Quote Originally Posted by 120
Local governance, nested and embedded in a small central federation is worlds more efficient, responsive governmment compared to the overcentralized mess we are building.
This is an ideal-type with little factual evidence to support your claim. First, "efficient" and "responsive" are not necessarily paired types, nor are they essentially conducive to democratic governance and "freedom" (assuming also that democratic governance is the ideal type for optimizing 'freedom'). As cited with both Hitler and Stalin, their conduct was "efficient" in so far their directives bypassed all other stakeholders and state bureaucracies. When Stalin noted that grass was overgrowing in Moscow, the very next day laborers were out cutting all the grass and pulling down the trees. That's pretty damn efficient. But he was also pretty efficient in condemning hundreds of thousands of people to death. We're talking about 'freedom', not money markets, so we can dispense with the economic jargon about 'efficiency'.

Is local governance more responsive than federal government? It depends to whom the government is responding. Local governments tend to politically alienate minority and low income communities depending on the structure of governance of the jurisdiction in question; and local special interest groups (i.e. COLLECTIVE action, there's that dirty word again) tend to have better access and more response than any individual citizen or business. But as noted earlier, that responsiveness is tied to the local conditions of the area, making it more difficult for localized authorities to tackle larger problems (i.e. regional transit, the environment, etc) alone, or simply stop functioning when local conditions fail (i.e. Detroit). And none of that actually makes government more democratic (i.e. maximizing citizen participation, which some would argue is a requirement for political freedom).

So until you actually man up and provide a definition of 'freedom', you don't have an argument to provide.