Excellent questions... The direction with respect to ARIN is that the Board has spent significant time considering this issue and the guidance provided to date is that ARIN is to focus on its core mission of providing allocation and registration services, and be supportive of other related organizations (e.g. NANOG, ICANN, ISOC) which perform related functions in the community. This approach has reduced the risk of mission creep (at least as far as I can tell... :-)
From a practical matter, it also means that we need to consider a future for ARIN which provides a core address registry function, modest IPv4 updates and modest IPv6 new allocation activity, and likely a very stable policy framework. This vision of the future is highly compatible with automation, and ARIN is indeed working aggressively in this area with ARIN Online. I do think that automation plus a reduction in activity will result in a modest reduction in overall costs, but the costs associated with having an open community-based organization aren't necessarily changing:
i think this is realistic, wise, and admirable. it is damned hard for an organization to resist mission creep, etc., and focus on mission, especially when that means long term shrinkage. the board and management are to be commended. randy