Your Views on a world Government

[Jack Simth]

Rasorow said:
Without getting into it, there was a lot going on with Hitler.. the basis being the allied powers failed to ensure a prosperous German nation where Hitler would not have been able to succeed as easily as he did or as completely. The fact is the allies created a situation in Germany and then allowed it to deteriate to the point that if Hitler hadn't come along someone like him would have.

Rasorow

Yes, Hitler did take advantage of a very bad situation. Of course, most the world ended up in a bit of a depression around that time. Germany was simply worst & first (due greatly to post WWI "cleanup" measures, true). And note that you mention that the allies "allowed it to deteriorate". Your statement implies the hodgepoge. But do you really believe that a setup could be made with humans as they are that could meet the three criteria I listed earlier (summary: good, long-term stable, immune to upset due to extraordinary people/Groups being malicious/greedy/very stupid/whatever). A very bad situation could theoretically be engeneered by such a group/person if they decided it was in their best interests.

[Jack Simth]

deccan said:
What's wrong with starting a revolt when you're still in the country? After all, there's no reason why revolts must start outside the country in question.

Actually, there is; a historical one: virtually no attempted revolt in a modernized country has ever succeeded without outside support, save for when the failure of the state took the form of negligence of the people and random bad stuff rather than deliberate oppression.

[Jack Simth]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
But, before you start a revolt, you must start a volt!

Shouldn't molting be in there somewhere? Or is that for the birds?

[Jack Simth]

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

Check through StarHawk's Posts.

[Makinus]

a good form of government would be a Dual-Monarchy/Dual-House state: 2 Kings/Queens, a Senate and a Deputy Chamber

The Kings/Queens are not hereditary, but choosen randomly by computer from all citizens that: 1) Are old enough, 2) Don�t have mental diseases or inbalances in judgement, 3) Don�t have any criminal record; 4) Never exerced or disputed any elective function in government. The computers would select several candidates that would be presented to the Deputy Chamber, that will chose one among them to be the new King/Queen.

The executive government would be exerced by the Kings/Queens in alternate ways: 1 king is chief executive for 5 years, then the other one assumes for more 5 years, then the first one govern again and so on...

The Senate, with a a two-thirds majority, can retire one of the kings/queens and start the (random) process of selecting another king/queen, the king/queen also retire obligatorily at reaching the age of 75.

All laws must be proposed either by the Senate or by the Deputy Chamber and must be aproved by simple majority in both houses. The Kings cannot propose laws but can veto any law proposed, the veto can be nullified by a two-thirds majority vote in both Senate and deputy chamber.

Both kings have a fixated salary based in a percentual of the global taxes that can never be modified by the Senate, Deputy Chamber or by the Kings themselves.

more to come...

[spoon]

Jack Simth said:
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?

A. Currently, no. Sometime in the future? Maybe. I'm not overly optimistic on this. Still, I think it is something to be strived for.
B. No. "Virtually" impossible condition. But I believe a world government would do more good than harm, and would be better than the current state of affairs.
C. No. But that is true of every system of government, and a new government designed with that threat in mind might be better than what we have now...

[Makinus]

A, another requisite to be chosen for King/Queen: to have a minimun education (High College at least)

[Gandalf Parker]

As far as Im concerned the pros and cons of a world government arent much different than any other government. All forms of government run into problems trying to cover a large area. The closest we will come for a long time will be an over-seeing body over the many governments. The UN is fairly close and about as efficient as any other effort (such as the Internet which is along the same principle)

[TerranC]

Yef said:
As another example, the success of Western Europe, that from the "dark ages" went all the way to an almost 5 centuries long global domination, was fueled because no single power managed to unify Europe after the fall of Rome, while in every other area in the world empires raised one after another, with just relatively brief periods of political fragmentation (ie: China, Middle East, etc.)

5 centuries of global domination? Correct me if I'm wrong, but true dominance of world trade by western european nations only began after the industrial revolution; the age of sail started only after it became necessary to find new routes towards India and China, as Portugal and Spain searched for new ways to bypass muslim states which held in their control land routes to western africa and asia; not because Portugal simply wished to outdo Spain, England, France, and others.

Also, even though politically Europe was fragmented, one could say that it was unified under christianity; not even entire states could resist the will of the church, and of the pope, until protestantism came about. Western Europe was also spared by, I would say, sheer luck; the bubonic plague hitting europe when it was having an economic slump, the moors being turned away by simple rumors concerning the non-existant massive frankish army, the turnaround by the mongolian hoard just before they reached present-day Germany, et cetera.

As for the percieved unity of China and the Arabic world, there has been many times when the dynasties of both regions fell apart and were replaced by warring states; the only difference between them and Europe being that the two worlds never fell into a dark age.

[Fyron]

Europeans did plenty of raping and pillaging around the world before the industrial revolution started...