Debate: One World Government - Advantages and Disadvantages
Often future based stories, movies and tv shows show the idealistic benefits of a single world government. The Federation in Star Trek is a perfect example of this. Rarely if ever do they discuss how the actual transition occurred as well and the assumed debates (or worse) that had to have taken place. Instead they just seem to magically have the structure in place with some form of benevolent leadership.
First I want to state that I personally don't have direct answers for this, but I can see some of the pro's and con's of such a One World Government. While I know this is a deeply passionate issue for many of you here, please keep your comments on point and no berating other users for their thoughts here.
Some of what I'm listing below are from my own thoughts, perceptions and concerns. Others are points I've heard in offline discussions or while searching these ideas on the internet. I don't expect us to come to a community decision on this, merely a good discussion for many of us to have.
Regardless of what the future of our world holds for us, the ability to communicate, especially with those holding opposing (subjective) viewpoints, is no doubt a requirement.
Advantages of a One World Government:
- Ability to deal with horrendous acts where the United Nations is typically to slow or completely unable (due to lack of consensus) to get things done.
- Increased efficiency of doing business with standardized regulations and compliance standards.
*Minimizing conflict over territorial disputes (assuming all land would be under this single control.) - No Lasting Wars
- Combined Technologies
- Accelerated Space Program
- Standardized environmental laws.
- Standardized judicial laws (at least the high level ones, since I'd assume that there would still be regional or municipal laws made and enforced.)
- Ease and increased speed to build up third world countries (can also be a negative incorporated into loss of cultural identities listed below.)
- Open travel/migration
Disadvantages of a One World Government:
- Homogenization of human language and/or culture and loss of individual cultural identities
- An even further separation of understanding between those in power and the 'everyday people' in many distinct societies
- Lack of keeping corruption and similar issues 'in check.' (i.e. If the One World Government is being led poorly, there's nothing on the same scale to counter it.) This could also lead to increased splinter/rebellious groups and conflicts.
- Ease of framing 'how the world is' on the perception of the general population, making it easier to sway people with propaganda and minimizing countering views.
- Sometimes universality is fair, and sometimes not. If you think of this in terms of risk tolerance though, it is far less potentially catastrophic to distribute government-related responsibilities to smaller states. If city X is badly governed, the poor decision-making is less likely to affect city Y or even country Z.
- General fear/distrust of a one world government.
Additional Reading/Views:
Pro's and Con's of a One World Government
World Government Debate
Should We Have a One World Government Debate
Should We Move Towards a One World Government Debate
Pros/Cons of OWG
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I've been working for 10 years on how to divide the government up into units of 4-16 people. Perhaps a hundred million governments and you might belong to a dozen of them, give or take, at different times in your life.
This would be interesting. I believe both in business and in military those are the group sizes typically ideal for communication and management.
I like that idea of belonging to multiple 'governments'...similar to social groups. Hrmm. Do you see these 'government groups' communicating with each other directly or would the cross membership of individuals somewhat handle that information sharing. Assuming even that is what you had in mind...I tend to picture the communicating in some way.
Yeah, that's exactly the point. The cross communication between interest groups who govern themselves creates a service corridor between providers and clients. You might be connected to the hospital in several ways, your group at the electric grid maintenance has a treaty with them to provide medical care, the interest group at the farmers market trades food for prescription services, etc.
To prevent collusion, like if all the restaurant owners in town form their own government and vote themselves a big price hike, they are also individually members of the apartment building, bowling group, college board, or volunteer fire department who will flag their restaurant group (I used to call it boycott until i joined steemit) into better behavior.
We couldn't really do this effectively before computers and the internet, but now affiliation groups can flow and change, merge and divide, while members pass into and out of them at will. Everything negotiated on the blockchain.
I'm going to write it up in my story line fairly soon, I have to put in some more background first.
I definitely like where this is going. I can't wait to see how you envision this in your story!
I've been calling a similar concept in my head "intertribes" for the way they resemble Venn diagrams interpenetrating each other, and thinking about simulations to see how much overlap would be needed to keep them from segregating the way current tribes always seem to.
Great term. I think of them as "tribes" in my head too, modeled after the various circumpolar tribespeople who establish recurring familial connections to loosely ink their separated tribes (BTW, apparently this has happened so much over millennia that the locii of the Saami, the Siberians and the Northern Plains tribes are all noticeably genetically inter-related to this day. Some of the traditions and tools show this (pentatonic music, beaded artwork, tipi construction, etc)).
As for interrelation, I agree with @sycochica that the military has worked out a lot of this already, they may even have some open data available. I've been working within a concept of complete integration by "six degrees of separation" type links (requiring multidimensional venn diagrams). I may not be in your housing affiliation group since you own a home and I'm in an apartment co-op, but since I am in a housing affiliation group, I am probably connected to you by yard care groups and/or insurance groups and/or roof repair groups, etc.
One of the papers in this colloquium lays out how complete integration (at least of a spatial kind, the way we think of real estate markets) is kind of impossible as long as the individual agents show any preferences for their own tribes. Even small preferences will lead to segregation over time. In other words, if individual agents are unwilling to be completely surrounded by people not of their own tribe, then segregation is inevitable, unless there are also larger disturbances that re-mix the system.
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl_3#ColloquiumPaper
Great resource, I'll have to take some time to go through it all, I didn't see the one you're referring to yet. I was immediately struck by this one though
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl_3/7257.full
Which claims that entities composed of active agents can be considered active agents themselves.
If I remember which one it was I'll post a direct link.
A quick search also shows that business has accumulated a lot of data and research on the topic
Great topic and definitely pertinent to many of the challenges we face as a species today.
I think that its obvious that if humanity wishes to make it to the next "step", we need to eventually come together. I don't think the division of people by imaginary lines is serving us as a whole anymore (if it ever was).
One of the problems I see with a world government is that a centralized government is intrinsically a violation of individuals as it assumes ownership over individuals. They are also easily corrupted.
I think the brightest future may hold a united world with a decentralized governmental system of some sorts where each person is sovereign (unless they choose not to be). I am not exactly sure how this would work, or what it would exactly look like. I feel like people must be free and in complete ownership of themselves in order for us to reach our highest potential. At the same time people will need an effective and efficient way to cooperate with each other.
I tend to feel the same way about nationalism...i.e. the imaginary lines. I also see that same 'violation of individuals' being the case whether it's national or a world government...hence the need to something else.
I like the idea of each person being sovereign or choosing to buy in to some group system they align with. While it's not a 'dealbreaker of sorts,' when each person is sovereign, I have problems thinking of a way to prevent/solve conflicts beyond the age old 'might makes right' side of things. At least in the group sense, we'd be buying into to some set of rules that we would agree to agree on, and I'd assume some sort of repercussions (i.e. being kicked out) if they weren't adhered to. I'm not trying to argue your points here, merely where I hit a wall myself right now.
Short of 'trusting' everyone in the world to have that complete ownership (and hence responsibility) for themselves, I'd suspect some mechanism would have to deal with aggressive violence, theft, etc. since I'd see that becoming the norm, would drive many people to join a group out of fear/security needs. Idk, I'm just kinda thinking outloud at this point.
I've toyed with the idea of quasi-decentralized patterns for this for a while, where there are the larger groups with their smaller offshoots, but at least hold to some core, agreed upon concepts (like murder outside self defense is bad as a cheesy example) but then the smaller groups could have their differing 'local agreements' like whether marijuana was allowed or not (again just a cheesy example.)
You make some valid points. I think one way these will be addressed is through the advancement of technology. If we can get to a place were robots and computers (AI) can take care of most menial tasks, and energy is renewable and abundant (free), we will not have the perceived scarcity and fear of meeting our needs. We will be able to get rid of money and everyone will have necessities and even physical wants available to them for free. I believe this will dissolve a majority of the crime and even unethical behaviour in society. At this point it will be easy for people to freely agree that they are all better off if they work together and at the same time respect each others freedom.
Because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, a one world government is a diabolical idea. Peace?! I think not. False flags and terrorism can always be fomented.....enemies are just too convenient. Recognition of the fact that where power is concerned, humans are only as strong as our weakest link...the insane, psychopathic, greedy will always subvert any centralised power eventually. Until such time that we can utilise networking technologies like blockchains to organise ourselves more effectively, best keep it all as local and accountable as possible.
@skyochica, I am not sure whether it is Logan's Run or Terminator but neither is appealing! Humans cannot resist taking the undeserved extra scoop.
There may be another, not wishing to hijack yours, but another argument about whether it is an inevitability that in the fullness of time, whether it be 1,000 or 10,000 years that this is the unavoidable culmination of human existence upon this frail planet. Resources will compel it so.
You're fine. I wasn't necessarily putting forth a specific solution here, just looking to hear thoughts of others in this area.
I do agree that the limits of our resources could drive to something, whether that be centralized or the push to keep the individual nations/societies/or whatever form a group would take. However with the new research and potential profits available with asteroid (and moon) mining this pressure might get extended, maybe indefinitely.
It'll be interesting to see how it ends change (or not) as time goes on.
Nothing good comes from power centralization
I agree, centralized governments are inherently a violation of individuals. I think the next step requires us moving to a kind of decentralized government system.
"Ease of framing 'how the world is' on the perception of the general population, making it easier to sway people with propaganda and minimizing countering views."
Lack of diversity in governance means bad governance propagates unchecked and experimentations with better governance are stifled. Same issues with any monopoly, just much more insidious when the power of government is at stake.
Imagine if that one world government was Hitler's Nazi Germany?
It is Hitler's Nazi dream
Very true and that's definitely a real concern that I personally had in mind. I'm never comfortable simply believing we have benevolent governance. It can be easy to use 'controlled media' and other propaganda to paint the picture the rulers want versus what's really going on. This would be the same concern whether this was a dictatorship or a democracy, they just use slightly different tools to achieve their goals.
Yeah and even if one, two, three, or n administrations of a government are "benevolent," it's guaranteed that at some point some group will take over that's violent, repressive, or destructive in some other way. One monopoly government means no choice and you're stuck with the good, the bad, the incompetent, etc.
A One World Corporate Government is inevitable. The IMF will be the only bank, and will produce IMF sdr backed blockchain based One World currency which will be stored in RF chip wallets instead of smaller banks. Corporations and sub corporations will merge into one single corporation which will control everything, from Military to agriculture. There will be no private property, although the Corporation will be controlled by a chosen few families with genetic relations among themselves, the descendants of the Pharaohs.
One government means less government, sounds like a good idea to me
Not necessarily...
I thought the pic looks familiar. I am a on and off star trek fan.
Hehe, yep. Totally the federation flag from star trek. I needed one with the right license, luckily that one was on Wikipedia :)
Your TIL for your next post?
https://www.kli.org/about-klingon/klingon-phrases/
That's pretty awesome! I laughed at the "your mother has a smooth forehead " insult in that list.
I have long thought the ideal of a single planetary government is an excellent thing for humanity to strive for. Long term, I think it's essential for the survival of the human race in order to maximize efficient utilization of Earth's resources as we expand into space. But I'm rather cynical about human nature. It will probably take some external existential threat of an extreme nature (such as the aliens of Independence Day) to force our squabbling species to finally set aside its differences and unite. I really don't see it happening in my lifetime, or my daughter's lifetime.
There have been some encouraging signs. The European Union is a grand experiment that shows how a planetary system of government might evolve. Although as we can already see, base human nature is starting to assert itself and I'm skeptical the experiment will survive.
I would argue this is not a necessary consequence of a world government. The United States gets on very well as a collection of semi-autonomous states, with quite widely varying local customs & identities. Someone from the South is very different from a New Yorker or a resident of California, but they all identify as Americans. Of course, it gets harder to keep such a union together as the scale of it increases, and the variety of cultural differences grows, as the EU has proven. Fundamentally the concept remains the same, but the devil is in the details, as they say.
My current thoughts aren't far off from this. While on the one hand the potential benefits of 'things being pulled together' with the other having the 'human nature' and tendency for corruption/collusion/etc. I can't get myself to simply 'trust' in such bodies...at best I can trust individuals that (I think) I know personally vs the facade they present in media.
It's a good description of the US being semi-autonomous states. Personally I see that nicer medium with states having the ability to cater to more specific groups, which they somewhat already do...marijuana being a current case in point, even though federally there still is a blanket ban. It's interesting making that comparison with the EU, where even though a part of that group, I'd assume most people there identify as their nationality (French, English, German, etc.) versus being European.
But like you said, the devil is definitely always in the details.
That's the main challenge the EU has, getting people to identify as European. As the nation states of the EU existed long before the EU itself, people there naturally identify as their nationality, whereas in the US you identify as American first. The great advantage of the US is it was designed from the ground up for that integrated system of government, instead of having to change existing systems later on. Also there's no escape hatch in US law for states to leave the union. Having, say, California secede and become its own country would be unthinkable (no matter how much the west coast states hated to see Trump win).
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