
Has the United States Become Ungovernable? - mooreds
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2014/02/has-the-united-states-by-virtue-of-its-size-and-complexity-become-ungovernableposner.html
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cylinder
The top comment pretty much sums it up:

"I have an idea. Since there is no way a large federal government can govern a
nation of 315,000,000 people spread across 3,79,000 square miles, lets devise
a system where the federal government is primarily responsible for defense,
international trade and affairs, protecting rights, minting currency, and
making sure states don't put up trade barriers. In fact, let's explicitly ban
the federal government from doing anything else. Let's relegate all other such
power to these individual entities called states, each of which will contain
far less land, and far less population than the nation as a whole!!!!

Oh wait; I guess that's what the constitution was supposed to do."

The Founders already understood that complex organizations fail and they tried
to craft the Constitution to avoid expansion of the federal government.
Unfortunately they failed to anticipate the judiciary's quick power grab and
the Congress' broad implementation of the Commerce clause.

~~~
csense
Other causes of expansion of the federal government include economic changes
brought about by technology and population growth; and cultural changes due to
mass media.

There are definitely problems, but the US is still fairly free and prosperous,
despite centuries of geopolitical events and economic / technological
disruption that could not have been foreseen in the 18th century when it was
written.

The Constitution works.

Because of its proven track record, let's try not to radically re-interpret
it, pack it with frivolous amendments, or allow the continued exploitation of
loopholes like the commerce clause.

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MrZongle2
"The most glaring deficiency is the limited authority of the President and the
absence of an official corresponding to the Chief Operating Officer of a
private corporation. ... The President should also be authorized to control
the finances of the states, alter their boundaries, appoint their principal
officials, and veto their laws."

Brilliant. What could _possibly_ go wrong with a stronger Executive Branch?

~~~
ahomescu1
He's just theorizing on how he'd make the government more efficient, not that
he'd actually want that (the Nazis were also pretty efficient).

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blisterpeanuts
Thank goodness we _don 't_ have a COO and a corporate structure. Corporations
have specific and absolute missions, usually starting with making a profit for
the shareholders.

However, countries generally don't have such specific missions but instead
strive to provide an environment for their citizens to pursue their own goals,
usually prosperity and health and happiness but not necessarily dictated by
the state.

We usually don't think of corporate C-level leadership as being there to
referee among many competing and disparate elements in the corporation. They
are there to set direction, give orders, and generally keep the corporate body
on track and working together toward a common goal.

In wartime, countries like the U.S. have come close to that type of effort,
but otherwise it's every man and woman for themselves, free to set their own
goals.

So, yes, the U.S. is by its nature ungovernable. It's remarkable that it has
as much functional government as it does.

