Perhaps

Whatever you wish "would be", without stopping the intellectual basis for statism you will do nothing to reduce the power of the Federal government or state governments. Letting statists "compete" results in more statism. They are already doing that.

I agree that the insurance companies tried to work their way into advantages guaranteed by government. I said "secret plan" because anyone taking breath at the time could see obamacare couldnt work, could never be repealed, and would end insurance altogether as medicaid for all would be the only thing left. The insurance companies were STUPID to think they could stick around

But some states are more collectivist than others, and I am simply suggesting that their individual governments would be likely to compete with each other in terms of taxation, regulation of drinking straws, minimum wage rates, etc

Obamacare was not as much a "secret plot" as the usual Democrat political pursuit of their agenda for socialized medicine every time they have the power to advance it. Nothing happens in Washington by accident.

The insurance companies knew exactly what Obamacare and the previous Clintoncare plan meant. As Ayn Rand put it, big business has been the last to defend freedom. They are Pragmatists who go along with the socialism hoping to influence the rules to be something they "can live with" -- until next week.

All states are becoming increasingly collectivist and statist. "Pragmatism" as a substitute for principled understanding does not change what is happening and neither does the anti-concept of "states rights".

My comment is totally from a pragmatic standpoint. Statism in all forms is bad, and has to be attacked philosophically to root it out.

That said, we are living in pretty much a predominately fascist USA. People own the means of production primarily, but governments tell us what to do. Reality sometimes rears its ugly head and causes disaster from the effects of particular regulations of the governments.

With a federal government, the whole country has to do what one huge fascist government dictates. With states being more in control, each state figures out its own fascist regulations and laws- resulting in various degrees of collapse depending on what they do.

When things get bad enough, a state can change its laws on its own, in an attempt to mitigate the disaster their previous regulations caused. I say this competition between states (some of which COULD convert to being run by objectivist principles) will be more beneficial to the residents of states than what we have now.

I call it a pragmatic approach in the short term while I am still alive to enjoy it.

It can't be reversed at all by appealing to a collectivist notion of "states rights" and competing statism.

Not a solution, but probably a better solution during your or my lifetimes. The country is on an irrevocable path to collectivist destruction because of the abandonment of rational thinking. That path just can’t be reversed in less than a generation or two

I think you are 100% right in everything you said in this post. Obamacare was a secret plot to get Medicaid for everyone. I saw that at the time. The insurance companies, in their greed, didn’t see it was a trap and soon they would be put out of business.

You hit this one on the head

Not so 'strange' these days. It means the same collectivist denial of freedom of speech. They are becoming more open.

Competing statism is not a solution to anything, and none of it nullifies Federal law.

No it's not a contradiction. Political candidates, like everyone else, are motivated by their own philosophy of life as a way of looking at the world. Some of them are overt collectivists, such as Marxists or progressives; some of them are viro nature worshipers; some of them are other kinds of religion, etc. Some have little more than a gangster mentality to a greater or less degree, getting their sense of self-worth, such as it is, from their role in influencing and acceptance by a group, and living off others as a normal way of existing.

Except for rare individualists, implementing their world-view requires the power to control other people. They want and need political power to do that. They seek office to exercise power for that purpose, not to preach. There are many other ways to spread an ideology other than running for office. But to get power they have to appeal to enough voters. They do that by appealing to what they thing the voters' philosophy of life is. If it's not exactly the same as their own, then they publicly suppress some of their own beliefs and emphasize others, distorting and employing ambiguity to aid their own dishonesty.

That is not a contradiction and it is not "show business". It's deadly, and if you don't expose the ideological aims, explain what they mean, explain what is wrong with them, and explain what is right it will continue. People need the principled explanations because most of them are not philosophical, do not have much of a source of such ideas, and do not think about it, as, contrary to your assertion, I have said many times here.

They have absorbed their philosophical world-view from whatever was around them in a hodgepodge of unthought out fallacies and contradictions mixed with what they were indoctrinated or told to believe beginning at an early age and continuing through school and beyond. Others, like educated Marxists, progressives and viros, have thought about their ideologies and consciously accepted wrong and malicious ideas.

But if you don't understand it yourself you can't explain it to anyone. People do not automatically favor liberty if they happen to think about the concepts, and there is much more to it than political concepts like an isolated "liberty". You cannot endlessly appeal to what is left of the implicit philosophy of the American sense of life (which originally came from the Enlightenment) and expect that the wrong ideas and premises bombarding the population from the schools, universities and media will have no effect on the course of the nation.

A philosophy identifying correct principles required in all the branches of philosophy is an intellectual achievement; it is not automatic and not a frivolous sideline. It is what Ayn Rand accomplished and illustrated in her novels, where she portrayed her view of the ideal man, and her subsequent non-fiction. It is the opposite approach of the anti-intellectual a-philosophical libertarians and conservatives who think philosophy doesn't matter and that people can somehow be appealed to through a supposed automatic disposition to "liberty" regardless of the false premises they are constantly fed and emotionally cling to.

People have the potential to embrace freedom if they are rational and if they understand the philosophical principles of reality, thinking and ethics that it depends on. None of it is automatic.

Of course Clinton intended to impose socialized medicine. She first tried in the 1990s when Slick put her in charge of the politics. The insurance companies, with no principles and no courage to fight it, had already signed on in secret meetings as they maneuvered to carve up among themselves the government spoils taking over what had been a market. It was stopped only when the draconian details Clinton tried to keep secret leaked out.

If she had become president she likely would have imposed it. If she had won she likely would have given the Democrats a majority in the Senate, too, and they expected to have it all by now.

Obamacare was intended to lead to "single payer" socialized medicine. They knew it would not work; it was not intended to work. Even Obama was caught on a leaked tape promoting "single payer" socialized medicine with his scheme as a step to get there, acknowledging that they couldn't do it in one step.

With the Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate they jammed every statist precedent they could into Obamacare as a base to build on, expecting that it would cause such chaos that people would be begging to 'fix' it by going the rest of the way. That is what Clinton expected to do. Her personal corruption and lack of ethics is the least of what she intended to do to us.

Clinton's lack of ethics and hard left collectivism dates back to her college days as an admiring fan of Saul Alinsky.

Clinton was to be a continuation and increase in the progressivism of Obama, implemented by radical socialist and viro ideologues and their power mongering manipulations. That is far worse than Trump, for all his weaknesses.

You didn't support Clinton because of Trump. You liked her well before the primaries. You liked her because you liked her welfare state policies posing a superior "liberal" intellect.

Hillary is a crook, plain and simple. She is power hngry, and her foreign policy sucks, not to mention she would have tried to go for single payer health care. Fortunately, she would have gotten nowhere with either of the houses of congress. How you could even think she would be better is a bit of a mystery to me.

"Candidates run to have power in office, not to spread their ideology. They are motivated by their ideology and appeal to popular acceptance of it. "
This is an apparent contradiction. Are you saying the use ideology to get popular appear, to get their end goal of power?
I think of politics as show business for ugly people, and power's part of it. You know I think you're wrong about ideology because I don't think people are as ideological or philosophical as you do. I'm cautiously optimistic that if they did think about philosophy, they'd be for liberty.

Clinton would have been better far-and-away, no comparison. No mainstream politician, though, would have any effect on the underlying problems.

“I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it.“
- Ayn Rand - Altas Shrugged

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

I can't really comment on someone's statement about Mr O'Bama being evil. I never could 'follow' him when he spoke. He would stop and start so much I got confused. And his cockatoo twitching of his head distracted me.

Strangest answer for this topic, posted in a few different forums,
“Each of us has to decide that collectively.”

Do you still think Hillary would have been a better president than trump?

Competition is always better than a federal monopoly

VERY thin veneer.
She is a truly evil woman.