My point was that before mass production and modern technology, transportation, and the preservation of perishables, problems like tainted meat, infected vegetables, defective vehicals, monopolistic transport, would be minor and local. There would be much less need for the federal government to play a role in interstate commerce because there would be so much less commerce and problems would be truly local. You can’t have the economy we have now and use the technology we use today and expect the federal government to be as uninvolved in commerce as it was in Jefferson’s day.
Clearly, there was interstate commerce then, or there would be no need for an interstate commerce clause, but the problem was still thought of in terms of tariffs and duties. They didn’t expect that the kind of regulation and oversight that we have now would be necessary. Today it is, and expecting every state to do its own safety regulation (or not) would introduce the kind of bottlenecks there were in the Holy Roman Empire. That doesn’t mean that everything we do is part of interstate commerce. It does mean that we were bound to have a bureaucracy larger than Jefferson’s. Maybe this was an obvious point, but I thought it needed to be made.
Actually, I do. The Constigution does not grant to Congress or the executive the kind of police power that you argue is necessary. Commerce is the same today as it was 250 years ago. The commercial code, financing and commercial transaction structures are the same. Claims for defective products or adulterated food proceed under a federal system predictably. International transactions proceed just fine without an overarching international police power. Which undercuts the basic thrust of your argument.
The drafters of the Constitution had the experience of an overly concentrated power regulating trade called the Crown. So our federal system was designed with basicly no police power because if you give an inch, they take a yard. The AAA in the 30's was nothing more than police power operating under the commerce clause. After 80 years, the federal government can now force an individual to enter into an unwanted contract. See NFIB v. Sebelius.
This is not because large, complex, voluminous or dangerous commercial transactions require a federal police power. It is because Washingtion will forever seek to expand its power because large, incumbent interests benefit from it. There should be only enough federal power to prevent individual states from taxing (internal tariffs) interstate commerce to the detriment of commercial transactions generally and nothing more. Instead we have a federal government that can do whatever it wants, literally. I detest it.