Should the US stay a federation?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Should the US stay a federation?

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

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.

No, you can choose to make on topic responses. You're deciding not to because you're huffy.

You screwed up your OP, you screwed up your thread title, and that's why you're getting mocked. Take a little personal responsibility. If you want to learn about the interplay of federal vs. state power, I'd suggest reading up on it. A basic textbook would be a good way to start.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 17:10

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 09:04

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Soviet Commubot posted:

Even if they wouldn't turn on each other militarily they'd certainly gently caress each other over other ways. Right now the states have to deal with each other civilly and there is a structure in place for that to occur, but once that gets taken away all bets are off. If New York wants to start charging extortionate fees on shipping through Buffalo what can Illinois really do about it? It's not like maritime shipping can go through anywhere else. It's either pay up or start asking Michigan and Canada for airspace rights for their bombers.

The real danger is that many of these newly empowered state governments would turn on their own populaces, or at least the "undesirable" elements of them. The Federal government enforces a baseline level of decency on the states, and while some of them would respect those norms on their own there's a lot of them that only do it because they're forced to. Gay Utahns had better hope that California accepts refugees and Hispanic Arizonans should prepare to get poo poo on mightily.

In other words, exactly the problems we had with the Articles of Confederation.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 18:13

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Most school textbooks still tell that bullshit story about the pilgrims and Thanksgiving so I highly doubt he'll learn much from them.

I mean more a college textbook. For example, the Give Me Liberty series is pretty great.

tsa posted:

Get the gently caress over yourself.

You seem tense.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 20:54

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Thanks for reminding me why I hate college textbooks. The $$$

Libraries are pretty rad, though.

And if you don't need it for class, you can just by an older edition for $.01

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 21:00

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Locke Dunnegan posted:

This thread is way more tense than it was meant to be. Keeps things exciting.

I think reducing military spending in the US would help out with inequality and funding of other important projects, but my issue is how can it be done? How do we go from the ingrained "won't raise taxes, hard on crime, protect Lady Liberty from dirty foreigners" shtick of politicians only looking to get elected to a more productive and sustainable state? How do you drum up support for that? It seems pretty insurmountable, which is why I seem so bleak in my views.

How about you read the textbook I recommended? Then you'll know more stuff than you do know, and that'd be cool, don't you think? 'cuz from what you've said in this thread, you've got mile-wide gaps in your understanding of US history and politics.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 21:39

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Sorry, trying not to spam the thread with my replies, and I'm away from home at the moment so I don't have the time to read up on your examples. Links or summaries would help anyway since I'm wary on reading random poo poo on the internet, especially about loaded topics like politics.

May I suggest that instead of reading random poo poo, you read a well-written text on the subject, like the one I provided for you above?

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 23:17

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Will you provide a free copy so the whole class can read, professor moneybags?

As I said, get it from the library or get the 2nd edition which is literally $.01.

The idea that if you want to learn about a subject you should read serious sources rather than engage in random discussion on the internet really shouldn't be shocking.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 23:26

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Links please? Since you're such an expert on where to get it why don't you actually help someone out instead of being a smug prick about it?

You really don't need to be an expert to type "give me liberty textbook 2nd edition" into amazon, but here you go:

http://www.amazon.com/Give-Liberty-...ook+2nd+edition

poo poo volume 1 costs .98 cents. What a rip.

You're pretty good at angrily demanding things be spoon-fed to you. There's probably some line of work that values that, you should look into it.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 23:37

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Edit: count this as a reply to the last two posts too. Now that's efficiency!

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.

I don't mean I don't have interest in reading ANYTHING relating to American politics, as I am sure people are going to skew my post into. It's more that if a random person comes to my door and won't tell me why they are there until I read the book they have, I'm going to close the door.

Dude, I'm saying if you want to know why the US should stay a federation--or, more broadly, the issues around federalism and states rights in the development of the US--you should read the book(s). If you're not actually interested in the question, then i dunno. It's a good book. very clearly written. You'll learn a lot of other stuff, too.

That's my input. It's not a hostage. See, it's walking free.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 00:15

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

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????

I haven't been lovely to you at any point, unless you think calling you 'huffy' is being lovely, and your response to me has been pretty much the same.

The issue is complex, or at least broad, and there's a reason why entire textbooks get written about it. Moreover, it is something that can't be understood as a static point in time, but as an evolutionary system. Just to take a microcosm, the way that states pushed environmental regulation under Reagan, and now push deregulation under Obama, has to be understood in the light of GOP's changing strategies etc. etc.

As I said, your OP and your further commentaries reveal ignorance. Ignorance is just a deficit in learning, not a deficit in intelligence or morals or anything like that. You can correct it by learning. You will not correct it by random conversations with people online--you may get a patchy understanding, but not a systematic and trustworthy one. And you certainly won't get past ignorance by just yelling at people about how they shouldn't be mean to you if they expect you to learn stuff.

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.

If you can't have a discussion without being civil, the problem is really with you and how you choose to interact with other people.

I was civil to him and his response to me is pretty much the same.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 00:37

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Locke Dunnegan posted:

It's actually annoying that people are actually calling some of the assholes out in this thread because I don't want to just pick up stakes and go when at least some of my issues with the discourse here is shared. This thread isn't about my OP anymore but maybe this new topic is worthy of discussion itself.

What's the new topic, exactly?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 00:50

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Typo posted:

So just to give you an example of something the federal government does better than state governments, it's the issue of externalities.

An externality would be something like pollution, it's a cost or benefit which comes as a result of a transaction between two parties, but affects more people than just the two parties in question.

So something like me buying electricity from the power plant, only for the coal burned by the power plant to generate acid rain in a neighbouring state is an example of an externality. Because there is a side effect to the transaction which isn't taken into account in the pricing of the good by either side, nor is the third party affected being compensated.

Environmental externalities are likely to be one of the biggest issues of the 21st century, and it's not handled very well by smaller government entities. By its very nature, larger entities are better at internalizing externalities (the federal government would for example regulate the power plant above whereas a state of Virginia wouldn't care all that much about causing acid rain in Montana or w/e). This even more significant when it comes to the issue of climate change which probably need transnational governance or legislation to resolve. There's also the issue of the collective actions problem which is less of an issue for the federal government (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action#Collective_action_problem). Environmentalism is something which is handled much better at the federal level than local state level.

Except the opposite was true during the Reagan years, where the Federal government was the one trying to deregulate and remove environmental protections, and the states were fighting them. This repeated again with the "California Waiver" under George W. Bush, where Bush pressured the EPA to deny California the right to create stricter standards for climate change-related emissions. The structure of the federal vs. state definitely means that states have less incentive to address environmental effects that pass-down, but you have to take into account a lot of other things too, like politics and who is in control at the federal and state level. In effect, federalism can act as a brake, and while it may retard progress, it also retards backsliding.

One of the many things covered in-depth, with more than just a few sentences, in the excellent series "Give Me Liberty".

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 01:03

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Going back and only reading your posts, yes, I was out of line. To be fair, you didn't really give much information on the book you were pimping beyond "hey read this" and "it costs $.01" which isn't very convincing of a quality resource and primer for complex discussion on American politics. Your later information on the book interests me more now, so I thank you for your efforts on getting me interested in this stuff.

You could have also spent 5 seconds researching the book and finding out it's a quality book written by a well-reputed historian. I'm still not sure why you wouldn't do that.

What is this new topic you want to address?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 01:05

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Typo posted:

I actually have the 3rd edition of the book, looking it up I don't see this one being mentioned anywhere in it. The book doesn't seem to touch on the environmentalism much at all.

I mean, I think you are right about the facts, I just don't see them in the book.

Do you have volume 2?

It is possible that I'm misremembering and it's not there. If not there, it's covered at length in Environmental Politics and Policy by Rosenbaum, and Environmental Policy: New Directions for the 21st century by Vig and Kraft.

Anyway, the main point is that the federal government doesn't always work to provide the better and/or broader environmental policy: it depends whose running the federal government, and who is running the state governments. Structure is only part of the equation.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 01:29

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

My Imaginary GF posted:

Pay me to implement methodologies which do so.

Is this a good time to remind you that your schtick is dumb and you look like an idiot a lot?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 03:03

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

VitalSigns posted:

None of that is states' rights. States' rights is the doctrine that the federal government doesn't have the right to interfere with state law. Colorado has not made that argument, liberals are not making that argument. States' rights is a very specific (and bad) doctrine. What is happening in Colorado is federalism: the state does a thing and it is allowed only because the federal executive decided to let it happen.

To put it even more simply: The 'liberals' are not arguing that the federal government shouldn't have drug laws or that state-level drug laws should supercede federal drug laws. They're arguing the federal drug laws are bad and should be changed.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2015 14:11

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

asdf32 posted:

Yep I'm known for radical ideas like "people like more stuff", "economics relates to social and political issues", and "capital is good".

You're one of the shittiest posters I've ever talked to. I can't think of anyone shittier who I don't think is a troll. Down with slavery was so awful I assumed he was a troll.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 02:34

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Pauline Kael posted:

That's a fantastic strategy, post something fucktarded then claim it was done as fakepost, or ironically. What's next, you claim to be gay, or talk about Caramel Machiato?

Did you think "Kill Whitey" was also a real plan?

# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 16:47

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 09:04

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Pauline Kael posted:

In D&D? That seems to be the only plan. "Real" never plays into it.

Now I can't tell if you're being serious or self-parodying.

To give you a hint: The plans to Kill Whitey are not real. You might have noticed when I was talking about Kill Whitey, I asked if I could be spared since I almost watched all of Do The Right Thing. This was an indication that the Kill Whitey plan was absurd, and not meant to be taken seriously. Other posters were mocking down with slavery's idiotic plan of "dump the south" by posting about "kill whitey" as an also absurd alternative. The point is that both plans are absurd.

I hope this helps you interpret the oft-confusing land of D&D a little better.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 17:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Should the US stay a federation?

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Soviet Commubot posted:

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

tsa posted:

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Typo posted:

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Typo posted:

Locke Dunnegan posted:

Typo posted:

My Imaginary GF posted:

VitalSigns posted:

asdf32 posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Pauline Kael posted:

Pauline Kael posted: