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Comment by leftyted | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy to pay more taxes so people poorer than me can have healthcare. But stuff like this strikes me as monumentally silly:

> They include a schedule of taxation on income and wealth that reaches ninety per cent and the elimination of nation-states in favor of “a vast transnational democracy,” which will secure “a universal right to education and a capital endowment, free circulation of people, and de facto virtual abolition of borders.”

I think arguments like these can serve a useful function. Based on their appeal, maybe we'll move in the right direction. But the arguments themselves? A "transnational socialistic union" is a bizarre dream. And dreams can be dangerous when people take them too seriously.

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That idea is beyond ridiculous.

Even small countries can't get agreement on what the gov't should be doing, so how could possible do that across the globe?

I'm going to guess like most "revolutions" it involves taking care of those "reactionaries" to make sure they don't upset the plan.

Any kind of one-world government would be pathological to the extreme. With no competitors or alternatives where people it treated poorly (or even just people who preferred a different style of governance) could go, it would rapidly become unimaginably tyrannical

In my experience people take a dim view that market based competition controls governments more so than any kind of representation or ideology can. They take a dimmer view that people on this planet take advantage of this reality, but they arent really perceiving that this is what those people and corporations are doing. Its definitely a privilege though!

> I'm happy to pay more taxes so people poorer than me can have healthcare.

Hmmm, I’d like to not pay more taxes and for healthcare to be cheaper

> A "transnational socialistic union" is a bizarre dream.

I think the perception of such a dream depends on a series of factors. One of them is the ability of the person to deal with complexity. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4LTqRJDW8&t=2s

A person on the third order of consciousness (Social) would tend to find the idea repulsing.

A person on the forth order of consciousness (and 5th) would tend to find the idea attractive.

Trouble is that we are not yet at 4th order at a global level. We are actually nowhere near that. Unfortunately, not even the leadership is there yet. Some are but not all.

The higher one goes on this scale of development the clearer the interconnectedness of everything is.

Kegan even argues that the reason we live longer might have something to do with needing to develop the higher levels of consciousness that are required to deal with the global challenges that we face. It is impossible to deal with global consequence by using the 3rd order of consciousness. The ability of people with this type of consciousness to deal with the complexity of the issue is simply inadequate.

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