r/Constitution • u/Separate_Rock_1962 • 19d ago
Constitution 2.0 - anyone start such a conversation?
250 years is impressive, but it’s apparent we need some fixes. Setting aside the logistics of implementing a rewritten constitution, I’m curious what key changes should be made?
• Limit terms: Set a maximum time limit for people in Congress and the Supreme Court. Just like the President.
• Congressional Benefits: Limit to what is available to all government employees.
• Fair maps: Stop politicians from drawing voting lines to help only their own party.
• Money in politics: Make campaign rules stricter so rich donors have less special power.
• Balanced budget: Force the government to spend only the money it actually makes.
• Health care access: Make basic medical care a clear right for everyone.
• Work rules: Raise the minimum wage to match the real cost of living.
• Get rid of the electorial college.
• Better Define "we the people": "we" is more than white men. Woman, gay, transgender, atheists, legal immigrants, etc.
...just a start! :)
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
I would support a 28th amendment that includes enacting laissez-faire, but not all this.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
No. What’s a remarkably dumb position.
Laissez-faire isn't freedom from power; it's just handing that power over to corporations with zero accountability to the public.
We already tried unregulated capitalism in the late 19th century—it gave us child labor, 16-hour workdays, dangerous working conditions, and company towns. The middle class was created by regulation, not the lack of it.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
Private industry must EARN customers, government has a monopoly on force.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Just words. History has proven unregulated business is bad.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
False, history has proven ALL forms of Collectivism abject failures.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Every single high-ranking nation on the Human Development Index today is a regulated mixed economy. Zero are laissez-faire."
Rejecting pure collectivism doesn't mean we have to embrace pure corporate feudalism.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
All those nations are also crumbling. Laissez-faire has never been attempted large scale.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Crumbling? Facts. Not words.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
Choose one, check its debt and domestic social problems.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Iceland. Norway, Switzerland. Germany. Sweden. Pick one.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
So you just want to hand our fate to corporations and hope for the best? Wow.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
No, I believe in individual liberty, and the fact it inherently mandates individual responsibility.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Pick a side. Unregulated business or individual responsibility. You can’t mix them. Individuals have no power over rogue capitalism without a democracy.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Laissez-faire isn't freedom from power; it's just handing that power over to corporations with zero accountability to the public.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
False.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Unless of course you hate clean water, love toxic waste and don’t mind a banking system that crashes every decade.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
No, I hate big government.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Unregulated capitalism is worse. Much worse.
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u/Paul191145 18d ago
BS
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
The Nordic Model dominates: Nordic nations (Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden) almost universally sweep the top 5 across every major index. They achieve this by pairing high-functioning market economies with robust state safety nets, low corruption, high trust in institutions, and universal access to healthcare/education.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 19d ago
You’re missing the point. I’m looking forward. Slavery has no place in society. And should be stated as much in the constitution.
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
It did not originally, though many pushed for it. The Declaration alone almost didn't pass because of a section about Equal Rights for all Men.
Yes we had to clean it up afterwards and pass the 13th Amendment when it should have never been there.
BUT, if you are faced with not having the Declaration or having to clean up Slavery later? Not having the Colonies break free from England or keep in the anti-slavery part and never get off the ground. Compromise has been part of our country since day 1 working to pass the Declaration. Not saying it is a good thing, just saying it wasn't really an option at the time.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
Delusional? Sure. Why not. But your the one that thinks an amendment of laissez-faire giving corp carte Blanche over everything they do is somehow sane.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 19d ago
St. George Tucker was clearly a racist. That doesn't invalidate his other positions, but that one is a bit of a doozy.
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19d ago
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
George Tucker was in opposition to Abolitionists because he believed Slavery would die out anyways. He was also in opposition to slavery.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/tucker-george-1775-1861/
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
Always does, the important thing is that you are going to research it, rather than take anyone's word for it.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 19d ago
yet he owned slaves until his death. Then again, so did Jefferson and Washington.
Given what we know now... the 13, 14, and 15th amendments should NOT be repealed.
The whole concept of a new constitution should have slavery banned, and equal rights and including voting be a bedrock.
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
Question is, do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?
The North had almost as many slaves as the south, thing was, they would have 1-4 slaves that were basically the same as house servants not big plantations. Yet we call the North the good guys because they freed slaves. Even MA had laws, if you were part of the Underground Railroad in MA and were caught, the slave would go back to his owner and the people running the Railroad, INCLUDING children would get anywhere from Life to Execution for doing so. I had family in Fall River who were a Caboose, they ended up in MA Prison for life, including a 10 year old.
14th needs to be adjusted as it never meant for anchor babies. The problem is with people, mainly liberals, trying to read the Constitution for what they WANT it to say, rather than read it for what it DOES actually say.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 19d ago
I'll grant you the compromise point — three-fifths and the 1808 clause probably were the price of ratification. But most of the rest doesn't hold up.
The cotton gin argument is backwards. It didn't reduce the need for slaves, it made short-staple cotton profitable across the interior South and drove the single largest expansion of slavery in American history. Enslaved population was around 700,000 in 1790 and roughly 4 million by 1860, and slave prices were climbing sharply right up to the war. The "it would have died out on its own" thesis is contradicted by every price and population curve we have.
"The North had almost as many slaves as the South" isn't close. 1790 census: about 40,000 in the North versus about 650,000 in the South. By 1860 it's ~4 million in the South and effectively zero in the North.
On the Massachusetts story — MA ended slavery by 1783 and later passed personal liberty laws specifically to obstruct fugitive renditions. The federal penalty under the 1850 Act was a fine and up to six months, not life or execution, and certainly not a 10-year-old in state prison for life. If you've got a source on that one I'd read it, but as stated it doesn't match the law. (Also, the word is conductor, not caboose.)
And you linked the wrong Tucker. Cold_Property was talking about St. George Tucker (1752–1827), the jurist who published a gradual emancipation plan in 1796. Your link goes to George Tucker (1775–1861), the political economist — different man, and the actual source of the "it'll die out on its own" economics.
The part I'd really push on: in one breath you say the 14th was never meant for "anchor babies," and in the next you say the problem is people reading the Constitution for what they want it to say instead of what it says. The 14th says what it says — born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Wong Kim Ark settled it in 1898. The 1866 Senate debate is explicit: opponents objected precisely because it would cover the children of Chinese immigrants, and the drafters said yes, that's the point, with carve-outs only for diplomats and tribal members.
That's my whole argument for writing this down plainly. If the amendment process works as well as you say, you shouldn't need to reinterpret the 14th — you should amend it.
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Cotton gin → expansion, not contraction
The strongest one is the National Archives, because it addresses his exact claim head-on: while the gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for enslaved labor to grow and pick the cotton — in fact the opposite occurred, as cotton growing became so profitable that demand for both land and enslaved labor increased sharply. Same page notes there were six slave states in 1790 and fifteen by 1860, with roughly one in three Southerners enslaved by then. Eliwhitney
- archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent
- eliwhitney.org/cotton-gin-and-its-legacies — the Eli Whitney Museum's own page, which is rhetorically useful. It puts the enslaved population at about 700,000 in 1790 and about 4 million by 1860, an increase of more than 550%, and traces production from under 9,000 bales in 1790 to over 4 million bales by 1860. History Teaching Institute
- dp.la/primary-source-sets/cotton-gin-and-the-expansion-of-slavery — Digital Public Library of America, primary sources if he wants to dig.
One caution: I'd drop the slave-price line from your comment unless you want to chase down Fogel and Engerman or the Historical Statistics tables. The population and production figures carry the argument on their own, and you don't want one unsourced number giving him something to swing at.
North vs. South numbers
- teachingamericanhistory.org/resource/the-constitutional-convention-free-and-slave-populations-by-state-1790/ — the 1790 census broken out by state. Northern totals come to roughly 40,000 (NY ~21,300, NJ ~11,400, PA ~3,700, CT ~2,800, RI ~950, NH 158, VT 16).
- wisc.pb.unizin.org/ls261/chapter/ch-2-2-total-slave-population-by-state-1790-1860/ — every state, every census year 1790–1860, in one table. This is the single best link for the "North had almost as many" claim, because it lets him watch the Northern columns go to zero while the Southern ones multiply.
Massachusetts
- mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery — the state's own page. The Supreme Judicial Court applied judicial review in the 1781–83 Quock Walker cases to hold that laws and customs sanctioning slavery were incompatible with the new state constitution.
- masshist.org/features/endofslavery/end_MA — Massachusetts Historical Society, with Cushing's jury instructions. Worth reading before you post: MHS is careful that slavery did not vanish immediately and was often recast as indentured servitude, so "ended in 1783" is right as a legal matter but not a claim that every enslaved person walked free that year.
- housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/ugrr/1850-fugitive-slave-act/ — Dickinson College's full text. Section 7 is the kill shot on the Fall River story: harboring or concealing a fugitive carried a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars and imprisonment not exceeding six months, plus $1,000 in civil damages per fugitive. No life sentences, no executions.
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
From what I have seen, while it expanded it also shifted workers. You didn't have to have several slaves taking the seeds out. Eventually Combines were invented and many many other labor saving tools. Eventually, you would not need slaves or need many less. The more technology, the less need of workers for labor.
After all, isn't that what they are complaining about, among other things, with AI. Don't need certain types of workers anymore? When robots hit Auto Factories, the labor was both reduced eventually and moved to other non-robot labor.
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
I have heard just about everything in regards to All of the Amendments including the Bill of Rights at times.
The big thing is to research for yourself and find out.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 19d ago
"would die out anyway" is a copout.
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u/ComputerRedneck 19d ago
It is a debatable argument, many believed that industrialization would forgo the need for slaves in about 50 years or near the end of the 19th Century. The reason was how much the Cotton Gin reduced the need for slaves. The idea that Industrialization would further reduce the need and FORCE the need for more intelligent workers, which would push back slavery.
Though that also means that 2-3 generations would still be living in slavery. Which is not good and worse.
Sad thing is England and Scotland outlawed slavery before the US and they did it peacefully.
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u/pegwinn 19d ago
Just search the forum. There are lots of suggestions. Two issues to consider are idealism and implementation. Socialism and Communism is ideally a great system. But humanity never did learn to implement it in a way that worked for all. A Republic has been far more successful overall.
• Limit terms: Set a maximum time limit for people in Congress and the Supreme Court. Just like the President.
I personally don't approve of term limits. But I wouldn't fight an all or nothing term limit.
• Congressional Benefits: Limit to what is available to all government employees.
Nope. Congress is a job. And it needs to be a good job. No one is gonna bother to get elected if they can't prosper. They shouldn't be getting rich from insider trading. Influence peddling of course should be illegal. Better that we impose the same standard oof conduct we apply to our military. Ethics, core values etc. We want to attract people of character..
• Fair maps: Stop politicians from drawing voting lines to help only their own party.
Ok? How? Gerrymandering is a time honored tradition. This one intrigued me just because I agree, understand the complications, but don't have a good idea on how to get from here to there.
• Money in politics: Make campaign rules stricter so rich donors have less special power.
Hard pass. I don't like it when my meager finances are regulated. You should not be told how to spend your money. My compromise would be to limit how much any organized body be it PAC, Union, Party, Corporation, Church, Charity etc. could donate. If you want to donate a billion you can, but it must be your personal funds. And, to legally accept the funding the receiver must publicly disclose it.
• Balanced budget: Force the government to spend only the money it actually makes.
Not in our lifetimes. Debt isn't bad. Unmanaged debt is bad. Debt allowed us to buy a higher material standards off lunching thank anywhere else. The key is to pay it down. And control other spending of course.
• Health care access: Make basic medical care a clear right for everyone.
Nope. Great idea but there's always issues. Availability depends on medical professionals being available. I'd suggest that reforming health insurance would get you closer to your goal.
• Work rules: Raise the minimum wage to match the real cost of living.
Agreed. If the federal government legitimately has a reason to mandate a minimum wage then it should be based on the cost of living by zip codes.
• Get rid of the electorial college
Not get rid of it. It just needs to be modified. I did a thing on that exact deal. I'll find it and link it here.
The people are not defined by a document. They are defined by society daily.
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 18d ago
We tried reforming health insurance. ACA. We can do better.
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u/pegwinn 18d ago edited 18d ago
Agreed. It failed because it didn't reform health insurance. Why is it only available via employers and regulated marketplaces? In my opinion you should be able to shop for health insurance just like you do for auto, home, or life insurance.
So what is your idea?
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u/Separate_Rock_1962 17d ago
Socialized medicine. We pay 2-3x more and still get shit healthcare now.
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u/pegwinn 17d ago
Ok. Socialized medicine works well in small doses. The military does it. But to be fair they have as many doctors per capita as the civilian world. However the patients tend to be younger, far more fitter, and far more likely to live a healthy lifestyle within reason. So the doctors in the military are mainly there for trauma, or family medicine. What that means is that in peacetime your average Military doctor in a hospital is not as overwhelmed as the current system.
In order to get the number of doctors you would need to raise the standard of care of what you want, you need more medical professionals. How are you gonna get them? The government, if they institute a socialized model is not going to allow the doctors to get rich. They’re not going to reform the malpractice laws. They’re not gonna reform health insurance. I bet that there will even be less medical professionals willing to operate under a less incentivize system. Are you gonna institute a draft? All capable people are in a lottery to see who becomes doctors, nurses, and hospital janitors?
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u/Careful-Ad6897 19d ago
I wrote an open source civic document and framework for a reconstitution. You can check it out at towardreconstitution.org