Beware Competent World Govt
Me a year ago:
Imagine a world where futarchy has spread far and wide, to be as ubiquitous as is cost-accounting, statistics, or randomized trials today. How is that world different?
In such a world orgs should be larger, as their more effective governance reduces the scale diseconomies that limit org sizes today. Governments and nonprofits may also encompass more social activity, if they can learn to adopt simple robust futarchy outcome measures. This plausibly cuts their disadvantages relative to for profit orgs today. We might well even get bigger national alliances, or even a world government.
In this world, the social status of arguing over facts and casual effects should decline relative to that of arguing over values, especially values expressed as measurable outcomes. …Imagine … a world government, or at least a government encompassing a large fraction of the world, adopts futarchy tied to some widely shared sacred goals, expressed concretely as some long term outcome metrics. If these goals were inconsistent with a collapsing civilization, that might be enough to prevent such a collapse. (More)
OK, I gotta admit I missed the most worrisome scenario here: a competent mal-valued world government. I’ve long worried that a world government seems pretty likely eventually, in part because humans seem so eager to collectively decide their future. I’ve worried that a world government might rot, commit civilizational suicide, or decide to prevent colonization of the universe.
Given our existing forms of government, however, these seem far from immediate concerns, as such forms just don’t seem up to the task of managing a whole world. They seem to be less competent or accountable on larger scales, and to face high levels of resistance and perceived illegitimacy anytime soon. If created, such world governments probably wouldn’t last long.
However, futarchy may offer a far more competent form of governance. While not directly change resistance or legitimacy, it might enable better managing or mitigating of such issues. The future might then depend greatly on which goals a world futarchy was assigned.
A big regional futarchy tied to a long term sacred goal inconsistent with civ collapse might be just what we need to get us to the stars. But a futarchy given the goal of preserving itself for as long as possible, while pleasing residents in the meantime, might be quite effective at preventing the rise of rivals while allowing cultural drift to shrink us comfortably toward extinction. Beware.
All of the international bodies that might be considered precursors to a world government, like the UN, WTO, NATO, and the EU, are getting weaker over time. Technology and improved communications have eliminated much of these organizations' reasons for being. Take the EMU: When the world ran on cash, the Euro did much to lower trade friction within Europe. But what now in a world of electronic money?
A similar trend is happening in the United States. Political decision making at the federal level is getting more rancorous and less competent over time. Fiscal discipline is harder and harder to impose. At a certain point people will ask, "why does that thing need to exist, anyway?"
In short I think a world government is one thing Gene Roddenberry clearly got wrong.
"In such a world orgs should be larger, as their more effective governance reduces the scale diseconomies that limit org sizes today. Governments and nonprofits may also encompass more social activity, if they can learn to adopt simple robust futarchy outcome measures. This plausibly cuts their disadvantages relative to for profit orgs today. We might well even get bigger national alliances, or even a world government."
If you were attempting at write an argument against adopting it, those are some good ones. An even larger government, further intruding into the social sphere, in cartel with even more nations, potentially all of them, reads like the intro to a dystopian nightmare indeed.