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Comment by compycom | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. Consider our inability to coordinate a proper pandemic response, or the current smoke catastrophe spanning the west coast. The problems facing our country are increasingly national in scope, and require coordinated responses at the federal level. I believe our entrenched commitment to federalism and state's rights is going to hold us back more and more in the years ahead.

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Why do you think pandemic response or wildfire are national in scope? Both can be handled at the state level. For example California, Oregon, and a Washington could perform necessary controlled burning (https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/899422710/to-manage-wildfire-...) or harvest trees on a timely basis (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/california-today-100-m...), or at least stay in target with even their existing forest management target, which they haven’t (https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/to-stop...). Whatever states cannot accomplish on their own, they can certainly invest in - whether it is purchasing PPE or hiring loggers.

Well, in this specific case, the majority of the forestry in California is owned by the Fed.

Could the state be allowed to close its borders to other states in the case of Covid?

They already have this power to an extent. Hawaii for example requires visitors to self quarantine for two weeks upon arrival and arrests violators.

And if that state can’t, for one of a hundred reasons, respond appropriately, the effects are not limited to that state.

For the pandemic, people traveling into, out of, or through the state will spread it to surrounding states (Florida is one great example of how a state not responding appropriately has broader impacts on the nation).

For wildfires, fire knows no state boundaries, and smoke is even more promiscuous in its spread.

Europe manage to handle those things just fine and local politics is very decoupled from EU politics. Why wouldn't states be allowed to close borders under emergencies?

Because a state is not a country. It doesn't have a military, border patrol, national guard, etc. That is to say, it doesn't have the manpower. And it could - practically speaking - never raise the money to do so (states have enough trouble paying their teachers, sanitation workers, paving roads, etc).

They have trouble paying for everything that’s on their wish list but that’s true of individuals and the federal government as well. A state COULD have those things, especially if their taxpayers gave up less in federal taxes since the federal government would have fewer responsibilities. Not sure how this changes things.

But if a state has sufficient personnel to handle an emergency (say a tornado strike on a town), they have too much personnel the rest of the time. Whereas, with a governmental entity, they can go from emergency to emergency, keeping wasted resources to a minimum.

The governmental agency can also shift resources from one state to another without having to wait for the resolution of aid politics between the individual states (not to mention the states the aid would be transported through).

Of course, there are significant inefficiencies that exist in those entities in reality, but what would realistically prevent those same inefficiencies from existing in a state-run system as well?

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