World Government...

[hallenrm]

No, Turtle. That is not what I mean with 'reasonable'. What I mean, if you read my first post, is that the initial form of 'government' was the tribe, and its physical area (national border) was only as big as what the tribe could control - through limitations of communication and travel. As time went by, and technology and communication became more advanced, the area over which any 'tribe' could project its power became bigger, and ever bigger 'nations' appeared. It is reasonable to expect this trend to continue, not idealistic in any sense. Our current national borders were drawn up before the appearance of instant mass communication like the internet and cellphones. Any citizen of Europe would have scoffed at the idea of unity only fifty/sixty years ago. Would it be reasonable, then, to assume that as far as political development goes, we have 'reached the end of history'?

 

Your thought (argument?) is an extrapolation and we all know extrapolations are valid only upto a certain point. For example, in the same line as your thought, centuries ago people lived in hutments and as the construction technology developed people started living in bigger houses. Today many people dwell in huge multistoreyed constructions. Would it be then valid to contend that one day entire cities could be located inside one mammoth structure.:)

[Tarantism]

hey this is really good thread, i have been pondering this quite a bit myself.

 

a new world government would require brand new ways of thinking about how governments run. it should certainly be vote-based, but instead of 40 or 50 people on a voting commitee we should raise the scale to 2000 or so. then, we could interchange the commitee every year, letting people apply for admission and make a modest salary (quite literally...this public service shouldnt be too lucrative). on top of that, such a large commitee would eliminate discrimination and imbalance, breaking down the boarders and acting as one human race would eliminate natinalism. no longer would you be "american" but rather a human living in the North American part of Terra.

 

it would be nice to stop killing each other and start progressing and pushing further.

[Boerseun]

Excellent thread Mullet

Thanks! We aim to please... you aim, too, please... (sign above a urinal in a restuarant)

I think that the need for cooperative wide scale engineering will be the catalyst for bonding nations into greater nation states.

Interesting! I think you might be on to something here...

 

Over here, South Africa and the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho have developed a big hydroelectric scheme where melting snow from the Lesotho Drakensberg mountains are dammed up in a couple of dams, and the water let out through tunnels that drop quite a bit, producing a heck of a lot of energy. And then the water is diverted through more tunnels into the Vaal river catchment area (they had to tunnel for hundreds of kilometers to cross into the Vaal catchment area) - and then used in the Witwatersrand area (Jo'burg & Pretoria). The Lesotho Highlands Water Project is beneficial to everybody involved, and investment from both countries are substantial; in any future imagined possible conflict between SA and Lesotho, investment in these capital projects will be a pacifying element. And management and operations of these kinda projects are cross-border multinational issues, and as the need for ever bigger and better cross-border co-operating ventures such as these increase, the bigger a pain in the *** it being two seperate nations with passport control etc. will become.

Large-scale engineering such as this is dictated by environmental realities, and what we might see as national borders don't really mean much when the topography of the landscape tells you where you can build a dam or not.

[InfiniteNow]

[Boerseun]

...and again...:xparty:

[InfiniteNow]

In the old days, the furthest you could instantly communicate depended solely on how loud your voice is, and how hard you could shout. 'Government' was effected by the radius of quick communication, and small tribes was the result. With the advent of agriculture, this expanded into 'city-states', and with literacy (where written orders could by carried by runners) resulted in relatively big kingdoms. Technology reached its peak (for the time) with the Roman Empire, and literacy, coupled with speedy communication (for the time - they employed fleets of galleys in the Med to uphold the empire) enabled the Romans to dominate.

 

There seem to be a correlation in the size of sovereign states/nations to the distance that communication is possible in order to preserve the unity and the loyalty of the subjects.

 

We have had telegraphs and telephones now for more than a century. Wireless communication in the form of radio and television, even less. But true wireless, effortless communication is something only about 10 to 15 years old. The global cellphone network consists out of two billion individual users, out of a population of six billion. One third of the global population are immediately reachable by anybody from virtually anywhere. The internet has enabled discussion forums such as these where nationality has no bearing on the free expression of ideas and the proliferation of new concepts. This is all new. I can now sit in my home in South Africa and have a more detailed, immediate discussion with somebody in Washington DC than was possible for two people in that city seperated only by a few street blocks only a few decades ago.

 

If the size of what we understand as a 'sovereign unit', be it a kingdom, a State, a democracy, a theocracy or any other form of 'united big tribe' is indeed effected by our capacity for communication, would eventual 'World Government' be inevitable?

I think so. It will hopefully have some local control, much like state power in the US, but we are at a tipping point where we must recognize our global community as of greater importance than our cartographically carved out national borders. There are too many issues that effect every single being on the planet, as well as the beings they and we eat, and we are no longer seperated due to distance. You are in SA and I in TX, yet we are able to reach one another with the click of a mouse or the flick of a key. We are a global community, and unless there is a mass extinction event, we will need to govern ourselves globally starting very soon.

 

Again, local control is important in the right contexts, but global connection is the next driver of population if we don't die first. ( btw, the next war is not over oil, but water.)

[Boerseun]

Ironically, all the machinations of such a 'World Government' is already in place.

 

I think a world where today's countries are more like States on the US model, with an overhead World Government (analogous to the US federal gov) would be a good idea, where local legislation can trump Federal legislation on matters that are exlusively local, but the central government's legislation regarding global issues like pollution and ecological matters would then trump local States.

 

Once countries submit to this kind of structure, international wars will become merely local uprisings, but the world's resources will be at the government's disposal to sort matters such as this out.

 

With advanced communications, warfare on such a scale is becoming more and more passé and so 20th century, in any case.

 

Problem here, of course, is nationalism. I think very few people are willing to give up their sovereignty to join such a scheme. If we see how important matters such as Kyoto are ignored, even global issues such as pollution doesn't seem to be much of a convincing argument for those in power to sway towards such a solution.

 

Ah, well. In some other, distant galaxy...

[C1ay]

I think a world where today's countries are more like States on the US model, with an overhead World Government (analogous to the US federal gov) would be a good idea...

 

The U.S. model does have one flaw though, it is a Constitutional model that can be changed by the people. While this is a good thing when the Constitution has problems that need to be fixed it also allows the people to introduce flaws into the Constitution. The U.S. is gradually moving towards a true democracy which is a form of government that has never endured and there is no mechanism in the Constitution to prevent it.

 

I believe strongly in the ideology of a Constitutional Republic and favor such a design for a world government. I also favor the 3 branch structure and it's limitations of powers. I do tend to think the Executive branch of such a government should be wielded by a panel of Executors like many Supreme Courts use instead of granting such power to a single individual. Here's in the U.S. it is getting harder and harder to find single individuals that possess all of the qualities the Executive branch should have.

 

In the end I do favor a world government but I don't see it as a feasible possibility as long as religion exists. Too many people in the world seem to want religion in their government and the world's religions are truly like oil and water, they just don't mix, and they shouldn't have any place in government.