Thursday, November 15, 2018

[rjyoizaf] Federalism then versus now

Back in the day, federalism was a good idea because the thirteen colonies had distinct cultures (based on different founders and subsequent chain migration), and travel and communication were expensive, so there was not much homogenization.

Nowadays these seem all less true.  Is federalism still a good idea?  Should we abolish state governments?

But city and town governments still seem like a good idea.  Does the same reasoning then apply to state governments?

The idea that the laws that affect your life personally should only be state laws, and if you are unhappy with them, you can move to a different state does remain attractive.  It also allows states to experiment in parallel with different policies about the same issue, then providing researchers with data to compare the outcomes.

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