Hi Michael — thanks for reading and weighing in. This is a great question, and one that speaks to the heart of what I hope is a global reconciliation between what had formerly been ideological tribes.

There is a big difference in my mind between global government and global governance. I believe that we are in what I would term a complexity transition (if I recall, your term is “phase shift”) between hierarchical systems and network systems. Now, nothing precludes these network systems from being holonic, that is systems within systems, but I don’t think there is any room for a top-down central authority in the coming era.

Instead, humans will better align incentives in pro-social ways and operate more as a hive mind. It won’t be perfect, but from the standpoint of reckoning with complexity, far superior to what we have today (namely a quasi-corrupt Westphalian system and some supranational entities like the UN; May they pass away quietly).

While I have no hope for the latter systems, I think there is a lot of promise in peer-to-peer and holonic systems, such as those envisioned by both the blockchain and Holochain developers. Most of these innovators are weaving a web of human relationships that integrate us within the planetary system while making us less at odds with it and with each other. Social value and individual interests in these systems become much more tightly matched.

Post-capitalism, then, is coming. Capitalism did more for humanity than any system prior. Post-capitalism will allow us to humanize the dehumanizing aspects of the prior era and reconcile the old ways in which we had been at odds. Because there will be multiple experiments in governance, we will have fewer monolithic systems that can fail catastrophically, system wide. Failures will be localized. Successes will be copied. At least that is my hope.