Hacker News Reader

Comment by fileeditview | Hacker News Reader

So why not just merge into one and be 16 times as effective? Sorry for the sarcasm but your calculation is just a wild assumption.

How does the US do it? They have a fair amount of states too with their own laws, don't they?

Sure, federalism produces some overhead and inefficiencies. But it also has many benefits. Especially to avoid too much power in one hand but also others. E.g. you can have different school systems in different states and see what works better and adapt the other systems (if you actually do that is another question).

People are also different in different states. This also applies to Europe and its member states. Just merging all into one is just a recipe to fail epically.

View on HN

Afaik, the bulk of the US' federal centralization of commerce is based on the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution [0], which based on reading (and more so on precedent) grants the US federal legislature the ability to regulate commerce between states. As most commerce crosses state boundaries, this de facto allows the federal legislature to define and enforce regulatory standards.

In practice, it's more nuanced and subject to continual back-and-forth arguing. E.g. California and Texas trying to decide their own standards, by virtue of their economic size, then hashing it out with the federal government in court.

I'm not sure what the EU regulatory cornerstone equivalent of the Commerce Clause would be.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause

> So why not just merge into one and be 16 times as effective? Sorry for the sarcasm but your calculation is just a wild assumption.

The division is on purpose, to divide power and make it harder for a second Hitler to rise again. And the calculations are no assumption, it's a common topic in Germany how much additional time and money this all costs.

> How does the US do it? They have a fair amount of states too with their own laws, don't they?

Why do you assume they are different? Or better?

> E.g. you can have different school systems in different states and see what works better

You can also have this without federalism, without maintaining a dozen different administrations which are all doing the same in different flavour.

> People are also different in different states. This also applies to Europe and its member states.

Compared to Europe, people in the USA are not that different per state. At least not on the level where individual administration is necessary. The different groups are mainly independent of the state they are living in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com