This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a huge problem, but I don’t really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:
- not everyone has internet access
- not everyone that has access has unfettered access
- It’s hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
- it’s hard to verify elections haven’t been tampered with
- what happens when violent crimes are committed?
- how do taxes work in this system?
- how do armed forces work in this system?
I don’t think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don’t know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?
The EU consists of a bunch of European countries that are similar culturally, economically, and politically. It makes sense for them to form a union that aims to achieve their common interests. A lot of similar unions exist like ASEAN, Arab League, African Union, etc. These are still different than having a single government for the entire world. There are way too many differences for that to work, different cultures, unequal economies, different religions, different politics, etc. This global government would end up trying to appease everyone to maintain the unity, but this would ultimately lead to have no teeth. In other words it’ll be reduced to what the UN is now.
Oh, I definitely meant far future. While the differences are far too big today, I can see gradually increasing cooperation between e.g. the EU and African Union at some point culminating in the construction of a governmental body that has some regulatory power over them both.
Once such a body exists, I can imagine that it over time accumulates power, bringing the two unions even closer together. The EU started out as a relatively small organ, and has grown gradually to what it is today over many decades. My point was that if some “global government” ever forms, I think that kind of gradual process is how it will happen. Starting out with trade agreements, and then gradually regulating more aspects of government.
I mean that’s a completely fair point of view. If we make the assumption that humanity will continue to progress with time, even if there are periods of regression, then I could see where you’re coming from. Humanity did evolve from being nomadic tribes to creating settlements of tribes to creating nations from settlements to creating empires from nations to today where we’re forming unions of empires and nations. It’s logical to think that with time we’ll have these unions merge and create a higher authority, and if we follow this trajectory it should eventually lead to a global government. I just hope we don’t go extinct before that happens.