* stable currency
Privatize currency, or allow local currencies. There's absolutely no
reason to believe that a single currency backed by a "unified" federal
government of our states is "better" or "more stable" than the notion of
other liquid, interoperable, interdependent currencies from a variety of
local governments or private concerns. In fact, by averaging out local
economic interests, the current currency system may in fact be more
volatile than a more thoroughly decomposed and distributed system of
interrelated currencies.
* interstate highways
There's no reason to believe that these could not be mainained at a
higher level of quality and at a lower cost by the cooperation of
neighboring states.
* air traffic control
I have *no idea* why this should be a federal concern.
* national parks
State parks. Why should "national" interest dictate the management of
public lands in my state?
* government research facilities
Much if not most of this ends up being pork, anyway. Why not fund this
out of locally-collected state taxes, since the spending ultimately has
an impact primarily on a local level anyay? At least in this way, the
extremely high penalty we pay in overhead for federal management of
disbursement of these funds would be reduced. In effect, I believe that
this would translate into *more* funding options and *more* funding
dollars!
* subsidized technologies
I'll grant that there are certain things that are large enough in scale
that it takes more than a state-scale economy and government to fund.
Fine. Let's let ad-hoc coalitions of sovereign state interests and
private concerns form to manage these types of things.
* benefits of regulation
It doesn't take centralization of authority to get this. Indeed,
coalition government on an ad-hoc basis may be more efficient and
cost-effective.
* the Federal gov't still is... a remarkably efficient, and
citizen-oriented government.
Whatever! :-/
jb