I share that suspicion: when you pay taxes for lifting the poor from your doorstep, it not only helps them, it also improves your own quality of life. The poor

I share that suspicion: when you pay taxes for lifting the poor from your doorstep, it not only helps them, it also improves your own quality of life. The poor half a continent away, not so much. The same applies when you replace "paying taxes" with any other measures that reduce inequality, like a preference for level education access, a judicial system that prefers rehabilitation to vengeance, minimum health standards and so on. The dark side of this hypothesis is that it predicts that all those civilizatory achievements will increasingly come under pressure as national states become more open and integrated. It's almost a "national" and a "socialistic" idea, if you look at the terms without blending them into one. Which makes any meaningful discussion really hard.