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Just saying but literal FEMA death camps for "bad people" would be a more practical and effective way to fix things than "the good ones can move to the nebulously defined Good Zones". Not that it's a high bar.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:23
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down with slavery posted:well honestly anyone can move here, but they need to apply for citizenship before they can vote in our elections (if we're talking post-secession) This is literal Nazi poo poo.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:28
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down with slavery posted:
No voting in the rest of the world doesn't involve randomly declaring chunks of your country no longer part of it and demanding everyone who didn't move reregister, you Nazi lunatic.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:32
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down with slavery posted:no honestly I expected a pretty reactionary response when I made the claim that the progressive states would be better off without the conservative ones Uh, this is flat out moronic. There's way more advantage to be had by keeping the states and getting rid of the population. Why give up resources, ports, and infrastructure?
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Apr 22, 2015 22:32
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