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To: x
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.

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.

32 posted on 07/04/2023 12:21:12 PM PDT by frithguild (The warmth and goodness of Gaia is a nuclear reactor in the Earth's core that burns Thorium)
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To: frithguild

Washington DC didn’t take that power on its own. It didn’t even get it from powerful interests acting on their own. The voters wanted various protections, or what they thought were protections, and they didn’t think the Founders would have opposed federal product safety regulation of interstate commerce.


33 posted on 07/04/2023 1:16:25 PM PDT by x
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