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> So what? I see nothing wrong with reliance on government being replaced with reliance on more local entities (i.e. one's friends, neighbors, church congregation, etc) which is what happens in the near term when higher level institutions collapse.

I think you have that backwards. One of the strengths of the US system is that you can buy something from someone far away and have a high probability you'll get it. Even for the first century or so of the republic that system didn't work so well (for example when you tried to use currency -- banknotes -- people were reluctant to accept money from far away banks in case it was fraudulent).

Governments are far fro perfect but they are more controllable than private corporations. Would you really prefer that companies regulated drug claims and manufacturing rather than the FDA?

> Sure, if the federal government just stopped handing out SSI checks tomorrow it would suck for a lot of people in the short term but in the medium term you'd see towns running their own food pantries and whatnot. Something always creeps in to fill the vacuum.

The idea of a shared effort is that we support each other: the local economies that can't afford food banks are helped out by those who can. If a hurricane hits your region all of the food banks can be rendered inoperable. The government is supposed to help everyone (Texas, Florida, California, Puerto Rico) even when individuals have suffered "help fatigue".

>*I see nothing wrong with reliance on government being replaced with reliance on more local entities..."

But then you just replaced one government with another. Worse, the one you replaced it with has fewer abilities. How does it get fuel for logistics. (ie - the food pantries get food from where? The federal government is gone, so the oil tankers don't dock anymore and the pipelines aren't full anymore.)

Sure, Chicago would be golden, it's on lake Michigan. But what happens if you live in Arizona? Where does your water come from?

Who helps if a hurricane guts Miami FL?

Who helps if a tornado guts Norman OK?

Etc etc etc.

Our way of life just doesn't support hyper local governments doing whatever they want, and hording resources from other hyper local governments. We, for better or for worse, are set up on the premise of bountiful energy, and through that energy, bountiful access to resources. That's just how we survive currently. No one has the stomach or the constitution to go back to being local farmers.

> *Our way of life just doesn't support hyper local governments [...] No one has the stomach or the constitution to go back to being local farmers.

Er... guys, your American states are as large as European countries (the largest ones being in the range of France, Germany, Spain down to UK, the smaller ones in the range of Switzerland down to Belgium). As bit less populated (and even that is not really a drawback since it typically means more available resources per inhabitant), but otherwise... why wouldn't they be able to support themselves? Furthermore, having different governments/countries does not block the flow of goods.

OK. I'm going to assume that you aren't American.

Imagine a European country...

a lot of space right?

Now imagine it's in the middle of a desert. Literally.

OK, do you have that picture in your head? Great!

Now... imagine that it's ALSO landlocked.

If you've followed along to this point, then I want you to answer the following question in as honest a fashion as you can:

How many, "resources per inhabitant", would that nation realistically have available?

Continuing with our thought experiment, imagine there was no federal government to provide the structure for, say, Texas, to share its energy resources with other states...

now, ask yourself why Texas would continue to give Idaho free energy resources? Should Texans continue the charitable practice, in exchange for a few Idaho potatoes? There are just better markets for those resources. And I wouldn't blame Texans one bit for availing themselves of the opportunities those markets present.

Governments, and common sense, can, and do, block the flow of goods.

What I'm trying to point out, is that I don't think you've thought this whole thing through.

What happens when an entire town is poor, or washed over by a hurricane? They pick each other up by each other's bootstraps?

What's your theory for the Great Depression, that persisted until WWII's nation-wide economic coordination?

The only way I can see to match your theory to experience is to observe that yeah, poverty evaporates when the poverty stricken people nearly all die off.

> when an entire town is poor, or washed over by a hurricane? They pick each other up by each other's bootstraps?

Those are cases when you need higher level help. For unexceptional, routine, stuff there's no reason to make a higher than necessary level of authority deal with it. Doing so is like having a CEO waste his time figuring out what office furniture to buy. Funding a food bank is something that can be done on a local level. Figuring out health insurance is something that can be done on the state level. Etc.

>The only way I can see to match your theory to experience is to observe that yeah, poverty evaporates when the poverty stricken people nearly all die off.

You know what else tends to evaporate? Tax dollars making the long trip all the way up the stack just to come back down it. Administrative overhead is nonzero. Better to just fund a locally if possible.

I think you're making some pretty good points overall about the benefits of state and city governments, but one thing I still have questions with is what we do as a country when one part of our country adopts some set of practices but other states refuse to do so. The clear example in this case is the abolishment of slavery, there were a ton of states that didn't want to do that. The answer isn't as easy as "just move if you don't like the conditions in your state" because the residents don't always have the means to move (especially the case in the slavery example). Nor can we afford to just ignore it "until they catch up" because there is no guarantee that they will catch up if the smaller governments are caught in a local maximum (in the mathematical sense, no pun intended) where the group that receives the most benefit at the expense of the oppressed has 0 reason to seek change.

Essentially, I think that the increasing power of the federal government comes (in some part) from a desire from the citizens of the country to have things be more uniform across the country. I personally think that based on some of the points you have made that more effective small government operations could help rebuild trust and the social fabric. The problem is that I'm not sure I'm willing to condemn the role of the federal government and stop trying to help those in states that would seek to oppress them.

As a side note, as far as I'm aware, the state's rights argument in recent history has largely been used as a dog whistle to signal racism [0] and other forms of systemic oppression for just this reason. "Let all the states decide for themselves" is coded language for "You know you're part of the majority in your state and we won't tolerate the Fed. Gov. mandating that we abolish slavery/legalize abortion/legalize gay marriage etc."

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

As per Europe: if you have a monetary union, you need a redistributive fiscal union, because otherwise the money will concentrate in the net-exporter states.

What's the trade deficit of, say, Arkansas?