I seem to remember at one point that conservatives celebrated federalism - something about the states being the laboratories of democracy. Who knows, maybe New York will show how successful such a ban can be and the federal government can take that into consideration, but for now it seems like this is just New York.

Federalism means states have the power to make decisions independent of the federal government. It doesn’t mean supporting any particular exercise of that power.

And of course liberals don’t believe in federalism, so whatever happens to New York (including the 47% of the state that voted Republican in 2022) is coming to the federal level next.

If that's the case then I assume you should prepare for a ban.

Having lived in the metro area for quite a long time, I am qualified to tell you that few things NY does is exemplary of success. Most energy or public works projects turn into a total debacle. Shoreham Nuclear Power station is a good example. Billions spent, and they never even turned it on. Residents are still paying that down. Endless road project cycling. I'm not sure there has been a single transportation project that wasn't at last 3x over budget. Public corruption, kickbacks, bribery, influence peddling, patronage... The entire state apparatus is rotten to the core and rife with incompetence. I'd like to believe in the state's benevolence and concern for the well-being of its residence, but then I'd have to start or join a new religion (on blind faith alone) with its dogma being the bullshit that the state feeds to its residents.

And yet I believe it is considered the capital of the modern world in some sense, isn't it? (My perception as someone who's never visited the NE US). You choose to live there, or at least chose to live there for quite a long time as you said, so there must be some reason.

NY state is consistently ranked 2nd after California for the # of residents leaving. New York saw a net loss of over 75 thousand families last year.

Immigration helps offset those numbers a bit, because like you said people see NY(C) as the capital and plenty of people still want to live there.

Deterioration happens slowly and builds up over time. Humans are very resilient and adaptive to things getting worse (as every war has shown). When things happen slowly you don't notice how bad it is and forget what is lost. The older (usually conservative) people who notice the deterioration are often dismissed as cranks, boomers, out of touch, etc. So immigrants/young college kids still flock to NY and start building a life there before noticing that living there as an adult is way harder than it should be.

Moving states typically requires things to get really bad and people often don't understand the cause/effect of shitty gov and deteriorating cultures.