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0 pointsAnthonyMouse8mo ago0 comments

There is more than one possible structure to sustain an active constraint against power grabs, to be sure. But a Senate elected by the state governments was effective in doing it for as long as it was in place. There are other things that could work instead, but sometimes the old thing only stopped working because it stopped happening. And either way you would still need the something else to be used instead rather than continuing the status quo which is objectively not achieving the intended purpose.

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Eisenstein8mo ago· 2 in thread

You have done nothing to demonstrate any of those claims, though. Make your case without the appeal to history to make it valid.

AnthonyMouseOP8mo ago

It's an empirical fact that in all the years from the founding to the passage of the 17th Amendment the US federal government was much smaller than it quickly became in the years following its passage, so all of the available evidence is consistent with the theory.

Moreover, the mechanism of operation makes logical sense. Senators want to keep their seats and state legislators don't want to have their own regulations preempted by federal laws unnecessarily and don't want excessive federal spending because money collected in federal taxes can't be collected in state taxes and taxpayers have a threshold level of total taxation they're willing to put up with

So I'm not sure what you're asking for other than logic and evidence.

Eisenstein8mo ago

> It's an empirical fact that in all the years from the founding to the passage of the 17th Amendment the US federal government was much smaller than it quickly became in the years following its passage, so all of the available evidence is consistent with the theory.

This is appeal to history. We don't know if repealing the 17th Amendment would do anything at all like what happened 300 years ago.

> Moreover, the mechanism of operation makes logical sense. Senators want to keep their seats and state legislators don't want to have their own regulations preempted by federal laws unnecessarily and don't want excessive federal spending because money collected in federal taxes can't be collected in state taxes and taxpayers have a threshold level of total taxation they're willing to put up with

You are assuming a whole lot in that logic.

1. That state legislators wouldn't collude with the executive due to party affiliation

2. That spending more money at the federal level would require them to raise taxes

There is no logic or evidence when you get rid of the history and the wrong assumptions.

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