The case for the /usr merge

Well in this context I believe the biggest failing of Debian (and still a feature) is to include many features of a package even if most users won't need it. Seriously when I see from your post that for example wpa_supplicant depends on libpcsclite it makes me shudder. Yes it's nice to have smartcard support in wpa_supplicant but the vast majority of users won't need it and this just adds an unncessary dependency.