Rendering the federal government impotent by ensuring that 10% of rurals owned it but 90% of populous states were subject to it wouldn't discourage people from getting their policy goals done at the federal level it would insure that there wouldn't BE a federal level in 10 years.
This is true in the sense of if you ask someone "Should the federal government be smaller?" they will say yes.
It is not true in the "Should we get rid of Medicare and Social Security and reimplement them on a state by state basis?" or "Should we abolish the FCC, SEC, EPA, FDA, Postal Service?"
When you ask people if we should make the federal government smaller they'll say yes, when you ask them about a specific piece of the federal government they say no.
In order to reverse the trend you have to have people who are the very representatives of the power you wish dismantled choose to dismantle it. This is even harder than it seems.
The job naturally predominantly attracts those who desire the power in the first place and they retain the support of the people who put and keep them there by giving these people things they desire. This is why you see tax cuts but no real meaningful reduction of the federal government.
You might as well consider it an axiom that no government willingly dis empowers itself.
You say its not settled but it has been moving the same direction for 244 years and shows no sign of reversing course. What suggests a reversal to you?
Depends what you mean by settled matter. In discussion, I'm sure you can find a lot of people that think it's a bad idea, and I'm ambivalent myself. But as a matter of reality a strong federal government is what we now have. I think the federal government and the executive in particular is much stronger than the founders thought it would ever be.
The federal government absolutely has more power than was intended. The constitution only allows the federal government to do very specific things. This includes the power to coin money, to regulate commerce, to declare war, to raise and maintain armed forces, and to establish a Post Office. Everything else is left to the states.
How many powers does the federal government have that are above those enumerated powers? The government we have is not what the constitution defines. It is what the constitution was designed to prevent. But, we have slowly marched towards a central government that the founders feared and warned needed to be protected against. A central government has a much higher risk of tyrannical control.
Trusting the people to hold the government to the Constitution may have been the fatal flaw. I know that being a Constitutional idealist is a weak position. I feel that is very unfortunate. The Constitution was intended to protect against human natures of avarice and corruption and limit to paths to tyrannical government. Every time the Constitution is weakened the paths to corruption and tyranny are widened.
Allowing a minority of welfare states to extract the money and blood of the united states while voting in their representative to oversee the extraction literally weakens the constitutional protections afforded to everyone as we have seen in the last 20 years.
Thread is dead but I want to add that it isn't a minority of welfare states. There are only 11 states that pay more in federal taxes than they spend in federal benefits.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Other countries have maintained a robust federalism. (Canada has 80% of total spending at the provincial level, versus our 50%.) Some countries like Sweden which are unitary reformed to push more decisions and spending down to the provincial level. Some unitary countries like Spain are exploring it: https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/resource/federalism-...
I think the point being made is the federal government was originally given a very limited charter, over time that charter has expanded to the point where factions are battling for control of it, because it is now the seat of power. When the republic, as it was designed, was intended to deal with things at the state level. The foundational republic looked more like 13 small countries that bound together by a federated agreement on defense, taxes, liberties, citizenship. This was the idea, that the states could look very different from one another on the way they governed. The problem was while this was great for the individual to find a representative government, it creates a horrible business climate for those so inclined. So gradually business money wanted to move more of their regulation to the federal level and avoid state regulation as they had to comply with each state to conduct business. It started with banking, then the railroad barons, then electric companies and other public works, then moved on the the military industrial complex and now we have the tech companies getting in on the actions. So in today's context, due to distortion towards business interests, it is very disjointed and does not make sense, but under the limited federalist contract of the founding republic it made sense that each state had equal representation at the table that bound them together. Now we have gotten to the point where we are pushing social issues to the federal level and it is not going to end well. That being said, the remedy is not just go to a popular vote, a popular vote is just mob rule by the majority. The republic was designed to co-exist with people that don't agree on everything, federalization forces them to agree, and the popular vote, just silences the minorities voice and will eventually lead to their rights being revoked, which is not a formula for success.
The solution to "mob rule" isn't less democracy traditionally it to provide rights that require more than a simple majority to abrogate. This also means that if you believe that the document requires amendments to better protect rights NOW that also means that you will require overwhelming support for that as well.
The interesting thing is what DOES not take 2/3 is a compact by an increasing number of states to give their votes to whom ever wins the popular vote if enough states to equal 270 votes enact it.
States worth 196 states have enacted it and states worth 60 are pending. If we push hard we can have this in the next 10 years whether people like you disagree or not.
