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Comment by burfog | Hacker News Reader

It was like the EU.

In the sense of being somewhat federalised, maybe, but

> had little authority, and could not accomplish anything independent of the states. It had no chief executive, and no court system. Congress lacked the power to levy taxes, regulate foreign or interstate commerce, or effectively negotiate with foreign powers.

sounds nothing like the EU!

Interestingly the EU also doesn't levy taxes. Unlike the US under the Articles of Confederation though, EU member states actually value central government, and so they do actually pay to run it (all EU governments pay in, but EU schemes have the effect that the poorer states get back more than they paid in various forms). That Congress wasn't able to get anything done because in practice the States didn't allow it to get anything done. A lot of the same thinking that's today popular on the US West Coast brought down that government.

"Oh, I'd definitely _voluntarily_ pay for a central government, I just don't want mandatory taxes". "Oh did I say I'd definitely pay? I'm short right now, hit me up next month." "Actually I decided I don't want to contribute to anything I'm not totally in favour of, I need veto over all decisions or else I won't be paying". "Huh, funny, why did the government fail?"

And that's why the modern US government has tax raising powers. Just as the UK can rightly say it tried not having kings, hated it, so got a new king but now very clearly at the whim of the people; the US can say it has tried not having mandatory taxation and that didn't work so yes it now has taxes (with or without representation) and that won't be changing.

I'm not an American, how does this compare to current US West Coast?

The Californian ideology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

I grew up in Florida (Rep. Joe Scarborough's district, back when he was a rabid conservative and a leader in the Republican revolution) and Alabama, worked as an intern at a neoconservative K Street think tank in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and went to law school in Virginia in the late 2000s. I've lived and worked on and off in the Bay Area for nearly 15 of the last 20 years, and have plenty of family in Southern California (including a sister and cousin who are active politically, one progressive the other more a Californian conservative), so understand the vibe down there.

The sentiments of the techno-utopians on the west coast and the settlers before them shouldn't be equivocated to the anti-civic sentiments of Southern conservatism and the national conservative movement that emerged principally from the Bible belt and Sunbelt states in the 1990s.

Keep making that mistake and we'll have decades more of civic and political nihilism. Even the most starry-eyed Silicon Valley billionaires dreaming about basic incomes and robo-basilisks still seek to engage with government and the state. Gingrich, perhaps more than any other politician (he did lead the Republican Revolution, after all), is a walking incarnation of the modern Republican ideology, and he's an avowed nihilist when it comes to government.

Similar all-or-nothing, bitter attitudes are creeping into the political left and it will likewise lead to political decay. It's not healthy. People should feel to disagree with and criticize Benihoff, Mayer, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc; but step back and compare them to people like Carla Fioroni. Who's politics should you really be afraid of?

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