Your Views on a world Government

[Jack Simth]

You know a unified government is actually listed in Revalations as one of the steps in the end of the world? Revelations 13:7: (emphasis added) (NIV) "He was given power to make war against the saints and conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation."

Skipping the Apocoliptic prophecy, however, there is a very practical reason why I don't like the idea of a world-wide government: If the government decideds to do something evil, what you gonna do about it? With a zillion countries, it's at least possible (if not always easy nor safe, such as in the case of the Berlin wall in Germany for a time) - to "vote with your feet" and go to another country. That doesn't work with only one country.

[Starhawk]

See IMHO the only way we'll have a united "Earth" government is when we have offworld colonies in other systems, in all probobility such colonies would eventually form their own nations, Earth would likely form a united government by then.

[EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro]

Maybe we'll settle for continental or regional powers. Like North America, Oceania, Eurasia. O.k. now that I've typed that it kinda looks and reminds me of Orwell's 1984. Here's a shout out to the homies at "Airstrip One" (England) Anyway I am aware of Switzerlands past misdeeds as well as my own country too. But c'mon, all they do now is make chocolate, watches, and cuckoo clocks. I trust neutrality. Anyway I look forward to this new European fast reaction force. Maybe now they can get their hands dirty in world affairs rather than complaining if the U.S. does or does not.
One world government? Probably not in our life time. Of course global war and catastrophe will shorten our life time.
I like this topic. Good job Starhawk, good replies all.

[DarkHorse]

EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro said:
...Anyway I am aware of Switzerlands past misdeeds as well as my own country too. But c'mon, all they do now is make chocolate, watches, and cuckoo clocks. .

Actually they are still just as involved in blood-money laundering, they just do it for drug dealers and petty dictators now.

[DarkHorse]

But enough about Switzerland, all countries have plenty of skeletons in their respective closets.

The real key to peace, prosperity and the general success of humanity as a species is... more bureaucracy.

No, really, you read that right. Throughout history, the main cause of the death-spiral most civilizations (that aren't conquered by outsiders) find themselves in eventually is lack of institutional resistance to change.

For example, the Roman Empire was arguably a rather successful civilization for a number of centuries. How did this happen? Bureaucracy! The Romans practically invented the stuff, and it was the giant sticky morass singularly responsible for holding it together for four or six (I always forget which) centuries, until a lack of computerization finally did them in. Technically barbarians, but in reality it was the lack of computerization. Think the barbarians would have conquered mighty Rome if they had had to submit thirteen applications in triplicate to the Bureau of Conquering and Cultural Assimilation? Hardly. No self respecting barbarian would have had the patience for that, instead they would have wandered off to conquer other, lesser (and less bureaucratic) civs, or just hung around and played lawn darts.

Anyway, the point is, the more resistant to change of any sort a civilization is, then by definition the longer it will remain cohesive and intact. The U.S.'s founding fathers knew this, hence the beautiful system of checks and balances they wove into the fabric of our government to make it virtually impossible to effect any real change. I weep with joy at the ruthless inefficiency of our triply-redundant executive/legislative/judiciary house of mirrors, each patently incapable of accomplishing anything meaningful (aside from voting themselves pay raises), each replete with its own complex web of inherent redundancies (a bicameral house/senate--Brilliant! Allow 50 separate states to retain just as much bureaucracy as the Federal system, while simultaneously adding another 50 layers of bright-red tape to interstate interaction [commerce, law, etc] process--Brilliant!).

The wisdom of our 'fathers shall ever shield us from the inevitable fate of nations. A brief primer on how it happens in nature:

First: The Founding--some people have a relatively innocuous idea for a nation/empire/hegemony of some sort, and go about creating it (often by killing people).

Second: The Short Golden Age, wherein a few people are Actually Happy, usually at the expense of at least one other class of people who are Generally Put-Upon. Often characterized by frequent fireworks displays, and the occassional third world Police Action.

Third: The Slow But Inevitable Death Spiral of Change. More people think they have good ideas, make some changes (often by killing people), see that their changes inevitably make things worse, and the cycle continues until the splendor of the bureaucratic state has devolved into a nightmare world of chaos and change and loud yelling, often referred to as "Parliament".

Fourth: Sunset. Either another group of people have a relatively good idea for a nation/empire/hegemony and come conquer our sad example state (because they lack computerization; think: Rome, Mongols, countless Chinese Dynasties), or our heroes slowly recede into the dustbin of history in a faded state of decay and whistful meandering thoughts of lost glory and empire, and The Way Things Used To Be (think: Britain).

Change is bad! Revolution isn't the answer! Vive le Bureaucracy! Even the very word 'bureaucracy' comes from the French, and we all know how effective they are...

No politicians were harmed in the making of this post.

[spoon]

Jack Simth said:
If the government decideds to do something evil, what you gonna do about it?

I don't know? What do we do now if the Dread Governor of Arkansas decides to do something evil?

A world government can still have checks and balances.

[Jack Simth]

spoon said:
I don't know? What do we do now if the Dread Governor of Arkansas decides to do something evil?

There's a reason I used "government" rather than "ruler", "leader", "president" et cetera. The US president can be removed without assasination precisely because he is a portion of the government, rather than the government itself. Sure, he is capable of doing a lot of evil stuff - nuking half the planet, for instance - without consent of the rest of the government; even if he had the full support of the entire US government, the average joe could still in practice run away from laws that were truely evil (such as mandatory lobotomies for everyone (except those closely related to a government official) with an IQ over 90) as the US does not hold sway over the whole planet.

spoon said:
A world government can still have checks and balances.

Sure; of course, checks and balances occasionally break down. Take, for example (a fairly extereme one), Hitler's rise to power. Post WWI Germany was handed a constitution as part of the WWI cleanup (I'm simplifying a lot here). They got an elected body with specific, limited powers, modeled after the British and US system. Their constitution gaurunteed certain rights, which could only be supressed in an emergency by at least a two-thirds majority vote of the elected body with at least two-thirds of that body present. The body was a party-election setup, similar to the British system; that is, the party with X% of the popular vote got X% of the seats.
Then Hitler came along. He was popular; he managed to get something like 45% of the popular vote for his party. Then, one day, it came about that all of his people were present, and enough of the other representatives were gone that there were just barely enough there to qualify for an emergency rights supression vote. Interestingly enough, two-thirds of two-thirds is four-ninths; which is 44%. The vote went along party lines and Hitler was handed the full reins of Germany, with full permission to do whatever he liked.

For a smaller example, take Washington State's (now named, wasn't so named at the time) SafeCo Field. Bills for funding it went to the voting public two or three times. Every time, it was turned down. Currently, you can buy a ticket and go see a game at SafeCo field, and know that the majority of the construction was funded by taxpayers, and the majority of the profits from the building go to private enterprise.

Tell me, do you really think that you (or anyone else) can come up with a worldwide system cohesive and strong enough to be safely called a world government that will (A) be long-term stable, (B) be "good" for virtually everyone (ignoring for the moment that virtually everyone has a different specific definition of "good"....), and (C) have checks and balances of such near-perfection that a particularly extraordinary person or group will never be able to come along and turn this ideal government around so that it now only cares about that particular person or group?

[deccan]

Jack Simth said:
... (C) have checks and balances of such near-perfection that a particularly extraordinary person or group will never be able to come along and turn this ideal government around so that it now only cares about that particular person or group?

Isn't this somewhat contradictory? I mean presumably the so-called checks and balances will require some sort of overwhelming majority to make big changes, so in order to make a government care only about a particular person or group, a sizable majority of people not in the favoured group must also somehow be persuaded that favoring this particular group is somehow good.

And of course, this is already the case in modern industrial economies. In France, for example, the majority of the population put up with higher taxes and higher food prices in order to maintain subsidies for farmers at least partly because they agree that it is part of France's national identity that the so-called "produits du terroir" be accorded a privileged and honored position and that having a France with no sweeping farmlands would just not feel like France.

And note: this is not a bad thing. It's simply what the French people want, and the government gives it to them.

And finally, isn't someone going to rebut Randallw's communist nonsense?

[Jack Simth]

deccan said:

Isn't this somewhat contradictory? I mean presumably the so-called checks and balances will require some sort of overwhelming majority to make big changes, so in order to make a government care only about a particular person or group, a sizable majority of people not in the favoured group must also somehow be persuaded that favoring this particular group is somehow good.

Not necessarily. In the Democracy variants that you seem to believe are inherently implied in a good system, they merely need to be convinced that the particular bill that warps things is a Good Idea. You don't even need to do that much, really; fraudulent votes or corrupt/misguided representatives could also serve the same purpose.

However, democracy variants are not the only forms of government that have been suggested in this thread.

[Jack Simth]

deccan said:
And finally, isn't someone going to rebut Randallw's communist nonsense?

Check through StarHawk's Posts.