World Government?

I'll start a new thread, because this is a very interesting problem of politics, philosophy and political science.  What are the prerequisites to a world government, and what must its functions be?  I say that the things which make such a body possible are that there is a global decline in religion, the national governments of each member state are republican in nature (democratic, or parliamentary in nature, with either no monarchy or one limited only to being a figurehead, and no present imperial characteristics), and a relative distance of each state from its most recent mass human rights abuses.  (The British empire, American expansion, Israeli-palestinian back-and-forth, Rwandan genocide, and so on).

Obviously, if the world was composed of such nations, we would hopefully first have a very good situation for the world.  It would stand to reason that a world of 'perfect' citizens does not require a government.  However, a world government would in fact need to be imposed at this juncture; it would be not only possible, once a certain quasi-ideal state is reached, but it would immediately be seen to be necessary.  The functions of such a body would be the absolute preclusion of war, and a legitimate defense of human rights.  If the world is, at a future time, composed of a set of nations which are more or less 'perfect' citizens, however distant past conflicts have been, they would still be in a state of nature with respect to one another, which must forever be tenuous and uncertain.  National pride (and, indeed, the religious conceit that the law of God supersedes the law of man) would be eternal dangers to peace; they compose the main principles for which a people would be willing to fight and die.  A world government, composed of member states, would have as its proper function the preclusion of such conceits and cynicism.  Nor would its language and code have to be steeped in naive idealism; the possibilities of a necessary, just war would be accounted for (however undesirable), and the tendencies of particular nations to gain too much power would be accounted for by checks and balances.  Once manifold philosophical problems are addressed, it would indeed become necessary for member states to surrender a degree of their sovereignty for the sake of peace, with this caveat-it is more important to preserve peace and protect human rights than it is for the institution of the world government itself to remain absolute.

I do not say that such a system is likely.  I do say that it is desirable, possible, and necessary, if we are to have a perpetual peace.  But there are cultural obstacles, so I do not speak of this world government as something right around the corner.  It can only be established, with the most pragmatic intentions, when certain changes have affected the nations of the world.  Nor is it legitimate to speak of this discussion as being anything other than pragmatic-the impetus for such a discussion is an end to the horror of war, and it goes without saying that the facts of politics apply on the road to such a government, and continue to apply after its implementation.  The World Government would have to be the most open and scrutinized government on the face of the earth.

I would like to reply to the poster who started me thinking about this: s/he said that "In surrendering, partially or in full, your sovereignity to a foreign body you give up in equal measure your power to look after your best interests - you are agreeing to place the desires of other nations before your own."  To which I reply: Er, yes, exactly.  Why do individuals establish and surrender an absolute freedom to their own national governments, to replace it with a freedom that extends only so far as the freedoms of their fellow citizens?  Because they are moved by an organizational ethics which both makes life easier and more secure.  Without government, the individual's perceived 'best interests' do not extend much farther than doing whatever the hell they please, at the expense of those around them.  The same goes for nations, and the same necessity of a world government to nations is implied by the necessity, or desirability, of a national government to a people.  In both cases, we presuppose that the government in question is able to govern justly, so don't bother retorting in that vein.  The function of such a world government would be, logically, to secure the human rights (which implies a certain basic quality of life) for ourselves and our posterity-this goes for all Earth.  If by the "best interests" of a particular nation, you mean the right to exist, and to wage just wars of self defense, these would be accounted for in the language of the government.  If, however, all you mean is economic growth without end, I reply that such growth unchecked will very probably have an environmental effect on the earth-(meaning all earth, and this is one of many reasons why the whole earth must be regarded as a unified, governed element), thereby affecting the quality of life of our posterity.  This is precisely the case for the United States, which consumes a plurality of the earth's energy-they ought by right to consume less.  And yes, I'm well aware of the irony of such an assertion as I sit in my nice apartment at my nice computer in the USA, so don't bother pointing that out.  What we must first come to is a reasonable global consensus, followed by action. (however unlikely that may be, even in this supposed distant future).  Much of the resistance to the idea of a world government, I believe, comes from a disconnect between what it ought to look like, and what people think it would turn out to look like.  Another problem with the resistance to a world government is that most people have come out of the state of nature, and into any of the governments of the world-their initial desire for an organization is thus satisfied, and they do not want to surrender what sovereignty they have.  However, it happens that they must, if one examines the circumstances correctly-such is my claim, at any rate.  Secondly, people rightly fear that the implementation of such an apparatus would be far too swift-I say that it would be based on evolution, not revolution.  The historical lesson of the failure of communism is that you cannot move too swiftly toward your own special utopia, or cynically deny the human rights of some in favor of the majority-particularly if your crappy central planning doesn't even secure those.  I am also honestly curious as to why you say that you despise Kant (I'm not looking to argue, just have a genuine discussion.  There was plenty to dislike-he was quite the bigot).

I have tried here to sketch something basic.  I will be very interested to hear whether people agree that such a system is either desirable or possible, or whether you think I'm full of shit.  What I really don't care to hear is that we must continue along the tradition of a number of separate nations, or continue to have wars, 'because it has always been so'.  It rests on you to show me something specific in human nature that makes this ivory tower inconceivable. 

I agree that for a world goverment to startup quick it will be difficult because it will be hard for people like national goverments to relinquish such power.

Look at the EU. Took them decades to get it off running. And now it has its own parliament with laws that nations must follow on. They now even have their own single currency. Granted that all this is still being half-assed done because nations like UK feel they don;t need to particapate 100%.

My idea for a world goverment would be a middle ground. Somewhat like the USA with their federal and state laws. In the case of the world goverment, we will stil have national goverments that handle national issues but global issues will be handled by the world goverment.

I agree that if world peace is the goal, a world government is probably the best way to achieve world peice. There are a couple thing that I would like to point out though.

In the first place, having just one governing body means that one centralized body is making decisions for many, widely diverse cultures. These cultures may have wants and/or needs, percieved or otherwise, which conflict with the wants and/or needs of others. As an example I will turn to the Gay Marriage issue in the United States. Some cultures (which we will imagine to be contained in states, as we imagine broader cultures are contained in nations) are vehemently opposed to Gay Marriage, and others are for it in like measure. The problem is the national government - instead of allowing each state to reach its own conclusion on this issue and thereby satisfy the decision making body housed therein (in this case, ideally, the majority) we have this mindset whereby we must not only satisfy ourselves, but also make others do things the way we do.

The same thing will be the case with an imagined community of nations, such as the UN. What works for one nation may or may not work for another. When there may be many different opinions on how things should be run, why should we turn to just one when we can allow smaller communities to meet their own needs more effeciently and more consistently? If I want to run things a certain way in my country, why should I give up my power to do so to an outside body? If I want war, it should be my business. If I want to oppress my people (say, for example, through the religious edicts of a given religion, i.e. the Taliban) and you as a nation would like to stop me, there should be no godlike council to which you can turn for moral justification. It is your opinion against mine, and nothing more.

In the next place, you may be interested in reading "The Lucifer Principle" by Howard Bloom, if you have not done so already. Your theory seems to rest on slowly convincing people to identify as world citizens instead of followers of a particular religion or citizens of a particular, exclusive nation. You are absolutely right that if people identified as world citizens things would be alot nicer... you typcially don't go to war against those from your own faction, you go to war with people you can de-humanize or simply label "them."

However, Bloom posits (and I agree) that people cannot all be members of the same faction. It is a basic human need to form into separate, exclusive "cliques" regulated by "memes," or ideologies. These cliques naturally fight with one another for supremacy - Bloom cites many excellent examples of rival cliques (even formed out of former friends, colleauges, and/or classmates) violently vying for supremacy. I haven't got the book with me and so I cannot cite those examples myself or indeed make the full argument (which would, at any rate, take a very long time), but I think that you may see the wisdom in the argument. Given that factionalism is a fundamental aspect of human nature, the ivory tower which you describe is indeed inconceivable.

I don't like Kant because the morality he describes sounds pitiful. I am no expert on the man, but from what I have read he is against pretty much everything I stand for. He talks about the good being in doing one's duty, and the true good as being dutiful without the inclination. In other words, you are good only insofar as you don't want to do what you're doing, and later, only insofar as this undesirable action can be made into a universal law. I am of the opinion that the ultimate good is to please one's self, even if that pleasure comes at the expense of others.

Why do people submit to a national government? Probably out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of being oppressed by some mightier force... or else, because they can't conceive of any alternative. I am an anarchist insofar as I think that any person should submit to governmental authority only insofar as the imperatives of the government in question coincide with the individual's personal moral imperitives. For example, if I feel that it is alright to punch people with whom I am angry, and the government says that it isn't, I am under no obligation to follow the government's stance on the subject, except that obligation which self preservation places upon me (fear of being retaliated against by the government, in this case).

I think of nations the same way. Frankly, if you aren't willing to mindlessly follow every edict of a governing body, and if you have a reasonable alternative, you should not become a member of that body. For America, say, to submit to the will of the United Nations is for America to say "You have the RIGHT to tell us what to do, and therefore we will do whatever you say." The United Nations does not have that right unless the United States says it does, and given my percieved duty of a nation, saying so is simply a losing proposition.

I'm sure that came out mixed up, but I am sure you will be quick to point out anything that sounds strange. I'm not going to go through drafts for a discussion in a forum, you understand.

My goal in this conversation is not to establish that membership in a body like the United Nations is universally a poor idea for any country, particularly the United States, but to establish that my opinion (being such) is a reasonable one.

>>3

Thank you very much for an excellent, civil reply.  This is precisely what I wanted to coax out of you.  The things that I would say back to you, off the top of my head, are:

1:  the function of the purported government would not be to micromanage culture, but, in making an appraisal of the world situation, to move to avoid war or to protect those most basic tenets of human rights in the broad case (I will take the UN's Universal Declaration as my preliminary working definition, excepting some implications of article 16-the inalienable right to reproduce, with which I disagree).

2: the factionalism and conflict which characterize human nature could still be expressed in most of the usual ways-the function of the body would be to preclude its escalation into something that it need not and 'ought' not become.  I suppose small scale inter-tribal warfare in Africa or other places could escape the concern of the body as 'cultural' as long as it did not approach a genocide.

3: The body need not imply a global culture, but for its missions of human rights and war preclusion-those do compose, of course, a global worldview.  However, I feel a decline in religion is a necessary prerequisite to the body.  Other sections of culture (even if it is merely regional pride) would remain to validate daily life.

4: Even if religion were to decline (yeah right, I know...), new ethical problems would be created, and there would come to be shown new principles over which people would be willing to make war: this comes through technological advancement and its implications for humans.  This is really the biggest problem to a perpetual peace, which I suppose to myself.  Human cloning, genetic advancement, and who controls the 'means of production', to abuse Marx, would all present international ethical problems to the body.  Legal bodies have a historically very poor track record for keeping pace with legal and ethical implications of technology, so this would perhaps be the main problem of humanity after a time.

Interesting points.

1: That's true, that crossed my mind while I was typing but I figured I'd keep the point.

2: True again. I begin to wonder what, precisely, I was getting at.

3: What I mean to say is that this global worldview should not be considered universal. Further, though this is something of a slippery slope, once you set a precedent whereby you are regulating world affairs to one extent, it is very easy to start regulating them more. After all, you will have a large body of very bored politicians sitting together in the UN building. What will they do if not make policy? Every policy passed runs the risk of over-regulating, I think.

4. With the science, this is, I think, a large point against a global political body. When an issue (such as human cloning) comes up, I think that people ought to be able to decide for themselves what they want to do... and the larger/more inclusive a given political body is, the less say an individual will have in the decision making. Suppose that a ban on human cloning passed by 58/42 (or any slim majority). Should nearly half of the world be forced to abide by the civil rights standards of the other half? Where is the line drawn? And perhaps most significantly, does any line have to be drawn at all?
_____

If we say that the only real purpose of a global political body is to mediate disputes between nations, that is one thing - whether the UN can keep its hands to itself to that extent is another. But that is off topic. If the purposes of the global body are mediation and ensuring civil rights, I have two main issues.

First, in the latter case, I think cultural views of what is moral, what is not moral, what civil rights are appropriate and which are not vary so widely that any regulation at all runs the risk of being over-regulation. You may or may not agree that morality is relative/subjective, but I think you would agree that views on morality are, and any attempt to lay down an objective set of rules would likely be unsatisfactory, and might even devolve to a "secular theocracy" by which proponents of a particular ethical stance (Utilitarianism, say) attempt to force their idea of "basic rights" on a minority group. The question is simply "How much is too much, and is any properly inclusive policy going to be too vague to be worth anything?"

In the former case, I think that war is inevitable. I do not say that we shouldn't stop waging war because it's always been with us, but instead say that the most fundamental law of this existence is that "Might is Right." An organization like the UN simply changes the sort of might we are testing from military might to political might, and such a change of value is neccesarily temporary. In the end, no matter how much one might wish otherwise, the strongest will use their strength to bend the rules, or break the rules altogether and make new rules.

Three examples - individual, regional, and national. I am an intellectual arguing with a brutish weightlifter. We have decided to settle the dispute by arguing, and I win, being the better debater. Instead of abiding by the agreed upon rules, the brute simply punches me in the face and does what he wants anyway (or else the consequences of his loss didn't really matter all that much.)

Next, the Civil War. That very thing occured. While pro-slavery forces had agreed to abide by the Constitution and wage mere political war, as soon as it became apparent that they were going to lose by those rules, they switched to the enescapable, fundamental rules of battle, to which all issues have historically devolved.

Finally, we have a global political body dedicated to mediating conflicts and ensuring basic human rights. A truly divisive issue arises over a vital ethical issue, and one side looks like it will lose... an outcome which it cannot accept. Instantly, I expect, the rules will change... the loser cedes from the union, etc.

The next obvious thing is that nations don't last either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have them. Which is a good point.

I think it comes down to preference. I prefer a bare minimum of regulations which allow nature to take its course... the best to succeed and the worst to survive only so well as they can make themselves useful to the best. Trying to change the rules is an exercise in futility, I think, and can stagnate progress if it gets out of hand.

>>1
You seem to be a "not stupid", yet you fail to address any question raised.  In any thread.  You can type fast, compose a complete declaritive sentence and/or cut and paste talking points. So fucking what?
You spout much--yet say nothing.  Yet, you show dim promise.  Try reading. :)
 

>>6

I'm going to need a loooot more context if you want me to do something.  If referring to my original post (or addressing the conversation), what questions are raised?  I think you must be reffering to my writing  in >>4 .  And yes my thoughts are my own (albeit spurred by some of what I've been reading lately).

Basically, 'address which questions', and read exactly what?  Honest questions.

World government is gay like pistachio.

I think anyone who wants a world government does not realize how TOTALLY DIFFERENT people are.

>>8

Shut up, confederate!

World Government wins!　

PISTACHIOs WIN!

HAIL ILPALLAZO!

>>8

Lies, they are all the fucking same but won't admit it.

Gov't needs to scale with the population. City > State > Nation > World, with power becoming more diluted along the way.

>>1
>>3

That will always be the problem with a world government- culture.  Let's say every country is a "state," with its own population, culture, political issues, religious preference, and form of government.  It ultimately is governed by the world government, but still retains its individuality.  What makes this different from the world now?  Every country has its own individual views.

To establish a world view of humanitarism works fine until inevitable conflicts arise.  Like an older parent, the world government would step in the middle of a fight and seperate two powers, settling a dispute with equal terms, such as Israel and Palestine or India and Pakistan.  Both countries may be temporarily appeased, but still harbor aggression towards their neighbor, or disagree that a world government ruling has been "fair."

Too much individual freedom for each country works fine until natural conflicts emerge, and too much interference in these conflicts creates doting parent government that enforces its views of "right and wrong," which ultimately leads to a common morality or ethics, something that not everyone will agree with completely. 

The only result of such a government, one that treats its members as "equal," is rebellion.  Countries will secede, form larger bodies, and divide the political map into several scattered groups, or several large groups of five or six bodies, i.e. "political continents" . 

They will most likely get away with seceding as the "wiser, parenting" government would rather not risk casualty on their enemies, and allow the independent freedom that these seceding countries desire.  This creates further division as political bodies collapse, reform, merge, and divide. 

Look at the political map of Europe over the last six millenia.  Greece, Rome, the Ottomon Empire, Arabia, the Soviet Union.  Small countries become large nations, and collapse into small countries once again.  The same will happen in a world government.  The real change will not be in human behavior, but in national borders.  The map will need to be updated every decade, that is all.

There is one thing, and that is eliminating borders entirely, having only geographical boundaries present, while former nations govern themselves with capital cities that have no true physical boundary.  This would create sonar waves of culture, fiercely independent in their center, but merging with others as they come in contact in the middle of the land.  Cultural identity lessens over time, and is almost gone. 

The Earth is then divided in an accurate grid, with coordinates indicating location, much like longitude and latitude, until everyone refers to where they live as a grid coordinate, making borders of nations seem like an outdated concept.    

But then there are islands, and the identity that islands bring.  A melting pot may work in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa, but how can it work in the Philippenes, or Japan, or Australia?  How, when the people know they exist at one place alone, when they have a history they are deeply attached to, and a culture that naturally excludes those who are not born in that area?

Independent nations form, with their own identity, beliefs, ethics, and morals.  They do not agree with the world nation, and the world nation is still faced with the problem of rebelling/seceding states.  This will always continue.  Even if the government controls 98% of all countries, it will not control the entire Earth.

LOL SHOCK TROOPS IN POWAR ARMOR am i rite?

Concentrated power -> concentrated lobbying on behalf of interested parties -> concentrated control.

It would take either an unprecedented, and indeed impossible level of uniformity, or a very strong will for conflicts to be cooled and people to be suppressed. We would be faced with cooperation at the expense of individuality or oppression at the expense of free will.

Destiny Plan, indeed.

>>13
Sure all confederacies start out that way with the top of the heirarchy having the least power but the most authority. But almost always, power seeps up the heirarchy and we end up with a huge force and in the case of World Government, a force with noone to oppose them and noone for the power to oppose.

"tl;dr"

But I intend to read it. I'm just tired right now and I'm going to spew on concept and address everything else that's been said in this thread later.

But that's beside the point. I probably would've read it if I haven't gotten into this argument sixteen or seventeen times before and it all basically comes down to the fact that giant governments rulling lots and lots of people tend to be less efficient than smaller governments rulling not as many people, and at the moment this planet is far too different to be able to take care of everyone's needs democratically (And it's probably going to stay that way for at least another 500 years) so any world government would have to be the result of an external threat (z o m g aliums) or possibly a new religion.

That or somehow someone got control of all the nukes.

World Government is a bad idea.   I will never trust any organization wholeheartedly.  What I like most about the world right now, is that if you don't like the way things are where you live, or if you are persecuted somehow, you can flee somewhere else, to land under someone else's control. 

Even if you do everything right, and make it a utopia where everyone is represented well, and where the good of all is looked out for, how will you account for time?  At first it could all be daisies and roses (Though I'd doubt it'd even work at first), but what's to say that they don't eventually decay to hell?  You'd have the world under one power's control, and there would be no escape from them.

>>15
Can always be taken by my seven nine. ;Þ

>>1
North American Union FTW!

The bigger the government gets, the more evil it becomes, and the more disenfranchised you get as a citizen, and the more you become a number and a victim instead of an actual citizen.  A world government will be the most evil thing to ever happen to Humanity.  Anyone who thinks that such a government is desirable is literally the most delusional person on Earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeboqg4t9vs

Good end.

a NWO will mark he end of free humanity.
Those who believe it will be managed fairly are deeply deluded.