I will say that I'm a huge fan of SlateStarCodex's epistemic status system, where before posts where he is unsure of he will clearly state how far he has gone d

I will say that I'm a huge fan of SlateStarCodex's epistemic status system, where before posts where he is unsure of he will clearly state how far he has gone down the rabbit hole, and such a status would have made for a better blog post, and that such a status would have made your argument less required or more pointed depending on what he put as his status. At the very least we need to be asking these questions... 1. What has global positive or negative externalities? 2. What has country-level positive or negative externalities? 3. What has local positive or negative externalities? If you aren't at least asking those questions, you are never going to arrive at the correct level of abstraction. Should we have a World Government? We have global externalities, so probably. What should that government do? As little as required.