In this essay, I document the negative relationship between the population of a country and its economic freedom.
Overall, 43 percent of the small nations are in the highest group for economic freedom. Only 20 percent of the middle-sized nations are in that group. And just 17 percent of large nations have high levels of economic freedom.
After you read that essay, you might want to look at this version, where I use a controversial measure of national average IQ as an additional variable to predict economic freedom.
Think about what it might mean to have responsibility for something like Medicare or unemployment insurance devolved to the state level. Would someone who is born in Missouri and moves to Maryland be considered a citizen of Missouri who then is a guest worker in Maryland? When would that person become a citizen of Maryland? etc.
It wouldn’t be ‘radically federalist’ if the answer to that isn’t up to Maryland.
I think calling this federalism is misleading (though totally accurate). For example, under every interpretation of American federalism ever the answer to your question is “recent migrants can’t be denied the fundamental privileges and immunities of their new state nor otherwise discriminated against in a way that too-adversely effects interstate commerce nor discriminated against in a way that burdens their right to travel. As such, under the US constitution someone who moves states intending to become a resident of the new state must get the welfare provided by his new state after a relatively short interval.”
I realize that “federalism” doesn’t automatically refer to American federalism, but I suspect that is what readers will hear, and even if you make it clear that you aren’t calling for federalism on originalist grounds you also have to make it clear that you are calling for federalism entirely without reference to and possibly beyond what is provided for in the constitution.
I’m also not clear why you are calling for radical federalism in the first place rather than Balkanization. If small countries are good, don’t you want small countries? Not big, decentralized countries?
I realize that calling for “federalism” is respectable but calling for a bunch of entirely new micro-nations would get you wrongly dismissed as a crank, but there’s got to be some third rhetorical way. “Special development regions,” or something?
How about radical bundling. Elect a retirement executive with his proposed tax for SS, a healthcare executive for medicare medicaid etc., a benevolence executive with his tax and law enforcement and defense and diplomacy stays with the president.
The problem with this is they consider places like Singapore among the freest when they actually have far more intrusive government than many poorer ones. Wealthier countries have more government and once you control for that, size is irrelevant or even regressive.
Since over half the states in the United States are sub 5 million, a better comparison might be the even smaller countries you didn’t look at.
A simple glance at the list will show some unusually bad places. I don’t think Connecticut, for example, can learn too much of governance from Moldova, even though they’re very similar in size and population.
Many (most?) public colleges have big subsidies for tuition, but only if you’re a resident of that state. So, they have rules to determine residency. I think this is quite similar to the hypothetical scenario involving welfare and guest workers? (I also wonder if it would be better if public colleges competed more across state boundaries, with tuition subsidies coming from the federal government rather than the state.)
That’s actually thanks to an exception to the dormant commerce clause doctrine called the market-participant doctrine. When a state provides a service in the marketplace, like selling higher education, it can discriminate against out of staters in a way it cannot when it provides a service for free, at nominal cost, or outside of an existing marketplace. Don’t ask me why; it made sense to the Supreme Court.
States also are not free, even when they can discriminate against out of staters, to too broadly define the term. So, for example, a state couldn’t rule that you are only illegible for instate tuition if you’ve lived there 18 years, as that would too significantly prejudice the right to travel.
Lastly, if a privilege of state citizenship is fundamental, rather than incidental, it can’t be denied under the privileges and immunities clause.
So yeah, this is all pretty well tread law, and much of it has been settled for some time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_participant
Tradable Shares.
Maybe he’s less pushing libertarianism as offering an out of this idiotic fighting over aesthetics.
As for “convincing people” its essentially impossible and at best too costly. People at best probably need to steal ideas.
So, offhand, we can see two problems. (1) when taxes are used to develop semi-public good assets like universities. It’s hard to then move to another state and take your piece of the university that you and your parents and grandparents paid to create. And there is (2) claims on future tax revenues – much like the pre-existing conditions issue in insurance. So, if you move to a new state what entitles you to the benefits that are supported by the tax base? These aren’t unique problems as any church member can attest, but the government sure has a knack of making them unique in degree.
And I would note that this degree of the problem is ameliorated by walking back the scale of competing government units, which is why they will oppose it.
“43% percent of the small nations are in the highest group for economic freedom. ”
I have not looked it up, but are not a large proportion of small nations in the lowest group for economic freedom too? Could this not be an artifact of smaller populations being more likely to be at the edge of distrubutions? Cf Bill Gates error in preferring small schools.