You don't have to be an expert to read the 10th amendment.

Many experts think the 10th amendment has no teeth. It just says the feds can do what the constitution says it can do. It's too open in my opinion.

Is it "true" the government broke the law or do you think it broke the law? The supreme court sided with the government? If anything it's "not clear".

Lets say the government did break the law and the supreme court made a mistake. Isn't that all this is is a mistake? If this is an issue the voters will make the law more or less specific to limit future mistakes. Why have they not done so?

Again, your in favor of individual rights over group rights. We have been over that. You appeal that the man should be able to do what he wants over what the "group" wants is falling on def ears here. ;)

We can argue the merits of the governments original intent, but the point is this: one mans actions, multiplied by "all men" can have huge consequences for the group. The government needs to be able to regulate that.

When have I mentioned interference, other than by government?

OK, so you think there is something specific to government that makes it's "interference" always do the wrong thing. What do you think that is?

The videos are good but they don't prove anything. We can both drag out hundreds of videos, reports, blog posts, etc. Until there is a consensus (like 90/10, not 50/50) then maybe we are getting closer to a proof. If you want to talk about one specific items we can try and drill down in to it. But again, I'm more interested in the specific mechanisms at play. What would make government fail at everything where other large organization don't seem to?

That power is reserves to the state government, by the 10th amendment.

Maybe? I'm not a legal expert in general or in this specific case. However, it seems the experts don't agree with you in most cases?

Existing or carried on between states : "interstate travel".

Why does "between states" have to mean travel? Are bank transfers between states "travel".

Again, not a legal expert, but it seems to me the "intent" of the government was to raise wheat prices. This guy wanted cheap wheat (regardless of the reason) so he "cheated". The government push the boundary of the laws to achieve it's goal.

Please respond to this common sense argument as It's hard to debate the minutia of these laws without spending days researching the case, related cases, and laws, etc. I'm trying to understand if your arguing legal technicalities or if you really think he was not cheating the "intent" of what the government was trying to do.

"It would have been worse", is not an argument, unless you give evidence that it would actually have been worse. it is a gratuitous assertion. I could just as easily say that If I hadn't shot that puppy, he could have grown up to maul children. The logic is the same.

This is true. The problem with charts and opinion pieces is they are not conclusive. It would take an incredible amount of analysis is "prove" the causation here one way or the other. Where do you think that graph was headed? Zero? Probably not. Seems like it was doing well 2001...

What is the mechanism that destines human "interference" to make things worse when governing, but in every other case better? There must be one in your mind?

I think were back to the old stalemate. You believe the rights of the individual, in all cases, are more important than the group. I can't argue with that belief.

No one should "run" society. Society should run itself, through the individual, voluntary interactions of the individuals within that society.

That would be great and I understand that you believe that could work. I don't.

To summarize:

- You feel individual rights are more important than group rights

- You are only logical, not emotional or empathetic when forming your world views

- You feel that you and everyone you love will "land" on the winning side of the equation because nothing in life is chance.

I would not say I'm at the "opposite" end of those 3 views but maybe "opposite with moderation".

It's true that other things in society can kill you but there are differences. A car has huge utility outside of running people over. This makes it impractical to even be considered as something to get rid of, so I don't.

While it's true that at any moment a random person could run you over, maybe resulting in death, that's just "bad luck". They could have chosen anyone, they chose me. However, the case I don't like is where for example I fire a bad employee and they decide to use their "kill button" to "settle the score". They could try and run me over but that is much much harder because, I have to be walking someplace that A car can easily reach, where I won't notice the car coming, etc. The ease of being able to kill a specific person (or a group of people) with a gun is much higher than with a car.

The federal government had no jurisdiction, without MAJOR stretching of logic for the commerce clause to include ANYTHING that ANYONE does. He was not engaging in commerce, nor did he act across state lines.

Again, playing devils advocate:

- He was cheating the "intent" of the governmental efforts to raise wheat prices.

- Technically, this was interstate commerce because it was all states where they were trying to get the price of wheat up.

Here is what I think this is, a guy tries to cheat the system so the government pushed the boundaries of what the court would allow to shut him down. The government is allowed to push the boundaries as far as it can (just like any capitalist would in the free market). If the citizens don't like it, they will vote against it. If the interstate commerce laws were such a bad thing, Why doesn't a candidate run and win on a platform of changing those laws?

I don't know enough details about the war on drugs. Again it's easy to say it did not work when we have no idea what would have happened if we did not wage that war. What if Crack usage would have been 10 times as high without the war? Personally, I think much of the war on drugs was a mistake (at least for things like pot), but again, I don't know enough on the subject to be sure. Even so, if it was a mistake, it was not a "fundamental problem" with government, it was a bad idea supported by voters at the time. Simply a mistake. Alcohol prohibition was a mistake that was fixed.

Appeal to emotion. Irrelevant in a logical discussion.

You might be able to have a logical debate about the size of the earth but how can you possibly not use emotions when trying to decide how civilization should work? The free market advocate must think about emotions very, very hard because it's not a "game". If you make a wrong choice when structuring civilization, you and your family can die.

It's very easy to say "we must sacrifice" as long as you are never the one who has to sacrifice anything you value.

But I am sacrificing. I give about 30% of all my earnings to the government each year. Its a huge sacrifice. I'm already on the loosing side of your equation and I still support it! Maybe someday the government (and the majority of people) will take away a right that I think I should have, but I can't think of a realistic case right now.

Now back to my equation "It's very easy to have a steely, logical view on the world as long as you have convinced yourself that you won't end up on the wrong side of the equation." How sure are you your going to end up on the right side of it?

Luck is the cop-out of the lazy and the rally-cry of the looter.

I said "partially luck" which is absolutely true (when I say luck I mean chance). The only reason I'm not physically debilitated right now from disease, car crash, knife attack is "chance". I was born in to an upper middle class family through NO effort of my own. It was chance! I liked computers when a was young, and now it turns out computers are running the world. I do work hard, but the fact that I happen to like doing something that can earn a good living in today's market is pure chance!!

Of course there are lazy people and we should fix all systems where lazy people take advantage, but to say everyone without resources or the means to collect them is lazy is absolutely not true. I think you said yourself your son is not a good test taker. Wouldn't it be a shame if he was labeled lazy when in fact he is just not good at tests?

Using your premise, yes. But I disagree that we "build" society. Society grows from the actions of the individuals within that society.

Yes. And what you see in the US, most of Europe and Asia is what those individuals built over time.

True, which is why we should keep as much emotion as possible OUT of government.

Not sure. Humans are emotional animals. To leave that out of the equation seems like a bad idea...

(took <5 minutes on Google)

Are you sure these prove anything? All you need is cost of living or medical expenses to rise at a faster rate. Were are in the middle of one of the worst recessions in history, you can't use today's number and say look, it's not working. What if nothing was done, how many would be dead? How much higher might poverty be?

This assumes that people will just sit and starve, instead of attempting to find some productive activity to support their life.

This theme is coming up a lot. We can argue at what level you should support people, but not everyone "fails" in life because they are lazy.

The intervention is the problem.

So you think that by definition, intervention makes things worse?

This is the "scientism" of economics. It tries to apply only equations to economics, ignoring the incentives of the people acting within the economy, and the possible unintended consequences of interfering in the economy.

I only included the analytic side of the argument, but yes, there is also a human side which should be factored in as well. The argument still stands: "If we did not get something right, lets figure out what went wrong and fix it".

...aside from the fact that it violates the property rights of some, to fund a ponzi scheme that marginally benefits others, to a lesser degree than if the money had stayed in the economy, instead of going to the government.(rest of argument)

I agree that you can look at almost any government program and make it better. But

I reject the idea that it's impossible, using common sense, logic, sociology, empathy, etc to come up with a "good system". For many of your arguments to be right, there would have to be something fundamentally wrong with the operation of government that can't be fixed for some reason OR a theorem and proof that says "in case X its impossible to do better because of Y". Maybe you could turn me to the dark side if you could convince me of one or both of these.

I don't reject the idea that there are other perhaps better ways we could run society, I simply have not heard convincing arguments that there is anything better.

I think that much of our disagreement is in what constitutes the "pillars of society" and how much they should cost.

Agreed.

Wickard vs. Filburn

Just skimming the wikipedia, it seems like the government had a case. The point was to drive up wheat prices and he was growing his own so he did not have to pay the inflated price. He was cheating, regardless of his intention to sell it or not. I'm not saying I agree with the government in this case, I'm just making the argument.

Even so, one bad case (even 100's of bad cases) does not mean you should throw out the baby with the bathwater. I think the intellectually honest person can also come up with the same number of cases (actually many more in my opinion) where the government did the right thing.

Someone voluntarily supports them, or they die.

Fair enough. Now what if it's your child starving to death in the worst depravity.... It's very easy to have a steely, logical view on the world as long as you have convinced yourself that you won't end up on the wrong side of the equation. You do realize that it's partially just "luck" that your not that starving child right?

It really sucks. But my feelings or needs have no bearing on the rights of others. I have not answered because it is an appeal to emotion, not logic.

Society is not an emotionless thing? Are you saying that when you build a society, you should ignore emotion? Every single human action is in part driven driven by human emotion.

I think it would be hard to prove that welfare programs caused greater poverty than if we had done nothing. Maybe you can? Maybe if we did nothing a large portion of people in poverty would have died off (social Darwinism) and poverty would have gone down as a result. Is that success? Even if you could prove scientifically that the program was "not that great" then by definition you must have also discovered what it did wrong so why not fix it instead of throw it out?

Lets say it's proven that, all things being equal, generous unemployment befits cause unemployment to rise by 30%. Lets also assume that some unemployment benefit is beneficial (statistically) in preventing an otherwise productive person from falling in to poverty or resorting to crime (helps 1% say). So the societal cost benefit may not be worth it. All you have to do is adjust the program until unemployed only goes up by 1% but preventing poverty and crime in the target group goes up to 30%. Now you have a working program. Why not learn and improve instead of start over? There is nothing "inherently wrong" with medicare or social security, just adjust the levels (politically difficult). Problem solved.

All things being equal, if you can prove college admissions officers are racists and deny X number of applications on race alone, then I think we may need to counteract that with a law. I'm not sure you can prove that anymore or not.

Also, there is something to be said about the benefit to society if kids can mix and form relationships with people and races they have not been exposed to in a major way. For many young people, going to college is the first time they have been out on their own, away from their parents and churches and social class ideology. One could argue that diversity is part of the learning experience and important for citizens of our society, and that a homogeneous school would not give a student a "full" education.

Not sure why your getting so excited. I agree with you. I just think it's all politicians to some degree or another, not just Obama.

I'm for it in principal. My problem is the "innocent man" issue. If we ever have or ever will put an innocent man to death, then the death penalty is not a supportable principal. If you support the death penalty and concede that an innocent man could be put to death, you must be willing to put your name in the hat, with every one else, to have the government execute you by mistake.

Yup. That's just the nature of "society". People have differing views on the cost/benefit of whats good for the group and there will never be in agreement 100%. That said I wonder what equality we should purposely NOT have? I don't think we should have money or property "equality", but is there any other equality that we should not strive for in principal?

You statement does not make sense grammatically, but I think I get your point.

I think most politicians (including Obama) are against Super PACs. It's a zeros sum game. Democrats raise a billion dollars, republicans raise a billion dollars, they cancel each other out. There is no benefit to the politician. However there is a huge downside for the politician because now they have to give up some of their principals ("repay" the Super PAC) which hurts them personally and with their constituents.