[TastyTim]

So I noticed quite a few people in the Nationalism/Internationalism section talking about many supranational concepts and started to wonder what most people in this forum think of World Government as a solution to the problems of Earth. I tried my best to make as many positions as possible and to be as fair as possible. I myself am for World Government, but wanted to see what other people here thought of it. So do tell me if I did a good job of being fair to those who are not for it, I'd be curious of that as well.

[Fraqtive42]

Other

My opinion on a world government pretty much approximates a solid HELL NAW (for utilitarian rather than moral reasons), but I am not sure if it is possible to achieve or not.

Also, Welcome to the Forum. I hope you stick around, we need more centrists.

[Baff]

I think by it's very nature the larger a government gets, the less democratic it gets.

People have conflicting intrests. It's not possible for one policy to represent everyone.
The larger the government, the more people any one decision doesn't represent.

In many western democracies for example the political divide is fairly even split between two propsals, let say left wing and right wing.

So any time I enact a policy there is a good chance that this policy will not be democratically representative of the wishes of perhaps 40% of the population.

When a policy acts agianst the intrests of half of the human race, it isn't democratic! You can't just piss off half the planet and pretend that you have a moral mandate to do so.

[Fraqtive42]

^ That definitely is a good criticism. My initial criticism was that economic management would be terribly inefficient under a world government.

Some more are ethnic strife, complete isolation from the political community (due to lack of democracy), etc etc..

[Harold Saxon]

I think it is NOT possible to achieve no matter what kind it is - though I'd add the caveat "except for a very short period of time."

While such a state would in theory trend towards dictatorship, it'd be such a large body with such intense internal strife that the central governing authority would be in either a state of near-irrelevance or collapse immediately due to instant backlash. If not so powerful that it immediately collapses, it would still relatively quickly collapse for roughly the same range of grounds, such as a lack of accountability with politicians so far removed from their populace, internal conflict begetting secession, and central economic mismanagement from diseconomies of scale.

[TastyTim]

I think it is inevitable and will be very positive for humanity

This is how I look at it:

In a universe of billions of galaxies, each galaxy with billions of stars, here we are in this tiny solar system on this tiny little rock trying to make something of ourselves. And I think no matter what, humanity will survive, and I would also add that they will not just do that but they will thrive as well. They will overcome their obstacles in the coming centuries and become truly sustainable. I really don't think we are headed for extinction, I've known everyday people to have done too extraordinary of things. So if not, then where are we going? On our tiny little rock in our tiny little solar system, within this vast, vast universe, what makes you think that humans, such close, immediate neighbors, will not unite themselves so that they can progress together and really make something of themselves?

I think with all the power wielded by technology these days, it is going to require a global administration to mediate conflict and convict lone agents intending on mass destruction. Other whys, how are we going to keep ourselves from self-annihilation? The world will not let that happen, that's why I think it is both positive and inevitable.

[Varax]

Not possible or desirable in any democratic form and the U.N. certainly isn't the answer. Organizations like the U.N. will always be worthless without any real enforcement mechanism. Under that system it is up to major powers to provide enforcement and that only happens if it's in their own interest. The U.N. just provides more legitimization for global powers to do what they could have done anyway.

One way I do think something might be possible is greater cooperation for space development between the various programs. The vastness and amount of resources involved makes it difficult for any one country to conquer on its own. Thus some form of international governance may become a practical and necessary compromise to truly deal with it. This however would not truly be global but only really take place between the most advanced countries with the largest space programs. It would also be a mostly technocratic in form. Of course, all of this in the "maybe hundreds of years from now" territory - then again that's all anything in this thread could ever really be referring to.

A more full scale world governance in the way some people look at it is a pipe dream, especially if ignores more disparate national and regional differences.

[Preston Cole]

Other:

It's possible to achieve, but undesirable. If it did occur, though, it had better be non-democratic or we're fucked as a species.

[Thunderhawk]

I think it is possible to achieve but would be morally wrong

break down:
I think it is possible to achieve
Not necessarily will, but I believe it is possible.

Corporations take over spiel: Non-state actors are becoming more and more powerful, initially as pawns of governments but now running parallel to them. Some of the largest corporations, the Catholic Church and even some small corporations are more influential then many countries. With the spread of democracy, corrupt democracy, modernity and materialism, I suspect many non-state organizations will become even more powerful. As the un(der)-developed world moves up, exploitation will become difficult, so they will go back to methods common in the developed world - lobbying politicians and operating in existing legal frameworks. In those situation, why lobby and support politicians in 10 different countries and run the risk of the eleventh country might cause you problems when you can lobby and support one politician at a super national level and through him end descent?


but would be morally wrong
The larger the government, the more room there is for corruption and fiefdom creation at the cost of society as a whole. Also, if everyone is in the same box, then I worry about a conservative inward looking society springing up, as a unified planet would mean no outside force to remove bad rulers/societies. Some day we might have societies planet wide that are capable of having a single world government that isn't oppressive or excessively corrupt, but I don't see that happening in the next 200 years.

[Doug64]

Achieving a world government is flat-out not possible. If it were possible, I would be cautiously in favor so long as it was built on strong federalist principles.

[J Oswald]

It is impossible to achieve, and would be a bad idea even if it were possible.

[Alexander]

It's not possible to achieve. Even if it were, I'd oppose it. Nation-states are a good thing.

[Zionist Nationalist]

Horrible Idea anyone who support that is insane its exacly what the elites whant to achieve a global domiation with a small population of 500 million instead of 6 or 7 billion

[roxunreal]

Some form of humanity's unification beyond the archaic and destructive nation-state model will be the necessary next step in our species' evolution, but we may not be ready for a long time yet. Whether it's "world government" or just a supranational union like a more pimped and functional version of the UN is anyone's guess, the only important thing is that it needs to actually function. And of course, it would be imperative that such a system was transparent and decentralised.

[Andropov]

World government is a vague term. I support a coalition of nations, working together to acheive common pan-human goals, but not some kind of freakish soulless bureaucracy, similar to the EU but on a global scale, telling sovereign countries what they can or can't do.