Your Views on a world Government

[Aiken]

As many of you, I'm an opponent of world government idea.
But on a second thought I came to idea that our judgements are way too banal: global state = very big USA/China/EU/whatever -> despotic methods = bad.
I thought about different things, though.

For example, my science work is dedicated to "automatization" of urban economics. Together with vast of other projects it might lead to humanless expert system of local administration guided via declaration of will of citizens (electronically). Such autonomous cells could be united into state-scale grid, and then (theoretically) into world-wide grid. So finally we will have global "government" which rule world economy in a most effective and rational way. All this is possible from scientifical point of view.
You'll ask, "What about politicians and such?" Well, they'll be obsolete. Several millions of controllers over the world will be enough to check and maintain such system.
Want success stories? Internet grew up the very similar way - local nodes united to local networks and then LANs formed global network.
You'll say, "I won't trust computers to manage my life!". Well we do it already. We trust computers to make cars, electronics, and other computers. We trust them to pilot airplanes and cars. We trust them to manage enterprise resources (ERM systems and most of middleware). They're not smart enough to make some complex decisions yet, but I think it's a matter of time. You don't really need true AI, just very good algorithms and very good mathematical models.

I agree that such future looks quite joyless, but I think it's possible. And probably in our lifetime.

About Russia as the leader of world integration:
As Russian I can say for sure, that our society is turning into typical police state (ala Pinochet's Chili), which has nothing common with communism or socialism. Of course our Soviet past has huge influence still, but it's a matter of methods, not ideas. Ex: local elections are limited (you can't elect Governor or city Major anymore); our parliament will be reduced to minimum, freedom of national referendum is limited (in fact, it should be approved (sic!) in Moscow!!). Combined with ruined economy and science, this negates any chances for Russia to be a leader of world integration.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

An AI government would not make human error; however, it would make computer error; that is, misunderstanding of human nature. To solve this, humans would have to correct AI descisions. As one or the other would have to be in overall charge, this once again leads to problems of lack of choices.

[Jack Simth]

One problem with a computer run society is that, eventually, a successful cracker will come along and change things to his/her liking (and/or ruin the lives of others). Or do you truly believe someone will invent the perfect computer program? Especially when SOMEBODY has to have access to the hardware?

In a hogepodge (many different reasonably independant nations, many different reasonably independant systems) if something goes horribly, horribly wrong with one government, or one form of government, people can escape to the others (well, unless one "succeeds" in nuking everything, or similar), which can cause the collapse of the form that went horribly wrong (not necessarily directly - if a refugee starts a war that ends the regime (s)he fled, that indirectly caused the collapse (for loose definitions of collapse)); even if push comes to shove, in a hogepodge, things are recoverable even with extremely high levels of corruption.

A fully encompassing government, however, doesn't have a repair mechanisim that can operate on that level. Of necessity, a fully encompasing government needs to be held to a much, much higher standard - to the point of true perfection; which isn't really possible in something run by humans as they are, or as they will be within the foreseeable future.

[deccan]

Jack Simth said:
... (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?

Isn't this somewhat contradictory? I mean presumably the so-called checks and balances will require some sort of overwhelming majority to make big changes, so in order to make a government care only about a particular person or group, a sizable majority of people not in the favoured group must also somehow be persuaded that favoring this particular group is somehow good.

And of course, this is already the case in modern industrial economies. In France, for example, the majority of the population put up with higher taxes and higher food prices in order to maintain subsidies for farmers at least partly because they agree that it is part of France's national identity that the so-called "produits du terroir" be accorded a privileged and honored position and that having a France with no sweeping farmlands would just not feel like France.

And note: this is not a bad thing. It's simply what the French people want, and the government gives it to them.

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

[deccan]

Jack Simth said:
... people can escape to the others (well, unless one "succeeds" in nuking everything, or similar), which can cause the collapse of the form that went horribly wrong (not necessarily directly - if a refugee starts a war that ends the regime (s)he fled, that indirectly caused the collapse (for loose definitions of collapse)); even if push comes to shove, in a hogepodge, things are recoverable even with extremely high levels of corruption.

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.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

But, before you start a revolt, you must start a volt!

[Rasorow]

Jack Simth said:

There's a reason I used "government" rather than "ruler", "leader", "president" et cetera. The US president can be removed without assasination precisely because he is a portion of the government, rather than the government itself. Sure, he is capable of doing a lot of evil stuff - nuking half the planet, for instance - without consent of the rest of the government; even if he had the full support of the entire US government, the average joe could still in practice run away from laws that were truely evil (such as mandatory lobotomies for everyone (except those closely related to a government official) with an IQ over 90) as the US does not hold sway over the whole planet.

Sure; of course, checks and balances occasionally break down. Take, for example (a fairly extereme one), Hitler's rise to power. Post WWI Germany was handed a constitution as part of the WWI cleanup (I'm simplifying a lot here). They got an elected body with specific, limited powers, modeled after the British and US system. Their constitution gaurunteed certain rights, which could only be supressed in an emergency by at least a two-thirds majority vote of the elected body with at least two-thirds of that body present. The body was a party-election setup, similar to the British system; that is, the party with X% of the popular vote got X% of the seats.
Then Hitler came along. He was popular; he managed to get something like 45% of the popular vote for his party. Then, one day, it came about that all of his people were present, and enough of the other representatives were gone that there were just barely enough there to qualify for an emergency rights supression vote. Interestingly enough, two-thirds of two-thirds is four-ninths; which is 44%. The vote went along party lines and Hitler was handed the full reins of Germany, with full permission to do whatever he liked.

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

[Yef]

The world today resembles classical Greece's city-states, on a diferent scale.
They never managed to create a single Greek state. They had quite a few leagues, some very succesful, but unification was only achieved when the Macedonian Falanxes decided to march south. Short lived unification, by the way.


Then a there is the other matter.
Unification tend to slow down progress due to the lack of competivity. The hellenistic kingdoms, the succesors to Alex's Empire, achieved more during the 2 centuries of rivalry between them than after the Roman unified them by conquest.

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.)

[Rasorow]

ok, I disagree with about everyone..

Below are my opinions, I will happily elaborate if asked but will state them briefly here...

1. A world government is a desirable thing.
2. The world governments discussed here are not what a world government would look like. A world government would not be a handful of politicians nor companies, running the world. It would be more outside the box.
3. The human race is not currently evolved enough to work with a world government
4. The human race will never evolve enough as long as humans value money over fulfillment.

I'll stop here.

Rasorow

[Jack Simth]

deccan said:

Isn't this somewhat contradictory? I mean presumably the so-called checks and balances will require some sort of overwhelming majority to make big changes, so in order to make a government care only about a particular person or group, a sizable majority of people not in the favoured group must also somehow be persuaded that favoring this particular group is somehow good.

Not necessarily. In the Democracy variants that you seem to believe are inherently implied in a good system, they merely need to be convinced that the particular bill that warps things is a Good Idea. You don't even need to do that much, really; fraudulent votes or corrupt/misguided representatives could also serve the same purpose.

However, democracy variants are not the only forms of government that have been suggested in this thread.