The current proposal is just as regressive, albeit in a way that introduces more inefficiency.
A cap on Ubers/Lyfts + minimum pay will likely increase the price of Ubers/Lyfts. Rich people will be able to afford the new prices, but poor people will not.
I don't think that this is a technology problem - it's a polarization problem. No amount of technology traveling at the speed of light will solve the simple problem that you belong to an ideological sub-group that ferociously disagrees with another sub-group about how things should be run. Indeed, we're a nation of 330 million people, this is to be expected. I'm amazed we've been able to get away with this level of centralization for this long.
This isn't all that different from the EU, a similar union of states with a similar population (500 million), where the vast majority of laws and regulations are passed at the member-state level and not at the EU level. Any American that argues "each state will handle things on its own" is just making the same argument that a European might make when saying "we should enact this healthcare system X, or that pension system Y, or that policy Z in Germany".
This was always the Framers' intent, Hamilton himself was well aware of the perils of the Tyranny of the Majority[1]. The prescription for this was to apply the subsidiarity principle and use concurrent majorities (i.e. "let the states decide"). Federalism was never about the logistics of walking to state lines.
Can you explain what the law on the books currently is, and how the majority opinion "absolutely does not" respect it?
> It completely makes up a reason why this should be considered any different than any other instance where things have changed since a law was enacted.
Things have changed since a law was enacted by legislative fiat. The thesis behind those arguing the intended function of the judiciary is that any instance in the past where the judiciary has actually changed a law since it was enacted is considered abuse and not to be repeated.
> Kicking the can to "elect someone else" is just as naive as claiming that this decision respects the law on the books.
But...it does respect the law on the books. Your concern seems to be that the law is bad, and that the judiciary ought to change that law. I don't think there's a lot of disagreement about the former, it's the latter that's more controversial.
From an idealistic standpoint, enacting Federal law is necessarily onerous, owing to the requirement of a strong consensus so as to prevent a marginal majority from shoving Federal laws down the throat of a large minority.
> Okay sure. But don't lose track of reality in your quest for idealism though.
Okay sure, it sounds like you don't care much for the idealistic standpoint, so let's talk pragmatism. If we can't gather this consensus at the Federal level, we have the levers of state legislatures to pass those same laws at a more local level.
Liberal states have the political will, the systems, and (if we're being frank) the majority of businesses that would be affected by Federal law anyway. They just need to have the will and pragmatism to compromise and pass their desired law at the state level until such a time that there's Federal consensus for that law.
> We have a system that operates at the pace of 1776. That served us well for a long time, but since the post-war proliferation of mass media, it's hard to argue that it's adequate anymore.
I'd argue the exact opposite. The pace of our system is just a reflection of the current ideological polarization. Enacting Federal law requires a strong consensus (to prevent abuse), and the more polarized we are, the more difficult it becomes to shove Federal laws down the throat of a narrow minority.
If we can't gather this consensus at the Federal level, we have the levers of state legislatures to pass those same laws at a more local level.
Liberal states have the political will, the systems, and (if we're being frank) the majority of businesses that would be affected by Federal law anyway. They just need to have the will to compromise and pass their desired law at the state level until such a time that there's Federal consensus for that law.
Re: the helmet laws, they've been shown to do more harm than good[1]. Helmet laws suppress ridership, and riders tend to be safer when they're surrounded by more bicyclists. This is why cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen are actually safer for riders despite having no helmet laws.
This is half true: European infrastructure construction is almost perfectly decentralized to the point that it's (for the most part) fully centralized at the level of each member state.
The US half tries to fund and administer infrastructure at the federal level, state level, as well as local level, depending on the state.
As an American, I find the EU to have phenomenally good infrastructure, but I think that's because decisions aren't being made in Brussels, they're being made concurrently in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, etc.
I feel that the US would do well to emulate the EU, and centralize the funding, regulation, and administration of its respective systems in each member state.
I have the iPhone 7. I've been using Bluetooth headphones since about 2014 (started with the JayBirds, but use the AirPods now). I use my headphones pretty much all day.
Not once have I noticed the absence of the headphone jack, nor have I felt the need for it.
Possibly, I think "impartial" means reserving the judgement until the judgement is to be made at the end of the trial as opposed to in the middle of the trial, which could very well be wrong - IANAL.
I'm neither a lawyer nor a judge, but I'm just wondering if this is a typical type of thing to assert during a judgement. It just jumped out as impartial to me.
Maybe I'm wrong, but the whole point of this case is to prove this. I would find a more impartial adjudicator to take more of a "the motives contradict with the allegations of theft" view.
To outright say that the theft occurs before an official judgement was made seems in poor taste for, well, a judge.
> “Then why did he steal this stuff? That’s the story the jury’s going to want to know about,” Judge William Alsup retorted.
I find it alarming that the judge assumes a "guilty until proven innocent" position. Obviously outsiders like us would take a stance like this, but for a judge on the bench to operate in that manner sets off all kinds of red flags for me.
Relative to that culture? Yes absolutely. Not being a "culture fit" can be a boon for the candidate if they are not compatible with a culture in which they would be miserable.
"If we abolish all local and regional regulations, then there is an absolute reduction of regulations. "
You seem to make the implicit assumption that federal regulations are somehow better than the same amount of state-level regulations. This simply isn't the case. Today, New York has to participate in the same polity as Florida, and it is for that reason that it does not have a single payer system, despite its citizens being in favor of it. This is unsurprising because you can't create one-size-fits-all solutions for all of our states given how different they and their economies are.
Instead, if we allow them to chart their own path, we can allow them to fail (or succeed) fast. The alternative is the limbo state we are in where nobody is moving forward (or backward) and nobody is happy.
To continue the engineering analogy, this is a divide-and-conquer problem. Denmark and the Nordic countries were able to successfully implement their social systems because they are small, well contained countries. By allowing US states to implement their own systems, we set them up for the same kind of success.
My hypothetical was for them to socialize it with a shared single-payer system. Think about it this way: all of the small states in New England decide to create a government run insurance (like Denmark) by pooling all of their taxpayers.
An exchange would be more like a multi-payer system rather than a single-payer system.
Were states to implement such systems at the state level, I fully expect the smaller states to consolidate and form alliances of their welfare systems so as to achieve economies of scale faster.
"By what possible stretch of the imagination is the system working well in the EU? The EU has been on the brink of breaking apart since 2008, and Britain just voted to leave the EU this summer. The EU is even more federated than the USA, and they have suffered even more problems with federation. Both the USA and the EU must eventually move toward consolidated governments."
I would argue exactly the opposite. The primary criticism that member nations have of the EU is that there are too many regulations imposed at the EU-level. This was the non-xenophobic argument in favor of Brexit.
By enacting what you would propose: total control at the federal level, we would move closer to such an unpopular reality.
It's rather easy for a wealthy person in the EU to move to a low tax country as well! Switzerland has one of the lowest income taxes in the developed world, yet most of the wealthy people in Europe don't live there. Wealthy people will choose to go wherever it's most beneficial for the industries that they participate in. London still has a booming economy despite its relatively high tax rate. In fact, post-Brexit, there's speculation that industries will choose to leave London in favor of cities like Paris, Amsterdam, or Berlin to be able to participate in the European common market.
Retirees can definitely choose to move to whatever state they want, but they've never been the contributors to social security programs, they've always been the beneficiaries.
The system that I've proposed seems to be working quite well in the EU. Perhaps provide a counter-example to support your assertion that the opposite is true?
EDIT: and I agree with you - let's think about this as engineers. As an engineer, I would approach this problem using divide-and-conquer: by breaking down the problem into multiple sub-problems (i.e. at the state level) of the same or related type, until they become simple enough to be solved directly. We have come to learn that monoliths do not scale, and we have to scale horizontally.
A cap on Ubers/Lyfts + minimum pay will likely increase the price of Ubers/Lyfts. Rich people will be able to afford the new prices, but poor people will not.