But why, to cut off the pirates, do they need the RIAA at all? I guess I don't see what the ISPs gain from involvement with the RIAA. They could do the same things right now, by themselves, without getting in bed with such a dirty, dirty group.
Yes, but music files are relatively extremely small these day compared to video.
But I would be willing to bet that a majority of movie pirates also pirate music. It doesn't matter to the ISP why they kick them off; it reduces bandwidth consumed either way.
What we need are real killer applications in completely new spaces.
The open source nature of any potential linux-based killer-app, pretty much guarantees that it will be ported to Windows. That's not a bad thing, and will not significantly change the number of people running linux.
Linux's real power is its ability to run on anything, when properly configured: servers, check; desktops, check; netbooks, check; embedded systems, check; thin clients, check. Consumer hardware manufactorers have only just begun to realize that they can save buttloads of money building upon linux instead of developing a complete, in-house solution.
Microsoft has financial interests which may be opposed to those of certain hardware manufacturers. They may be worried that a low-power, low-cost OS may cannibalize sales of higher margin products. Linux, and all the open software in its orbit, has no such agenda. The hardware manufacturers aren't beholden to anyone.
Essentially, linux allows every hardware manufactorer to be have all the advantages of Apple: tight integration of software and hardware without having to go begging to MS; without the downside: cost of developing an OS from scratch. It also can help save their product from becoming a commodity, like Dell.
I'm not saying that there was no return on the investment, but that the principal will be taxed at a functionally lower rate ten years in the future than it would have been taxed in the year it was earned.
As soon as they redeem/withdraw that money and spend it, then they, too pay the 10% tax, both on the original deposit and on any returns.
That assumes that the investment carries no risk. Any money lost is never taxed. If the rich person, from my example, loses $10,000 from his original $100,000 investment, that ten grand is never taxed. The rich person still made $200,000, but only payed taxes on the $190,000 consumed.
Also, inflation takes its toll. If my hypothetical rich person invests his extra $100,000 and only spends it ten years from now, inflation will have reduced the value of that money. Because the poor would pay their taxes before inflation has a chance to affect them, they would end up paying a higher percentage of their buying power in taxes.
There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.
Is it fair? I didn't say anything about fair. But it is definitely not flat. Its progressive. The rich are taxed at a higher percentage of their income than the poor.
Why not just tax everyone according to this formula?
Well, because there is no incentive to work harder and earn more. In fact, everyone's just better off being unemployed and collecting their check at the end of the year.
Not based on a percentage of income. Your poor person doesn't just spend $5,000 of his $20,000. He has to spend it all, on food, rent, clothes, etc. So, with a sales tax of 10%, the poor person has paid 10% of his income to tax. The rich person is not in the same position. He doesn't have to spend all of his two million. He can afford to save and invest a portion. Since he doesn't spend it all, his effective tax rate is less than 10%.
The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.
Once you start adding exceptions, why move to a sales tax at all? Why not just keep the current income tax?
No, a flat tax is where everyone pays the same percentage of their income on taxes. A sales tax is clearly not flat. The rich will pay a smaller percentage of their income on the sales tax than the poor. And, as long as the poor have to spend nearly all of their income to survive, that will be the case.
Sales tax discourages consumption, and instead encourages saving money.
Yeah it has that effect, but only for the people who have money to save in the first place. A sales tax is usually considered regressive because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income than the rich. If the sales tax were 10%, and I make $20,000 a year, and spend all of it, I pay 10% of my income in taxes. If you make $200,000 a year, but only spend half of it on taxable items. The rest goes to investments, and savings. You only pay 5% in taxes. It doesn't seem quite fair.
... and START OVER. This time with term limits and minimal pay.
I'm with you on the term limits. But as to decreasing their pay, there's no better way to assure that congress stays the realm of the already rich. Congressmen make $169,300 dollars per year. If you go much lower than that, many people who would make excellent representatives would not be able to afford it. The rich already have the advantage of spending their personal wealth on their campaigns. I don't see how giving them one more advantage over the rest of us is a good idea.
I think a good congressman is worth every penny of what he earns today. But term limits would help assure that they can't suckle from the government tit forever.
I'm not sure there's a mechanism to forcibly eject such a person, nor what would happen even if there is.
There's no formal mechanism in place. So far, we have depended on the honor of the President to step down when his time comes. And its worked. But there are a number of informal safeguards in place that make it a really bad idea:
- Each member of the military swears an oath to the constitution, not the President. Hopefully, we could depend on them to stand by their word. - Congress has the power to stop funding the illegitimate president. - The states would shit a brick. The National Guard is under the governors' control. - Finally, we have to depend on the president's own vanity, when he realizes that he will go down in history as the worst human since Judas.
the ipod, macbook and iphone do nothing other gadgets haven't before. indeed on many technical levels they are inferior, especially the ipod.
One thing Apple has done well, since its beginning, is to make technology exciting for the masses. Most of that is marketing, to be sure. But it always takes marketing to push technology into general use.
True, Apple entered the portable mp3 player market late, and with an, arguably, inferior product. But, through marketing and tight integration with the computer, managed to get 90% of people to trade in their Discmans for iPods. They were able to dominate a market which didn't even exist a few years before (and probably would not be nearly as large without Apple).
From the Apple II, to the iMac, to the iPod, and to the iPhone, Apple has managed to create mass markets where none existed before. I don't think that fact can be overlooked. Whenever Apple comes out with a product, they are trying to open up larger markets for technology, even when they fail (Newton).
The other thing Apple does well is make money. Lots and lots of money. Metric buttloads of money.
Same group that would remove any elected official from office if he or she refused to step down after losing an election. I mean, we do have someone that does this right?
I thought you said there should be a law which would strip a legislator of his office if he sponsored a bill which was determined to be unconstitutional. Correct? Now, if we can find a way to agree that a law is unconstitutional (and I'm not conceding that point), who does the kicking-out?
The congress? Congress has the power to expel members with a two-thirds vote. But, given that the unconstitutional law was passed by a majority of congress, I think it would be hard to find 2/3 of them to expel the person who wrote the bill, which they supported.
The president? Well, we'd have to have a constitutional amendment for this. And congress would bitch about the separation of powers. But it could happen. I would give it six months though, before the president is accused of removing a congressman for political reasons.
The judiciary? Nope.
Who is handling this now? If a congressman or a senator or a president refused to leave, who removes them? And what checks are on their power?
You shouldn't think about that too much, because there's no one there to remove a president if he decides to stick around. Its kind of scary, really. At best, you could hope for a rouge general to take him out by force, but hopefully not overstay his welcome. Its kind of amazing that we've had so many orderly transitions of power, now that I think about it.
The part I want 'splained is: Why does anyone think that the stock market is a serious indicator of the state of the economy?
If you're looking to the stock market as a barometer, you're in for a let down. The price of a stock depends on so much more than just the state of the economy. The only real rule is: historically high stock prices usually indicate overconfidence, and historically low stock prices usually indicate undue pessimism.
Everyone knows the market is going to be way up in a few years because it is currently highly undervalued...
You sound like the prognosticators in 1929. But it took 22 long years for the Dow to surpass its pre-depression highs. Don't commit the same sin of hubris that got us here in the first place.
Maybe if someone was required to hold a stock for a minimum period of time it would make stocks an indicator of something.
But that would remove one of the main reasons to own stocks, their liquidity. We don't need stocks to be an indicator of anything at all. All they represent is the value the market places on projected earnings.
I really think that the government could free up a huge quantity of the credit blockade by lending directly to the enduser to force the various credit companies to wake up and try to compete for their markets.
Now here's where you lost me. You think that banks are going to try and compete with the government, which can borrow money to lend at almost zero cost. Banks have to get their money from somewhere, and their risk of default is seen as so much higher than the government's, that the interest rates they can borrow at are sky high right now. Why would they try to compete with the government at all? They're almost guaranteed to lose.
If they would just refinance the so called "Toxic debt" mortgages at 3% over prime it would drop the payments down to a point where most of the "toxic" loans would be workable for the debtors and then they wouldn't be toxic. At 3% over prime it would be plenty profitable too. If they would force the mortgage companies to carry the paper on a portion of the loans (selected at random) it would guarantee that they wouldn't write fraudulent loans either...
I think you underestimate the scale of the mortgage problem. There is too much debt out there on homes that are worth nowhere near what is owed. What incentive does the homeowner have to repay a loan when they are $100,000 underwater? Even at a zero percent interest rate, it just doesn't make sense for the borrower. Those toxic loans are called "toxic" because there's really no good way to fix them.
If they pass an unconstitutional law, it should be automatic, and permanent. Having the people have to take action to fire a politician who passed an unconstitutional law is absurd as having the people launch grassroots campaigns to convict criminals.
Who would you have do this, then? What new office or department would you create to fill this need? What checks would be on this new office's powers? Who removes them, if they violate the constitution? Are they elected or appointed? By who? Is it a political or non-partisan office? What standards will they use to judge the constitutionality of a law? If a section of a large law is found unconstitutional, but the rest passes muster, which congressmen should be held responsible, those who voted for it or those who wrote the unconstitutional section?
This is a can of worms you don't want to open. You haven't thought this through. Why would you want to needlessly complicate things when there is already a simple and effective solution: the voters.
I see you're point. But instead of enacting a law, with technicalities and loopholes, we, the voters, should be the ones removing the congressmen from office. The two (or six) years between elections is usually less time than it takes for a case to be appealed up to the Supreme Court. And it doesn't require a constitutional amendment that these congressmen would never vote for.
If we, the citizens, want to protect the constitution, then we should step up and take responsibility for defending it from our politicians.
Golf clap for theory, but let's face it, the only times articles of impeachment have ever been voted on in Congress have all been for political reasons and not for actual Constitutional violations.
But neither of the impeachments in our history have lead to a conviction by the Senate. I think that only reinforces my point.
Impeachment cannot happen without an opposing party in majority control and with enough spine to stand up unless the President does something REALLY egregious. Otherwise, if he's just pushing the borders of executive power, as long as he does it in a way that his party likes, then impeachment cannot be triggered.
I think the obvious counter-example is Nixon. I'm pretty sure he would have been impeached (had he not resigned first), even if the congress had been Republican. And if anyone deserved it, he did.
I only want the congress to act if the president has done something really egregious. The other checks and balances in our system, judicial review and congresses power of the purse strings, seem to do a pretty good job of restraining the president's power without resorting to throwing the sitting President out every time there is a political pissing match.
I would rather have a government with a little executive overstepping which is eventually remedied by the courts or the voters, than a system where the sitting President is in constant, real danger of being impeached.
The simple solution, IMO, is to have a bill make a quick side trip to the SCOTUS before going on to the President. Glaringly unconstitutional items could be stripped out well in advance of them causing any problems. It means all three branches have a say in the creation of the laws, as opposed to two doing so and the third being left to clean up the mess.
The constitution would have to be changed to allow advisory opinions. But I don't think that would be a good idea. Making the court a player in the crafting of legislation, would jeopardize the court's apolitical standing, and erode congresses legislative prerogative.
But, most importantly, the Supreme Court usually takes cases which have been argued and ruled on at the lower levels. They have the insight of well-reasoned and persuasive arguments from both sides of an issue. Those nine justices are able to draw upon the collective wisdom of all the lower court proceedings. When issuing an advisory opinion, they would have no such resource, and be expected to think of every possible outcome themselves.
That whole "enforce the laws" part of the separation of powers could theoretically be extended to make the nation's police forces directly answerable to the President.
The federal police (FBI, ATF, DEA, etc) are all answerable to the President. That's what executive means. That's a major part of the President's role in the separation of powers. The congress controls the purse strings, but the President is their boss.
Look up Andrew Jackson's response to an unfavorable court ruling, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" Its the executive branch's check on the power of the judiciary.
By making there be consequences for passing an unconstitutional law, for starters.
But who decides what's unconstitutional? The Supreme Court has explicitly reversed itself a number of times. I'm not saying its right that the congress passes laws without giving any thought to constitutionality. But, most of the time, there is not enough case law (or the case law is conflicting) to be sure what you are passing is constitutional or not. Even in this case, as outrageous as it seems, there were genuine constitutional questions which had never been directly addressed.
I agree that congress has abdicated its responsibility to, at least, think about the constitutionality of the laws it passes. But there is no real, cut and dried, solution.
The President swears to uphold the Constitution, but what if he chooses not to?
He's impeached, or his actions are ruled unconstitutional, as in this case. What do you want, a coup? Sadly, these kinds of decisions are too important to undertake quickly.
As you point out, the worst that happens is the court eventually overrules, but often the damage has already been done and the President can just try again in a slightly modified way.
But what remains is a more fleshed out interpretation of the constitution. After this case, these actions are explicitly unconstitutional. It should be harder for the congress and president to overreach. But you're right, you can't undo the damage. But impeachment could stop him from trying again.
At the very least it is an impeachable offense, but only if congress has the will to impeach.
Impeachment isn't supposed to be easy. How else do you minimize the chances the impeachment isn't politically driven, but to make it hard enough that a consensus is reached on both sides of the aisle.
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But why, to cut off the pirates, do they need the RIAA at all? I guess I don't see what the ISPs gain from involvement with the RIAA. They could do the same things right now, by themselves, without getting in bed with such a dirty, dirty group.
Yes, but music files are relatively extremely small these day compared to video.
But I would be willing to bet that a majority of movie pirates also pirate music. It doesn't matter to the ISP why they kick them off; it reduces bandwidth consumed either way.
What we need are real killer applications in completely new spaces.
The open source nature of any potential linux-based killer-app, pretty much guarantees that it will be ported to Windows. That's not a bad thing, and will not significantly change the number of people running linux.
Linux's real power is its ability to run on anything, when properly configured: servers, check; desktops, check; netbooks, check; embedded systems, check; thin clients, check. Consumer hardware manufactorers have only just begun to realize that they can save buttloads of money building upon linux instead of developing a complete, in-house solution.
Microsoft has financial interests which may be opposed to those of certain hardware manufacturers. They may be worried that a low-power, low-cost OS may cannibalize sales of higher margin products. Linux, and all the open software in its orbit, has no such agenda. The hardware manufacturers aren't beholden to anyone.
Essentially, linux allows every hardware manufactorer to be have all the advantages of Apple: tight integration of software and hardware without having to go begging to MS; without the downside: cost of developing an OS from scratch. It also can help save their product from becoming a commodity, like Dell.
I'm not saying that there was no return on the investment, but that the principal will be taxed at a functionally lower rate ten years in the future than it would have been taxed in the year it was earned.
Until the rich are taxed at 100% (past the certain threshold) then there is ALWAYS incentive to make more.
You didn't really read the GP, did you? His proposal was to tax at 100% after $30,000.
As soon as they redeem/withdraw that money and spend it, then they, too pay the 10% tax, both on the original deposit and on any returns.
That assumes that the investment carries no risk. Any money lost is never taxed. If the rich person, from my example, loses $10,000 from his original $100,000 investment, that ten grand is never taxed. The rich person still made $200,000, but only payed taxes on the $190,000 consumed.
Also, inflation takes its toll. If my hypothetical rich person invests his extra $100,000 and only spends it ten years from now, inflation will have reduced the value of that money. Because the poor would pay their taxes before inflation has a chance to affect them, they would end up paying a higher percentage of their buying power in taxes.
There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.
Is it fair? I didn't say anything about fair. But it is definitely not flat. Its progressive. The rich are taxed at a higher percentage of their income than the poor.
Why not just tax everyone according to this formula?
Well, because there is no incentive to work harder and earn more. In fact, everyone's just better off being unemployed and collecting their check at the end of the year.
Except that the rich tend to buy more stuff.
Not based on a percentage of income. Your poor person doesn't just spend $5,000 of his $20,000. He has to spend it all, on food, rent, clothes, etc. So, with a sales tax of 10%, the poor person has paid 10% of his income to tax. The rich person is not in the same position. He doesn't have to spend all of his two million. He can afford to save and invest a portion. Since he doesn't spend it all, his effective tax rate is less than 10%.
The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.
Once you start adding exceptions, why move to a sales tax at all? Why not just keep the current income tax?
That's not regressive. That's flat.
No, a flat tax is where everyone pays the same percentage of their income on taxes. A sales tax is clearly not flat. The rich will pay a smaller percentage of their income on the sales tax than the poor. And, as long as the poor have to spend nearly all of their income to survive, that will be the case.
Sales tax discourages consumption, and instead encourages saving money.
Yeah it has that effect, but only for the people who have money to save in the first place. A sales tax is usually considered regressive because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income than the rich. If the sales tax were 10%, and I make $20,000 a year, and spend all of it, I pay 10% of my income in taxes. If you make $200,000 a year, but only spend half of it on taxable items. The rest goes to investments, and savings. You only pay 5% in taxes. It doesn't seem quite fair.
It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run...
So you support taxing anything which might cause higher medical costs for the insured, in order to discourage its use? Why not just ban it outright?
... and START OVER. This time with term limits and minimal pay.
I'm with you on the term limits. But as to decreasing their pay, there's no better way to assure that congress stays the realm of the already rich. Congressmen make $169,300 dollars per year. If you go much lower than that, many people who would make excellent representatives would not be able to afford it. The rich already have the advantage of spending their personal wealth on their campaigns. I don't see how giving them one more advantage over the rest of us is a good idea.
I think a good congressman is worth every penny of what he earns today. But term limits would help assure that they can't suckle from the government tit forever.
I'm not sure there's a mechanism to forcibly eject such a person, nor what would happen even if there is.
There's no formal mechanism in place. So far, we have depended on the honor of the President to step down when his time comes. And its worked. But there are a number of informal safeguards in place that make it a really bad idea:
- Each member of the military swears an oath to the constitution, not the President. Hopefully, we could depend on them to stand by their word.
- Congress has the power to stop funding the illegitimate president.
- The states would shit a brick. The National Guard is under the governors' control.
- Finally, we have to depend on the president's own vanity, when he realizes that he will go down in history as the worst human since Judas.
But none of that leaves me especially confident.
the ipod, macbook and iphone do nothing other gadgets haven't before. indeed on many technical levels they are inferior, especially the ipod.
One thing Apple has done well, since its beginning, is to make technology exciting for the masses. Most of that is marketing, to be sure. But it always takes marketing to push technology into general use.
True, Apple entered the portable mp3 player market late, and with an, arguably, inferior product. But, through marketing and tight integration with the computer, managed to get 90% of people to trade in their Discmans for iPods. They were able to dominate a market which didn't even exist a few years before (and probably would not be nearly as large without Apple).
From the Apple II, to the iMac, to the iPod, and to the iPhone, Apple has managed to create mass markets where none existed before. I don't think that fact can be overlooked. Whenever Apple comes out with a product, they are trying to open up larger markets for technology, even when they fail (Newton).
The other thing Apple does well is make money. Lots and lots of money. Metric buttloads of money.
Same group that would remove any elected official from office if he or she refused to step down after losing an election. I mean, we do have someone that does this right?
I thought you said there should be a law which would strip a legislator of his office if he sponsored a bill which was determined to be unconstitutional. Correct? Now, if we can find a way to agree that a law is unconstitutional (and I'm not conceding that point), who does the kicking-out?
The congress? Congress has the power to expel members with a two-thirds vote. But, given that the unconstitutional law was passed by a majority of congress, I think it would be hard to find 2/3 of them to expel the person who wrote the bill, which they supported.
The president? Well, we'd have to have a constitutional amendment for this. And congress would bitch about the separation of powers. But it could happen. I would give it six months though, before the president is accused of removing a congressman for political reasons.
The judiciary? Nope.
Who is handling this now? If a congressman or a senator or a president refused to leave, who removes them? And what checks are on their power?
You shouldn't think about that too much, because there's no one there to remove a president if he decides to stick around. Its kind of scary, really. At best, you could hope for a rouge general to take him out by force, but hopefully not overstay his welcome. Its kind of amazing that we've had so many orderly transitions of power, now that I think about it.
The part I want 'splained is: Why does anyone think that the stock market is a serious indicator of the state of the economy?
If you're looking to the stock market as a barometer, you're in for a let down. The price of a stock depends on so much more than just the state of the economy. The only real rule is: historically high stock prices usually indicate overconfidence, and historically low stock prices usually indicate undue pessimism.
Everyone knows the market is going to be way up in a few years because it is currently highly undervalued...
You sound like the prognosticators in 1929. But it took 22 long years for the Dow to surpass its pre-depression highs. Don't commit the same sin of hubris that got us here in the first place.
Maybe if someone was required to hold a stock for a minimum period of time it would make stocks an indicator of something.
But that would remove one of the main reasons to own stocks, their liquidity. We don't need stocks to be an indicator of anything at all. All they represent is the value the market places on projected earnings.
I really think that the government could free up a huge quantity of the credit blockade by lending directly to the enduser to force the various credit companies to wake up and try to compete for their markets.
Now here's where you lost me. You think that banks are going to try and compete with the government, which can borrow money to lend at almost zero cost. Banks have to get their money from somewhere, and their risk of default is seen as so much higher than the government's, that the interest rates they can borrow at are sky high right now. Why would they try to compete with the government at all? They're almost guaranteed to lose.
If they would just refinance the so called "Toxic debt" mortgages at 3% over prime it would drop the payments down to a point where most of the "toxic" loans would be workable for the debtors and then they wouldn't be toxic. At 3% over prime it would be plenty profitable too. If they would force the mortgage companies to carry the paper on a portion of the loans (selected at random) it would guarantee that they wouldn't write fraudulent loans either...
I think you underestimate the scale of the mortgage problem. There is too much debt out there on homes that are worth nowhere near what is owed. What incentive does the homeowner have to repay a loan when they are $100,000 underwater? Even at a zero percent interest rate, it just doesn't make sense for the borrower. Those toxic loans are called "toxic" because there's really no good way to fix them.
If they pass an unconstitutional law, it should be automatic, and permanent. Having the people have to take action to fire a politician who passed an unconstitutional law is absurd as having the people launch grassroots campaigns to convict criminals.
Who would you have do this, then? What new office or department would you create to fill this need? What checks would be on this new office's powers? Who removes them, if they violate the constitution? Are they elected or appointed? By who? Is it a political or non-partisan office? What standards will they use to judge the constitutionality of a law? If a section of a large law is found unconstitutional, but the rest passes muster, which congressmen should be held responsible, those who voted for it or those who wrote the unconstitutional section?
This is a can of worms you don't want to open. You haven't thought this through. Why would you want to needlessly complicate things when there is already a simple and effective solution: the voters.
I meant that the President is the boss of the FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.
I see you're point. But instead of enacting a law, with technicalities and loopholes, we, the voters, should be the ones removing the congressmen from office. The two (or six) years between elections is usually less time than it takes for a case to be appealed up to the Supreme Court. And it doesn't require a constitutional amendment that these congressmen would never vote for.
If we, the citizens, want to protect the constitution, then we should step up and take responsibility for defending it from our politicians.
Golf clap for theory, but let's face it, the only times articles of impeachment have ever been voted on in Congress have all been for political reasons and not for actual Constitutional violations.
But neither of the impeachments in our history have lead to a conviction by the Senate. I think that only reinforces my point.
Impeachment cannot happen without an opposing party in majority control and with enough spine to stand up unless the President does something REALLY egregious. Otherwise, if he's just pushing the borders of executive power, as long as he does it in a way that his party likes, then impeachment cannot be triggered.
I think the obvious counter-example is Nixon. I'm pretty sure he would have been impeached (had he not resigned first), even if the congress had been Republican. And if anyone deserved it, he did.
I only want the congress to act if the president has done something really egregious. The other checks and balances in our system, judicial review and congresses power of the purse strings, seem to do a pretty good job of restraining the president's power without resorting to throwing the sitting President out every time there is a political pissing match.
I would rather have a government with a little executive overstepping which is eventually remedied by the courts or the voters, than a system where the sitting President is in constant, real danger of being impeached.
I do think that the concept of a disincentive of some sort would be good.
We have it, but don't use it often enough. Its called, "voting those bastards out of office".
The simple solution, IMO, is to have a bill make a quick side trip to the SCOTUS before going on to the President. Glaringly unconstitutional items could be stripped out well in advance of them causing any problems. It means all three branches have a say in the creation of the laws, as opposed to two doing so and the third being left to clean up the mess.
The constitution would have to be changed to allow advisory opinions. But I don't think that would be a good idea. Making the court a player in the crafting of legislation, would jeopardize the court's apolitical standing, and erode congresses legislative prerogative.
But, most importantly, the Supreme Court usually takes cases which have been argued and ruled on at the lower levels. They have the insight of well-reasoned and persuasive arguments from both sides of an issue. Those nine justices are able to draw upon the collective wisdom of all the lower court proceedings. When issuing an advisory opinion, they would have no such resource, and be expected to think of every possible outcome themselves.
That whole "enforce the laws" part of the separation of powers could theoretically be extended to make the nation's police forces directly answerable to the President.
The federal police (FBI, ATF, DEA, etc) are all answerable to the President. That's what executive means. That's a major part of the President's role in the separation of powers. The congress controls the purse strings, but the President is their boss.
Look up Andrew Jackson's response to an unfavorable court ruling, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" Its the executive branch's check on the power of the judiciary.
By making there be consequences for passing an unconstitutional law, for starters.
But who decides what's unconstitutional? The Supreme Court has explicitly reversed itself a number of times. I'm not saying its right that the congress passes laws without giving any thought to constitutionality. But, most of the time, there is not enough case law (or the case law is conflicting) to be sure what you are passing is constitutional or not. Even in this case, as outrageous as it seems, there were genuine constitutional questions which had never been directly addressed.
I agree that congress has abdicated its responsibility to, at least, think about the constitutionality of the laws it passes. But there is no real, cut and dried, solution.
The President swears to uphold the Constitution, but what if he chooses not to?
He's impeached, or his actions are ruled unconstitutional, as in this case. What do you want, a coup? Sadly, these kinds of decisions are too important to undertake quickly.
As you point out, the worst that happens is the court eventually overrules, but often the damage has already been done and the President can just try again in a slightly modified way.
But what remains is a more fleshed out interpretation of the constitution. After this case, these actions are explicitly unconstitutional. It should be harder for the congress and president to overreach. But you're right, you can't undo the damage. But impeachment could stop him from trying again.
At the very least it is an impeachable offense, but only if congress has the will to impeach.
Impeachment isn't supposed to be easy. How else do you minimize the chances the impeachment isn't politically driven, but to make it hard enough that a consensus is reached on both sides of the aisle.