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A Single Country in the World


House Balstroko

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27 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Degrees of contemptuous dismissiveness lead me to ask: what city states are y'all living in ATM? 

James,

Are you cool with a WS Legislature declaring homosexuality a crime punishable by death?  If we're "dismissive" it is because we see the serious potential problems.  Further, to me, the level of cultural homogenization that will be necessary to adopt either HB or TAT's ideas is not a positive thing.

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Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

James,

Are you cool with a WS Legislature declaring homosexuality a crime punishable by death?  If we're "dismissive" it is because we see the serious potential problems.  Further, to me, the level of cultural homogenization that will be necessary to adopt either HB or TAT's ideas is not a positive thing.

I'm saying that we all already live in societies that have addressed internal fault lines and still kept on keeping on. To answer your question, no I am not cool with that. But then I imagine many people in countries where that is the law aren't cool with it, and yet those countries are. Getting all condescending about an arbitrary designation somewhere between anarchy and OWG seems, well, silly. We're the government Goldilocks would run?

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James,

I appreciate your point but taking a western style democracy to a global level cubes (or more) existing complexities and cultural tensions.  Once this WS has sovereign power the purposes to which the global majority or plurality attempt to put that power will piss off a significant minority.  We have 7 billion people on this planet if 1% of those people are angry enough to take up arms about an action of the WS that is 70,000,000 people.

No world state is viable without an outside threat (natural or otherwise) to force such unification.

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1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

James,

I appreciate your point but taking a western style democracy to a global level cubes (or more) existing complexities and cultural tensions.  Once this WS has sovereign power the purposes to which the global majority or plurality attempt to put that power will piss off a significant minority.  We have 7 billion people on this planet if 1% of those people are angry enough to take up arms about an action of the WS that 70,000,000 people.

No world state is viable without an outside threat (natural or otherwise) to force such unification.

So what style of government do you think a a single country should have?

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1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

James,

I appreciate your point but taking a western style democracy to a global level cubes (or more) existing complexities and cultural tensions.  Once this WS has sovereign power the purposes to which the global majority or plurality attempt to put that power will piss off a significant minority.  We have 7 billion people on this planet if 1% of those people are angry enough to take up arms about an action of the WS that 70,000,000 people.

No world state is viable without an outside threat (natural or otherwise) to force such unification.

The leverage of Thoreau's dilemma doesn't change with volume, as far as I can see. A % of the population will serve to police majority opinion. And you can add to that all those currently occupied in protecting sovereignty. 

Again, I'm not talking about what's ideal, but rather what's feasible vs. ridiculous and I'm really objecting to the idea that X is ludicrous but w/e we're at is somehow inherently guided by some kind of rational gravity. We make no more sense than Rome, nor less than Siena.

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28 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

The leverage of Thoreau's dilemma doesn't change with volume, as far as I can see. A % of the population will serve to police majority opinion. And you can add to that all those currently occupied in protecting sovereignty. 

Again, I'm not talking about what's ideal, but rather what's feasible vs. ridiculous and I'm really objecting to the idea that X is ludicrous but w/e we're at is somehow inherently guided by some kind of rational gravity. We make no more sense than Rome, nor less than Siena.

In brief, countries will continue to expand until internal strife between diverse groups becomes too much, at which point they should split up into smaller, sub-entities populated by like-minded individuals. Eventually the sub-entities will grow in population size/density until the pattern repeats itself, at which time further splits should occur on the same basis as before.

By this point sufficient decades/centuries should have passed for humanity to have expanded into space, allowing disgruntled groups to flee/migrate to Mars and or other colonized bodies in the solar system. The pattern will keep repeating itself as we expand beyond our own solar system, ensuring that it can continue pretty much indefinitely, as new territory becomes effectively unlimited.

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Following on, I take issue with the O/P's view that standards in a World Government would converge on the moral values that prevail in Western Europe and North America.  I think it quite likely that standards would converge on the moral values that prevail in much of Africa or the Middle East, especially as these regions have a growing share of the World's population,  and would therefore be entitled to a growing share of representation in any World legislative assembly.

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2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Following on, I take issue with the O/P's view that standards in a World Government would converge on the moral values that prevail in Western Europe and North America.  I think it quite likely that standards would converge on the moral values that prevail in much of Africa or the Middle East, especially as these regions have a growing share of the World's population,  and would therefore be entitled to a growing share of representation in any World legislative assembly.

Well precisely. The arrogance is in thinking that Western values are the values that all people would strive for if they just happen to be educated enough. Personally, I only want to live in a Western based value system, but I am not deluded enough to think that a majority of the world would vote for it if they had a choice.

So short of forcibly converting the world at gunpoint, the next best option is to make sure that like minded people remain the majority inside the entirely artificial boundary represented by a national border.

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3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The real question is how HB or TAT would feel about the new WS Legislature taking such an action based upon the will of the majority of the planet?

They would, and that is the tragedy of the Spell of Plato, implement that solution with the ruthlessness that only people convinced of their own decency possess.  

Authoritarianism is a psychopathology that the victim mistakes for goodness. It is the root of the social justice movement, of third wave feminism, marxism, the Catholic church, etc. Well-intended, all. Totalitarian, all. It’s a real tragedy, and I say this without sarcasm. Certain decent, agreeable positions seem to attract individuals with no native resistance to authoritarianism, groupthink, etc.

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3 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

They would, and that is the tragedy of the Spell of Plato, implement that solution with the ruthlessness that only people convinced of their own decency possess.  

Authoritarianism is a psychopathology that the victim mistakes for goodness. It is the root of the social justice movement, of third wave feminism, marxism, the Catholic church, etc. Well-intended, all. Totalitarian, all. It’s a real tragedy, and I say this without sarcasm. Certain decent, agreeable positions seem to attract individuals with no native resistance to authoritarianism, groupthink, etc.

I like that. Well said.

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6 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Following on, I take issue with the O/P's view that standards in a World Government would converge on the moral values that prevail in Western Europe and North America.  I think it quite likely that standards would converge on the moral values that prevail in much of Africa or the Middle East, especially as these regions have a growing share of the World's population,  and would therefore be entitled to a growing share of representation in any World legislative assembly.

Oh, absolutely I'd challenge the givens. But the responses have also been wanting, spoken as though tautological when not, really. 

FNM: that's certainly a viable pattern. History also includes major/sudden forces towards unification, a la Hellenism or Islam or whatnot that are butterflies away from potential reality. Another thing I've considered...and I'm sure this has been done to death by sci-fi, but as someone who until embarrassingly recently thought the constant references to Checkov's guns was some late 19th C Russian play I'd missed, I'm ignorant...is that as virtual lives transcend in significance geo-political ones, online communities may become the possessors of real sovereignty. Or, options.

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7 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

They would, and that is the tragedy of the Spell of Plato, implement that solution with the ruthlessness that only people convinced of their own decency possess.  

Authoritarianism is a psychopathology that the victim mistakes for goodness. It is the root of the social justice movement, of third wave feminism, marxism, the Catholic church, etc. Well-intended, all. Totalitarian, all. It’s a real tragedy, and I say this without sarcasm. Certain decent, agreeable positions seem to attract individuals with no native resistance to authoritarianism, groupthink, etc.

Yes. Much much more harm/'evil' has been done in the name of good than was ever conceived to be done in the name of it's opposition. I'd probably vary on your illustrated examples some, but conceptually agree wholeheartedly. Once wrote a course outline on the idea of Utopianism as a near-untiversally destructive agent, citing among other sources, Mein Kampf. 

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14 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

 

2 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Yes. Much much more harm/'evil' has been done in the name of good than was ever conceived to be done in the name of it's opposition. I'd probably vary on your illustrated examples some, but conceptually agree wholeheartedly. Once wrote a course outline on the idea of Utopianism as a near-untiversally destructive agent, citing among other sources, Mein Kampf. 

If you know that you are righteous, and creating the ideal society, it must follow that your opponents are evil, or the dupes of evil people, and that any harm caused along the way is just incidental.

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1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

The leverage of Thoreau's dilemma doesn't change with volume, as far as I can see. A % of the population will serve to police majority opinion. And you can add to that all those currently occupied in protecting sovereignty. 

Again, I'm not talking about what's ideal, but rather what's feasible vs. ridiculous and I'm really objecting to the idea that X is ludicrous but w/e we're at is somehow inherently guided by some kind of rational gravity. We make no more sense than Rome, nor less than Siena.

Both empires and city states have been widespread for thousands of years though, which shows that that these types of polities evidently can function in the real world. A world state on the other hand has never existed, or even really come close to existing. So I think that there is a lot more room for doubting its feasibility compared to actual historical forms of government like the ones you mention. 

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20 minutes ago, SeanF said:

 

If you know that you are righteous, and creating the ideal society, it must follow that your opponents are evil, or the dupes of evil people, and that any harm caused along the way is just incidental.

The most disturbing pattern about this IMO isn't so much that it happens, but rather that it continuously becomes unknown. Twain, Shaw and Wilde all observed this more wittily and concisely than any of us are...to be followed in relatively short order by Mussolini, Hitler, Fulles, Stalin, etc.

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