Several sources lately incline me to think of world (or solar) government as very likely in the long run. First, I read Betrand Russell, in a 1950 essay The Future of Mankind, advocating violence to make a world government:
Ultimately, wealth is not about security or luxury. Wealth is about POWER. Power is worthless without people to exercise it on. Today there are individuals that have more wealth than entire countries. There are small cabals that have more wealth than MAJOR governments. With the advance of technology, weapons become more & more automated and controlled with AI. When sufficient cooperation and organization is established by the uberwealthy, the world will be ruled by an oligarchy. This was not possible before technology reached the level it has, but has been an inevitability since the Industrial Revolution. How long that will take is an unknown, but it WILL happen. This isn't a belief in a conspiracy, just an acknowledgement of human nature and reality.
It would become every bit as abusive, corrupt, and exploitative as our own Federal government. World government is a terrible idea in concept, and would be even more terrible in practice.
This is pretty ridiculous. It's clear that nations are becoming more fragmented as rebels get their hands on more modern weapons. We saw the breakup of the Soviet Union, African secessions including places like Somalia that no longer have ANY government, and now the trend is world government? If everyone had the same laws, labor and environmental and criminal, then how would we get cheap clothing from China, cheap produce from Mexico? And if every country has completely different laws simply to maximize profits, then how is it really one government?
Governance also comes down to cultural similarity, the less different a culture is, the easier it is to govern, a very large government can govern quite effectively as long as its citizens are not too different.
I'd like to add another factor, global cultural homogenetity and destruction of unique cultural traits such as languages seem to show that the argument oh we are to different for a world government, will not be so for much longer.
to support a world government, is to support monopelies of greed and facsism/communism .i t will eraticate the free and independant human; leaving behind in a discusting excuse for the human race.
We already have a world government. It is called the UN. It is quite unaccountable, mostly noxious, reasonably corrupt. It has all the salient features of a world government. What proponents of world government usually mean is that they want a global centralisation of power beyond what we currently have and that through some unknow mechanism this centralisation of power will be good for us all. It is hard to know whether one should laugh historically or else sob pathetically.
I would like to throw out somewhat more concrete proposal for what I would describe as a world society, rather than a world governemnt. It would look something like this. The world gets divided up in to 10 or perhaps 11 areas, NAFTA, SAFTA, E.U.,ASEAN, Greater Arabia, and so on. Each of these areas would be would have one vote at the UN, no vetos.But the responsiblilities of the UN would be quite limited. It would have sovernty over the worlds high seas. None of the 10 or 11 areas could possess a blue water navy, only a Coast Guard to enforce laws over the within 200 miles, or less from their coasts in areas where the 200 mile limits overlap. The UN be given the task of managing that part of the plantet whcih lay in international waters for the benefit of all man kind. Other World problems will have to be handled by treaties bwtween these 10 or 11 confederations. The enforcment mechanism for these treaties would have to be the confederations themselves. If one confederation threatens the safety of the others it will probably not be able to get away with it as all the others will threaten military action. If three confederations wish to persue a policy that 7 others are oppossed to those 7 are just going to have to do a cost risk benifit analyisis. They will probably come to the conclusion that to take more than symboic action would be to costly to persue. Just like nation states today. I recognize that getting the UN to work in such a way that in actual practice it manages the worlds high seas in a maner to benifit the common good of the planer will not be easy. Special Interest Groups will of course try to subvert the mandate of such a UN it will be up to people of good will to stop them, Essentially the exact details will have to be worked out in a treaty between the confederations.In addition all of the countries with in one of the 10 or 11 confederations are going to have to work out how much power to give to the confederation and how much to give to leave with the countries themselves. I would expect that this would evolve over time.
So the same group of people who would cause a future of barbarism and/or end of the world scenario are going to get together and sing kumbaya because one group of them has declared themselves a government and decided to kill the rest if they don't toe the line????
That's pretty much how governments have been working for the last ~6000 years.
No member of the US political elite wants to grant a international court with the power to try USwar criminals. Even if the US public wants to give an international court that authority the US isn't that democratic. As long as powerful US politicians don't want to lose their immunity from prosecution for the war crimes that they commit, they won't transfer the power.
So the same group of people who would cause a future of barbarism and/or end of the world scenario are going to get together and sing kumbaya because one group of them has declared themselves a government and decided to kill the rest if they don't toe the line???? How is that not a recipe for a dystopian future?? It reminds me of the line from Orwell, '. . .imagine a boot stomping on the face of humanity forever.".
Until we harmonize our definitions of legitimacy, interpretation, representation, risk, causality, identity formation and mental health no world government should exist or imo, can exist. And until that day, it is not possible for me to be more opposed to such an endeavor.
Unchecked competition in the face of limited natural resources can lead to "tragedy of the commons" scenarios.The current lack of efforts to reduce CO2 emissions is perhaps the most obvious example, and there are others.
Competition in wages, workers rights and environmental regulation benefits subjects that can easily relocate their operations and trade international, that is, large corporations. Common people, who can't easily migrate, are exploited by such mechanisms.
And frankly, I hope the trade and wage pressure from competing with countries with looser regulations on labor and environment cleans up my country's attempts at such.
Have your head in the sand do you?
Ultimately, wealth is not about security or luxury. Wealth is about POWER. Power is worthless without people to exercise it on. Today there are individuals that have more wealth than entire countries. There are small cabals that have more wealth than MAJOR governments. With the advance of technology, weapons become more & more automated and controlled with AI. When sufficient cooperation and organization is established by the uberwealthy, the world will be ruled by an oligarchy. This was not possible before technology reached the level it has, but has been an inevitability since the Industrial Revolution. How long that will take is an unknown, but it WILL happen. This isn't a belief in a conspiracy, just an acknowledgement of human nature and reality.
It would become every bit as abusive, corrupt, and exploitative as our own Federal government. World government is a terrible idea in concept, and would be even more terrible in practice.
This is pretty ridiculous. It's clear that nations are becoming more fragmented as rebels get their hands on more modern weapons. We saw the breakup of the Soviet Union, African secessions including places like Somalia that no longer have ANY government, and now the trend is world government? If everyone had the same laws, labor and environmental and criminal, then how would we get cheap clothing from China, cheap produce from Mexico? And if every country has completely different laws simply to maximize profits, then how is it really one government?
Governance also comes down to cultural similarity, the less different a culture is, the easier it is to govern, a very large government can govern quite effectively as long as its citizens are not too different.
I'd like to add another factor, global cultural homogenetity and destruction of unique cultural traits such as languages seem to show that the argument oh we are to different for a world government, will not be so for much longer.
And you sir shall be a valid target! All traitors to the US constitution deserve no less!
to support a world government, is to support monopelies of greed and facsism/communism .i t will eraticate the free and independant human; leaving behind in a discusting excuse for the human race.
They don't need one.
We already have a world government. It is called the UN. It is quite unaccountable, mostly noxious, reasonably corrupt. It has all the salient features of a world government. What proponents of world government usually mean is that they want a global centralisation of power beyond what we currently have and that through some unknow mechanism this centralisation of power will be good for us all. It is hard to know whether one should laugh historically or else sob pathetically.
I would like to throw out somewhat more concrete proposal for what I would describe as a world society, rather than a world governemnt. It would look something like this. The world gets divided up in to 10 or perhaps 11 areas, NAFTA, SAFTA, E.U.,ASEAN, Greater Arabia, and so on. Each of these areas would be would have one vote at the UN, no vetos.But the responsiblilities of the UN would be quite limited. It would have sovernty over the worlds high seas. None of the 10 or 11 areas could possess a blue water navy, only a Coast Guard to enforce laws over the within 200 miles, or less from their coasts in areas where the 200 mile limits overlap. The UN be given the task of managing that part of the plantet whcih lay in international waters for the benefit of all man kind. Other World problems will have to be handled by treaties bwtween these 10 or 11 confederations. The enforcment mechanism for these treaties would have to be the confederations themselves. If one confederation threatens the safety of the others it will probably not be able to get away with it as all the others will threaten military action. If three confederations wish to persue a policy that 7 others are oppossed to those 7 are just going to have to do a cost risk benifit analyisis. They will probably come to the conclusion that to take more than symboic action would be to costly to persue. Just like nation states today. I recognize that getting the UN to work in such a way that in actual practice it manages the worlds high seas in a maner to benifit the common good of the planer will not be easy. Special Interest Groups will of course try to subvert the mandate of such a UN it will be up to people of good will to stop them, Essentially the exact details will have to be worked out in a treaty between the confederations.In addition all of the countries with in one of the 10 or 11 confederations are going to have to work out how much power to give to the confederation and how much to give to leave with the countries themselves. I would expect that this would evolve over time.
So the same group of people who would cause a future of barbarism and/or end of the world scenario are going to get together and sing kumbaya because one group of them has declared themselves a government and decided to kill the rest if they don't toe the line????
That's pretty much how governments have been working for the last ~6000 years.
No member of the US political elite wants to grant a international court with the power to try USwar criminals. Even if the US public wants to give an international court that authority the US isn't that democratic. As long as powerful US politicians don't want to lose their immunity from prosecution for the war crimes that they commit, they won't transfer the power.
So the same group of people who would cause a future of barbarism and/or end of the world scenario are going to get together and sing kumbaya because one group of them has declared themselves a government and decided to kill the rest if they don't toe the line???? How is that not a recipe for a dystopian future?? It reminds me of the line from Orwell, '. . .imagine a boot stomping on the face of humanity forever.".
Until we harmonize our definitions of legitimacy, interpretation, representation, risk, causality, identity formation and mental health no world government should exist or imo, can exist. And until that day, it is not possible for me to be more opposed to such an endeavor.
Yeah, those inferior genes..., that would be like a black man becoming President of the US...
Unchecked competition in the face of limited natural resources can lead to "tragedy of the commons" scenarios.The current lack of efforts to reduce CO2 emissions is perhaps the most obvious example, and there are others.
Competition in wages, workers rights and environmental regulation benefits subjects that can easily relocate their operations and trade international, that is, large corporations. Common people, who can't easily migrate, are exploited by such mechanisms.
And frankly, I hope the trade and wage pressure from competing with countries with looser regulations on labor and environment cleans up my country's attempts at such.
Ever heard of the Bhopal disaster?