Comment on Wikimedia Foundation calls on US Supreme Court to strike laws that threaten Wikipedia

• SomethingBurger@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Places like that in other countries usually don’t have as much power as US States do. Other countries are better designed and don’t have practically independent sub-countries inside them with their own laws.

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  • Furball@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Federalism can also be a very good thing to allow autonomy for certain groups within a country, though. I wouldn’t say Unitarianism is a better design by default.

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    • SomethingBurger@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Why would certain groups have autonomy on some things but not others? They don’t get to pick and choose. Either declare independence or submit to the central government.

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      • Furball@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I strongly disagree. Local autonomy is important for a functioning country, especially one with minority ethnic groups.

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      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Does it make sense to have local government? A mayor or a city council that decides how to run a town? You could (and certainly will) end up with with situations where some things are generally legal in the country, but illegal in some specific towns.

        States are really no different.

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  • bitcrafter@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If you are going to compare the United States to other political entities, I think that the better thing to compare it to is the European Union rather than other countries, because like the EU the US was formed from the union of sovereign member states and that is why it is designed the way that it is (for better or worse).

    Given that, I have an honest question asked out of ignorance: Does the EU have more power over its member states than the United States does? (I am not super-familiar with it, so the answer may very well be yes.)

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    • SomethingBurger@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It has less. The EU is mostly an economic union. It can regulate trade and consumer rights, but not much else. Countries must adhere to the European Declaration of Human Rights and some other conditions to join the Union (like being a democracy or having a stable economy), but the EU cannot enforce these rules after the fact; see Hungary which became a near-dictatorship after joining, or France which is regularly sentenced for human rights violations and simply pays the fine instead of changing anything.

      EU laws cannot supercede a country’s constitution. If they clash, the country must - by EU rules - change its constitution, but not doing so carries almost no consequence.

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    • Instigate@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think it’s even better to compare the US with other federated nations - Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, India, Argentina etc. as they’re all constitutional nations of federated states with separations of power between the federation and the individual states.

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