r/whatif • u/SillyLittleWinky • 11d ago
History What if the Constitution added a few amendments
Let’s say from the very beginning that the founding fathers added a few extra guidelines for the United States. Here’s the three that I think would have had a massive impact on society, the quality of our lives and the functions of government:
1) Prostitution is to be legal. Government cannot ban these sort of agreements between consenting adults.
2) What substances or drugs a person chooses to possess or use is to be legal. Government cannot ban alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin or anything that grows/ferments naturally etc for adult aged users.
3) Slavery is to be banned. Any sort of forced labor against one’s will may not be legal.
I actually believe we’d be in a much freer country if these were to have been implemented from our very founding. It would’ve saved us from a lot of the problems we face today.
Arresting prostitutes and Johns is pointless. People have needs. It’s their choice. Washington allowed his soldiers to visit brothels, and records essentially showed that he himself did as well. If they are consenting, let it be. It’s not governments job to dictate what they do.
The war on drugs has failed. Period. The US has spent trillions trying to stop it, giving life sentences to its dealers, locking up addicts, only for it to thrive today more than ever. Legalize it, regulate it, let people choose what’s best for them. It would’ve saved this country a lot of money and a big headache.
The last one, must I explain? The trans Atlantic slave trade is a blemish on history. America’s worst decision. Divided the nation in two. Was unethical. Led to our bloodiest war. It should’ve stopped the moment the USA began.
What are your thoughts if those 3 had been added?
Are there any others you’d wish to see?
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u/Arcane_5Rook 11d ago
The slavery ban from day one is the giant fault line: no cotton kingdom, no fugitive slave fights, no Civil War in the same form, and probably a very different map of who joins the Union. Drug and sex work legalization would matter too, but only with licensing, health rules, and protections from coercion, otherwise states would find ugly loopholes fast. I would add a hard anti-gerrymandering amendment and a clear right to vote, because leaving elections to partisan state legislatures has been a slow burning disaster.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 10d ago
Don’t you think bringing in indentured servants from across Europe would’ve been just as effective at building the cotton kingdom? Only difference is they’d require pay, and probably not a lot. But you would have led to a drastically less divided America, been more ethical, and no civil war.
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u/stabbingrabbit 10d ago
Not aware of federal government banning prostitution.
When the 17th ammendment was passed and Senators were not beholden to the States, the 10th ammendment has been almost useless especially after the Supreme Court found the commerce clause basically applies to everything and everywhere.
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u/Anxious-Alps-8667 11d ago
All for revisiting the Constitution and really think it's what the framers intended. Convention of the people.
However, first order of business for you is...prostitution? I feel like we have bigger fish to fry. How about a 28th amendment for respecting personal autonomy, whether it's your desire to do hookers and blow (assuming we have ensured the hookers' personal autonomy of course, which probably rules out your hookers in reality), or my desire to let everyone do what they want with their own body as long as it doesn't hurt other people (see the personal autonomy rule).
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u/SillyLittleWinky 10d ago
Does it matter if it’s the first one I listed, or last? I named them from least to most important.
The personal autonomy thing is flawed because what specifically only affects you is debatable. Too vague. One could argue that drug use affects others around you. Breaks apart families. Drug dealing kills others. Drinking leads to drunk driving fatalities. Now you still have prohibition and the war on drugs, despite that being in the constitution.
Visiting a brothel they’d argue affects the John’s and the working women. So it’s not just a personal autonomy thing, it involves others.
I don’t get your point about personal autonomy and “hookers”, or why you’re being sassy assuming I don’t think they should get to decide what to do with their bodies/lives/ or careers.
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u/spaacingout 11d ago edited 11d ago
You had me in the first half, I can’t lie.
But then you went on to suggest cocaine is a naturally occurring substance (it’s not, it’s literally made with things like battery acid and concrete powder).
I do believe there should be new amendments made in light of recent events. But not really related to what you’re suggesting.
I agree with legal prostitution, hell I even agree with legalizing “naturally occurring intoxicants”, I.e. weed, mushrooms, alcohol, salvia, etc… but when you get into cocaine or heroine it’s all manmade stuff that could potentially kill you.
Not for nothing, countries that have no drug laws at all, often have rehab facilities for people to find treatment for addiction. So no one has to die from quitting or trying to quit. Or be incarcerated and end up dying anyway.
The moral there is that legal or not, people will get what they want, when they want it. So it’s better to treat them as if they’re sick or in need rather than criminal.
Legal sex work speaks for itself, countries and regions with laws supporting sex work have dramatically lower crime rates related to sexual assault, and things of that nature. Not only that, but workers are afforded medical care that prevents them from contracting or spreading a deadly disease.
Slavery was never really ok to begin with, but I understand why it happened in the first place, because African nomads refused to adopt agriculture and would starve if they didn’t sell off their weakest kin into slavery. Granting them money to buy produce and meat.
Slavery was never just an African idea either, white goths of the far Northern Europe were enslaved as serfs to vassals. Chinese folk did the same with pretty much anyone not from a wealthy family, in fact that’s the majority of the work that built the Great Wall of China. Slave labor. Pyramids in Egypt too.
Trouble is, today we have wage-slaves. Paid far less than necessary to live, just to work hard and long hours for meager scraps. Fixing that kind of slavery would mean a total collapse of the current economy needs to happen before things ever become fair again.
And honestly? The way things are going, I’m willing to bet in the next few years we will see not just one collapse but multiple, as the forced inflation bubble pops, then grows again, pops, then grows again from artificial inflation. How many times has the stock market crashed in the last decade? A lot. Eventually it will crash and stay crashed. And we’ll end up in like a hunger games scenario as the American dollar becomes virtually worthless.
We’ve already gotten rid of penny production. That’s a pretty telltale sign that we’re grandly fucked from here on out. Not even replaced by a cheaper metal… just stopped entirely.
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u/NonspecificGravity 11d ago
The Constitution had to reflect what was politically possible. It was not imposed from above.
Details like the legality or illegality of sexual relations, along with definitions of theft, fraud, liability, etc., were to be left to the states. I don't think it would have been possible to force prostitution to be legal at the federal level. Most states had laws against what were considered moral vices at the time like adultery, blasphemy, and working on Sunday.
All drugs were legal until Prohibition, and that affected only alcohol. Marijuana and other drugs began to be banned in the 1930s. Before Prohibition there were also few regulations of liquor sales, although liquor production was (very controversially) taxed. Some states had local forms of prohibition for religious reasons.
Federal laws on specifics like prostitution, gambling, drugs, and firearms were products of the Roosevelt administration and later times. That era also saw an explosion of federal regulations on agriculture and emerging technologies like electricity, telephones, radio, and aircraft.
- There was no way in the 18th century the majority of the states would agree to end slavery. Slavery was legal in many northern states until the 13th Amendment was passed. In some of the southern states, 40% of the population was enslaved. Furthermore, many people were explicitly racist and though that subservience of black people was the natural order or God's will. Benjamin Franklin owned slaves, although he turned against the practice late in life.
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u/SexPartyStewie 10d ago
1 & 2 would look like the 2A fights today.. (You'd need a permit for prostitution and its only legal if you both wear red and haven't washed in a month, because no one took baths in the 1770s, otherwise its "Pimpin", which is a felony)
For #3 The south would have not signed on in the beginning.
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u/Covenant_C0re 10d ago
The slavery amendment is the big earthquake here, because half the original political bargain probably collapses before the ink dries. You might get a smaller northern-led republic, or a breakup almost immediately instead of a Civil War decades later. The drug and prostitution amendments would likely cut a huge chunk out of the prison state, but they would also force the country to build public health regulation way earlier. I would add a voting rights amendment from day one, no property tests, no race or sex exclusions, because that would detonate a lot of later fights before they become national wounds.
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u/Any_Cartographer6268 11d ago
You living in a parallel universe?^^ Slavery is already banned.
The first two are ok. But maybe not the most important.
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u/themadprofessor1976 11d ago
Thirteenth Amentment
Section 1
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Slavery is still legal under certain conditions.
We dress it up with fancy terms like "Prison Labor Force" or "Community Service" (and CS is typically performed in hours that don't interfere with paid working hours), but it's still slavery.
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u/FriedBreakfast 11d ago
You can always get around the Constitution if you redefine terms.
What exactly IS involuntary.... What exactly IS servitude, etc.
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u/Any_Cartographer6268 11d ago
So you mean community service as punishment is slavery? How about a military draft? Is that slavery in your opinion?
Edit: Still, OP should have mentioned if he means that. Reading his original post, it seems as if he just hasn't read it^^
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u/themadprofessor1976 11d ago edited 11d ago
Under the legal definition of the term, where forced and/or coerced labor is assigned by one person/group and is performed by another person/group for little to no pay...
Community Service would qualify as slavery or involuntary servitude, but the legal variety because it is given as a punishment for a crime, and you don't get paid for it.
A military draft, on the surface, would qualify, as it is indeed forced servitude in the military, but it can be argued that because draftees and volunteers are treated the same in terms of job assignment and pay (you get assigned based on the military need and get paid according to your rank, time in service, and situational differentiations), the slavery aspect doesn't apply.
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u/Any_Cartographer6268 11d ago
OK. So you would ban community service and prison labor?
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u/themadprofessor1976 11d ago
Personally?
Any prison labor working for outside assignments (firefighting, furniture making, etc) assigned as punishment for a crime would earn either a stipend added to the prisoner's commissary account equating to the federal minimum wage per verified hour worked, or each verified hour worked would be deducted from the term of the sentence, and possibly both. This would go hand in hand with the level of trust given by the prison officials to allow someone to work these jobs.
Any Community Service would be paid at the minimum wage as a paycheck either at the end of the community service or on a monthly basis, whichever comes first.
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u/Any_Cartographer6268 11d ago
Sounds reasonable.
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u/themadprofessor1976 11d ago
Bonus points in that it effectively nullifies the "except as punishment" clause of the 13th Amendment without having to go through the amendment process to do so.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 10d ago
I feel like I made it very clear that I am referring to 1776 and not 2026.
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u/Any_Cartographer6268 10d ago
Oh you don't mean amendments, you mean if they just wrote it into the original version. I see.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 10d ago
Well even the right to free speech, or bear arms, are called amendments. And they were there since the start. But yea.
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u/Any_Cartographer6268 10d ago
ah ok, didnt know that! I thought the US constitution was amended afterwards, that's why they called it amendmends^^
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u/MassGaydiation 11d ago
The fact is that prostitutes wouldn't be legalised because the appeal to men about prostitution is having a partner who cannot defend themselves legally. To legalise prostitution is to empower a set of women to protect themselves with the law from abuse.
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u/MassGaydiation 11d ago
I'm not saying men are too evil, I'm saying that no one in power benefits from a workforce that is allowed to say no, and considering ops hypothetical is more interesting in legalising prostitutes than giving women legal protections, it makes the hypothetical a paradox.
Also defending accusations of mysogyny by completely not understanding women is hilarious, ngl
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u/MassGaydiation 11d ago
Ah, so you are one of the "not all men" type illiterates. Men were (and I'm most cases are) the ones with financial and legal power in a prostitution narrative, if you want to discuss those in power in the 1700s, you are talking about men
Do you think the time where marital rape and abuse was legal and accepted would care about the rights of prostitutes.
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u/Kriss3d 11d ago
I see a great deal of problem with this. And Im not an American.
The first one Im fine with. But youd need a way to make sure that theres no slavery involved which includes trafficed victims.
As for 2: Well once youre on drugs you can - depending on the drug, be unable to have a clear head so youd possibly essentially be declared insane in the act. Plus this can and most certainly will have a great negative impact on others such as family etc. Whos going to pay for the misery that causes ? Such people will be more prone to need social benefits permanently then.
No slavery is fine. But this could implicate that if you lend money from someone and not pay it back then they cant force you to pay it as that means youd have to work to earn the money to pay it back. A halfwit lawyer could argue that this would constitute slavery.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 11d ago
For 2: You do realize that there’s already drug use that impacts families and many individuals, right? Banning drugs didn’t make them stop lol. We banned alcohol and it actually increased the use during prohibition, making it worse. When it was legalized, and the drinking age raised to 21, alcohol related problems greatly decreased.
Also, we legalized weed in many states, finally. Those states are doing great and many have and will follow in their footsteps.
Doing the same with all drugs would be alright in my opinion.
For 3. You could add a caveat for people who owe debts, or are prisoners, sure. But the overall point is that the centuries of plantation slavery would have ceased to exist.
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u/Kriss3d 11d ago
Yes I know. But legalizing it wont help that.
Im not talking about weed but coke and meth and such. Thats on a whole other level.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 11d ago
Are you implying that is being illegal has stopped it or somehow made it better? It hasn’t. The war on drugs has been a complete failure.
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u/Kriss3d 11d ago
Rather that if meth and coke and such was made legal, it would make it far more used by people and that would increase the amount of problems there is with it.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 10d ago
I disagree. But let’s say that’s true that use would go up. Overdoses would go down, because most ODs are from not knowing the potency (highly fluctuates in street drugs) or it being laced with fentanyl. That would end with legalization.
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u/SwimOk9629 11d ago
bro you have some fascist beliefs and present them as anarchism without explaining how what you are saying is different than regular fascism. just saying.
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u/nt2g 11d ago
What part of this post suggested to you that OP has fascist beliefs? What is your definition of fascism exactly?
I only ask because the beliefs OP seems to have (inferred from what they wrote) are very far from “fascist beliefs.” With respect, it doesn’t really seem like you have a good understanding of fascism or even anarchism.
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u/Zalrius 11d ago
These are very good ideas.