"Starve the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending by cutting taxes, to deprive the federal government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force it to reduce spending.
The most dangerous, murderous things in history are powerful central governments. They are like the Ring of Power, everyone thinks they can wield it for good, but it doesn't work out that way.
That’s a nice general principle but you didn’t provide evidence of specific harm. I think arguing past each other from first principles is exactly why the US is in this mess in the first place.
The fact is that all these government agencies are preventing specific harms. Throwing them out because of some vague “big government is bad because it might turn into a tyrrany later” isn’t an argument that the harms being prevented don’t exist. It’s a non-sequitor, like saying the sky is blue when someone complains about airplane noise.
I dont live in USA so I dont know. But here the ruling party is losing in local elections in town, so they cut the amount of taxes aplocated to muncipialities while at the same time they ask them to deal with more issues. So muncipialities are forced to degrade the quality of their services - since they dont have enough money. Then the ruling party claims that the local politicians cannot rule properly. What is just a lie. But this lie works.
I believe it is possible it is happening at some municipal levels but my question was more directed towards your statement
>employed by American conservatives ... to deprive the federal government of revenue
which appears to refer to federal level. The general trend of federal receipts have been fairly flat above 15% for decades (except during great recession circa 2009), and the spending slightly different rising a bit above and funded by debt and/or inflationary effects.
My takeaway is here the beast has not been starved, although the beast is spending more of our children's future incomes in the form of increasing debt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast