One world One Nation

[Zolar V]

One World One Nation.

 

What do you think? discus all the intricacies of such an idea. The economics, politics, world population mortality rate, education and ignorance.

 

I want to hear all your thoughts about every single facet of the concept.

[lemur]

If it was the US, the houses of congress would be much bigger and beyond that I don't know what would really change. Maybe there would be more terrorism without homeland security - not sure.

[Mr Skeptic]

If you think current bureaucracies are bad, wait til you see an even bigger one, and one which has no competitors either. But at least it should put an end to official wars, and only leave terrorism and crime.

[Zolar V]

If you think current bureaucracies are bad, wait til you see an even bigger one, and one which has no competitors either. But at least it should put an end to official wars, and only leave terrorism and crime.

 

I had a similar thought, but then i thought that if we institute localized government we could alleviate much of the corruption. Localized government would be akin to a 3 or more part setup similar to America; that being Country government, State government, and lastly town government. You might even want to scale it larger; country, state, county, city, and town. But of course the corruption would scale in magnitude due to the nature of corruption and government itself.

 

Would terrorism really still be a problem? In how many years will country V. country terrorism subside?

What reasons would it subside or what reasons would it not subside.

[Marat]

The problem of cultural, moral, and institutional relativism would prove intractable. Just to take one example, how would you design criminal law for a single world jurisdiction? If a female atheist who rejected Sharia law committed adultery in partnership with the husband of an Islamic marriage governed by Sharia law, would the female adulterer be subject to no criminal penalties whatsoever, as modern Western legal systems would insist, or should she be stoned to death, as the aggrieved wife of the Islamic marriage would demand? Similar irreconcilable differences arising from different cultural value systems would arise over female circumcision, blasphemy against Allah or Mohammed, theocratic or democratic governance, the legality of chewing cocaine leaves, etc.

[Zolar V]

The problem of cultural, moral, and institutional relativism would prove intractable. Just to take one example, how would you design criminal law for a single world jurisdiction? If a female atheist who rejected Sharia law committed adultery in partnership with the husband of an Islamic marriage governed by Sharia law, would the female adulterer be subject to no criminal penalties whatsoever, as modern Western legal systems would insist, or should she be stoned to death, as the aggrieved wife of the Islamic marriage would demand? Similar irreconcilable differences arising from different cultural value systems would arise over female circumcision, blasphemy against Allah or Mohammed, theocratic or democratic governance, the legality of chewing cocaine leaves, etc.

 

Though your questions are well supported, they are in fact very near sighted. Each and every one of these questions has a very simplistic answer, the answer derived from the nature of the system of government itself.

Lets say the world government is instituted in this fashion:

>World Government- Controls the world answers to ()

>State Government- Controls a Region that is defined by the World Govt, Answers to World Govt

>County Government- Controls a moderate region defined by the state, answers to state.

>City Government- Controls a small region defined by the county, answers to the county.

>Town Government- Controls a very small region defined by the city/county- answers to city/county

 

You have local law enforcement and laws set up by the powers in a ascending manner to County/State and a descending manner from World to State/County.

Within the state and county laws are the result of local culture and are enforced likewise.

All of your questions would be answered by this type of governmental system

 

__________

I hate it when formatting takes away my spaces and tabs >

__________

[divagreen]

Though your questions are well supported, they are in fact very near sighted. Each and every one of these questions has a very simplistic answer, the answer derived from the nature of the system of government itself.

Lets say the world government is instituted in this fashion:

>World Government- Controls the world answers to ()

>State Government- Controls a Region that is defined by the World Govt, Answers to World Govt

>County Government- Controls a moderate region defined by the state, answers to state.

>City Government- Controls a small region defined by the county, answers to the county.

>Town Government- Controls a very small region defined by the city/county- answers to city/county

 

You have local law enforcement and laws set up by the powers in a ascending manner to County/State and a descending manner from World to State/County.

Within the state and county laws are the result of local culture and are enforced likewise.

All of your questions would be answered by this type of governmental system

 

__________

I hate it when formatting takes away my spaces and tabs >

__________

 

Question...are you proposing a decentralized governmental system that falls under global law with regards to an agreed upon terms of human rights?

 

I might be able to get behind that...

 

My first thought is how would the economics work since there is such a variance upon cultural financial accruement.

Edited September 16, 2010 by divagreen

[ewmon]

A one-nation world could have some advantages, but the disadvantages would include lack of competitiveness, comparison, experimentation (all of these in a social/national sense) and lack of alternative governance that people can immigrate to. For example, in a one-nation world governance, after (or while) surviving the Great Depression, we'd have no way of judging the effectiveness of our governance because of nothing else for comparison. We currently enjoy about 200 varieties of sovereign governance. We can look around and see how various nations govern themselves, and we can form new, unique combinations of governance.

 

Also, because the entire world would depend on a one-nation governance, improvements to it might grind to a halt for fear of ruining the whole world instead of one small corner of it.

 

Another facet, is the form of governance itself. Would majority rule? If so, many minorities would loose their say in governing themselves. So, instead of majority rules, it's 2/3's or 3/4's. How could a government get most of the world to agree to any kind of global governance?

 

Finally, it's not clear to me at all what benefits would derive from a one-nation governance. Perhaps a bigger feeling of being "one big happy family", but that's about it.

 

Keep in mind that people agree to submit themselves to be ruled by their government. I think it would be rather cumbersome and horribly inefficient for a government to be all things to all people.

Edited September 16, 2010 by ewmon

[lemur]

Would terrorism really still be a problem? In how many years will country V. country terrorism subside?

What reasons would it subside or what reasons would it not subside.

If there was no plurality of nations, separatist movements would probably be discouraged from fighting for independence. However, they might still want status as a separate state/province. If this was not granted, they would probably operate underground and engage in mafia-type vigilantism to achieve goals. They might band together to fight against the one-world regime the way the rebel alliance fought against the empire to overthrow Darth Vader and liberate the ewoks. It really depends on how well democracy functions and what people's interests are in separatist nationalism. If sufficient cultural freedom was respected within a global republic, what need would there be for separate nationhood and autonomous sovereignty?

 

 

 

The problem of cultural, moral, and institutional relativism would prove intractable. Just to take one example, how would you design criminal law for a single world jurisdiction? If a female atheist who rejected Sharia law committed adultery in partnership with the husband of an Islamic marriage governed by Sharia law, would the female adulterer be subject to no criminal penalties whatsoever, as modern Western legal systems would insist, or should she be stoned to death, as the aggrieved wife of the Islamic marriage would demand? Similar irreconcilable differences arising from different cultural value systems would arise over female circumcision, blasphemy against Allah or Mohammed, theocratic or democratic governance, the legality of chewing cocaine leaves, etc.

State governments would probably be allowed to make whatever laws on adultery their constituents would support. Then it would be up to the state government whether it would issue a warrant for the female adulterer if she entered into their jurisdiction. Death by stoning might be replaced with lethal injection if it was deemed cruel and unusual. Female circumcision would probably be regulated by state legislation, I'm guessing. Theocratic governance would be formally forbidden by church-state separation but theology would probably strongly influence secular legislation, as it always has. I don't think the FDA would make special allowances for cocaine leaves or anything else on the basis of culture, unless some general exemption procedure could be defined.

 

 

 

[Marat]

The problem with having a federal system of different component jurisdictions as a way to solve the problems of dissonant values within one world government is that this solution undermines the strength of the hypothesis in the process of saving it. Obviously a world government is much less a world government if it is subdivided into more or less autonomous regional governments, since if these local governments had to be very autonomous to address the problem of cultural diversity, then you would just have something approximating what we now have, which is a world of 204 nations under one United Nations, one system of international treaty law, one collection of jus cogens international law principles, one World Court, etc. There would also be problems of coordination, since what if someone in jurisdiction A fired a gun into jurisdiction B, killing someone there, but while jurisdiction A would allow the killing as an honor killing of a woman who had disgraced her family by her promiscuity, jurisdiction B would regard that as just unexcused murder. These coordination problems would become even worse for what is now an increasingly globalized system of finance and industry, since it would be undermined by dissonant local rules regarding acceptable contractual arrangements. Thus an Islamic province might forbid charging interest as inconsistent with the Koran, while a non-Islamic jurisdiction would allow it, so what would become of the world government's credit market?

 

All these divergent pressures would exercise their centrifugal force and quickly begin fragmenting the world government into independent states again. Much of the reality we now find in front of us is there for a reason, and I suppose that the 204 nations exist because historical and cultural forces make them necessary. Interestingly, the world seems lately to be going in the opposite direction from a world government, since many states have been spliting up into sub-states, like Czechoslovakia turning into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Yugoslavia fragmenting into even more pieces, the old Soviet Union breaking down into parts which had been united ever since the Tsars, etc.

[Zolar V]

Question...are you proposing a decentralized governmental system that falls under global law with regards to an agreed upon terms of human rights?

 

I might be able to get behind that...

 

My first thought is how would the economics work since there is such a variance upon cultural financial accruement.

 

A: Yes, that is an excellent description of the policies the world government tier would make. However the world tier must have considerable or at least a moderate amount of power. Otherwise the lower tiers would make the world tier obsolete and ruin the ideal of world unity.

 

 

Your questions regarding the economic system are quite valid and I think I may have come up with a probable solution.

Economics, the basic philosophy is supply and demand.

If we were to institute the governmental system at this instant, remove all borders and such all currency changes to 1 type of currency, we would still have supply and demand. Yes people will move out of less profitable areas and into much more profitable areas. Cities will grow, and some areas will die out. However the peoples in the cities need supply, so they go out to buy land that can supply. (or work at firms to supply). Wealthy people would see the prospects of buying the areas that people left, the reason behind this is because the value of the land went down when people left to go to more profitable areas therefore the profit to risk should equalize.

 

My general idea in my mind is like this, people from third world countries that are poor due to the country, will move to places that are more profitable and richer to live in. In doing so they decrease the value of their land. Wealthy people will eventually buy the land, seeing it as a profitable venture for development, and begin to develop the land. This in turn will attract people from less profitable areas to these areas. So the economics of a world government wouldn't be hurt by the lack of intra-governmental trade, rather it would stimulate the global economy by allowing the wealthy to develop lands that were previously too risky to develop.

[lemur]

The problem with having a federal system of different component jurisdictions as a way to solve the problems of dissonant values within one world government is that this solution undermines the strength of the hypothesis in the process of saving it. Obviously a world government is much less a world government if it is subdivided into more or less autonomous regional governments, since if these local governments had to be very autonomous to address the problem of cultural diversity, then you would just have something approximating what we now have, which is a world of 204 nations under one United Nations, one system of international treaty law, one collection of jus cogens international law principles, one World Court, etc. There would also be problems of coordination, since what if someone in jurisdiction A fired a gun into jurisdiction B, killing someone there, but while jurisdiction A would allow the killing as an honor killing of a woman who had disgraced her family by her promiscuity, jurisdiction B would regard that as just unexcused murder. These coordination problems would become even worse for what is now an increasingly globalized system of finance and industry, since it would be undermined by dissonant local rules regarding acceptable contractual arrangements. Thus an Islamic province might forbid charging interest as inconsistent with the Koran, while a non-Islamic jurisdiction would allow it, so what would become of the world government's credit market?

 

All these divergent pressures would exercise their centrifugal force and quickly begin fragmenting the world government into independent states again. Much of the reality we now find in front of us is there for a reason, and I suppose that the 204 nations exist because historical and cultural forces make them necessary. Interestingly, the world seems lately to be going in the opposite direction from a world government, since many states have been spliting up into sub-states, like Czechoslovakia turning into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Yugoslavia fragmenting into even more pieces, the old Soviet Union breaking down into parts which had been united ever since the Tsars, etc.

 

The big difference would be that people would be free to migrate among states/provinces. Hopefully such a one-nation arrangement would also put an end to ideologies of natural-citizenship. Culture should be viewed as a choice, imo, not a natural essence of individuals based on birth/socialization.

Edited September 17, 2010 by lemur

[Marat]

Though how long would the transition take for people to conceive of themselves as like-minded citizens of a global nation rather than as furious anarchists who refused to be ultimately governed by a global state whose principle of democratic rule didn't absolutely require an Ayatollah as the supreme ruler.

 

The hoped-for economic spin-off of the world government idea seems to replicate oldfashioned colonialism. That is, the poor people move to wealthier areas where they can be more productive (cf. the British Empire's importation of Blacks and Indians from colonies with surplus populations to areas deficient in workers such as Uganda, the Caribbean, and South Africa). Then the colonial powers (the rich) buy up the land left behind by the migration of the population to the more productive lands (cf. the late 19th century competition among the Great Powers of Europe for colonies in the remaining open spaces of Africa, such as Camberoons, Southwest Africa, Eritrea, Abyssinia).

[lemur]

Though how long would the transition take for people to conceive of themselves as like-minded citizens of a global nation rather than as furious anarchists who refused to be ultimately governed by a global state whose principle of democratic rule didn't absolutely require an Ayatollah as the supreme ruler.

 

The hoped-for economic spin-off of the world government idea seems to replicate oldfashioned colonialism. That is, the poor people move to wealthier areas where they can be more productive (cf. the British Empire's importation of Blacks and Indians from colonies with surplus populations to areas deficient in workers such as Uganda, the Caribbean, and South Africa). Then the colonial powers (the rich) buy up the land left behind by the migration of the population to the more productive lands (cf. the late 19th century competition among the Great Powers of Europe for colonies in the remaining open spaces of Africa, such as Camberoons, Southwest Africa, Eritrea, Abyssinia).

 

Anti-colonialism is so collective/class oriented. Do you really think that every individual identified with a particular class/nationality wants to be permanently governed in the interest of their presumed class/national affiliation? My guess is that many people would just like to be free to migrate where they please without being treated as inferior citizens.

[Zolar V]

Though how long would the transition take for people to conceive of themselves as like-minded citizens of a global nation rather than as furious anarchists who refused to be ultimately governed by a global state whose principle of democratic rule didn't absolutely require an Ayatollah as the supreme ruler.

 

Aprox. 3 generations.

 

Just look at the immigrants to America, they on average change their own inherited culture within the first generation born. so i give it 2 generations past that, and the citizens should opt into the philosophy.

+ without your dogmatic culture propaganda, your children and their children are not indoctrinated into your ignorant ideals.

Cultural indoctrination is the #1 cause of your anarchist example.

[Dan6541]

I think all the people in the world would only come together under one nation if we found intelligent alien species, and we saw that we are very similar. The way we are now, there would always be too many cultural differences to form one nation.

 

The system you described, with a world government, then country governments, isn't that similar to what we have now, with the UN. Obviously the world government would be more powerful, but is it the same sort of idea?

Edited September 17, 2010 by Dan6541

[CaptainPanic]

A global government is only useful for global issues...

 

The climate, our oceans, overpopulation, and possible aliens are about the only issues that I can see that are really global.

 

I just fear that a global government wouldn't be democratic (or rather that the democratic system would fail) because people will regard their local situation, and use that for voting for a global government. Also, I would definitely fear a police state where a government has too much control over the population.

 

If I see how most governments worldwide get their priorities wrong, then I have little hope that a world government would do any better.

[Marat]

Wouldn't there be problems with a world state with respect to its redistributive effects? At present, the first world absorbs a vastly disproportionate amount of the world's resources, while people in the third world live on $2 a day. If this world government had a welfare system, obviously the democratic forces electing the rulers would not tolerate the current maldistribution of resources which is only made possible by dividing the world into separate nations so the global fairness of the wealth distribution is kept off the political agenda. With the single world state, however, you would have about five billion people voting to redistribute the wealth so as to even out resources around the world, with only about one billion people of the first world voting to preserve the current maldistribution of resources that allows us to have two cars and golfing vacations in Bermuda while most of the world lives in a grass hut with two goats as their sole source of 'weath.' If you average in our two cars and golfing vacations, multiplied times one billion votes, divided by the rest of the population's two goats and one grass hut, multiplied times five billion votes, the center of gravity of the electoral decision of how to distribute the single world state's resources is going to work out to one mud-brick hut, two goats, and a cow for each person. Would the one billion people who had lived in first-world nations tolerate that outcome?

[lemur]

The interesting thing would be how economic and cultural differences would play out if migration and acculturation occurred multidirectionally. Generally it is assumed that people living in developing economies would move to more developed economies if they got the chance, but is it also possible some people living in more developed economies would opt for a simpler agricultural lifestyle? I think this would be the case if access to modern health care was available. Likewise, if cultural and linguistic plurality was respected and valued, but no longer treated as an essential attribute of individuals, would people migrate and acculturate multidirectionally, or would there continue to be a global preference for English-language cosmopolitanism?

[Marat]

"Okay folks, now that we're all one country, how many of you would like to move to Westchester County New York or to Beverly Hills California? All right, that's 5.999 billion. And now how many of you would like to move to the malaria-ridden swamps of Gambia, where you can eek out an income of $3 a day if you're a good entrepreneur and work hard? Let's see, that's ... Oh come on, somebody must be willing to sign up for Gambia, otherwise the planet's going to be too crowded in some places and too sparsely populated in others!"

 

But even if people agree to move freely from the first to the third world, the essential problem remains, which is that in a democratic society of six billion people, no one is going to stand for the unified budget of that world government being distributed in such a way that it preserves the income differential of the present world, where something like 90% of the weath is controlled by the richest 10% of the population. Instead, the democratic majority is going to require considerable evening-out of that wealth differential, which would set off a revolution among the haves which would quickly restore the multinational world we now live in. The wealthy of America today fiercely resist giving up the Bush tax cuts, but just imagine what they would do if they had to face the wealth redistributing pressures not of 300 million Americans earning an average income of $45,000 a year, but of nearly six trillion people earning $2 a day! The stresses would be beyond anything that could be resolved within a single state.

[lemur]

"Okay folks, now that we're all one country, how many of you would like to move to Westchester County New York or to Beverly Hills California? All right, that's 5.999 billion. And now how many of you would like to move to the malaria-ridden swamps of Gambia, where you can eek out an income of $3 a day if you're a good entrepreneur and work hard? Let's see, that's ... Oh come on, somebody must be willing to sign up for Gambia, otherwise the planet's going to be too crowded in some places and too sparsely populated in others!"

 

True, but popular cities don't provide opportunities for all who seek them and then people have to seek elsewhere. Still, that problem is a social-economic one that would not change too much due to reduced migration control. What would change which would be significant, I think, is that relatively large blocks of language populations could relocate together in ways that would reduce population pressures in language-regions and facilitate migration for people speaking that language by allowing them to continue speaking it in a new multiethnic geography. For example, if many Swedish-speakers moved to some North American city, that would provide opportunities for people who would like to migrate to Sweden to live in that city and integrate into "Swedish society" there. Then, presumably migration pressures and restrictions wouldn't remain so unidirectional and people could move back and forth among cities on different continents and in different post-national regions.

[Mr Skeptic]

"Okay folks, now that we're all one country, how many of you would like to move to Westchester County New York or to Beverly Hills California? All right, that's 5.999 billion. And now how many of you would like to move to the malaria-ridden swamps of Gambia, where you can eek out an income of $3 a day if you're a good entrepreneur and work hard? Let's see, that's ... Oh come on, somebody must be willing to sign up for Gambia, otherwise the planet's going to be too crowded in some places and too sparsely populated in others!"

 

On the other hand, in those nice nice places, you can't live on $2 per day.

 

But even if people agree to move freely from the first to the third world, the essential problem remains, which is that in a democratic society of six billion people, no one is going to stand for the unified budget of that world government being distributed in such a way that it preserves the income differential of the present world, where something like 90% of the weath is controlled by the richest 10% of the population. Instead, the democratic majority is going to require considerable evening-out of that wealth differential, which would set off a revolution among the haves which would quickly restore the multinational world we now live in. The wealthy of America today fiercely resist giving up the Bush tax cuts, but just imagine what they would do if they had to face the wealth redistributing pressures not of 300 million Americans earning an average income of $45,000 a year, but of nearly six trillion people earning $2 a day! The stresses would be beyond anything that could be resolved within a single state.

 

Yup, that's why in democratic countries like the United States, the top 1% owns only about 60% of the wealth.

[Zolar V]

A one-nation world could have some advantages, but the disadvantages would include lack of competitiveness, comparison, experimentation (all of these in a social/national sense) and lack of alternative governance that people can immigrate to. For example, in a one-nation world governance, after (or while) surviving the Great Depression, we'd have no way of judging the effectiveness of our governance because of nothing else for comparison. We currently enjoy about 200 varieties of sovereign governance. We can look around and see how various nations govern themselves, and we can form new, unique combination of governance.

Why would a One world one Nation disallow the people to form/think different emulation of government systems? Just because the world government is a certain way doesn't mean the state/town/local governments can't be formulated to fit the needs of the community. In fact that is what this whole theory is about. It is about fitting government to society and then fitting government to government so that each piece acts as a cog in a clockwerk machine, and by the movements and summations of the cogs you get a functioning masterpiece.

 

 

Also, because the entire world would depend on a one-nation governance, improvements to it might grind to a halt for fear of ruining the whole world instead of one small corner of it.

 

Another facet, is the form of governance itself. Would majority rule? If so, many minorities would loose their say in governing themselves. So, instead of majority rules, it's 2/3's or 3/4's. How could a government get most of the world to agree to any kind of global governance?

 

Finally, it's not clear to me at all what benefits would derive from a one-nation governance. Perhaps a bigger feeling of being "one big happy family", but that's about it.

 

Keep in mind that people agree to submit themselves to be ruled by their government. I think it would be rather cumbersome and horribly inefficient for a government to be all things to all people.

 

Yes, the government system will have its inefficiencies, BUT that is not the point of the government. Government is about fitting the laws and rules to a society and then going form there.

This specific formulation of government allows a great amount of flexibility on the lower tiers, while allowing human rights for all. It also addresses the nature of borders and many many many crimes between countries. it would get rid of military, for the most part. There would be no need to amass armies, much rather you would just have very small local militias.

This formulation also allows for increased technological and scientific sharing throughout the communities. (there is very little scientific/ technological sharing between countries right now, due to the potential of political and military goals)

 

The governance of the system at the top levels will be by election of 1 individual from the lower level, then there will be a election for a singular individual to rule as a figurehead (similar to the American president) the president is elected via popular vote for the entire world, while the election of the 1 individual is done at that level, (basically 1 country elects a individual to represent itself, while the figurehead is elected by all countries).

 

that seems to be a fair system, however i am not blind to its downfalls. some of these being political/alliance forming within the countries, elected peoples.