This implies a complete removal of the social safety net, worldwide and total government collapse/anarchy, or some radical change that makes redistributive taxation impossible. I disagree with the bolded text because I do not think any of those are going to happen.

Just to clarify I do not really see NWO as benevolent. Rather I see it as a likely future scenario that might be an incremental improvent for a majority of humanity. This does not necessarily mean that things will be better for everyone or even for most of those living in the west. The majority of humanity includes countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia and some regression to the mean may apply.
  
I agree on the difficulty of predicting the future. Things may play out completly different than I described above. That said here is how I think things will unfold.  

I suspect that the formation of a one world government is an economic inevitability at this point.

Bankrupt countries and their handout dependent populations will line up to eagerly surrender national sovereignty as this will be the only means to pay the bills. Greece is the future model for most of the indebted world.

Thus the question we face is not whether to implement NWO as that ship has sailed. The relevant query is what can be done to limit the inevitable centralization in such a system and ensure that it is not hostile to human life.

I agree that global corporations and those that own them would likely have disproportionate influence in any future world government. They have similar disproportionate influence today so I am unsure how much worse it would be. The future role of consumerism, eugenics, and transhumanism seems more difficult to predict.

I would also agree that (at least in the short term) a global world government has almost no chance of bring decentralized. It may also be more authoritarian Especially when compared to countries with a history of strong personal liberties like the USA.

My argument rests on the premise that despite these flaws humanity as a whole will be more free under such a system then it is today.
 

Justification for New World Order: Part 1, 2, 3, 4

The Nash equilibrium is often referred to as an "evolutionary stable state"

The prisoner's dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely "rational" individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. In the prisoners dilemma each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent.

The Nash equilibrium for the prisoners dilemma is to always defect and betray the other. However, this is not the most economically efficient outcome nor is it the Pareto optimum. Interestingly populations able to interact repeatedly do not necessarily converge to the Nash equilibrium. Populations able to interact over time can converge on an equilibrium state that results in significant levels of cooperation even in the prisoners dilemma a game with rules that makes cooperation very dangerous.

http://m.pnas.org/content/102/31/10797.full


Fig.
Deterministic replicator dynamics of an infinite population with different mutation rates u. Filled circles represent stable stationary points; open circles represent unstable stationary points. The times symbol in b and c (×) indicates the time average of the limit cycle. The payoffs in the prisoner's dilemma game are T = 5, R = 3, P = 1, and S = 0.1; the expected number of rounds is m = 10, and the complexity cost for TFT is c = 0.8.

World of peace and harmony is not in the cards anytime soon if ever. However, fundamentals may actually get us there someday as peace and harmony is a more economically efficient state.

The evolution of the social contract appears to be a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. I suspect that in the future republics will be consumed by world government, world government will evolve into decentralized government, and decentralized government will finally mature into a shared consensus among individuals with limited or no government.

Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. To borrow from the links in the opening post each iteration increases the amount of entropy the system can sustainably support.

This is not to say we cannot revert to a lower energy state. A world war could set us back to tribalism or worse. Even in that event, however, the survivors would simply start the slow climb all over again. Progress is always a terrifying proposition. As the old saying goes the higher you climb the harder you fall.

Thank you I am humbled.

I like to think of this thread and the forum in general as a modern version of the 17th century English coffehouse. A place where we all learn from each other and discuss the news of the day.

Power Vacuum: a situation where the benefits of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular special interest groups, while the costs, in higher taxes, slower economic growth, and many other second-order effects are diffused through the entire population.
Cooperation: Voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange.
Defection: An exchange that advances the individual to the detriment of his fellows typically involving coercion, violence, or ignorance.

There is no such thing as complete freedom except for the state of nature as described by Hobbs. In every other scenario the best we can achieve is a partial freedom. We agree to some limitations of our freedoms to maximize our ability to prosper and cooperate while minimizing individual freedom to coerce, and defect.

The ideal government is no government at all. In this utopia nearly all individuals act only cooperatively. A stable utopia would require its participations to identify, correct, and in extreme cases neutralize those choosing defection over cooperation. Such a society is simply is not possible at our current juncture in history. We lack the required education, moral fiber, technology, and transparency and have simply not advanced enough to make it work. This leaves us no choice but to settle for an inferior semi-centralized alternative subject to an exploitable power vacuum.

There are two types of “freedom fighters” that rise up in opposition to the social contract. The first is the angry defector. Many individuals are optimized for violence, force, and coercion. Historically violence was a viable evolutionary strategy. The modern social contract has increasingly limited opportunities to profit from violence and those optimized for it are genuinely worse off as a result. The angry defector thus hates the social contract and longs for a return to the more primitive state for which he is optimized.

The second type of “freedom fighter” is the disillusioned cooperator. The social contract is a blunt and crude instrument. It is easily abused and manipulated. This weakness creates openings for today’s defector aka the intelligent narcissist. By exploiting the power vacuum the narcissist and his junior partner the parasite are able to succeed at the expense of others.  Disillusioned cooperators grow angry at a system that permits this abuse. Sometimes this leads to a conversion to anarchism which is either a desire for the utopia described above, a desire for a return to primitive tribalism, or some muddled mix of the two.

The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism evolved into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. Perhaps in the future republics will be consumed by world government, world government will advance into decentralized government, and decentralized government will finally mature into the optimum of no government at all.

RealBitcoin, this is a challenging question but I will add my thoughts.

To answer your question we must first examine the role of government and it's relationship to the base state of nature. This relationship was analyzed in depth by Thomas Hobbs in his book Leviathan.

In the state of nature, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. There is no centralized authority and no external recourse against violence, coercion, or defection. This, Hobbes argued, leads to a "war of all against all"


Such a primitive state cannot endure. Humans are intelligent enough to see that this "war of all against all" is horrible so we accede to a social contract and form tribes which later become cities and eventually nations. Society is a population under some sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede some rights for the sake of protection.

Back in 1651 Hobbs argued that the best type of sovereign authority available was a centralized monarch. Indeed there may well have been a time in human history when monarchy was the best available solution given our overall level of technology and education. I am hopeful, however, that we have outgrown that time. Our current social contract for all its flaws is superior to the monarchies and dictatorships it supplanted.

The role of the social contract is to maximize individual freedom to build wealth, prosperity and happiness via cooperation while minimizing individual freedom to prosper from coercion, violence and defection.

With this framework in mind will a transition to a one world government represent an improvement. I believe the answer to this question is yes. The transition from nation states to a world government contains the potential finally eliminate large scale tribe on tribe and nation on nation war and violence. The importance of such an achievement cannot be overstated.

A diffuse decentralized world government of the type described by macsga above would be of course be superior to a centralized one. However, I doubt we can smoothly transition to such a decentralized system from our current state. We lack both the technology and more importantly the education to make it work. Like our primitive forefathers forced to settle for monarchy as an incremental improvement over despotism a loose centralized world government is an incremental improvement a stepping stone to something better.

I agree with all of this.

A farmer in the agricultural age could achieve some protection from theft and violence by arming himself. He could protect himself against a small hostile groups by forming defensive pacts with neighboring farmers. However, defense against large scale organized violence requires an army and thus a state. In the Industrial Age the state was also required perhaps less to aggregate capital and more to protect such aggregations. Laws, judges, and property rights permit capital to be safely concentrated and deployed.

In human interactions we often face a choice between cooperation (reaching a mutually beneficial exchange) and defection (advancement of ourselves to the detriment of our fellow man).  In the Agriculture Age a cooperator might approach a farmer and ask to trade or perhaps for his daughters hand in marriage. The defector might kill the farmer and take the farm.

Collectivism exists because it limits defection especially those forms of defection linked to physical violence. Collectivism is expensive and inefficient. However, the inefficiencies associated with collectivism are less (at least historically) than the inefficiencies that come from the violence and defections that occur in an environment of unrestrained individualism.

Today we are seeing more complex forms of defection dominating the economic reality. The primary tool of today's defector is not violence but ignorance. The banks and those who own them corrupt natural market forces and profit while causing massive malinvestment via fiat currency and fractional reserve lending. At the other end of the spectrum disability and welfare scammers live off the taxpayer instead of working.

Modern collectivism certainly has serious problems the largest of which is that it is entirely unsustainable in its current form. However, in the medium term (well before any spontaneous collapse) it appears set to drive us via economic fundamentals and debt into a single world government paradigm. We may indeed be transitioning into a Knowledge Age, but a Knowledge Age alone will not immediately solve the problem of defection and thus will not eliminate the economic need for collectivism.

I share your wish for a world that is meritorious and without power vacuums. However, such a world offers little if it does not also limit coercion and defection.

I would point out you appear to be undervaluing the benefits of collectivism. You have correctly highlighted how modern form collectivism is unsustainable, but you appear to jump from there to the conclusion that all form of collectivism, the social contract, and the concept of social fairness itself is undesirable. This jump appears logically flawed.

Humans are collectivist by nature. We have been hardwired this way by generations of natural selection. Each human interaction can viewed as a choice between cooperation, and defection. Cooperation involves a mutually beneficial exchange that improves the wellbeing of both participants. Defection is an interaction that benefits one party at the expense of another. Defection implies violence, the threat of violence, ignorance, or forced interaction.  

Society as a whole is better off if its members choose cooperation over defection. However, for an individual defection is sometimes the optimal choice. Defection comes in many forms but theft and rape are probably the most clear cut examples. Cooperation likewise comes in many forms and shades of gray exist.

Collectivism is the evolved response to limit defection. The desire to pool some resources for the greater good, establish basic governance and the creation a social contract arises naturally in response to the need to combat defection and maximize cooperation and group survival. Merely pointing out the admittedly significant flaws in the modern form of scaled up collectivism is not a compelling argument for a return to pure anarchism.

I have noted on several occasions that you associate pure individualism and anarchism with a return to nature.

 
However, you do not seem to accept that collectivism and a social contract are not only a part of nature but play a critical and natural role in limiting defection and maximizing cooperation in groups. A rejection of the social contract in particular leads to an acceptance of defection as “natural” and perhaps even leads to a glorification of violence and theft as natural and right as part of “evolutional fitness”. I have seen some signs of this line of thinking in your prior posts.


Now it is certainly true that modern collectivism in conjunction with fiat economics appears to be vulnerable to many new types of defection. Abuse of the welfare and disability system is a form of defection with the victim being the multitude of taxpayers. Fractional reserve lending is a much larger form of defection with the victims being those forced to conduct commerce in fiat economies. However, I believe the answer to these problems is not a call for the collapse of the collectivist order and a return to anarchic individualism but rather to develop solutions that limit these new forms of defection while allowing collectivism to continue in its proper role of promoting cooperation over defection.

I saw that too. The thread reads number of replies = 1984 while the last reply asks what can we extrapolate from this.

A little eerie actually.

Having spent very little time on the topic of Global Warming (my interest really lay elsewhere) general skepticism is where I am right now.
Perhaps if I spent the time to delve deeply into the topic my opinions would harden. However, since it took me over a year to dedicate  the small amount of time to the topic that I did today this will realistically never happen.

The purpose of the above post was mainly to summarize and share the data that caused me to shift from undecided to skeptic as I figure many readers are like me and unlikely to ever spend any significant time on this topic.

Also I think my intuition is quite good thank you very much 

Recently there has been debate about a global warming pause. Apparently the temperature data both land based and satellite data have shown little global warming since 1998. There have been many attempts to explain this pause including theories about volcanic eruption and the oceans absorbing more heat.

This year there was an article in the Journal of Science arguing that there was no pause in global warming and that the data once "adjusted" revealed the previously hidden warming trend.

A chart summarizing the papers conclusions.

US scientists: Global warming pause 'no longer valid'


Now science is one of the most selective scientific journals in the world. Studies published there are supposed to be both rock solid scientifically important and subjected to extreme peer review.

This study appears to reach very shaky conclusions using adjusted data.    
  
‘HIDE THE HIATUS!’ HOW THE CLIMATE ALARMISTS ELIMINATED THE INCONVENIENT ‘PAUSE’ IN GLOBAL WARMING'


Here is the satellite temperature data since 1998
Global warming has been on pause for 19 years': Study reveals Earth's temperature has remained almost CONSTANT since 1995



Now if you have two data sets and the adjusted data is giving you completely different results from the raw data one must immediately scrutinize the methods and motivations of the adjuster.

I have changed my opinion on global warming from undecided to skeptic. If I see clear (non adjusted) data set showing a simultaneous rises in both surface temperature and satellite temperature readings I will reconsider. Until then I am going to dismiss any argument using "adjusted" data.

I saw today that someone is using the name CoinCube to run some sort of Bitcoin investment scheme using the webpage CoinCube.io

I wanted to note for the record that this is not affiliated with me in any way.
 

Systemic malinvestment creates a population dependent on continued government intervention for their livelihood. Such a population will demand continued intervention (and redistributive taxation) further corrupting market incentives until the underlying governments themselves become insolvent. While war and potential collapse of society are possibilities I believe it is more likely that the bankrupt nation states will instead be forced to surrender national sovrenty in exchange for continued access to global debt markets.

Below is a chart from zerohedge showing total debt burdens per country.

Absolutely, in addition to drawing a lot from your work especially your essays linked in the OP I have also benefited from pages and pages of sometimes bruising back and forth debates across numerous threads where I did not always emerge with the upper hand. 

That's why I put my predictions on page 98 of a thread dedicated to exploring your overall premise.

I agree wealth will increasingly seek to hide by moving into tax havens in other countries. It will also be increasingly hunted. Pressure applied in the name of shutting down tax havens will be one more tool to drive political consolidation and weaken the nation state. Those running from the tax man will increasingly be identified, caught and punished. Options for legal evasion like you mentioned above will be shut down or restricted to a even narrower elite.

Tax havens that survive will likely be rare and limited to select jurisdictions where citizenship is hard to obtain. These areas are likely to be funded by income taxes (there will likely be no escape for wage earners anywhere)
In these havens citizens will likely be exempt from inheritance, capital gains, and wealth taxes. This will allow the billionaire class to safely run their interests from afar.

The lesser wealthy will be increasingly consumed via taxation in their home nations. The coming wave of socialism and public anger will drive most of them back into the ranks of government dependents. This will serve the purpose of sating public rage, destroying potential local opposition, and further undermining the economics of nation states thus increasing the dependence on debt that will soon be issued by bodies and governed by laws under the jurisdiction of those same tax havens.

Rather then spontaneous collapse. I believe the proper model is that of controlled demolition.

It is certainly not impossible to tax the rich just ask any rich person.
Businesses are only able to pass on a portion of new taxes to their employees and customers (see link below for why)

http://foundationsofecon.blogspot.com/2011/06/businesses-cannot-simply-pass-on-taxes.html?m=1

Increasing taxes does lead to increasing centralization and reduced dynamism in the overall economy.

Why do you say socialism on the decline? Unsustainable in its current form sure. Far from petering out socialism seems set to grow dramatically over the coming years.