Dear list, Is there a good reason that partially applied type synonyms cannot be made instances of classes? - A simple example would be making the identity type 'Id' ("type Id x = x") instance of 'Monad'. This would eliminate the need for some silly occurrences of 'runIdentity', and perhaps narrow the gap between monads and monad transformers. - The reason I complain about this now is a more involved example, where introducing a newtype to work around the restriction is not an option. Well, not as far as I can see now, anyway. Partially applied type synonyms are, in a sense, the anonymous functions at the type level, and one might argue that they deserve the same 'first-class member status' as the lambda at the value level. Kind regards, Arie Peterson