Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Shrinking the Federal government might just make State and local governments larger.
Perhaps they could be more efficient...for instance it wouldn't be as easy to toss billions around with a smaller budget and fragmenting K Street would make it harder for wealthy interest groups to assert influence.
On the flip slide you would lose economies of scale. Also the introduction of more variability (state to state) could increase the costs of business to service local needs. Environmental regulations that impact everyone could set states against one another, or decisions made locally might not be in the interest of the country. A good example here might be ANWR. If left to the Alaskan people (who get a piece of the oil action) they might be biased in supporting exploration at the expense of damage to the environment that all Americans own.
Perhaps we simply need to pay our politicians better, then we could attract the real talent 
-spence |
I'm not sure what you mean by economies of scale. If you mean economies of large size, and by that you mean the U.S. economy--that would still exist. The Federal Gvt. subset would be smaller, but that is the objective so would be a good thing. The U.S. aggregate economy would be more diverse since it would be less centrally regulated. And the States could be freer to be the much lauded laboratories of experimentation which are now suppressed by central power. Various programs to deal with common needs seen on a more first hand view would be implemented with more likely voter approval than with the current force of 51% of far off voters determining what the majority of your State will pay for.
Though State to State variability might create some minor expenses for bigger business, it might, even more, save them money as States compete for their business, or try to make it economically advantageous to sell or produce locally. But that is secondary to the goal of limiting the central government power to spend. It is also secondary to the goal of applying Constitutional principles to governance. It is secondary to assuring the individual citizen the liberty that the Constitution provides. We are first, or should be, a nation of citizens, not an economy. The economy should be the result of our action, we should not be slaves to some centrally planned and regulated theory. The former will evolve and flourish, the latter will ultimately stagnate and fail due to lack of diversity necessary for evolution.
And . . . OH! . . . the Environment. To begin with, one of the main reasons for writing the Constitution was to create economic cooperation among the States, instead of the economic wars that were occuring between the confederated States. So there is, actually, a Federal power granted in the Constitution to ameliorate economic disputes between States. If the environmental regulations that you speak of are creatures of the central gvt., they are probably unconstitutional and should be void. If your speaking of environmental regulations drafted by States that conflict with one another, the Federal Gvt. would Constitutionally be an arbiter. So, no need to worry there.
As for the environment of Alaska belonging to all of us, that is saying that there is no State sovereignty. And if your referring to territory that belongs to the Federal Gvt., Alaskans can't do what they will to such territory without Federal consent.