> If each of these small states were completely autonomous, and had to legislate their entire body of law, the citizens would care more, and they would develop more representative and accountable voting systems and institutions, due to the extent of the government's responsibilities.

I see several possible problems with this approach. I had similar thoughts in the years past, an I was wondering what your opinions were as to the following issues:

1. Inconsistent laws in a small geographical area. As a real world example, take a look at the car window tint law in the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. In Illinois you can have up to 60% tint on your windows, while in Chicago, the local rule is that you can only have up to 30% tint. Don't quote me on those figures, last I looked into it was 10 years ago. But the point is, you can live outside Chicago, have a perfectly legal 50% tint, and than, as soon as you drive into Chicago, your car is all of the sudden in violation of one of the local laws. And they do ticket you for it. In your proposed system you would have all kinds of inconsistent laws. This is a problem for automotive laws, food safety, building codes, etc. The only solution I see would be for all of the small governments to gather together and agree on some standard set of laws that they will all implement. But than you are more or less back to square one.

2. Large infrastructure projects. Large projects require a lot of capital and a lot of cooperation from people in a large geographical area. Things like highway construction, rails, bridges, aqueducts, pipelines, all of those would require cooperation of dozens, if not hundreds of individual governments in your system. And you would always have holdouts, townships that would demand an extra something for their cooperation.

3. Research projects. Currently the united states government sponsors significant amount of research. If we were to switch to the township system, than that research would not be sponsored any more. Alternatively, maybe a bunch of townships could unite in a consortium to pay for research. But then you run into problems with division of profits from that research. Say 6 out of 10 townships paid for the research which resulted in development of a cancer cure. Would they then be able to deny the benefits of that cure to the other 4 townships?

There are a bunch of examples that I can think of in addition to this. In the past after thinking about this idea, the Jefferson Township model of government, I decided that I could not think of a way to make it work. However, a State system might work. A state system would largely eliminate the Federal Government and programs like the Social Security, ACA, Medicare, and all of the other social programs. It would also eliminate the Federal Income tax. The Federal Government would be responsible for national defense (military), borders, interstate transportation, and the interstate laws and treaties. The interstate laws would be a set of laws that 3/4 of the states would agree on. Things like food labeling, minimal vehicle safety requirements, etc.

To pay for the Federal Government each state would pay a yearly membership fee based on the number of people in that state and the GDP of the state, or some other kind of matrix. It would be up to each state to organize their own Social Security, health program, and other social programs. Each state would also be free to decide how to govern it self, would have the power to collect income tax, etc. The main key to the system would be free travel. This means that no person could be prevented from leaving one state or moving to another. This would allow each state to experiment with all kinds of government models, and would allow people to vote with their feet.

Any way, my idea is as unlikely to ever come true as the Jefersonian system.