There shouldn't be any variation when it comes to commercial regulation, and insofar as "commerce" includes both goods and services, there is a very small area of of actual 10th Am territory.

To see if there would be a long line of posters pretending to mock lumping those three states together. There probably would have been a week ago.

I already offered my therefore. States should have have a higher bar if they want to pass a law that contradicts almost every other state and they should review laws like that currently on the books. (By having people study the opposing arguments in all those other states and disagreeing only if there really is a reason that their state should be an exception.)

Sorry. I was responding to the OP and hadn't read the entire thread.

For several reasons, I would need a lot of convincing before I endorsed what you are proposing. First, for a lot of issues, defining whether proposed legislation is generally consistent with almost every other state would be a lot more difficult than you are suggesting. Second, if inconsistent laws across states are indeed a problem, your solution would do little to solve the problem, especially in the short run. Most discrepancies in state law are the product of legislation that has been in place for decades, not the product of some state or other passing a new law. Third, in the less common situation in which a discrepancy would be caused by proposed new legislation, your proposal would hamstringing states with legislatures that want to be leaders in areas where legislation needs to advance.

OK. So what about the simpler proposal that I mentioned that there should be a federal law or maybe better to call it a "guideline" that is the default position for the state law unless there is a 60% vote to override it.

Did I miss the post where you stated what the problem actually was? I'm alright with companies having to follow the regulations of the most conservative state and I'm alright with laws not being controlled by the most conservative state.

If you look at the recent legalization of marijuana in a number of states, it seems to argue that yes the difference here is cultural attitudes surrounding drug use and puritan attitudes concerning the role of the state and the reformation of individuals.

One would think that culture played a bigger role in different individual state laws in the past than in today's world of mass media.
Now it seems the individual states are possibly losing their uniqueness and in this polarized political landscape everything is basically split down party lines.

Look at the tug of war going on in Wisconsin.

Is that what you meant by statistical fluke?

I suspect that you don't want to hear practical objections, but I have a lot of them.

First, Congress doesn't have the bandwidth to embark on a massive codification project of the sort you describe.

Second, in at least some areas, Congress doesn't have the authority under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution to do what you are proposing.

Third, if your goal is uniformity in state law absent a state supermajority, your proposal won't work. Congress can pass legislation that preempts state law. But Congress doesn't have the authority to simply erase state law. This matters because some states have legislation (i) in areas where other states do not; and (ii) in areas where Congress doesn't believe legislation is necessary.

Fourth, your proposal would shift power in a significant way from state legislatures to Congress. This shift would amplify the influence of Senators in low population states.

Fifth, differences in local law -- for example, local law on income taxation -- would persist. Maybe uniformity of state law would be good enough for you.

Thus we have Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

and it's continuing fallout:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_...s_Constitution

You are right. My OP was simply a version of a well known statement that falls out of Baye's Theorem. "Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence" (For the nitwits who don't get why this is Bayes, think of a guy who is making $50 an hour in 10-20 limit after a months play. That's not enough evidence to justify believing he is $20 an hour better than anyone else. He was mopre likely just lucky. Similarly if one or two states have laws disallowing or allowing stuff where the other 48 or 49 do the opposite, it is more likely that it was a fluke than actually some relevant difference about their state.)

But I don't really care. I just enjoy pointing out the mediocre thinking processes of the majority of people in power.

marijuana is legal in the most liberal states and cities

doesnt sound coincidental

What could be different between a single poker player and dozens of politicians making decisions? Another perfect internet analogy!

You haven't offered a reason why we should care to take this recommendation.

Does it really matter to the country as a whole if some state decides that the speed limit in residential neighborhoods should be 23mph?

for the most part, these areas are few



Katzenbach v. McClung - a single restaurant discriminating against blacks implicates interstate commerce


Wickard v. Filburn - a dude growing his own wheat and not selling it implicates interstate commerce

Thanks for the tip. I went to law school. For the record, you are mischaracterizing the holding in Katzenbach fairly significantly. Your description of the holding in Wickard v. Filburn is a bit better, although I wouldn't go so far as to call it accurate.

Sure. I'll buy this, especially if we are talking about laws of no particular cultural significance that were put on the books 40 years ago.

I'm not sure it follows that there is an urgent need to bring the outliers in line, but it's common sense that many differences in state law are uncorrelated to differences in culture among those states.

I'm wondering if you agree with me that most of the disparities in different state laws are actually NOT due to the differences in the cultures or makeups of the different states but rather a statistical fluke...[/QUOTE]

If you call democracy a statistical fluke, who am I to argue with you?

How is it you still haven't learned what Bayes's Theorem is?

If you are saying that "extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence" cannot be derived via the use of Baye's then you are just wrong.

In your poker example, what was the prior probability and how did you use new information to get a posterior probability?

Also, the gentleman's name was "Bayes."

True given more or less equal initial conditions but statistical flukes in many areas can lead to extreme established differences that perpetuate the future 'odd' decisions in a causal manner - not so much for win rates

Better hope that DS doesn't start going on about that Ockham chap

Once again, different laws are not based on a fluke or Bayes Theorem, they are based on democratic decisions, or in other words, because the voters voted for them. Note: Not every voter votes equal, because not every human is equal, because not every human thinks exactly like another human. It would be different if you replace human voters with puppets though. Then it would indeed be a statistical fluke, or some sort of technical flaw.

I'm starting to wonder if the point is to get to a "Philosopher King" dictatorship ASAP.

I really hope not.

It is preferable that folks get to make their own mistakes.