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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

The US federal government has been doing that to the states for a while now. They don't have the constitutional authority to do something, so instead they shove a lever under something they nominally are allowed to do and tell the states "do the thing we're not allowed to, the way we tell you to, or else." Where the "or else" is something like, they collect billions of tax dollars from your constituents that you then can't use to provide them with services, and return them to only the states that bend the knee.

(The US constitution originally required federal taxes to be apportioned for exactly that reason.)

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This isn't how EU works though (EU can actually directly order states arouns :P), so I'm not sure how that's relevant here?

That doesn't appear to be accurate:

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/faq-eu-competences-and...

Moreover, it's ignoring the context of the thread. The relevance is obviously that coercing someone to do something against their will and then saying they're still in charge because they're the ones doing it is a sham.

Can you highlight what part of that FAQ doesn't make it accurate? EU directives are a thing.

US federal laws are also a thing. In both cases, they're supposed to be limited to specific categories.

In the EU this appears to be classified into "exclusive", "shared" and "support" "competencies":

> the EU has competence to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States (article 6 TFEU) – in these areas, the EU may not adopt legally binding acts that require the Member States to harmonise their laws and regulations.

So for example, one of the areas in that category is industry.

The common trick to look out for in cases like that is that when they want to regulate something like "industry" they instead categorize the rules as something else, e.g. the US infamously regulates non-interstate non-commerce as "interstate commerce".

Please provide examples, because this sounds highly speculative, and also straight up incorrect!

As an obvious example, regulating education isn't one of the enumerated powers of the US federal government, but there are numerous -- often controversial (e.g. NCLB) -- federal laws that take tax revenue from every state's constituents and return it to the state only if they comply with federal requirements the federal government has no power to impose on its own.

A major example is the US drinking age. Federal highway funds, which provide money for interstate highways, major US routes, etc, are partially contingent on states (who are given authority over alcohol laws both by the general police power and the 21st Amendment) setting the minimum age for the legal purchase of alcohol at 21. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act withheld 10 percent of highway funds from states that didn't comply. The fact that it wasn't 100% let the Supreme Court allow it to slide, but eventually all the states did comply, and effectively the US has a drinking age set by the Federal government instead of the states even though the states technically have the power to set an age themselves.

The Federal government using the withholding of funds to get the states to do what it wants is a well-documented phenomenon.

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