That's the risk of not living in a planned covenanted community w/a strong HOA and restrictive CC&Rs. That's a decision you willingly made. In exchange, you have more freedom to paint your house whatever color you want, hang your laundry out to dry, park your RV in your driveway etc.
In most cases, Airbnb guests are not that obnoxious and those few that are, like all Airbnb guests, move on quickly. You've obviously never had the "neighbor from hell" who was a permanent neighbor (or long term renter) and there was nothing you could do about it except move and try to sell your now devalued house (perhaps because the neighbor is exercising their free speech rights and have posted racist or otherwise offensive materials on/around their house -- such as a prominent swastika that doubles as a wind vane and lightning arrester high above their house).
But, it's much better than when those same asshats buy the place next to you and then live there for ten years. At least Airbnb asshats move on quickly. Many of those asshats (excluding foreign visitors) live somewhere when they are not staying at Airbnb -- and their neighbors are probably happy to get a break for a week or two when they are staying at an Airbnb rental. Kind of a zero sum game.
Why don't you get your condo association to ban short term rentals? Or, get them to assess fines on the condo owner if there are neighbor complaints about noise when there's a short term renter occupying the space? Why does the government have to get involved when you have a governing body that is much closer to the problem and challenges of your building rather than a "one size fits all" solution.
Since ballots are secret, I can't of course prove this. However, this strategy was proposed and encouraged by those posting on various progressive/left web sites -- including the site known, ironically, for its orange plumage. I would assume people advocating such a strategy took their own advice.
However, I never said that I thought cross-over voting was instrumental in Trump being the nominee. Most of his success comes from being the most well known, to the masses, national candidate in my lifetime. Most voters are swayed by things that are irrelevant while ignoring the important issues.
You are confusing "fairness" with "law" and the "Constitution".
The BoR is, legally, simply the first ten amendments to the constitution. The Federalists felt them unnecessary as the Federal government wasn't granted the right to restrict speech, arms, or to quarter soldiers etc. so they couldn't do it. The Anti-Federalists, in a last stand, demanded a BoR which the Federalists agreed to. The Federalists though were wary that the rights enumerated in a BoR might be construed to be the only rights to be retained by the people or states respectively - hence the inclusion of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which, theoretically, are completely unnecessary (as the body of the Constitution doesn't give Congress the right to pass laws limiting freedom of the press, free speech, right of assembly, keeping and bearing arm etc).
If you are making the argument (poorly) that the Federal Government has far overstepped what the People ceded to them in the Constitution (as amended), you are correct. However NONE of that argument as to do with "fairness", it simply has to do with Congress et al exercising powers they were never granted by the people in the Constitution (as amended). There is not a single notion of "fairness" in the Constitution except that which is explicitly captured in it. Nowhere is Congress limited to passing "fair" laws nor are the Federal courts allowed to reject laws based on them being "unfair".
The Constitution, as amended as of October 18, 2016, is the supreme law of the land. Until an amendment is ratified (note that not all that were proposed for the what we now call the "Bill of Rights" were ever ratified), it has NO impact. Those of the original "Bill of Rights" that were not ratified, have no force - and if NONE had been ratified, they would have no force. Again, though, the entire BoR is superfluous. Exactly what some of the Federalists were concerned about has happened - pretty much the Federal Government is now allowed by the courts to intrude on most any right that isn't an enumerated right (or, one found to be in the penumbras by a creative court).
However, the Constitution clearly gives, in its body, a broad right to Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
It's still an unfortunate use of the term -- it's not "wrong", it creates confusion for many who don't understand the law and confuse the term with the more abstract and flexible and moralistic term "fair" rather than a relatively precise and narrow meaning in the US copyright law. It isn't a problem for those in the publishing business or in the legal profession of course.
You conveniently omitted mention of Kasich. I'm convinced that Clinton would not have had a chance against him (given that Trump who is a ignorant, unlikable, uncouth, buffoon has actually gotten close enough in the polls at times to make Clinton sweat a bit) and, although one may not agree with him, he is not "unreasonable" by any overall objective sense. Christie actually didn't, in my opinion, look "reasonable" compared to Kasich.
It's interesting that you treat "natural-born" citizens quite differently from "naturalized" citizens in your proposal.
Nice try, but that won't fly. There are VERY few places in the law this is done today (eligibility to become POTUS comes to mind and most intelligent people I know think this restriction should be eliminated as it makes little sense in this day and age) and adding more will not pass the muster of voters. Remember that the vast majority of voters have at least one naturalized citizen in their family tree above them or are, themselves, naturalized citizens.
I stopped reading there (much as I would stop reading any business plan that proposed development of a perpetual motion machine that required no input of energy but output energy in the form of heat).
I didn't mention that the shoe-size law had a "fairness" clause. Most laws don't so it's disingenuous to assume that a random hypothetical law would when no mention has been made of such a clause.
The "fair use" section of copyright law is more the exception than the rule.The "fair use" section is an essential part of copyright law as, otherwise, the law would stifle the press et al from even quoting material from copyrighted sources and thus would interfere with the intent of portions of the First Amendment, and would also interfere with academic research etc. It's also not a general "fairness" clause ("fair use" was an unfortunate term to use in the law as it's easily confused by laypeople with some abstract notion of "fairness" that many primates, including humans, seem to posses). "Fair use" is a specific piece of the machinery of the law and quite specific -- the decisions left to the courts are the relative weights and impacts of four specific factors listed in Section 107 (coupled with higher court precedents on such matters). Congress recognized that it would be impossible to come up with crisp criteria for every case so left that up to courts and government agencies to determine.
HOWEVER... Suppose I create a work entirely based on the life of some destitute homeless guy that I notice every day. Assume I carefully avoiding violating copyright interests he may have (for example, perhaps by quoting, in their entirety, every one of his cleverly worded signs begging for money over the years). Suppose I make hundreds of millions of dollars off that work. Suppose the homeless guy notices this and makes photocopies of my work without permission and sells them to those passing by. Although many people may "feel" that would be "fair" (after all, "The entire work exists only because of actions and behaviors of this homeless guy, shouldn't he benefit?"), the courts would find in my favor if I sued him for copyright violation because his use was not "fair use" under Section 107 and the courts are not authorized to create a new exception for this case based just on some abstract notion of "fairness".
To gain support, the phase out would have to leave everyone whole. I doubt a "deduction" for UBI would cut it as people wouldn't like having worked and paying payroll taxes for their entire adult life only to be told that they needn't have bothered as people who never worked a day in their life are now eligible for the same benefits. Humans (actually, probably most primates) have an inherent sense of "fairness" and it's not something that it's wise to mess with (in fact, the Revolution was mostly about a sense of "fairness").
The payroll tax could be immediately eliminated and everyone's "earning record" frozen and as long as they or covered dependents/spouses live, they would enjoy full benefits on that truncated earning record -- although probably those with recent work history but less than the required (simplistically) 40 quarters of work history would need to be made eligible. Most people with, say, 39 quarters were willing to contribute to SS because they knew that once they hit their 40th quarter, they would get full credit for the first 39 quarters and terminating the program in their 39th quarter of work would be quite unfair. The hundreds of billions/trillions of dollars to fund this transition would come from the general fund but this should not be a problem as ultimately, once UBI is fully in place, there have to be money trees somewhere so just plant a few extras when initiating the soft shutdown of SS.
The courts would not allow enforcement of a law that made voting contingent on someone paying a fee to do so (as that would be a poll tax). However, when tested, virtually every right retained by the people has turned out to have limitations (even when the unambiguous term "shall not be infringed" is in the text). For example, when someone makes the voluntary decision to commit a felony, they risk giving up the right to keep and bear arms and in almost every state the right to vote for at least the term of their imprisonment (Vermont being at least one of the few exceptions).
Would you consider a situation where 75% of the voting age people were completely supported by the state and the remaining 25% were paying taxes to support those people to be "moral"?
As far as "Libertarianism"... A state provided UBI is not consistent with libertarian principles and it is that very failing that leads to this problem of the "tyranny of the majority" (something, by the way, that Hamilton was specifically wary of).
Merely making the statement that "It would be completely unconstitutional" is insufficient in law. WHY would it be "completely unconstitutional" -- what case law or what words in the US Constitution would make it so?
When someone joins the volunteer military, they give up a number of rights that are normally protected from government intrusion. On a military base, your CO, acting in their role as a government actor, can search anything of a military member at anytime for almost any reason or no reason whatsoever -- yet, the police nor the CO could do the same to someone who had not volunteered to give up some of their rights in exchange for a government job. Similarly, if you chose to work for certain "spook" agencies, you give up some of your "rights" that a "private" citizen does not for the duration of your employment (and, arguably, beyond your employment).
There's no substantive difference between the military case and accepting the UBI.
The Constitution doesn't care about if UBI is "a good idea" or not -- all that matters to the courts is did the legislative process pass it into law following the rules (mostly put in place by the Senate and House respectively and the courts rarely if ever question those rules because the Constitution lets the Senate and House set their own rules) and does it conform to the United States Constitution. It's similar to the role of an umpire in baseball -- the umpire's job is to enforce the rules as set by the league -- their job is not to insert their opinion about if the strike zone is too small for short hitters and insert their own views by calling strikes for short hitters where the pitch was a ball by the clear rules of the league.
Perhaps UBI might be unconstitutional -- without a concrete proposal it's hard to say. But banning automation would likely be (except for that which crossed interstate borders -- but a state like California or Texas could have a self sustaining economy developing their OWN automation and using that to improve efficiency of business).
It is not the court's job to save the US from catastrophic decline, that is the job of the legislators (both Federal and State). For example, if Congress passed a law that pi was 3.0 for the purposes of all Federal contracts, the courts could nothing about it in our system no matter how stupid the notion was.
If the drafters of the shoe-size law were not rigorous, yes, the courts could decide it was too vague to enforce. However, it's easy to get this right so, unless the courts were doing something they should not be doing, it would not likely be an avenue that would result in an successful challenge to the law. "Fairness" of the law would never be a proper reason for a court to rule for/against the shoe-size law.
Actually, the Supreme Court doesn't "strike down laws" - the laws often stay on the books because the court has no authority to strike them, they just fail to be enforceable in full or in a particular way due to findings of the court.
I agree that Article III does not completely define the scope of the court's power and, unfortunately, the courts have few checks and balances on them beyond the power of impeachment by Congress -- but Congress does have the power to impeach every last Federal judge (or, just dissolve all inferior Federal Courts and define the Supreme Court to consist of one justice using rules that mean their "favorite" justice will be the survivor) and the Senate can refuse to confirm replacements that they don't feel are appropriate. That is, of course, a sort of "nuclear option" so the courts avoid getting too close to the flame and Congress would be very hesitant to strike out at the courts if they don't get to close to the flame.
If self-driving cars on public roads mixed with humans, animals, bicyclists, human piloted cars are "almost there" as proponents like to claim, robots capable of doing most of the drudgery of stocking/straightening supermarket shelves seem not to be far behind -- esp. if the store is not open to regular customers during the stocking hours. I suspect there will be some human intervention required for exception cases, but many of those would go to a central service where humans would look at the situation remotely and either guide the robot through the resolution, flag the situation for later "on-site" human resolution and move on, or "page" the on-site human to resolve it immediately.
For example, when the robot doesn't recognize the long since melted milkshake in the fragile paper cup that someone left on the shelf, the problem would get routed to the central service. A human would look at it remotely and decide if the robot gripper could safely pick it up without spraying the contents all over the surrounding shelves (or, perhaps another robot with different "skills" could be called over to do it), if a human needed to get involved right away, or could tag the problem for future resolution and tell the robot to skip that shelf. There would still be one human on-site during this process available to go to the "floor" to help out with exception cases. And, it will be quite some time before robots will be able to deal with the produce section very effectively -- esp. figuring out if a particular piece of produce should be discarded because it's just sufficiently misshapen or is no longer fresh.
Note also that designs can be changed when automation is introduced. For example, your car is designed for a human to change the oil -- if you want robots to do it, there would probably be design alterations. Of course, the real reason for a human to be involved in your oil change is to try to up sell you to "better" oil or "additives to extend the life of your engine" or other nonsense. Getting to and fixing a switch deeply buried behind your dashboard is probably not something we will see robots doing for a long time -- it's just not routine enough and is complicated (esp. when people have added after market stuff to the car) and rarely done.
Most people who don't vote are also so horribly uninformed as to not make rational decisions based on sound principles. Abysmal voter turnout is not a bug, it's a feature.
I don't know of anything in the text of the Constitution that would prohibit one giving up their right to vote in exchange for making a decision to receive a government benefit (not a single government financial benefit is guaranteed in the Constitution). Some bad precedents may need to be readdressed, but that happens from time to time.
The right to vote is not abridged if someone decides not to vote (which is what the accepting the UBI would be). Really little different than although everyone has a right to a jury trial, they are allowed to in most cases give up that right voluntarily in exchange for a bench trial.
Taking the basic income would be an OPTION for which you would give up your right to vote (for 12 months?).
This is necessary to prevent the tyranny of the majority -- once over 1/2 the people are dependent on the UBI (as presumably they would be because the whole justification for implementing it would be "There are no enough jobs even for well educated people") which is being paid for by taxes on the top few percent, those dependent on the UBI will reliably vote for politicians who will promise to increase the UBI dramatically at every turn. That is not a stable situation.
Replacing Social Security with UBI would never pass.
Social Security retirement benefits are proportional (non-linearly) to how much one contributed in payroll taxes over their working life. Those who have contributed 12.4% of their income (directly or indirectly) for many years are not going to accept that suddenly they will get nothing in return for those contributions (since they would get the same amount in retirement as someone who never worked a day of their lives). Also, almost certainly UBI would be less than the maximum Social Security payout (currently about $32K per year per person - or more than twice the minimum wage for a full time worker) and those retirees who saw an actual cut in their benefits would certainly be incensed and throw out every politician who voted for such a change.
Sander's self identification as a "Democratic Socialist" coupled with his "I'm a Democrat only when it's convenient for me" track record probably would have doomed him against any reasonable candidate the Republicans put up (of course, who knew Republican voters and saboteurs engaging in cross-over voting would have picked the unreasonable candidate they did).
Government has no "rights". We, the people, agree to cede our rights to the common government in the interests of the common good. We, the people, also can reclaim every one of those rights through the democratic process. Corporations are simply collections of people - owners (sometimes stockholders), employees, customers.
We, the people, could even amend the U.S. Constitution to repeal every word of it and replace them with a declaration that the person with the user name uncqual on/. is the supreme ruler and shall have complete control over every person, business, and property in the U.S.
The U.S. courts have no role in determining the "justness" or "unjustness" (or "fairness" or "unfairness") of a law. They are only to apply existing law -- which includes the United States Constitution which is the supreme law of the land.
If Congress passed a law (and the President either signed it or the President's veto was overridden) that "No commercially produced shoes in half-sizes shall be shipped across state boundaries in trade", it might not be "fair" to people who wear a size 10½ shoe but the courts could not dismiss the law unless they could articulate a valid constitutional right to buy or sell half-size shoes across state boundaries. One of the few powers granted to the Federal government is to regulate interstate trade so Congress clearly has the right to do so.
The ballot box is the last line of defense against "unjust" laws -- and remember, one person's "unjust" law is often another person's "just" law.
The black box will show that the driver initiated the swerve that made an accident inevitable. The driver will be civilly liable (and the car company/programmer might also be) and the driver will be criminally liable (the car company probably not assuming they/the programmer was not grossly negligent).
They built none of the infrastructure they profit from.
Really... So those excavators digging up the streets and the Comcast trucks swarming around pulling cables and testing stuff on the street I live on maybe 15 years ago wasn't Comcast? Now, we all get (for a price of course, but water costs money too and it truly is needed for life) effectively 180mbps down (unfortunately, only about 12mpbs up) and could go higher with a business account. Who was pretending to be "Comcast" - was it the FBI, the CIA, the FCC, the FDA (sorry, my tinfoil hat is a bit loose so I am not up to date on the latest conspiracy theories).
Specifically which Tier 1/2/3 network providers providing transit for consumer packets are using infrastructure built by the government now? Hint, it's not 1985 any more.
I think shirts with the standard red octagonal STOP symbol may become very popular with pedestrians -- although, maybe that would just cause the cars to begin to ignore STOP signs that looked like shirts - perhaps because they were slightly bent. That may not end well.
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That's the risk of not living in a planned covenanted community w/a strong HOA and restrictive CC&Rs. That's a decision you willingly made. In exchange, you have more freedom to paint your house whatever color you want, hang your laundry out to dry, park your RV in your driveway etc.
In most cases, Airbnb guests are not that obnoxious and those few that are, like all Airbnb guests, move on quickly. You've obviously never had the "neighbor from hell" who was a permanent neighbor (or long term renter) and there was nothing you could do about it except move and try to sell your now devalued house (perhaps because the neighbor is exercising their free speech rights and have posted racist or otherwise offensive materials on/around their house -- such as a prominent swastika that doubles as a wind vane and lightning arrester high above their house).
But, it's much better than when those same asshats buy the place next to you and then live there for ten years. At least Airbnb asshats move on quickly. Many of those asshats (excluding foreign visitors) live somewhere when they are not staying at Airbnb -- and their neighbors are probably happy to get a break for a week or two when they are staying at an Airbnb rental. Kind of a zero sum game.
Why don't you get your condo association to ban short term rentals? Or, get them to assess fines on the condo owner if there are neighbor complaints about noise when there's a short term renter occupying the space? Why does the government have to get involved when you have a governing body that is much closer to the problem and challenges of your building rather than a "one size fits all" solution.
Since ballots are secret, I can't of course prove this. However, this strategy was proposed and encouraged by those posting on various progressive/left web sites -- including the site known, ironically, for its orange plumage. I would assume people advocating such a strategy took their own advice.
However, I never said that I thought cross-over voting was instrumental in Trump being the nominee. Most of his success comes from being the most well known, to the masses, national candidate in my lifetime. Most voters are swayed by things that are irrelevant while ignoring the important issues.
You are confusing "fairness" with "law" and the "Constitution".
The BoR is, legally, simply the first ten amendments to the constitution. The Federalists felt them unnecessary as the Federal government wasn't granted the right to restrict speech, arms, or to quarter soldiers etc. so they couldn't do it. The Anti-Federalists, in a last stand, demanded a BoR which the Federalists agreed to. The Federalists though were wary that the rights enumerated in a BoR might be construed to be the only rights to be retained by the people or states respectively - hence the inclusion of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which, theoretically, are completely unnecessary (as the body of the Constitution doesn't give Congress the right to pass laws limiting freedom of the press, free speech, right of assembly, keeping and bearing arm etc).
If you are making the argument (poorly) that the Federal Government has far overstepped what the People ceded to them in the Constitution (as amended), you are correct. However NONE of that argument as to do with "fairness", it simply has to do with Congress et al exercising powers they were never granted by the people in the Constitution (as amended). There is not a single notion of "fairness" in the Constitution except that which is explicitly captured in it. Nowhere is Congress limited to passing "fair" laws nor are the Federal courts allowed to reject laws based on them being "unfair".
The Constitution, as amended as of October 18, 2016, is the supreme law of the land. Until an amendment is ratified (note that not all that were proposed for the what we now call the "Bill of Rights" were ever ratified), it has NO impact. Those of the original "Bill of Rights" that were not ratified, have no force - and if NONE had been ratified, they would have no force. Again, though, the entire BoR is superfluous. Exactly what some of the Federalists were concerned about has happened - pretty much the Federal Government is now allowed by the courts to intrude on most any right that isn't an enumerated right (or, one found to be in the penumbras by a creative court).
However, the Constitution clearly gives, in its body, a broad right to Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
It's still an unfortunate use of the term -- it's not "wrong", it creates confusion for many who don't understand the law and confuse the term with the more abstract and flexible and moralistic term "fair" rather than a relatively precise and narrow meaning in the US copyright law. It isn't a problem for those in the publishing business or in the legal profession of course.
You conveniently omitted mention of Kasich. I'm convinced that Clinton would not have had a chance against him (given that Trump who is a ignorant, unlikable, uncouth, buffoon has actually gotten close enough in the polls at times to make Clinton sweat a bit) and, although one may not agree with him, he is not "unreasonable" by any overall objective sense. Christie actually didn't, in my opinion, look "reasonable" compared to Kasich.
It's interesting that you treat "natural-born" citizens quite differently from "naturalized" citizens in your proposal.
Nice try, but that won't fly. There are VERY few places in the law this is done today (eligibility to become POTUS comes to mind and most intelligent people I know think this restriction should be eliminated as it makes little sense in this day and age) and adding more will not pass the muster of voters. Remember that the vast majority of voters have at least one naturalized citizen in their family tree above them or are, themselves, naturalized citizens.
I stopped reading there (much as I would stop reading any business plan that proposed development of a perpetual motion machine that required no input of energy but output energy in the form of heat).
I didn't mention that the shoe-size law had a "fairness" clause. Most laws don't so it's disingenuous to assume that a random hypothetical law would when no mention has been made of such a clause.
The "fair use" section of copyright law is more the exception than the rule.The "fair use" section is an essential part of copyright law as, otherwise, the law would stifle the press et al from even quoting material from copyrighted sources and thus would interfere with the intent of portions of the First Amendment, and would also interfere with academic research etc. It's also not a general "fairness" clause ("fair use" was an unfortunate term to use in the law as it's easily confused by laypeople with some abstract notion of "fairness" that many primates, including humans, seem to posses). "Fair use" is a specific piece of the machinery of the law and quite specific -- the decisions left to the courts are the relative weights and impacts of four specific factors listed in Section 107 (coupled with higher court precedents on such matters). Congress recognized that it would be impossible to come up with crisp criteria for every case so left that up to courts and government agencies to determine.
HOWEVER... Suppose I create a work entirely based on the life of some destitute homeless guy that I notice every day. Assume I carefully avoiding violating copyright interests he may have (for example, perhaps by quoting, in their entirety, every one of his cleverly worded signs begging for money over the years). Suppose I make hundreds of millions of dollars off that work. Suppose the homeless guy notices this and makes photocopies of my work without permission and sells them to those passing by. Although many people may "feel" that would be "fair" (after all, "The entire work exists only because of actions and behaviors of this homeless guy, shouldn't he benefit?"), the courts would find in my favor if I sued him for copyright violation because his use was not "fair use" under Section 107 and the courts are not authorized to create a new exception for this case based just on some abstract notion of "fairness".
To gain support, the phase out would have to leave everyone whole. I doubt a "deduction" for UBI would cut it as people wouldn't like having worked and paying payroll taxes for their entire adult life only to be told that they needn't have bothered as people who never worked a day in their life are now eligible for the same benefits. Humans (actually, probably most primates) have an inherent sense of "fairness" and it's not something that it's wise to mess with (in fact, the Revolution was mostly about a sense of "fairness").
The payroll tax could be immediately eliminated and everyone's "earning record" frozen and as long as they or covered dependents/spouses live, they would enjoy full benefits on that truncated earning record -- although probably those with recent work history but less than the required (simplistically) 40 quarters of work history would need to be made eligible. Most people with, say, 39 quarters were willing to contribute to SS because they knew that once they hit their 40th quarter, they would get full credit for the first 39 quarters and terminating the program in their 39th quarter of work would be quite unfair. The hundreds of billions/trillions of dollars to fund this transition would come from the general fund but this should not be a problem as ultimately, once UBI is fully in place, there have to be money trees somewhere so just plant a few extras when initiating the soft shutdown of SS.
The courts would not allow enforcement of a law that made voting contingent on someone paying a fee to do so (as that would be a poll tax). However, when tested, virtually every right retained by the people has turned out to have limitations (even when the unambiguous term "shall not be infringed" is in the text). For example, when someone makes the voluntary decision to commit a felony, they risk giving up the right to keep and bear arms and in almost every state the right to vote for at least the term of their imprisonment (Vermont being at least one of the few exceptions).
Would you consider a situation where 75% of the voting age people were completely supported by the state and the remaining 25% were paying taxes to support those people to be "moral"?
As far as "Libertarianism"... A state provided UBI is not consistent with libertarian principles and it is that very failing that leads to this problem of the "tyranny of the majority" (something, by the way, that Hamilton was specifically wary of).
From a practical matter, yes. As a Constitutional matter, the ammo box is not a factor.
Merely making the statement that "It would be completely unconstitutional" is insufficient in law. WHY would it be "completely unconstitutional" -- what case law or what words in the US Constitution would make it so?
When someone joins the volunteer military, they give up a number of rights that are normally protected from government intrusion. On a military base, your CO, acting in their role as a government actor, can search anything of a military member at anytime for almost any reason or no reason whatsoever -- yet, the police nor the CO could do the same to someone who had not volunteered to give up some of their rights in exchange for a government job. Similarly, if you chose to work for certain "spook" agencies, you give up some of your "rights" that a "private" citizen does not for the duration of your employment (and, arguably, beyond your employment).
There's no substantive difference between the military case and accepting the UBI.
The Constitution doesn't care about if UBI is "a good idea" or not -- all that matters to the courts is did the legislative process pass it into law following the rules (mostly put in place by the Senate and House respectively and the courts rarely if ever question those rules because the Constitution lets the Senate and House set their own rules) and does it conform to the United States Constitution. It's similar to the role of an umpire in baseball -- the umpire's job is to enforce the rules as set by the league -- their job is not to insert their opinion about if the strike zone is too small for short hitters and insert their own views by calling strikes for short hitters where the pitch was a ball by the clear rules of the league.
Perhaps UBI might be unconstitutional -- without a concrete proposal it's hard to say. But banning automation would likely be (except for that which crossed interstate borders -- but a state like California or Texas could have a self sustaining economy developing their OWN automation and using that to improve efficiency of business).
It is not the court's job to save the US from catastrophic decline, that is the job of the legislators (both Federal and State). For example, if Congress passed a law that pi was 3.0 for the purposes of all Federal contracts, the courts could nothing about it in our system no matter how stupid the notion was.
If the drafters of the shoe-size law were not rigorous, yes, the courts could decide it was too vague to enforce. However, it's easy to get this right so, unless the courts were doing something they should not be doing, it would not likely be an avenue that would result in an successful challenge to the law. "Fairness" of the law would never be a proper reason for a court to rule for/against the shoe-size law.
Actually, the Supreme Court doesn't "strike down laws" - the laws often stay on the books because the court has no authority to strike them, they just fail to be enforceable in full or in a particular way due to findings of the court.
I agree that Article III does not completely define the scope of the court's power and, unfortunately, the courts have few checks and balances on them beyond the power of impeachment by Congress -- but Congress does have the power to impeach every last Federal judge (or, just dissolve all inferior Federal Courts and define the Supreme Court to consist of one justice using rules that mean their "favorite" justice will be the survivor) and the Senate can refuse to confirm replacements that they don't feel are appropriate. That is, of course, a sort of "nuclear option" so the courts avoid getting too close to the flame and Congress would be very hesitant to strike out at the courts if they don't get to close to the flame.
If self-driving cars on public roads mixed with humans, animals, bicyclists, human piloted cars are "almost there" as proponents like to claim, robots capable of doing most of the drudgery of stocking/straightening supermarket shelves seem not to be far behind -- esp. if the store is not open to regular customers during the stocking hours. I suspect there will be some human intervention required for exception cases, but many of those would go to a central service where humans would look at the situation remotely and either guide the robot through the resolution, flag the situation for later "on-site" human resolution and move on, or "page" the on-site human to resolve it immediately.
For example, when the robot doesn't recognize the long since melted milkshake in the fragile paper cup that someone left on the shelf, the problem would get routed to the central service. A human would look at it remotely and decide if the robot gripper could safely pick it up without spraying the contents all over the surrounding shelves (or, perhaps another robot with different "skills" could be called over to do it), if a human needed to get involved right away, or could tag the problem for future resolution and tell the robot to skip that shelf. There would still be one human on-site during this process available to go to the "floor" to help out with exception cases. And, it will be quite some time before robots will be able to deal with the produce section very effectively -- esp. figuring out if a particular piece of produce should be discarded because it's just sufficiently misshapen or is no longer fresh.
Note also that designs can be changed when automation is introduced. For example, your car is designed for a human to change the oil -- if you want robots to do it, there would probably be design alterations. Of course, the real reason for a human to be involved in your oil change is to try to up sell you to "better" oil or "additives to extend the life of your engine" or other nonsense. Getting to and fixing a switch deeply buried behind your dashboard is probably not something we will see robots doing for a long time -- it's just not routine enough and is complicated (esp. when people have added after market stuff to the car) and rarely done.
Most people who don't vote are also so horribly uninformed as to not make rational decisions based on sound principles. Abysmal voter turnout is not a bug, it's a feature.
I don't know of anything in the text of the Constitution that would prohibit one giving up their right to vote in exchange for making a decision to receive a government benefit (not a single government financial benefit is guaranteed in the Constitution). Some bad precedents may need to be readdressed, but that happens from time to time.
The right to vote is not abridged if someone decides not to vote (which is what the accepting the UBI would be). Really little different than although everyone has a right to a jury trial, they are allowed to in most cases give up that right voluntarily in exchange for a bench trial.
Taking the basic income would be an OPTION for which you would give up your right to vote (for 12 months?).
This is necessary to prevent the tyranny of the majority -- once over 1/2 the people are dependent on the UBI (as presumably they would be because the whole justification for implementing it would be "There are no enough jobs even for well educated people") which is being paid for by taxes on the top few percent, those dependent on the UBI will reliably vote for politicians who will promise to increase the UBI dramatically at every turn. That is not a stable situation.
Replacing Social Security with UBI would never pass.
Social Security retirement benefits are proportional (non-linearly) to how much one contributed in payroll taxes over their working life. Those who have contributed 12.4% of their income (directly or indirectly) for many years are not going to accept that suddenly they will get nothing in return for those contributions (since they would get the same amount in retirement as someone who never worked a day of their lives). Also, almost certainly UBI would be less than the maximum Social Security payout (currently about $32K per year per person - or more than twice the minimum wage for a full time worker) and those retirees who saw an actual cut in their benefits would certainly be incensed and throw out every politician who voted for such a change.
Sander's self identification as a "Democratic Socialist" coupled with his "I'm a Democrat only when it's convenient for me" track record probably would have doomed him against any reasonable candidate the Republicans put up (of course, who knew Republican voters and saboteurs engaging in cross-over voting would have picked the unreasonable candidate they did).
Government has no "rights". We, the people, agree to cede our rights to the common government in the interests of the common good. We, the people, also can reclaim every one of those rights through the democratic process. Corporations are simply collections of people - owners (sometimes stockholders), employees, customers.
We, the people, could even amend the U.S. Constitution to repeal every word of it and replace them with a declaration that the person with the user name uncqual on /. is the supreme ruler and shall have complete control over every person, business, and property in the U.S.
The U.S. courts have no role in determining the "justness" or "unjustness" (or "fairness" or "unfairness") of a law. They are only to apply existing law -- which includes the United States Constitution which is the supreme law of the land.
If Congress passed a law (and the President either signed it or the President's veto was overridden) that "No commercially produced shoes in half-sizes shall be shipped across state boundaries in trade", it might not be "fair" to people who wear a size 10½ shoe but the courts could not dismiss the law unless they could articulate a valid constitutional right to buy or sell half-size shoes across state boundaries. One of the few powers granted to the Federal government is to regulate interstate trade so Congress clearly has the right to do so.
The ballot box is the last line of defense against "unjust" laws -- and remember, one person's "unjust" law is often another person's "just" law.
Well, until that old guy who clings to his 1964 Mustang comes along -- oops...
The black box will show that the driver initiated the swerve that made an accident inevitable. The driver will be civilly liable (and the car company/programmer might also be) and the driver will be criminally liable (the car company probably not assuming they/the programmer was not grossly negligent).
Really... So those excavators digging up the streets and the Comcast trucks swarming around pulling cables and testing stuff on the street I live on maybe 15 years ago wasn't Comcast? Now, we all get (for a price of course, but water costs money too and it truly is needed for life) effectively 180mbps down (unfortunately, only about 12mpbs up) and could go higher with a business account. Who was pretending to be "Comcast" - was it the FBI, the CIA, the FCC, the FDA (sorry, my tinfoil hat is a bit loose so I am not up to date on the latest conspiracy theories).
Specifically which Tier 1/2/3 network providers providing transit for consumer packets are using infrastructure built by the government now? Hint, it's not 1985 any more.
I think shirts with the standard red octagonal STOP symbol may become very popular with pedestrians -- although, maybe that would just cause the cars to begin to ignore STOP signs that looked like shirts - perhaps because they were slightly bent. That may not end well.