That's my point. Instead of lording over the people and redistributing their money in ways some find positive and some find negative we can remove the whole lording over and redistributing part all together and the people can deal with it. There doesn't have to be "the rest" if you remove "the rest" the core point of your post goes away all together. There was a time, before the first World War, when the U.S. did run on a much more local level. There's many examples, such as a drought in Texas the feds chose to stay out of and the people did more than the feds were planning to, the fact there was so many resources and money designated for the indigent in some cities it was nearly embarrassing and they were practically begging people to use it - "the rest" doesn't have to be there and we would be better off for it.