this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Why don't the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Americans seem to have forgotten about federalism. You don't need the same laws governing all 340 million of you.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example. Poland doesn't have marriage equality and only permits abortions in case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. The Netherlands has marriage equality and abortions on demand up to 24 weeks. The union is not endangered by this.
Hell, Canada does federalism better than you, with a relatively weak federal government that needs to be always consulting with the provinces. Provinces retain much of the income-tax revenue and get to experiment much more meaningfully with different policy mixes, under a multi-party system.
Because there will be a lot of people in those areas who are not happy living under an ancap dystopia. Those states may even try to trap them there like Texas wants to do.
Imagine a couple moved to one of these ancap dystopias and have a kid. That kid turns out to be a big leftist and they hate not having rights.
We can't just forget about the other states and only care about some. At that point, you can consider the United States to have fallen.
So long as there is free movement of people and basic democracy, if people hate it they can leave it or change it.
That also supposes that everyone can afford to move to somewhere they would like to be. There's a reason the right wants people to stay where they are regardless of political affiliation. Those states tend to be full of poor folks living where they can afford to live. Not everyone has the privilege of living in a place that treats them they way they'd like to be treated.
No, I said freedom of movement AND basic democracy. It assumes that people have enough democratic rights that they can organize to change the laws in their own community.
It is a truism that oppression exists and that it affects exactly the people who can't escape it. There are no shortcuts to freedom unfortunately. The American solution has been that some external authority, the federal government comes and resolves this. For the big things, slavery, apartheid, I get it. But for things below the threshold of crimes against humanity, it becomes trickier because then control of the Big Saviour starts being a critical battleground, it can turn into the Big Oppressor, and basically you might end up with the unworkable federalism you currently have.
If we assume that the Democratic Party actually wants to do good and not just what their donors want. They still have to contend with a Senate that's is biased towards the empty states, and even the House of Representatives is somewhat biased but not as bad.
Now if the Blue States (or even Counties) form some kind of union to transcend the USA, things might begin to happen.
The EU is a confederacy. It has a much weaker central government and much stronger states. The US could go back to a confederacy model.
What's stopping California or Vermont or whatever from enacting state-level Universal Health Insurance programs or free university or whatever else?
The Commerce Clause is one often cited by conservatives. I am not a lawyer but if they can abuse it you bet they will even if that's not what it was meant for.
The commerce clause doesn't apply to in-state systems unless they interact with a foreign nation, native tribe, or another state.
What kind of abuse is even possible here?
I saw it brought up against states setting their own emission standards. I don’t agree with it but it is something I have seen them argue.