The scope and intensity of governments have clearly increased over the centuries, as have the size of firms. We’ve had some near global empires in the last few centuries, some serious attempts at world domination, and we now coordinate more via the United Nations and international treaties.
Amazing!Marshall McCluhan wrote that "The media is the message." All the above comments originate ON PLANET EARTH! Every one came from a human being BORN ONTO THE PLANET! Simply using cyberspace to communicate is to recognize the fundamental UNITY OF THE SPECIES.Inter-national wars called "World Wars" started 96 years ago. (I was in the 2nd as a B-17 bomber pilot.) But as of August 6, 1945, war went from relative to absolute. Einstein said "if we don't eliminate war, war will eliminate us." THE BIG US! Nations fight war BECAUSE THERE'S NO LAW TO STOP THEM. Those of you who argue against a world government have no answer to how to prevent a final holocaust. Ever hear of human rights? Of morality, reason, wisdom, understanding, commonsense? The humans whirling around the planet every 90 minutes at 11,000 mph in the space station see THE WHOLE APPLE, A "VERTICAL" VISION. Everything I have read here is "horizontal," the old "we-and-they" philosophy of conquerors. GET REAL AND SURVIVE!
Michael, we have strong reasons to expect larger integrated markets to be more efficient. Since larger nations have those, but aren't overall more efficient, I conclude that their governments are substantially less efficient.
Sampson uses the Jungian term shadow to refer to the unacknowledged totalitarianism of the company in this instance. At the personal level, the Jungian shadow contains all the aspects of our personality that do not fit in with our self–image. Jung means this to include the positive aspects (such as creativity and altruism) that we are not able to acknowledge in ourselves, as well as the negative aspects, but in popular usage the shadow is often identified with the negative. The shadow is experienced collectively as well as personally....
The seventies and eighties saw the rise on a global scale of anothernarrative, that of economic rationalism. Once again we found a storyabout the world presented as a universal truth. The self–evident truththis time was the centrality of the unregulated marketplace as the finalarbiter of values. We saw an economic theory being turned into anunchallengeable truth that was applicable in every field, includinghuman relationships, health, education and welfare. Whereorganizations adopted this view of the world or had it forced on them we saw market value taking the place of all other ways of valuing, not only in the organization’s relation to its products and processes but also in its relation to its people. . . .
Many corporations have a dominant narrative, a dominant fantasy, but it is balanced by other complementary narratives. In earlier, simpler societies individuals and organizations could conduct their lives within a single narrative. That option no longer seems to be available. When leaders or their magicians try to impose a single story and image on an organization, they are more likely to generate confusion and demoralisation than constructive energy. . . .
What we can now observe is the confusion of corporationsinhabiting a world where there is a growing sense that the political,environmental, social, economic and health problems that the latemodern–industrial age was so confident of solving are not only toocomplex to solve but too complex even to think about. It is in this state of confusion and instability that Gebser sought for signs that a new way of experiencing and dealing with the world might be evolving. . . .
| Finally, it seems to me that the empirical data doesn’t much support| the hypothesis that larger polities are more or less efficient than| smaller ones, though it does seem to support the idea that larger| corporations are less efficient. I wonder why.
The Innovator's DilemmaWhen New Technologies Cause Great Firms to FailBy Clayton M. Christensen ISBN: 0-87584-585-1
excerpt:
"But the problem established firms seem unable to confront successfully is that of downward vision and mobility, in terms of the trajectory map. Finding new applications and markets for these new products seems to be a capability that each of these firms exhibited once, upon entry, and then apparently lost. It was as if the leading firms were held captive by their customers, enabling attacking entrant firms to topple the incumbent industry leaders each time a disruptive technology emerged. Why this happened, and is still happening, is the subject of the next chapter. "
My personal (non-expert) opinion is that large corporations become inefficient because they do not have cultures that incentivize waste prevention (maintain robust internal criticism/accountability). At some point, the creativity and drive of the founders of the business is lost to bureaucratic groupthink. Instead of hiring risky, edgy characters, the impersonal nature of the HR department kicks in, and "safe" people, with standardized, certified educations from equally risk-averse, status-quo supporting colleges and universities are hired instead. "Mavericks" are marginalized unless they somehow support the conformist bureaucratic logic of "large institutional" status quo.
I guess the public sector, born of large political organization (the governing classes) is by nature insulated from creativity (or any other "threat" to its groupthink), so it is always inefficient, no matter the scale? In most cases, any public sector worker that tries to increase efficiency will be ruthlessly attacked for daring to question the status quo. Dysfunctional/sociopathic personality types tend to rise up in public sector "management", and they excel at controlling and punishing any nonconformists that examine assumptions, critique management "vision" fads, or dare to speak of the original concept of civil service: duty to a higher, common purpose.
All purpose in public sector organization management culture has been reduced to faking the ideas and methods of Corporatist plutocracy so as to justify bloated salaries: endless, pointless exercises in social networking (as opposed to actual competence in business processes).
Utopians, perhaps having a sense of doom about doom, are probably as guilty of hero complexes as the doomsters? lol.
Anyways ......
Classic liberalism is necessary, but in a postmodern world, not sufficient.
(its truths should be honored, and the major problems that come from utopians abandoning those truths {the cause of doom} should be seen realistically.)
Postmodernism, having deconstructed the absolutisms and "spiritual flatland" that results from modernism, and replaced it it with pluralism and relativism, fell into deep narcissism and nihilism (inquisitorial political correctness, intolerance in the name of tolerance, etc.).
Non-postmoderns (traditionalists, libertrians, conservatives), horrified at the prospect of being pushed into a cultural abyss of selfishness and meaninglessness (or new age mystical mush), supported reactionary counter movements, such as neoconservatism. Which created other problems.
The "strict daddy" paradigm of conservatism was "at war" with the "nurturing mommy" paradigm of postmodernism (the PC/Left).
In the chaos and "psychic fragmentation" (Vlaclav Havel) that resulted, the old moral order of modernism started disintegrating, and social institutions began to be unable, or unwilling, to fight off the tendency toward dysfunctionality (corruption, incompetence).
Corporatism's swift rise (which is premised on a soulless form of "power" {greed/ego} that flows from reducing all categories of human meaning into "money") is a function of the paradigm regression that set in as a result of the state of chaos.
So, expect a lot of nastiness to continue between the two "paradigms" as each paradigm's failures continue to deepen, and are blamed on the "other side's" opposition. Already whole media industries are based on the lies and distraction from common purpose that flows out of the resulting hyperpartisanship.
As "transformative" movements continue to grow, a nasty shadow will follow them that will require "healing". As Professor Bernie Neville has stated, a study of the psychological archetypes in ancient greek mythology reveals that Hermes, the God of transformation, was also a slippery character ("trickster" - the god of lies and deception).
If a paradigm based on "something other" develops that is better, meaning that it can address the "coherence needs" of a globalizing, but psychically fragmented world, then it seems reasonable that a reform movement that transcends existing national boundries (and existing cultural/paradigm boundries) would naturally tend to reorient toward global "loyalties".
One example of how people are thinking about "something better" is the transpartisan politics movement, which was partly inspired by the integral thought movement (Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, Clare Graves, Ken Wilber).
Integralism honors the truths of the preceeding paradigms, while transcending thier limitations and psychic baggage. It proposes that the fragmented elements of human consciousness be "healed" and be seen as parts of a larger whole.
Obviously, if holistic/integral culture can find pragmatic solutions to problems like ecology, poverty and warfare, the basis for thinking that national and cultural and paradigmatic "divisions" are the source of "bad stuff" will increase.
Here are my two theories about why this post is so down:
* Robin seems to be a DOOM enthusiast. The world must be at risk for heroes to be able to save it - or to signal to others how much they care about saving their associates. So, he sees a potential for future disasters (such as an evil totalitarian state) more than most.
* The potential for universal cooperation would undo the competitive ideas that much western economics is based on. It would mean that much of what people learn in economics classes is no longer applicable. Robin does not seem to favour that.
There’s not much diference in scale between China or India, and the worldWhat? That seems a pretty big case of scale-insensitivity. Almost piraha-like.
Matt Nikkel: Why would a world government eliminate the threat of large scale nuclear war? As I noted on Dec 29th, a civil war in such a government would be between nuclear-armed belligerents from the first shot - and if the split is not very asymmetrical, between large nuclear belligerents.
If a government is sufficiently despotic, wouldn’t it use nuclear weapons (or the threat of a nuclear strike) to put down an insurrection?Perhaps, and I should also note that a World government does not remove the threat of the use of nuclear weapons by extremist groups who can mange to get their hands on them.
But while both events would result in a massive loss of life, neither poses the threat of essentially ending civilization as we know it, as a war between two or more nations with large nuclear stockpiles is conceivably capable of doing. Note that I did not say a world government would end nuclear war, only large scale nuclear war.,
I figure we will see a major union of the world's currencies, languages, and standards (including plugs & sockets, banking, taxation, patents, charities, etc) plausibly by mid-century. How extensive it is may depend on factors such as how interested China is in playing with the rest of the world - which is not trivial to predict.
Such a union may not eliminate national boundaries for purposes such as restricting migration.
Since the time nation-states existed concretely enough to record how many there are, the number has always been increasing and not decreasing. Successful secessions are a dime a dozen, but mergers between two states that are both members of the world community are almost unheard of except in the very special situation where the two were separated by the vagaries of the Cold War (ie East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam). If you want us to believe the number of countries is on a downward trend, you need to provide at least one example or dataset.
Why restrict to "since the time nation-states existed"? Over all stateful history, the trend seems clear.
Most successful secessions I can think of were from colonial empires, or followed such secessions; other breakups don't seem to be notably more frequent than mergers.
Thanks for the "put down an insurrection" point. A slightly different take on this is just to note that civil wars are reasonably common. Presumably a world government (in any form that includes control over armed forces) is going to start out with the existing stockpile of nuclear arms. A civil war within such an entity (if it fissions :) approximately symmetrically) is a conflict between nuclear-armed parts. Also, if this world government had absorbed all other states, such a civil war couldn't use allied states as buffers the way the US and USSR did - the conflict would be directly between nuclear entities for the first shot.
I agree with Robert here. It all comes down to could and competent. I wouldn't bet on it happening though! What if, God forbid, you disagreed with what 51% of the people on earth wanted world govt to be (assuming here that each had a fair and equal chance to vote)? Wouldn't be a very nice place to be. What other choices would you have? We currently have a wide range of diversity among countries (becoming less so?) but sadly it is very hard to actually choose what you want (i.e. move).
I find it highly unlikely that a world govt could satisfy and serve more people better than a local govt would (but that's just my speculation). In order to do so I can imagine that it would have to have such vague and general policies (no?) as to render it functionally useless. But then we know based on the past that the polices are never really unclear in action, are they?
Amazing!Marshall McCluhan wrote that "The media is the message." All the above comments originate ON PLANET EARTH! Every one came from a human being BORN ONTO THE PLANET! Simply using cyberspace to communicate is to recognize the fundamental UNITY OF THE SPECIES.Inter-national wars called "World Wars" started 96 years ago. (I was in the 2nd as a B-17 bomber pilot.) But as of August 6, 1945, war went from relative to absolute. Einstein said "if we don't eliminate war, war will eliminate us." THE BIG US! Nations fight war BECAUSE THERE'S NO LAW TO STOP THEM. Those of you who argue against a world government have no answer to how to prevent a final holocaust. Ever hear of human rights? Of morality, reason, wisdom, understanding, commonsense? The humans whirling around the planet every 90 minutes at 11,000 mph in the space station see THE WHOLE APPLE, A "VERTICAL" VISION. Everything I have read here is "horizontal," the old "we-and-they" philosophy of conquerors. GET REAL AND SURVIVE!
Michael, we have strong reasons to expect larger integrated markets to be more efficient. Since larger nations have those, but aren't overall more efficient, I conclude that their governments are substantially less efficient.
more on dysfunctional organizational culture:
Bernie Neville:
teaching: http://www.cejournal.org/GR...
corporations: http://www.gebser.org/publi...
exerpt:
Sampson uses the Jungian term shadow to refer to the unacknowledged totalitarianism of the company in this instance. At the personal level, the Jungian shadow contains all the aspects of our personality that do not fit in with our self–image. Jung means this to include the positive aspects (such as creativity and altruism) that we are not able to acknowledge in ourselves, as well as the negative aspects, but in popular usage the shadow is often identified with the negative. The shadow is experienced collectively as well as personally....
The seventies and eighties saw the rise on a global scale of anothernarrative, that of economic rationalism. Once again we found a storyabout the world presented as a universal truth. The self–evident truththis time was the centrality of the unregulated marketplace as the finalarbiter of values. We saw an economic theory being turned into anunchallengeable truth that was applicable in every field, includinghuman relationships, health, education and welfare. Whereorganizations adopted this view of the world or had it forced on them we saw market value taking the place of all other ways of valuing, not only in the organization’s relation to its products and processes but also in its relation to its people. . . .
Many corporations have a dominant narrative, a dominant fantasy, but it is balanced by other complementary narratives. In earlier, simpler societies individuals and organizations could conduct their lives within a single narrative. That option no longer seems to be available. When leaders or their magicians try to impose a single story and image on an organization, they are more likely to generate confusion and demoralisation than constructive energy. . . .
What we can now observe is the confusion of corporationsinhabiting a world where there is a growing sense that the political,environmental, social, economic and health problems that the latemodern–industrial age was so confident of solving are not only toocomplex to solve but too complex even to think about. It is in this state of confusion and instability that Gebser sought for signs that a new way of experiencing and dealing with the world might be evolving. . . .
re: michael vassar December 29, 2009 at 12:39 pm
| Finally, it seems to me that the empirical data doesn’t much support| the hypothesis that larger polities are more or less efficient than| smaller ones, though it does seem to support the idea that larger| corporations are less efficient. I wonder why.
http://www.businessweek.com...
The Innovator's DilemmaWhen New Technologies Cause Great Firms to FailBy Clayton M. Christensen ISBN: 0-87584-585-1
excerpt:
"But the problem established firms seem unable to confront successfully is that of downward vision and mobility, in terms of the trajectory map. Finding new applications and markets for these new products seems to be a capability that each of these firms exhibited once, upon entry, and then apparently lost. It was as if the leading firms were held captive by their customers, enabling attacking entrant firms to topple the incumbent industry leaders each time a disruptive technology emerged. Why this happened, and is still happening, is the subject of the next chapter. "
---
additional background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Critique: http://www.pcmag.com/articl...
---
My personal (non-expert) opinion is that large corporations become inefficient because they do not have cultures that incentivize waste prevention (maintain robust internal criticism/accountability). At some point, the creativity and drive of the founders of the business is lost to bureaucratic groupthink. Instead of hiring risky, edgy characters, the impersonal nature of the HR department kicks in, and "safe" people, with standardized, certified educations from equally risk-averse, status-quo supporting colleges and universities are hired instead. "Mavericks" are marginalized unless they somehow support the conformist bureaucratic logic of "large institutional" status quo.
I guess the public sector, born of large political organization (the governing classes) is by nature insulated from creativity (or any other "threat" to its groupthink), so it is always inefficient, no matter the scale? In most cases, any public sector worker that tries to increase efficiency will be ruthlessly attacked for daring to question the status quo. Dysfunctional/sociopathic personality types tend to rise up in public sector "management", and they excel at controlling and punishing any nonconformists that examine assumptions, critique management "vision" fads, or dare to speak of the original concept of civil service: duty to a higher, common purpose.
All purpose in public sector organization management culture has been reduced to faking the ideas and methods of Corporatist plutocracy so as to justify bloated salaries: endless, pointless exercises in social networking (as opposed to actual competence in business processes).
Bye!
re: DOOM vs. UTOPIA vs. SOMETHING(s) ELSE
Utopians, perhaps having a sense of doom about doom, are probably as guilty of hero complexes as the doomsters? lol.
Anyways ......
Classic liberalism is necessary, but in a postmodern world, not sufficient.
(its truths should be honored, and the major problems that come from utopians abandoning those truths {the cause of doom} should be seen realistically.)
Postmodernism, having deconstructed the absolutisms and "spiritual flatland" that results from modernism, and replaced it it with pluralism and relativism, fell into deep narcissism and nihilism (inquisitorial political correctness, intolerance in the name of tolerance, etc.).
Non-postmoderns (traditionalists, libertrians, conservatives), horrified at the prospect of being pushed into a cultural abyss of selfishness and meaninglessness (or new age mystical mush), supported reactionary counter movements, such as neoconservatism. Which created other problems.
The "strict daddy" paradigm of conservatism was "at war" with the "nurturing mommy" paradigm of postmodernism (the PC/Left).
In the chaos and "psychic fragmentation" (Vlaclav Havel) that resulted, the old moral order of modernism started disintegrating, and social institutions began to be unable, or unwilling, to fight off the tendency toward dysfunctionality (corruption, incompetence).
Corporatism's swift rise (which is premised on a soulless form of "power" {greed/ego} that flows from reducing all categories of human meaning into "money") is a function of the paradigm regression that set in as a result of the state of chaos.
http://attackthesystem.com/...
So, expect a lot of nastiness to continue between the two "paradigms" as each paradigm's failures continue to deepen, and are blamed on the "other side's" opposition. Already whole media industries are based on the lies and distraction from common purpose that flows out of the resulting hyperpartisanship.
As "transformative" movements continue to grow, a nasty shadow will follow them that will require "healing". As Professor Bernie Neville has stated, a study of the psychological archetypes in ancient greek mythology reveals that Hermes, the God of transformation, was also a slippery character ("trickster" - the god of lies and deception).
If a paradigm based on "something other" develops that is better, meaning that it can address the "coherence needs" of a globalizing, but psychically fragmented world, then it seems reasonable that a reform movement that transcends existing national boundries (and existing cultural/paradigm boundries) would naturally tend to reorient toward global "loyalties".
One example of how people are thinking about "something better" is the transpartisan politics movement, which was partly inspired by the integral thought movement (Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, Clare Graves, Ken Wilber).
Integralism honors the truths of the preceeding paradigms, while transcending thier limitations and psychic baggage. It proposes that the fragmented elements of human consciousness be "healed" and be seen as parts of a larger whole.
Obviously, if holistic/integral culture can find pragmatic solutions to problems like ecology, poverty and warfare, the basis for thinking that national and cultural and paradigmatic "divisions" are the source of "bad stuff" will increase.
Bye!
Here are my two theories about why this post is so down:
* Robin seems to be a DOOM enthusiast. The world must be at risk for heroes to be able to save it - or to signal to others how much they care about saving their associates. So, he sees a potential for future disasters (such as an evil totalitarian state) more than most.
* The potential for universal cooperation would undo the competitive ideas that much western economics is based on. It would mean that much of what people learn in economics classes is no longer applicable. Robin does not seem to favour that.
There’s not much diference in scale between China or India, and the worldWhat? That seems a pretty big case of scale-insensitivity. Almost piraha-like.
Matt Nikkel: Why would a world government eliminate the threat of large scale nuclear war? As I noted on Dec 29th, a civil war in such a government would be between nuclear-armed belligerents from the first shot - and if the split is not very asymmetrical, between large nuclear belligerents.
If a government is sufficiently despotic, wouldn’t it use nuclear weapons (or the threat of a nuclear strike) to put down an insurrection?Perhaps, and I should also note that a World government does not remove the threat of the use of nuclear weapons by extremist groups who can mange to get their hands on them.
But while both events would result in a massive loss of life, neither poses the threat of essentially ending civilization as we know it, as a war between two or more nations with large nuclear stockpiles is conceivably capable of doing. Note that I did not say a world government would end nuclear war, only large scale nuclear war.,
I figure we will see a major union of the world's currencies, languages, and standards (including plugs & sockets, banking, taxation, patents, charities, etc) plausibly by mid-century. How extensive it is may depend on factors such as how interested China is in playing with the rest of the world - which is not trivial to predict.
Such a union may not eliminate national boundaries for purposes such as restricting migration.
(aargh, that's meant to modify this comment)
(in the last 2-3 centuries, that is)
Since the time nation-states existed concretely enough to record how many there are, the number has always been increasing and not decreasing. Successful secessions are a dime a dozen, but mergers between two states that are both members of the world community are almost unheard of except in the very special situation where the two were separated by the vagaries of the Cold War (ie East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam). If you want us to believe the number of countries is on a downward trend, you need to provide at least one example or dataset.
Why restrict to "since the time nation-states existed"? Over all stateful history, the trend seems clear.
Most successful secessions I can think of were from colonial empires, or followed such secessions; other breakups don't seem to be notably more frequent than mergers.
Thanks for the "put down an insurrection" point. A slightly different take on this is just to note that civil wars are reasonably common. Presumably a world government (in any form that includes control over armed forces) is going to start out with the existing stockpile of nuclear arms. A civil war within such an entity (if it fissions :) approximately symmetrically) is a conflict between nuclear-armed parts. Also, if this world government had absorbed all other states, such a civil war couldn't use allied states as buffers the way the US and USSR did - the conflict would be directly between nuclear entities for the first shot.
For unification, perhaps see:
http://www.towardsunity.org...
I agree with Robert here. It all comes down to could and competent. I wouldn't bet on it happening though! What if, God forbid, you disagreed with what 51% of the people on earth wanted world govt to be (assuming here that each had a fair and equal chance to vote)? Wouldn't be a very nice place to be. What other choices would you have? We currently have a wide range of diversity among countries (becoming less so?) but sadly it is very hard to actually choose what you want (i.e. move).
I find it highly unlikely that a world govt could satisfy and serve more people better than a local govt would (but that's just my speculation). In order to do so I can imagine that it would have to have such vague and general policies (no?) as to render it functionally useless. But then we know based on the past that the polices are never really unclear in action, are they?