I'm not saying that we shouldn't have democracy, but we should acknowledge that it is far from perfect. As Churchill said, "Democ­ra­cy is the worst form of gov­ern­ment, except for all the oth­ers."

Democracy is also not a scale-free process. Very different dynamics play out in a democracy the size of a city versus a state versus the size of a nation.

It's hard to explain briefly, but basically all of these separations of powers are designed to avoid some of the worst aspects of democracy. They happen to look less "fair" in an abstract sense, but it's more important to have some practical safeguards than abstract fairness.

A lot of our most heated political battles are playing out at the federal level (and have been for a long time), and I think that's a consequence of the 16th and 17th Amendments. If some of these battles were playing out in the states, I think our society would be a lot less polarized.

Now, let's change the picture to directly-elected senators and direct taxation. Now, the money is collected directly from the citizens first, and then the government's relationship with the state is entirely different. Now, the state and the federal government are cooperating, and the sucker is the one not in the room: the citizen whose money is being passed around. The state just becomes a node in a hierarchy, rather than a formidable agent with its own powers and responsibilities.

It's actually very similar to negotiations with a public employees' union. The government and the union are "negotiating", but they are really on the same side of the table. The sucker is the citizen who's paying for it all, but isn't even in the room.

If everyone agrees about the major stuff, and you just need to finally make a decision on what color to paint the bike shed, democracy is great. A decision gets made, enough people are happy, and you move on.

But when you have real differences, you need a way to protect minorities against large coalitions of voters. Even if you aren't in a minority today, shifting politics (and divide-and-conquer politicians) will ensure that you are in a minority soon enough.

And it's even worse when society is polarized, because the coalitions form too quickly and too strongly.

But limiting the power of the majority is hard. The Constituion is genius because they recognized that and divded the power so many different ways. The protection of political minorities is much more important than the small amount of additional abstract fairness you get with direct elections.

If the federal government had to collect from the states, then there would be more oversight and power for states to say "wait a minute, why are we giving you money and then begging to get it back".

In theory, the result could be the same. Congress could still pass spending bills and give the money over with conditions. But in practice I think states would be in a more powerful negotiating position.

The idea that growing plants on your own land for your own consumption would some how fall under this legislative power is ridiculous. It's not "flexibility", it's fraud.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

Whether justices should be interesting is itself an interesting question.

Then, have a hard conversation about what freedom means, and whether restrictions on it really lead to better outcomes. Usually not.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

That would keep the pesky federal government out of our personal affairs.

If I donate now, what will the money be used for? Will it put green sand on beaches, or be used for bureaucratic paperwork, or be used for marketing to raise awareness?

Source code has been a dynamic thing for a while, and I think that's part of the reason the GPL (at least v2) is not very popular any more. I mean, nobody really even wants source code, it's just a maintenance headache.

Even after complexity started to take over, there was still the argument that you could audit your computer if it was doing something funny, or ask a different company to maintain it for you, instead. But that seems less and less practical as time goes on. The company that wrote the software is really the only game in town to keep it useful.

Snaps are a logical extension of this phenomenon. They cross a line in the sand, perhaps, but basically just continue a trend already going on.

Also, the unix security model seems fundamentally bad. The idea that any code you execute can delete everything in your home directory is insane. It imposes a huge burden of trust on your software distribution system for the most trivial things. That reduces the practicality of using third-party sources.

I'm not really defending snaps and I will probably avoid them as long as I can. But I sort of feel like the battle might already be lost.

The same thing with phones. Smart phones are good at a lot of things, but they are mediocre as a telephone.

Project vesta has the additional benefit that it works directly on the oceans, which may be the more pressing problem.

Perhaps that's a great thing to do, but it's not something to do quietly.

Can it be addressed with, say, liability insurance premiums (and is it already)? Do we need a stigma associated with unnecessary trucks? More laws?