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A Single Country in the World


House Balstroko

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11 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

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. 

And yet nation states have existed for a fraction of a fraction of human existence, and yet are 'normal'. Before which...inconceivable?

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20 hours ago, baxus said:

Does that make that much difference, really?

Why on Earth would I want to speak to my elected officials or other government employees in a language other than our own?

I suppose you'd be able to communicate with the government officials closest to you in your own language. Even at the now national level. I think it would apply only to the very top. Like in the legislative body or in official communications from the top. 

 

For instance if you needed to access social services why would you need to speak for arguments sake,  Latin if you speak the same language (Serbian?)? But if someone doesn't share your language a common language, whatever it is comes in handy. 

I don't even agree with this entire concept of a United Earth government by the way.  

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14 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

And yet nation states have existed for a fraction of a fraction of human existence, and yet are 'normal'. Before which...inconceivable?

Yes, but that shouldn't be taken to imply that any other imaginary form of government has to be regarded as feasible. There are lots of reasons to believe that nation states are realistic and relatively effective ways to organize societies, whereas with world states, single person states, underwater states, treehouse states or whatever, there are overwhelming reasons to believe that they wouldn't be. Hence why I don't see why it is unfair to be a dismissive towards the idea. 

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Just now, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Yes, but shouldn't be taken to imply that any other imaginary form of government should be regarded as feasible. There are lots of reasons to believe that nation states are realistic and relatively effective ways to organize societies, whereas with world states, single person states, underwater states, treehouse states or whatever, there are overwhelming reasons to believe that they wouldn't be. Hence why I don't see why it is unfair to be a dismissive towards the idea. 

But a single world state, unlike the others you cited, has been discussed by rational people for a long time, and pursued by real life power players, at least within the limitations of their understanding. Alexander, Ghengis, Marx et al aren't exactly blowing-bubble-world types. Moreover, the dreaded factor of efficiency might suggest that it's where reason would have us headed. 

And there are reasons now to believe that nation states are realistic/effective. Isn't that distinction dangerously close to hindsight bias? Would a Muskovite Prince or Mayan ahau have seen the one as obviously doable and the other pie in the sky?

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22 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

All ethics are subjective. The legalisation of homosexuality in Western countries came about precisely because those who supported legalisation finally got government to support their ideas.

In this case, the ethical system of your World State is unlikely to be the liberal sort you favour.

Ethics may be subjective in principle, but I think we can both agree that discrimination is not. No one is forcing you to be homosexual, but preventing others from having that choice is ridiculous. 

Maybe in today's world, those ideas may not be embraced by the majority, but given time society will move towards them.

15 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

That is exactly the authoritarian mindset, exactly the totalitarian urge, exactly the spell of Plato.

Please be mindful of this: you are routinely now brushing off arguments of the form “People may disagree” with “Laws trump the will of the people.” As if that were a good thing! It isn’t.

If this very quote of yours, freely given, does not give you time to pause and reexamine your moral politics, then I don’t know what to do.

Laws are in place to be followed and enforced, always have and always will be, or else we end up with anarchy. Now, you could argue that implementing them is subjective in nature and you are right, but there is a certain framework which would be considered acceptable.

You could say, that legalising homosexuality is enforcing one's law upon others, but the reverse is also true is that preventing them equally consists of enforcing one's will. Which one of those two do you think is more harmful? 

I think you're taking my original quote out of context. I do not mean that people have no right to express themselves, but that laws against discrimination prevent ones from acting out against people they dislike. What if I were to say that people who wear "Crocs" should be barred from public places. Should the will of the people trump law?

 

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9 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

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. 

As James Arryn mentioned, they have only existed for a fraction of human history. What do you think is the root cause of their existence?  People lead nomadic lifestyles for the longest time until the discovery of agriculture. Once they settled in they found that expanding their venture would be benefitting, and that's how empires and city-states formed ( not always peacefully of course). 

As to your other point regarding the historical context of empires and city states, you're looking at them from a modern perspective, go back in time and there would be no precedence for it. 

8 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Yes, but that shouldn't be taken to imply that any other imaginary form of government has to be regarded as feasible. There are lots of reasons to believe that nation states are realistic and relatively effective ways to organize societies, whereas with world states, single person states, underwater states, treehouse states or whatever, there are overwhelming reasons to believe that they wouldn't be. Hence why I don't see why it is unfair to be a dismissive towards the idea. 

Every form of government is imaginary until its first implementation. So again going back in time, the feasibility of these types of government was a large unknown, and they are only viewed as feasible in retrospect. 

Why do you think a WS is unrealistic when it is effectively a nation state or empire on a larger scale. Both of those are already the product of mixing groups of people who were not originally of the same background. 

An underwater state, just like a space colony is only unrealistic because we do not have the technology to overcome the natural hazards that would result living in such conditions. Overcome those and their possibility increases. 

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13 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

This highlights the ridiculous nature of a system wherein something is deemed to be correct just because more people support it than oppose it. I have never understood the basic logic of why the value of an idea should have any relation to the number of people that agree with it. Why should the views of two burger flippers count twice as much as the view of one Albert Einstein?

Democracy has been so indoctrinated into our collective psyche, that no one seems to bother questioning its fundamental idiocy anymore. Or if you do, you are branded a heretic and burned at the stake of social condemnation.

As I have often said before, I don't have a better system of governance handy, other than feeling that some kind of qualification should be required before giving someone an equal share in deciding the government of a country. This problem is just magnified when you have a single world government.

You are right that democracy can often lead to undesirable outcomes. However as you pointed out there is no better alternative at the moment. I agree in theory with you that an "Albert Einstein" should not be worth less than two burger flippers, but how do we implement this without harming the core structure of democracy?

I've also thought of ways to restrict voting by qualification, but then we end up with some arbitrary barrier. What if an individual excels at many things but is simply unable to qualify? Should he be disqualified from politics? 

Im not sure that the problem would necessary be magnified in a WS. While we may still end up with the same problem nation states face. The difference is that the problem will be collective in nature, but as a society we would be looking at improving the world. With independent nation states, you have different factions competing with one another, therefore you ultimately end up working against others.

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1 hour ago, House Balstroko said:

You are right that democracy can often lead to undesirable outcomes. However as you pointed out there is no better alternative at the moment.

Representation by lottery. If your name gets picked out of the hat, it becomes your (well paid) job to get educated on all the issues and make informed decisions. Not everyone would be great at it, but I think it would be better than the current system of a self-selected pool of career politicians competing with each other and the ones best at appealing to voters (a totally different skillset from that actually required to do the job once elected) being put in charge.

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7 minutes ago, felice said:

Representation by lottery. If your name gets picked out of the hat, it becomes your (well paid) job to get educated on all the issues and make informed decisions. Not everyone would be great at it, but I think it would be better than the current system of a self-selected pool of career politicians competing with each other and the ones best at appealing to voters (a totally different skillset from that actually required to do the job once elected) being put in charge.

And we're back to Athens.

I do actually like the Athenian 'tax' system, btw. 

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On 10/26/2016 at 5:39 PM, James Arryn said:

But a single world state, unlike the others you cited, has been discussed by rational people for a long time, and pursued by real life power players, at least within the limitations of their understanding. Alexander, Ghengis, Marx et al aren't exactly blowing-bubble-world types. Moreover, the dreaded factor of efficiency might suggest that it's where reason would have us headed. 

And there are reasons now to believe that nation states are realistic/effective. Isn't that distinction dangerously close to hindsight bias? Would a Muskovite Prince or Mayan ahau have seen the one as obviously doable and the other pie in the sky?

Eh, I'm not sure I'd describe either Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan as particularly rational people. They were good at what they did and all, and likely very intelligent as well, but Alexander believed that he was a descendant of the gods and thus destined to rule mankind by divine right, and Genghis Khan was (as far as I know) somewhat similar but with that strange bird-worshipping religion the Mongols followed back then instead. Either way their plans were completely unrealistic, and hence they never really came close to achieving their dreams either. I don't think this is a very convincing argument for why a world state should be regarded as a serious idea. 

As for your second point, I don't think that a nation state (going by the modern academic definitions) would have been a particularly realistic idea for a medieval Russian or Mayan either. Communication technology and so on wasn't good enough yet. People in this thread have listed tonnes of argument for why a world state also is not a realistic at all with the world looking like it does today. Sure, a thousand years from now the situation might look different, maybe we'll have different world states for different planets then or something, but that doesn't seem to be what the OP meant with his thread. 

18 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

As James Arryn mentioned, they have only existed for a fraction of human history. What do you think is the root cause of their existence?  People lead nomadic lifestyles for the longest time until the discovery of agriculture. Once they settled in they found that expanding their venture would be benefitting, and that's how empires and city-states formed ( not always peacefully of course). 

As to your other point regarding the historical context of empires and city states, you're looking at them from a modern perspective, go back in time and there would be no precedence for it. 

Every form of government is imaginary until its first implementation. So again going back in time, the feasibility of these types of government was a large unknown, and they are only viewed as feasible in retrospect. 

Why do you think a WS is unrealistic when it is effectively a nation state or empire on a larger scale. Both of those are already the product of mixing groups of people who were not originally of the same background. 

An underwater state, just like a space colony is only unrealistic because we do not have the technology to overcome the natural hazards that would result living in such conditions. Overcome those and their possibility increases. 

I went into the technology a bit above, and I agree with that. Again though, I got the impression that you were talking about something taking place relatively close to the present day when you presented your idea about a world government. 

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Individual States, which are often dominated by one culture and political system, can barely agree on how they should run things.

I'd have absolutely no idea how you could get a hundred+ cultures and political systems to agree on the time of the day, let alone complex issues. The UN is a notoriously laborious (some would say useless) beast, and that's already bare-bones compared to what a world government would require

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On 10/26/2016 at 9:28 PM, felice said:

Representation by lottery. If your name gets picked out of the hat, it becomes your (well paid) job to get educated on all the issues and make informed decisions. Not everyone would be great at it, but I think it would be better than the current system of a self-selected pool of career politicians competing with each other and the ones best at appealing to voters (a totally different skillset from that actually required to do the job once elected) being put in charge.

I've advocated this for a long time.  People always assume I'm joking.  It seems like the purest form of democracy and we've been willing to trust it for a long time in one-off life-or-death situations (the highest possible stakes) via juries. 

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14 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I've advocated this for a long time.  People always assume I'm joking.  It seems like the purest form of democracy and we've been willing to trust it for a long time in one-off life-or-death situations (the highest possible stakes) via juries. 

Indeed. And decisions would be made by ordinary people who'll actually have to live with them once their term is over, rather than an out-of-touch wealthy elite (the average US congressperson is a millionaire) who'll have a life of luxury pretty much no matter what happens to the rest of the country.

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On 27/10/2016 at 1:10 PM, House Balstroko said:

Ethics may be subjective in principle, but I think we can both agree that discrimination is not. No one is forcing you to be homosexual, but preventing others from having that choice is ridiculous. 

Maybe in today's world, those ideas may not be embraced by the majority, but given time society will move towards them.

As I have said, it is entirely conceivable that a majority of the world's population would vote to criminalise homosexuality. Are you happy living with that, in the hope that they eventually change their mind?

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On the government by lottery issue - I think the problem is that it requires time and expertise to figure out the bureaucratic procedures of the modern state. Having randomly appointed people moves the power to career officials (think Yes, Minister x10) and lobbyists.

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2 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

On the government by lottery issue - I think the problem is that it requires time and expertise to figure out the bureaucratic procedures of the modern state. Having randomly appointed people moves the power to career officials (think Yes, Minister x10) and lobbyists.

I agree about the power of career bureaucrats.  Some system of forced rotation would be required.  Lobbyist power would shrink dramatically when power is transient.  There would be less benefit to long term obligation so less willingness to invest in donations and de facto bribes to create that obligation. 

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I can't agree. Bribery would just become cheaper and more prevalent when people are a) uninformed and b ) never going to get another chance to make some money and c) desperate for someone, anyone to tell them what the hell to do.

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