Re: that's NOT totalitarianism

To begin with, the government creates and maintains a currency

So does Hasbro. Paper (or polymer, whatever) is not a currency, it is a fiction - and maintaining this fiction is one of the large factors for the mess many countries (including the USA) are in now.

I don't necessarily have a problem with fiduciary currency or monopoly on emission - alone. But (1) fiduciary currency with (2) fractional reserve banking and (3) monopoly on emission, together, is just asking for Crisis.

and provides a court system to solve business disputes.

For purely business disputes, arbitration would be more effective. You have a point with criminal law, but not with commercial law.

The public sector allows women to become more productive in the economy by guaranteeing access to child care in many countries

yeah, right, that is why they require you to be licensed before setting up a daycare, including qualifications and constant inspections. And you can't do that if you're a man, by the way. Or a minor. You really chose a bad example here: a clear case where over-regulation makes a service either more expensive, or illegal.

a basic level of education to children whose families otherwise wouldn't have the means to provide it.

It could just as well pay for it without having to take it over. There is an inherent conflict of interest if the whole system and curricula is decided by the government.

The Internet,

Do you know how many .gov and .mil domains are there? And how many .com domains?

nuclear energy,

Not hard to be a monopolist when you label anyone else who even thinks about it a terrorist.

and all the spinoff technologies of the space program

Which also used to be closed to private participation for National Security reasons. Of course the whole expense was beyond the reach of the private sector in the 1950s-1970s; but private participation in specific technologies and experiments was often off the question too.

The fact that the U.S. continues to dominate in web related industries and the wealth that's been created in this country because of that owes much to our government's spending in the development of the Internet.

Yet most of the hardware is ultimately Asian.

The fact that public sector workers remain heavily unionized even as unions have been undermined in the private sector is a legacy of the labor movement.

and to the fact that unions can take their employer for granted. They know that the employer will never be pushed out of business for its labor costs, nor will it move abroad (or even to the next state). They don't have any chance to lose by asking for more. And they can make a lot of pressure because a strike could paralyze the place, precisely because of the many services they do. All of that is structural to the public sector, and add in the fact that, in the public sector, if you are not unionized, you will not usually last more than an electoral cycle anyway, so unless your career is inherently tied to politics anyway (so you don't care), you will unionize, thereby increasing numbers more easily than in private sector unions.

countries with no environmental standards

Funny that the USA and the rest of the West also grew rich with no environmental standards.

Not saying which is preferrable, just saying that you just can't have both.

(as well as with easily exploitable undocumented immigrant labor).

Don't worry. Arizona took care of that.

California actually has a very low number of government employees relative to its population compared to other states, so I don't think it's a matter of the public sector crowding out the private sector there.

True. However, as all types of programs have guaranteed funding (because of the referenda that created them), public sector employees pay is, paradoxically, one of the relatively few things where cuts are possible within the legal framework the state has to work in.

(that, and again, the republicans in the state's legislature prevent the possibility of increased tax revenue)

I know that California Republicans are still orthodox Reaganites. But I doubt Democrats would raise taxes either if they had the necessary majority. They want to be reelected too.

Here's one reason for California's financial problems I think we'll agree on, though: overly punitive criminal legislation and a bloated prison system.

A lot of it voted in a referendum. Think of the children!
(Except the children of inmates, of course)