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A Single Country in the World


House Balstroko

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If you are arguing against the concept in the OP, i.e. the elimination of the nation-state, then we are talking about different things. Just as lower levels of govt must exist within the nation-state, so with a world parliament the nation-state must still exist.

A world federal system similar to (but not the same as) the USA is a natural evolutionary step of a world that already operates in a border-less fashion in so many ways. 

I agree with most of your points. Building a global society is a natural step of evolution. I don't see this happening anytime soon, but it would be a gradual process. First we would have EU like organisations popping up in different regions of the world. We already have some like NAFTA, ASEAN and MERCOSUR, but they are nowhere near as inclusive as the EU. If these organisations expand to become more EU like in structure, then we can slowly move to a world with less restrictions.

I like your idea of a global parliament, with nation-states intact, but I'm afraid it leaves too much room for dysfunction. If the fabric of the original nation-state is intact, then there is a huge possibility that the problems we face now could still arise. 

 

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8 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Which also isn't feasible any longer due to the existence of nuclear weapons. You were born in the wrong century, OP. Although to be fair no empire that has existed ever really came close to true global dominance. 

I'm not advocating for colonialism. For a WS to truly prosper it would have to be a collective effort, not the result of armed conflict. We would have to reach a state of mind, where societies embrace a sense of belonging to the human race before this integration is truly possible.

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13 hours ago, sologdin said:

maybe something less ambitious than one language--something like standardized weights & measures.  that's appropriately & grandly alexandrian in scope.

Weights and measures should definitely be standardised. To a large degree they already are as most countries use the metric system. As far as I know, only three (the US, Myanmar and Liberia) don't use it for domestic purposes. 

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12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

HB

Is this pure or representative democracy?  If the latter how will votes be distributed?  Will the legislature be bi or unicameral?  Will there be an executive?  If so how much power will be invested in that executive will the executive be one person or a committiee.  How will the executive be selected?  What type of judicial system should the WS have?  

Every point I raise (and many more beside) is a point of contention and conflict. Do  you really think this can be adopted without significant conflict and potential military conflict.

By pure, do you mean a system like the use used in Ancient Greece where citizens are directly involved in the decision making process?

A pure democracy would only be beneficial to mankind if the people involved in it are highly aware of social issues. I do like the skeleton of a representative democracy, such as the one found in the US, with the separation of power into three branches. As to how representatives of the judicial, executive and legislative should be elected, I would say through popular vote. If every branch is directly elected by citizens, it limits the amount of power elected officials have in placing individuals who benefit their interests.

You are absolutely right that all of these issues are potential points of conflict. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, for this to truly work humanity would have to collectively reach a state where it agrees that joining a WS, would be beneficial to all. 

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1 hour ago, House Balstroko said:

I agree with most of your points. Building a global society is a natural step of evolution. I don't see this happening anytime soon, but it would be a gradual process. First we would have EU like organisations popping up in different regions of the world. We already have some like NAFTA, ASEAN and MERCOSUR, but they are nowhere near as inclusive as the EU. If these organisations expand to become more EU like in structure, then we can slowly move to a world with less restrictions.

I like your idea of a global parliament, with nation-states intact, but I'm afraid it leaves too much room for dysfunction. If the fabric of the original nation-state is intact, then there is a huge possibility that the problems we face now could still arise. 

 

You have to retain the nation state as an administrative unit, just like you have to retain the city/district government (and in some cases regional government) within the nation state. You cannot legislate and administer everything at the national and supra-national level. Indeed decision-making should be made at the lowest level of govt possibe with increasing centralisation of decision-making only taking place when necessary. 

The last time we got a global quasi-democratic institution created it took a global-ish war and 2 nuclear bombs to achieve it. No one was actually fighting in favour of establishing that institution, but most of the countries of the world at least accepted the need for something that operated at a truly global level after the nuclear fallout settled. It's unlikely that countries are going to recognise the need for a stronger global parliament without some catastrophe catalysing the decision. The catastrophe isn't going to be a few countries demanding a world govt and most countries opposing it. Like WW II, the catastrophe is going to be something apparently not related to the concept of a world govt, but the obvious solution to cleaning up the mess will be the establishment of a world govt. Hopefully it will be the last time humanity, through a lack of vision, forces itself into an obvious decision through crisis.

If the Bible is right, in its most optimistic reading whatever happens might wipe out 1/3 of the world's population. I would hope something of that magnitude is not necessary to get the world to re-think how it operates, but maybe only something of that scale can shift the dial.

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55 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

This talk of "natural evolution" as applied to political units is beyond silly. The EU was supposed to be Ever Closer Union - and yet we have Brexit. The Soviet Union broke up into fifteen different republics. And so on.

Speed bumps. The 10,000+ years of human social evolution ably demonstrates that increasingly larger units of social organisation is the way things go. And Brexit is one country leaving over the course of several decades of more countries opting to join, so it's not even a valid point. 

The nation-state govt is an inadequate peak institution to manage the affairs of a globalised world. And as much as people hate globalisation in it's current form, it is impossible to wind it back. We are already a global society. And part of the problem of globalisation is that corporations are way ahead of government in operating at a global scale.

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6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Speed bumps. The 10,000+ years of human social evolution ably demonstrates that increasingly larger units of social organisation is the way things go. And Brexit is one country leaving over the course of several decades of more countries opting to join, so it's not even a valid point. 

The nation-state govt is an inadequate peak institution to manage the affairs of a globalised world. And as much as people hate globalisation in it's current form, it is impossible to wind it back. We are already a global society. And part of the problem of globalisation is that corporations are way ahead of government in operating at a global scale.

Visualize the world as a bunch of isolated lakes, located at different altitude levels and separated by dam walls that ensure that some lakes have higher water levels than others. These water levels represent wealth per capita/standards of living. Break these walls down, and all of the water will come rushing out of the higher lakes, into the lower lakes, until an equilibrium level is arrived at where all of the lakes have the same water level.

In essence, this is what would happen if you removed all national borders tomorrow. Why would billions of people from the developing world not stream to the developed world, to maximise their earning potential? The end result, after all the migration tsunamis have settled, would be that the entire world would settle at a new equilibrium standard of living that is much lower than that of developed countries, and a little bit higher than that in developing countries.

So the question then is - why the heck would anyone in a developed country want to follow such a course of action?

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8 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

This talk of "natural evolution" as applied to political units is beyond silly. The EU was supposed to be Ever Closer Union - and yet we have Brexit. The Soviet Union broke up into fifteen different republics. And so on.

Indeed.  And one hundred years ago, the World essentially comprised the Russian, British, French, Portugese, and German Empires, Japan, China and the United States.  Since then, the number of States has multiplied.

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8 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

This talk of "natural evolution" as applied to political units is beyond silly. The EU was supposed to be Ever Closer Union - and yet we have Brexit. The Soviet Union broke up into fifteen different republics. And so on.


I agree, but EU aside, lets take Iran as another example. It used to be the New York of the Middle East. Now look at it.

 

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8 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

A pure democracy would only be beneficial to mankind if the people involved in it are highly aware of social issues.

You still believe that everybody agrees on what a Good Society is. They don’t. We don’t. People (individuals as well as groups) differ hugely in what is morally important to them.

Societies are different for many reasons. One of these reasons is their own choice. For instance, you might belong to a large group of people for which Certain Things are Holy. Or you might belong to a group of people dominated by moral ideas such as “Only a bad person would not favour his cousin.” This are valid opinions. And if you build societies around these social issues (tribalism, holiness, kin-preference, moral responsibility for your extended family, etc.) then the result will be something different that a Western liberal democracy because you wanted it to be. It’s a choice. And that choice is taken from societies in your utopia. 

People (and groups of people) differ in their moral utility functions. People have widely differing opinions on social issues. I promise you that a Salafist or a Stalinist are “highly aware of social issues,” they just completely disagree with you.

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44 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Visualize the world as a bunch of isolated lakes, located at different altitude levels and separated by dam walls that ensure that some lakes have higher water levels than others. These water levels represent wealth per capita/standards of living. Break these walls down, and all of the water will come rushing out of the higher lakes, into the lower lakes, until an equilibrium level is arrived at where all of the lakes have the same water level.

I do that. Water level, say, is “free speech” or “are women chattel?” or “is homosexuality a crime?”

Currently, some countries have higher water levels that others, and they are separated by dam walls. Break the walls down, and we get an equilibrium. This is not what I want. I want societies to be different. Some societies should experiment with decriminalising homosexuality. Others may give personhood to women. Others may introduce the death penalty for insulting the prophet. Or experiment with Lysenkoism. In some societies, some of these ideas work, in others they don’t. This is a good thing. The dams that insulate societies from each other allow us to experiment with these things, and find societies in which different people are happy.

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Essentially I think Nation States could be on the way out, but we won't know about it. More and more control is handed over to private business and non national bodies that weren't democratically elected by ordinary people. Governments already have less power to make change than they ever have. 

We'll all just assume we have some element of democratic control when really we don't.

You could have a global system that manages the economy and trade, but you could never have one global system to manage people.

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On 10/24/2016 at 7:31 AM, baxus said:

Why on Earth would I want to speak to my family in English, Mandarin or any language other than our own?

And why would I want to hear everyone speaking the same language everywhere I go?

Different cultures are what's fun and interesting about this planet.

I hope never to see this "single country in the world" thing, especially with political situation in powerful countries - US elections, Brexit, Putin, the whole mess in China...

My understanding is that one language might be for government purposes. You couldn't be stopped from speaking your native tongue at home or on the street. Thst would be impossible to police. 

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11 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Visualize the world as a bunch of isolated lakes, located at different altitude levels and separated by dam walls that ensure that some lakes have higher water levels than others. These water levels represent wealth per capita/standards of living. Break these walls down, and all of the water will come rushing out of the higher lakes, into the lower lakes, until an equilibrium level is arrived at where all of the lakes have the same water level.

In essence, this is what would happen if you removed all national borders tomorrow. Why would billions of people from the developing world not stream to the developed world, to maximise their earning potential? The end result, after all the migration tsunamis have settled, would be that the entire world would settle at a new equilibrium standard of living that is much lower than that of developed countries, and a little bit higher than that in developing countries.

So the question then is - why the heck would anyone in a developed country want to follow such a course of action?

For starters, the conditions are not right for it to happen tomorrow. And if you'd been reading anything I wrote I said nation-states will remain necessary. In a world govt situation you might find there would be an even greater number of nation-states, potentially including a break up of the USA into several different independent countries. 

The extremely uneven distribution of resources and wealth needs to be made less uneven. One of the problems with the current world trading system is that it is facilitating the freer movement of goods, services and capital, but is doing nothing about freeing the movement of labour.

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