Seems more the other way around: Closures require extra automatic (and possibly "unsanctioned" memory usage, gasp) and largely requires good garbage collection,

Seems more the other way around: Closures require extra automatic (and possibly "unsanctioned" memory usage, gasp) and largely requires good garbage collection, what are you, rich? Currying requires even more closures, and sometimes closures of closures, do you think this house is made of money? Abstractions like functors and monads have large learning curves and smell too much like math and you need some sort of University degree to understand them, right? Money doesn't grow on trees here in the real world, pal!~