for most of the history of the US
the GOVT was about 10% of the economy
most of it stayed in local not federal
Discussion
and now if you count the cost of the regulatory state
is more than a half of the economy
the numbers of laws made in the Congress
has not really increased significantly in 100 years
Congress still works kind of the way it always worked
the point is:
the GOVT’s gotten really BIG
and some of the arguments for that are the ones i just named
there are crying needs
it’s one country
environmental harm goes over borders--
smog and stuff like that….
so there are arguments that there are crying public needs
and the GOVT should address them
do you think there is flexibility in the Constitution to meet that argument?
i think public needs and how that fits into the Constitution
is related to the debate that goes back to James Madison vs Alexander Hamilton and the interpretation of the Constitution
e.g. they debated over whether or not the general welfare phrase in the Constitution was an extra power that was given to the GOVT
or whether or not it was a summary of the previously named powers
there’s an Article 1, Section 8 where the Constitution says, roughly
that it can tax and spend ( i think it says ) for the general welfare
James Madison actually argues that that clause was badly written
bc what they had in mind was that they could tax and spend to pay off the debts that the state had incurred in the Revolution, as long as those debts were incurred in the general cause of winning the Revolutionary War
Hamilton read it as we can do more stuff
Madison’s counter to that was, why do we have a list then of things we can do?
why is it, say, you can do these things, if you can also do anything else that promotes the general welfare?
how does that make any sense?
in the case of an epidemic or a pandemic?
you’d have to fight that nationally somehow…
you could do that by cooperation among the states…
and even worldwide GOVT
cooperation among the nations…
think about COVID’19
we already have experienced
so there is a potential argument…
you’re gonna build up this GOVT
and it’s gonna be supreme for Int’l purposes
but only for they
almost all laws are made in a different way than they used to be made
most of the laws, the great majority ( 90% ) are not made in the Congress anymore
they’re made in these regulatory agencies
but in almost all cases, these regulatory agencies also enforce these laws and they also hear disputes that arise under these regulations they pass
so the 3 branches of GOVT are united in the single hands, as they are in the hands of the maker, of the creator, in the declaration of independence.
that’s a PROBLEM
that FORM is a PROBLEM
so when you have hundreds of lawmaking bodies, as we do now, then they start making these really technical, complex wrought laws
and nobody knows what they are
its’ so large now that it becomes a factor in the politics of the country, sort of as a separate interest
the GOVT is a separate interest now
and that is a PROBLEM
what are you going to do about that problem?
btw. it's a BIG PROBLEM
do we need a different kind of GOVT?
does the Founders’ Constitution enable the American people—by means of its system of representative government—to meet the new and pressing problems of today without compromising fundamental principles?
society could be organized in such a way that social ills would disappear
we need to move beyond the ideas of the Founders…
BITCOIN will solve America's debt
