Your Views on a world Government

[Starhawk]

Yep Because Europe is smaller then Asia so they didn't have a lot of their own "continentals" to kick the sh!t out of

Sorry I know that was probobly immature but hey

Well a major reason Europeans dominated was that most of them figured they had 'The RIGHT" to dominate and thus went out and did it with their advanced technology and rutheless determination.

You have to give Europeans one thing to their credit as an entire "continent" of people, when they become determined to conquer someone they usually do it.

[TerranC]

Imperator Fyron said:
Europeans did plenty of raping and pillaging around the world before the industrial revolution started...

What does that have to do with what I wrote? Yef made a statement about (western) Europeans dominating (I assume militarily, culturally, and economically) the world over all others, not raping and pillaging and assimilating and other acts of suppression and destruction linked to colonialism persued by few nations.

[Fyron]

TerranC said:

What does that have to do with what I wrote? Yef made a statement about (western) Europeans dominating (I assume militarily, culturally, and economically) the world over all others, not raping and pillaging and assimilating and other acts of suppression and destruction linked to colonialism persued by few nations.

Colonialism was running rampant long before the industrial revolution. That process merely increased the scale of it, along with nearly everything else.

[Fyron]

Starhawk said:
Well a major reason Europeans dominated was that most of them figured they had 'The RIGHT" to dominate and thus went out and did it with their advanced technology and rutheless determination.

Except that their technology was often vastly inferior to other greater powers in the world for a long time. Their "advanced technology" was mostly hogwash and did not provide much of a tactical advantage, especially as it relates to weapons technologies (other than ship cannons and naval bombardment, but that doesn't go very far for most of the places they went). For centuries, the firearms they used were not very effective. Sure, they could down the first wave of the enemy, but the rest will be at them long before they can reload... why do you think conquistadors always had steal breastplates and swords? As an example, the only way that Cortez and gang were able to defeat the Aztecs was by allying with a large number of other native tribes that hated the Aztecs, combined with very poor judgement on the part of the then ruler of the Aztecs... Their "superior technology" wasn't of too much use to them.

Also, European naval technologies were dwarfed by those of the Chinese, who had ships that made European vessels look like gnats centuries in advance. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their arrogance caused them to allow their once mighty fleets to fall into disrepair, and they gave up on naval prowess a bit before Portugese and Spanish explorers reached the Indian Ocean...

[Starhawk]

Heh yeah if the Portugese had reached the region just a little earlier then history may have turned out very different, imagine if China decided to use it's fleet for war against Europe back then?

Interesting thing about the Spanish tactics was that they paired a Gunner off with a sworsdman, the gunners would fire and their partners would protect them till they reloaded. Interesting if you ask me.

I was referring mainly to Colonial era tech but I suppose yur right for centuries the Europeans just won out on guts and superior tactics I guess (as well as making allies with one tribe to crush another or one nation to crush another)

[Fyron]

Europe was a piss poor area back then, and China wouldn't have cared less about it. It was too far away to conquer or to make practical its incorporation into the tribute system...

[Starhawk]

Jeeze Fyron it was a "what if" question lol not a "why not"

[geoschmo]

My understanding is that the Chinese hadn't really developed the techniques for deep water (Out of sight of land) navigation. At the time really only the Porteguese had, and later the Spanish and English. The Chinese may have been much stronger militarily, but it would have been extremely difficult to conduct a war by sea against Europe by hugging the coastline around India and Africa. If they had a mind to do it, it would probably have been easier just to march over land like the Mongols did centuries before.

[Grandpa Kim]

What are your views on a Unified World Government?

Good idea but we are not ready for it. At one time I thought we were moving in that direction then along came the breakup of the soviet bloc and now we have far more nations now then 30 years ago. Not to mention separtists all over the world: French Canadians and Basques come to mind.

What would be required to create it?

A willingness to legislate only the essentials... and that is where we are unready.

What would be the benefits?

These have been pointed out by others and are both obvious and vague.

What are the cons?

To many Groups/individuals trying to get there pet peeve passed into law even though 99% of the world does not want it. IE: mandatory state religion, polygamy illegal.

Which nations do you think should be dominant in it's creation?

Are you kidding me?? If any group of nations dominates the creation, I will have nothing to do with it!! Any group will have its own agenda. It will benefit themselves only, not me, not even the citizens of their own countries!

[dogscoff]

Vote anarchy! (It's better than no government at all!)

Seriously, as long as there is power, there will be someone willing to abuse that power. IMHO power needs to be held locally, where it can be applied with an understanding of the local situation, and where corrupt/ misguided leaders can only inflict a limited amount of damage.

I think with the internet, and with whatever comes after the internet (IE very portable, highly (and automatically) configurable, permanently connected and seamless devices/ applications that are almost as much a part of a person as their arms or legs or teeth) we can expect power to become more and more distributed, and that will be a good thing.

The kind of thing we are seeing now with the music industry will eventually happen to politics: In other words, politics (or at least, politicians) will cease to become relevant. The music industry is currently losing a grip on the market because the people it held in its hands- namely artists and music lovers- have found the technology to slip between the industry's fingers and are in the process of making the massive, lumbering, centralised structure of the industry utterly irrelevant. Imagine a giant trying to catch grains of sand in a sand-storm. Government will go the same way. Through technology, people will gradually get the power to slip between the fingers of government and administer their own lives. This will mean a lot of law-breaking, probably a lot of totalitarian clamp-downs and riots and shootings as government desperately tries to cling on to the power it once had (think RIAA suing individual file-sharers and bullying governments into passing IP laws for its benefit) but in the end there's nothing they can do.

Obviously all this is very abstract, and it makes it no easier to imagine just how you could run an army or a health service or benefits system or taxation in such a distributed fashion, but I believe people will find ways, and that will be the future. Hell, it worked for the Borg. It won't be world government, it will be self-government on a global scale, and it will be a damn sight better than what we have now. Sadly, it probably won't happen in our lifetimes.

0.02