Agreed – however, I want people to explicitly realise that they are placing a low weight on foreigners, rather than ignoring the fact that in any international prisoners dilemma games they are asking our government to screw other people over.

People often don’t realise how selfish they are.

BTW, love the externalities argument – as that is the reason I think that people often value each other in the first place 😛

“As to your other question, remember there are costs as well as benefits to more centralized governments.”

Indeed, I agree with you. However, it is interesting to ponder. If we are happy to have a government running a nation why aren’t we happy to have a government running the world?

You raise some good points to answer that, but I think it would be an interesting issue to discuss further.

As to your other question, remember there are costs as well as benefits to more centralized governments. The global governance institutions we have already our abject failures. Why would we want more? And isn’t the coase theorem enough at a governmental level? At a practical level the voting system is always going to be a sticking point between the rich nations and the poor, populous nations.