In case anyone is curious about [1], there is a paper called Lightweight higher-kinded polymorphism -- http://ocamllabs.io/higher/lightweight-higher-kinded-poly

In case anyone is curious about [1], there is a paper called Lightweight higher-kinded polymorphism -- http://ocamllabs.io/higher/lightweight-higher-kinded-polymorphism.pdf http://ocamllabs.io/higher/lightweight-higher-kinded-polymor... -- that goes into some of the possible encodings.