PROHIBITION ON STATE-FUNDED AND STATE-SPONSORED TRAVEL TO STATES WITH DISCRIMINATORY LAWS (https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887)
In effect, this law means that if any member of California government picks a contractor / supplier / conference in North Carolina, then that person has to pay for any related travel out of their own pocket. The idea is that this will hugely disincentize any one in the California government from doing business with companies located in North Carolina.
I guess we'll have to see if there's ever a legal challenge to it.
You also seem to be describing a case where California is a direct market participant (they're paying the contractors). States are allowed to discriminate in favor of their own citizens (or, I guess, anyone else) when they themselves participate in the market.
It's not just that they don't require employees to travel there, they also don't pay for trips "This bill would prohibit a state agency from ... approving a request for state-funded or state-sponsored travel to ..."
The bill doesn't explicitly forbid government employees (and by extension, the government of California) from doing business with North Carolina - it just adds personal, out-of-pocket cost for doing so. (which probably amounts to the same effect.)
Travel from a prohibited state, including the return flight back, shall be construed as travel “to” the original destination.
(I don't follow college sports enough to know whether CA and NC even have any universities in the same conference, though, so it might be moot)
(+) China has limited internal free movement and some countries have "special economic zones", enclaves/exclaves and status anomalies like Guantanamo etc.
That forces myriad issues to bubble up to the federal level, which was the exact opposite of the federal design. For example, say we didn’t have the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes a federal ban on child labor. States could ban child labor within their borders, but that policy would be undermined by neighboring states who could flood the market with cheaper goods produced using child labor. In fact, Congress proposed a Constitutional amendment in the 1920s to ban child labor. In the 1930s, FDR’s threats to pack the Supreme Court resulted in a dramatic expansion in the view of the federal government’s commerce clause power, which obviated the need for an amendment and child labor protections were included in the FLSA in 1938.
Complete economic integration is not necessary to provision a common defense (e.g. NATO). Inclusion of the Commerce Clause was instead a bit of a submarine trap. While the Constitution was sold to States on the theory that they would continue to be mostly sovereign, having ceded only narrow powers to the federal government, taking away states’ power to control cross-border trade left them castrated. Today, they’re mostly irrelevant except for the layer of inefficiency they add to the whole system.
Economic success isn’t the only concern (and there is no evidence that less economic integration wouldn’t have led to just as much success, and European countries are plenty prosperous with historically far less economic integration). At bottom, people were promised that they wouldn’t become one completely integrated country, but the Constitutional design made that promise a dead letter from the beginning.
It was meant to give the federal government all the powers necessary for the federal government to have to make the country successful. Hence the "necessary and proper" clause. You're of course correct that many functions have been successfully left to the states.
NATO would not work without the United States. It has the same issues the US had under the Articles of Confederation where members try to weasel out of their commitments: http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/08/news/nato-summit-spending-co...
The EU is not stable, has a terrible problem with border security, and the lack of economic integration is certainly a problem (e.g. look at Greece), so I don't think that's an example to aspire to.
The Necessary and Proper clause says: "The Congress shall have Power ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The "foregoing Powers" refers to the preceding text in Article I, Section 8, which gives Congress power to do things like "provide and maintain a Navy." So Congress has the power to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper [to provide and maintain a Navy], ..." It does not have the power to make laws "necessary and proper" generally.
The basic design of the government is flawed. It's supposed to be a federal system, with a limited federal government that provides for a common defense, regulates the currency, etc., but where the states build the roads, provide police services, etc. That was how the Constitution was sold to the public before it was ratified.
But depriving states to control their borders makes that idea unworkable in practice, because it creates a prisoner's dilemma situation. E.g., everyone might want universal healthcare, but each state has an incentive to let the other states do it, and simply let people cross the border for treatment when they get sick. Or, it might be the case that investing in education helps businesses to have a competent work force, but each state has an incentive to let the other states foot the bill, and lure businesses and educated workers after the fact through low taxes.
To provide the services people expect from a modern first-world country, then, the federal government is then forced to give up federalism. It has to dramatically overstep the limited role it was originally envisioned as having.