Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Yes, Hitler did take advantage of a very bad situation. Of course, most the world ended up in a bit of a depression around that time. Germany was simply worst & first (due greatly to post WWI "cleanup" measures, true). And note that you mention that the allies "allowed it to deteriorate". Your statement implies the hodgepoge. But do you really believe that a setup could be made with humans as they are that could meet the three criteria I listed earlier (summary: good, long-term stable, immune to upset due to extraordinary people/Groups being malicious/greedy/very stupid/whatever). A very bad situation could theoretically be engeneered by such a group/person if they decided it was in their best interests.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Actually, there is; a historical one: virtually no attempted revolt in a modernized country has ever succeeded without outside support, save for when the failure of the state took the form of negligence of the people and random bad stuff rather than deliberate oppression.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Shouldn't molting be in there somewhere? Or is that for the birds?

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Check through StarHawk's Posts.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

a good form of government would be a Dual-Monarchy/Dual-House state: 2 Kings/Queens, a Senate and a Deputy Chamber

The Kings/Queens are not hereditary, but choosen randomly by computer from all citizens that: 1) Are old enough, 2) Don´t have mental diseases or inbalances in judgement, 3) Don´t have any criminal record; 4) Never exerced or disputed any elective function in government. The computers would select several candidates that would be presented to the Deputy Chamber, that will chose one among them to be the new King/Queen.

The executive government would be exerced by the Kings/Queens in alternate ways: 1 king is chief executive for 5 years, then the other one assumes for more 5 years, then the first one govern again and so on...

The Senate, with a a two-thirds majority, can retire one of the kings/queens and start the (random) process of selecting another king/queen, the king/queen also retire obligatorily at reaching the age of 75.

All laws must be proposed either by the Senate or by the Deputy Chamber and must be aproved by simple majority in both houses. The Kings cannot propose laws but can veto any law proposed, the veto can be nullified by a two-thirds majority vote in both Senate and deputy chamber.

Both kings have a fixated salary based in a percentual of the global taxes that can never be modified by the Senate, Deputy Chamber or by the Kings themselves.

more to come...

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

A. Currently, no. Sometime in the future? Maybe. I'm not overly optimistic on this. Still, I think it is something to be strived for.
B. No. "Virtually" impossible condition. But I believe a world government would do more good than harm, and would be better than the current state of affairs.
C. No. But that is true of every system of government, and a new government designed with that threat in mind might be better than what we have now...

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

A, another requisite to be chosen for King/Queen: to have a minimun education (High College at least)

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

As far as Im concerned the pros and cons of a world government arent much different than any other government. All forms of government run into problems trying to cover a large area. The closest we will come for a long time will be an over-seeing body over the many governments. The UN is fairly close and about as efficient as any other effort (such as the Internet which is along the same principle)

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

5 centuries of global domination? Correct me if I'm wrong, but true dominance of world trade by western european nations only began after the industrial revolution; the age of sail started only after it became necessary to find new routes towards India and China, as Portugal and Spain searched for new ways to bypass muslim states which held in their control land routes to western africa and asia; not because Portugal simply wished to outdo Spain, England, France, and others.

Also, even though politically Europe was fragmented, one could say that it was unified under christianity; not even entire states could resist the will of the church, and of the pope, until protestantism came about. Western Europe was also spared by, I would say, sheer luck; the bubonic plague hitting europe when it was having an economic slump, the moors being turned away by simple rumors concerning the non-existant massive frankish army, the turnaround by the mongolian hoard just before they reached present-day Germany, et cetera.

As for the percieved unity of China and the Arabic world, there has been many times when the dynasties of both regions fell apart and were replaced by warring states; the only difference between them and Europe being that the two worlds never fell into a dark age.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Europeans did plenty of raping and pillaging around the world before the industrial revolution started...

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Yep Because Europe is smaller then Asia so they didn't have a lot of their own "continentals" to kick the sh!t out of http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Sorry I know that was probobly immature but hey http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Well a major reason Europeans dominated was that most of them figured they had 'The RIGHT" to dominate and thus went out and did it with their advanced technology and rutheless determination.

You have to give Europeans one thing to their credit as an entire "continent" of people, when they become determined to conquer someone they usually do it.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

What does that have to do with what I wrote? Yef made a statement about (western) Europeans dominating (I assume militarily, culturally, and economically) the world over all others, not raping and pillaging and assimilating and other acts of suppression and destruction linked to colonialism persued by few nations.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Colonialism was running rampant long before the industrial revolution. That process merely increased the scale of it, along with nearly everything else.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Except that their technology was often vastly inferior to other greater powers in the world for a long time. Their "advanced technology" was mostly hogwash and did not provide much of a tactical advantage, especially as it relates to weapons technologies (other than ship cannons and naval bombardment, but that doesn't go very far for most of the places they went). For centuries, the firearms they used were not very effective. Sure, they could down the first wave of the enemy, but the rest will be at them long before they can reload... why do you think conquistadors always had steal breastplates and swords? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif As an example, the only way that Cortez and gang were able to defeat the Aztecs was by allying with a large number of other native tribes that hated the Aztecs, combined with very poor judgement on the part of the then ruler of the Aztecs... Their "superior technology" wasn't of too much use to them.

Also, European naval technologies were dwarfed by those of the Chinese, who had ships that made European vessels look like gnats centuries in advance. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their arrogance caused them to allow their once mighty fleets to fall into disrepair, and they gave up on naval prowess a bit before Portugese and Spanish explorers reached the Indian Ocean...

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Heh yeah if the Portugese had reached the region just a little earlier then history may have turned out very different, imagine if China decided to use it's fleet for war against Europe back then?

Interesting thing about the Spanish tactics was that they paired a Gunner off with a sworsdman, the gunners would fire and their partners would protect them till they reloaded. Interesting if you ask me.

I was referring mainly to Colonial era tech but I suppose yur right for centuries the Europeans just won out on guts and superior tactics I guess (as well as making allies with one tribe to crush another or one nation to crush another)

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Europe was a piss poor area back then, and China wouldn't have cared less about it. It was too far away to conquer or to make practical its incorporation into the tribute system...

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Jeeze Fyron it was a "what if" question lol not a "why not"

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

My understanding is that the Chinese hadn't really developed the techniques for deep water (Out of sight of land) navigation. At the time really only the Porteguese had, and later the Spanish and English. The Chinese may have been much stronger militarily, but it would have been extremely difficult to conduct a war by sea against Europe by hugging the coastline around India and Africa. If they had a mind to do it, it would probably have been easier just to march over land like the Mongols did centuries before.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

What are your views on a Unified World Government?

Good idea but we are not ready for it. At one time I thought we were moving in that direction then along came the breakup of the soviet bloc and now we have far more nations now then 30 years ago. Not to mention separtists all over the world: French Canadians and Basques come to mind.

What would be required to create it?

A willingness to legislate only the essentials... and that is where we are unready.

What would be the benefits?

These have been pointed out by others and are both obvious and vague.

What are the cons?

To many Groups/individuals trying to get there pet peeve passed into law even though 99% of the world does not want it. IE: mandatory state religion, polygamy illegal.

Which nations do you think should be dominant in it's creation?

Are you kidding me?? If any group of nations dominates the creation, I will have nothing to do with it!! Any group will have its own agenda. It will benefit themselves only, not me, not even the citizens of their own countries!

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Vote anarchy! (It's better than no government at all!)

Seriously, as long as there is power, there will be someone willing to abuse that power. IMHO power needs to be held locally, where it can be applied with an understanding of the local situation, and where corrupt/ misguided leaders can only inflict a limited amount of damage.

I think with the internet, and with whatever comes after the internet (IE very portable, highly (and automatically) configurable, permanently connected and seamless devices/ applications that are almost as much a part of a person as their arms or legs or teeth) we can expect power to become more and more distributed, and that will be a good thing.

The kind of thing we are seeing now with the music industry will eventually happen to politics: In other words, politics (or at least, politicians) will cease to become relevant. The music industry is currently losing a grip on the market because the people it held in its hands- namely artists and music lovers- have found the technology to slip between the industry's fingers and are in the process of making the massive, lumbering, centralised structure of the industry utterly irrelevant. Imagine a giant trying to catch grains of sand in a sand-storm. Government will go the same way. Through technology, people will gradually get the power to slip between the fingers of government and administer their own lives. This will mean a lot of law-breaking, probably a lot of totalitarian clamp-downs and riots and shootings as government desperately tries to cling on to the power it once had (think RIAA suing individual file-sharers and bullying governments into passing IP laws for its benefit) but in the end there's nothing they can do.

Obviously all this is very abstract, and it makes it no easier to imagine just how you could run an army or a health service or benefits system or taxation in such a distributed fashion, but I believe people will find ways, and that will be the future. Hell, it worked for the Borg. It won't be world government, it will be self-government on a global scale, and it will be a damn sight better than what we have now. Sadly, it probably won't happen in our lifetimes.

0.02

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Sorry Dog that sounds terrifying to me, I mean I know some folks that if they were self governing would end up blowing up the world (if only an accident while the were stoned) People have proven we can't govern ourselves (individually) for millenia, we need something to unify us and in some ways some ways we need people to look up to for guidance and leadership, it is in our very nature to form tribes, states, nations and governments because we know we can't rule ourselves withotu guidance and leadership.


I think a good form of government would be that instead of the rich and powerful being politicos we switch over to a mentallity of letting true leaders and truely wise people become our leaders no matter whether they are loaded or poor.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

And how you would identify true leaders and wise people? I know a lot of very charismatic people that after the election wrecked entire countries... just to point an example, once we elected in Brazil a mr. Fernando Collor de Mello as president, that later was involved in a scandal of millions of dollars apropriated from government funds, and even implicated in extorsion schemes.... the brazilians went to the streets to demand his impeachment and he resigned, but during the elections he was the most popular candidate, very charismatic and so on...

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Exactly. Lord Acton's oft-quoted line that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." should always be kept in mind. Any system of government that relies solely on the continued benevolence of despots as the sole check on government is always suspect.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

It occurs to me that I should post this link.

A Short Guide to Comparative Government

It's funny, not too serious.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Funny. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Or, "Power corrupts, Powerpoint corrupts absolutely." If you'd ever sat through some of the deadly, dreary dull utterly-empty-but-somehow-full-of-[censored] 'presentations' fronted by lifeless, soulless career-junkie 'executives' that I had and wondered just how anything ever gets done on this miserable planet if this is the international business standard, then you'll know exactly why that quote is true.

It's not so much the software itself, but the powerpoint attitude: The strange concept that you don't need any knowledge about your (probably non-existent) product or (probably sub-standard) service, or even the bare mimnimum of intelligence or personality that might somehow be sufficient to cover for the complete lack of content in your so-called 'presentation' just as long as you have a smeggin' Powerpoint slideshow with fancy fades, wipes, a few bar charts, a pretty background and time at the end for a "Q&A session before lunch" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

*pant* *pant* *pant*

Sorry for the massive OT rant, this was supposed to be a short, jokey post but something just touched a nerve there.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

Well, I'm not suggesting that every individual should have their own set of nuclear launch codes. Neither am I suggesting an entirely unnaccountable anarchy. I'm just saying that some day we will have the technology to "cut out the middle man" when it comes to politics. As tech makes it easier and easier to put people in touch with one another on a massive scale, we won't need the (self-serving) institutions that currently (pretend to) represent us, because we will be able to represent ourselves directly. And I'm not suggesting a simple Athenian democracy be electronic vote either because that ways lies stagnation by committee on a scale never before imagined.

Instead it would be something far more subtle and more organic in which each person represents themself and has a voice, and in which no single person or Groups can dictate to others, but in which large-scale decisions can made and acted upon in a moderately efficient manner with all the checks, balances and stability that people have wished for elsewhere in this thread. I think the technology will soon be here, although the will (as always) will be a few centuries behind. I just have a gut feeling that that is the way things will eventually go. Again, I'm being vague, but if I had all the details worked out I would be a lot cleverer than what I is.

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

So, in a future eletronic democracy world government we would have an Chinese/Indian (from India and not America) government, since two/thirds of the global population are either indian or chinese.... (nothing against any indians or chinese people, i´m just pointing that a population-based democracy system will have an overpowering tendency to be dominated by some cultures where a higher natality rate is a predominant cultural trait)

Re: Your Views on a world Government
 

By then there may be only one race and one people. I think we will probably see a UN world rule long before a single-government world rule. So by the time any world-wide voting could happen, the idea of any one group of people might very well not involve nationalities or races. Im not saying there wont be some huge group for people to concern about, Im just not sure what it would be.