I don't really think the random assholes I have network ties on FB will understand or appreciate this discussion, so I'd rather comment here.

Paul's comment:
It's amazing that what appears to be a strictly-curtailed and limited Federal Government as envisioned by the Founding Fathers (and as supported by Strict-Constitutionalist Anti-Government Right-Wing Nutjobs like me) is what we ended up with when the "big government" side won. Discuss in comments how history might have gone differently had the Anti-federalists won.

Witty retort:

In short, there would be no United States.

At length:
I expect we wouldn't have 50 states, for starters. Probably a couple might be off on their own. Sort of south-wise a bit. Or not, we may have avoided the war entirely. We could still have slave states, or states without women's suffrage. We might have states that are veritable ghost towns, and other states that attempt to curtail migration from other states. We might have fundamentalist states, or a confederation of them. I don't want to have to get paperwork just to drive to the Pacific. I doubt there would have been a unified effort in WW2, as any state that felt like it could have said "no thanks".

If there was a snowball's chance in hell individual states could tell corporations what to do, I might be more interested in a more limited Fed - traveling state to state would be more interesting than weird street signs and bars open after 2, for one. However, what could Louisiana, Alabama, or Florida do to hold BP to account for their colossal mistake? Could a weaker Fed do anything to help? The current government will have enough trouble keeping BP "honest" as it is.

We have already reached the point in the downward spiral of megacapitalism where a human life has a (small) dollar value attached to it. I don't like the idea of not having an organization powerful enough to sanction large corporations. The fact that capitalist entities are powerful enough to challenge states is weird and scary all on its own, but that's where we are now. Who or what is to stop them from ending lives that are inconvenient? BP offed 11 people because it was inconvenient/expensive to keep them alive, effectively.

I feel rather poorly protected from business interests already, I don't want to imagine what it would have been like without a strong Fed to push back, even slightly. Actually, I think I can imagine it - Snow Crash.