Staredit Network

"This house believes that the world should be united under a single government."

Think about this for a second... would you agree with this house or disagree? I personally agree that we all should unite under a single governing force.

NO WAY!
I am strongly against this for several reasons.
1. The larger the area governed, the less the individual is heard. (Simply because not everyone would have the ability to be heard by vast numbers of people.)
2. If the individual is heard, it is through a chain of command, through which most, if not all of the original message is forgotten. (Larger governments means more government officials, or simply a totalitarian state, which I also disprove of. And more government officials means greater diversity of constituents = more spin on subjects of controversy.)
3. Large governments do not necessarily fix problems. In fact having competition between nations actually makes the government better. (Think of them like businesses, where if one is succeeding, others will follow its method. Sometimes this causes conflict, but without it, there would be less of a force to progress.)
4. I would much rather have a variety of different types of governments than a single one. It's like looking at only one experiment to say which one is the best to choose. (As opposed to conducting many experiments and selecting how they differ in results.)

If anything I would rather see divisions appear in our countries as is.

1. Thats why we have local governments, and united under a single federal government. And by now, we have Internet and other developed communications to spread word.
2. Even small governments we have in our world doesn't really listen to individuals... unless you're talking about some island nation with 15 people as their population. I agree on more government officials, but would the system we currently have work with such a large scale government? I think not.
Sure individual's opinions must be honored... however, will the people around the individual like the individual's statement? It varies.
3. There'd still be competition along with local governments as there are competitions along with companies internally. And the term 'large governments' are talking about governments that intervene society in some ways while 'small governments' do not interven societal matters, and only enforcing small laws. The federal government needs almost no change, adding extra local governments might make more officials though.
4. It is too bad most of the governments in the world follow governing idea of Democracy. Also, governing systems work differently with each nation as it will be different for the one huge nation.

- With one governing force, it can be more helpful with the developements because of the large economy it will have. Millitary upkeep money will go minimal into stopping small outbreaks and rebels.
- To unite is to survive, divisions bring wars and despair.
- With one governing force, space expansion may become possible due to the conflicts being settled inside a planet. Bringing resource properity and more land to live on in the future.
- The ability to travel anywhere in the world. It's kind to say that right now, local breakouts and warring countries are dangerous to go to. You can't even enter its lands for some countries.

Okay, I like the basic idea of a world government. It would reduce the amount of fighting and unite people towards common goals, as well as making things more efficient through not having the world invent the same technology in multiple places independently. So yeah, in that sense it's great.

But there's a catch. Right now, a world government would be extremely dangerous, because so far no one is using a political system that works well. Giving power over the entire world to the kinds of people who rule countries now would be disastrous. Before we form a single world government, we have to find a way of getting intelligent, moral people into positions of power, rather than shortsighted, corrupt jerks. This is not an impossible task, but so far we haven't been doing much towards achieving it, so until we can I'd prefer to go with multiple governments just for safety.

Nice idea, but it would never work, at least not for years and years.

I don't think the people of Britain, or Iraq, or any other country, would approve of rule from what they perceive to be a foreign power. I could write an essay on this, but I have actual essays to write so I'll just say that if you were asked to identify yourself and you couldn't say your name - wouldn't you say 'I am a <insert nationality here>'?

Most people identify themselves as belonging to a nation above anything else. I think this would pose a problem to federal rule of the world.

No thanks. The potential for corruption far exceeds the possible benefits.

What I think is that a single government would work, if he have a senate only and no actual leader. Lithium write a book about this and you can be sure some revolutionaries will start a new revolution, like they did with Karl Marx's theory.

Karl Marx predicted that developed capitalist worlds would be the first to step into the communist worlds. Which obviously never happened. =/


Actually, without corruption... probably almost any political system works great. This can be done with powerful enforcement of political rules. Like they did in Taiwan years ago, they had used to execute politicians who were corrupt and caught with some felony. They all got executed. Taiwan currently has the lowest corruption rate.


You are British. Am I not correct? I have no piece of resent to that statement because my ethnicity is Korean. And most Koreans have an oversized patriotism. Although, if you think about it in the states... people identify themselves with their states.

That's an interesting point, Lithium, especially considering that the US is a federal system. And yes, I am British and consider myself British above all else. That in itself is interesting because I was born in England and a lot of people born in England regard themselves as English, especially these days.

As for Marx - he never really talked about Communism, he just proposed a model for history based on economics which has shown to be flawed.

The way I could see this working would be to have a system similar to the government of the United States. That is, you could have one government on top that was semi-ethereal with states that have rights, although subservient to the world government.
However, I could also see this system having many problems. There would be a problem with representation, as countries such as Iran would probably want as much representation as countries such as China, India, or the United States. I also think the differences between nations are too great as of now, as you have great differences between the governments of the world. A communist government, a theocracy, and a democracy would not be willing to work together.

I think that a world government would be great, but it probably would not work for a very long time, if ever.

That's right. And you've hit upon a more fundamental truth of political systems here: So long as you choose a good leader, it doesn't matter how that leader got chosen. This is something that many people, especially in the United States, simply do not understand, and in fact actively prevent themselves from understanding.

Just wanted to clear something up here. The idea of a 'communist government' is a very common misconception. Communism is an economic system, and can exist alongside just about any political system.

A lot of people in the States, at least where I live, regard themselfs as their home country and not American. Which is weird cause they were born in American but say they are Irish or Russian... I know thats where their great great great whatevers are from but not them....

It's simply too early to talk of a world wide federal government. If you are to talk of it, you have to some how imagine the world at least 50 years from now. A world even more reliant on the internet and globalization.

Personally, I don't see a world wide federal government happening within this century.

Well, that's true, and I shouldn't have called it a communist government, but there is a government that has historically gone along with the practice of communism. That is the government (and people) I am talking about.

Not entirely, communism requires there to be one central planning center.

The economic idea of communism failed because of human jealousy and hunger for wealth.

That problem isn't the U.S.'s exclusive problems.


Isn't it why there is a Senate like in the United states? Two representatives for every state regardless of their size, economic strength, or population. If that becomes a problem, I would see a possibility of 3 story government. With state government, continental government, and world government. But with smaller countries like Germany, France, Japan could be just considered a state government.


All the remaining governments of Communism are in totalitarian state and most of the governments with eco system of Communism were dictatorship/totalitarian.

Which are produced by a capitalist economy that they tried to shift people from.

People feel that they need to have something that they can call their own, because throughout their lives they know that other people will see the same ideal and use it against them.
When you look at a family, (the ideal functional nuclear family to be precise.) the members withing the household share things with one another, because they know that the other family members won't utilize the "things" against each other, claiming each item in the house as their own.
Now I realize that even this relationship is not functioning, as nowadays kids are learning more and more about how capitalist systems work, and simply maturing faster, that these sorts of property problems can and in fact DO occur in the home. If you believe that it is our inherent nature to distrust one another to the point where we cannot share things with those closest to us, then I suppose this proves my point incomplete. But if so, then how have people come thus far working together? The reality is that people have been taught in every ounce of their existence, that they need to claim everything as their own or someone else will claim it from them.
The reason Communism failed was not because people are instinctively greedy, it is because over the past 3000 years (Ever since the agricultural revolution) man has been building up a believe that things could be owned.

You can see the differences with this in when European settlers came to America. Theres that famous quote that the Natives gave up Manhattan for some food and muskets or something. But the reality was that they believed nobody owned the land. The westerners came in and forced their structure and ideals, namely capitalism upon their people. If the idea of communism would have appeared in Native American society before the Europeans arrived, then it might have flourished. The fact is is that it is not in humanities interest to doubt Communism, but it is in Capitalisms interest to destroy it, because it is a system that could, if permitted replace it.

The key issue here is what the people are taught, every country that has ever been considered communist, has gone through a period where it's population was "taught" a specific set of values, yet it is obvious that ideas that have been taught from childhood are hard to simply get rid of with a few years of teaching other ideologies.



To get back to the topic.

What i don't get is how anyone thinks that simply having one government will prevent wars from happening. If anything people would see government as a form of imperial power that has no relationship to them.
Take the worlds religions for example, every country in the world is segregated in a manner that people of different ideals are able to carry out their own rulings about what morals should be upheld. When we combine many different types of ideologies, then we get conflict. Especially when one ideology presides over another, trying to maintain a sort of dominance. Take the middle east for example. We have had troops in and out of their country for the last 20 years, originally trying to form militant operatives within their nations. (Look up the ISI in pakistan, created by a british general, then expanded upon into covert operations by our very own CIA, creating many problems we are now facing. (bin laden seems to be very tricky to catch for being a peasant...)) Every action that we have done in those countries has ended ultimately with failure. Why? because we are not them, we do not believe in the same ideologies as their people, and it is only through an exchange of monetary values that we can even attempt to negotiate with different cultures. The fact is bringing different people together under one roof will not make them like one another, and will only bring conflict closer together. Although not in the sense of working out problems, because the actual people will be half a world away. They will only be able to reach each other through policy, and if anyone has ever tried to get a policy passed at any level of government, you know that the best decision is never chosen. They will be seeing general representations of ideals from people in distant countries. If we were to bring the people closer together we might work out a compromise, but simply setting policies halfway around the world will only increase the levels of conflict.

It is true that it will be like an imperial power, but however... with no relations? I have doubt about that. A World government is a more developed style of the U.N. with actual political power over a country. Do you believe U.N. have no relations with any of the third world country at all?
Bin Laden wasn't a peasant. He was a rich guy with a wealthy father. For that side, that is why theres a "state government". Islamic worlds in Middle East whether like it or not will change. We aren't necessarily talking about time lines here, but they will change.
Middle east's idealogical religious beliefs didn't stop them from joining the U.N. The western and middle eastern had conflicts because they obviously did not have enough understandings with each other. Especially the U.S. With more 'understanding' attitute with 'understanding' relations, there wouldn't be real conflict. Also on a side note, idealistic representations are already seen and being sawn by almost every country in the world. I believe Middle eastern countries aren't that poor to be unable to own a single computer in their country.

Rantent. Why do you drop my arguments? I feel saddened.

Well, it has to have somebody taking care of the sharing out process, yeah. Which means communism and anarchy might not work together. But pretty much anything else works fine.

No, but they do seem to have a worse case of it than most of the rest of the world.

It would go a long way towards preventing wars, because it would mean that there is one sole authority that everyone has to answer to. As it is we have multiple 'peaks' in the chain of command, so to speak, which do not answer to each other, and this makes wars much easier to start.

Through globalization and the internet, the world will become smaller. The world will slowly start to feel more and more like a country. And the countries inside it will start to feel more and more like states. After this long hundred+ year process, the world will then be ready for a world wide federal government.

You think it will take more than a hundred years? Well, that doesn't do us much good considering that by then the world will probably be ruled by intelligent machines...

A world government would be nice for one reason: to have one set of universal/planetary laws.
For as long as the United States was formed, criminals have been running to Mexico to escape being incarcerated. In the Middle East, public executions for very minor (in my point of view) rule-breakings are allowed. I don't think I have to explain what's happening in North Korea. Much of Africa is poverty stricken and not enough nations are helping them. There are so many more problems that I haven't even slightly addressed and most of them are from nations not in the U.N.
Now, the U.N. is the closest thing to a world government currently, and the nations involved are doing well in supporting each other. I believe that if all the nations got closer and closer in their relations, then it would be a win-win-win-win..etc. situation.

My other belief is that a perfect lifestyle for humans would be to govern ourselves and only ourselves, with near god-like powers, achieved through science, in order to protect ourselves. This is, of course, unrealistic and will probably never happen.

I say you watched too much sci-fi movies.

That's pretty much what I have in mind too.

Well, consider that it's taken us only 60 years to go from ENIAC to BlueGene. And this rate of growth has been exponential, rather than linear. Unless advances in computer technology slow down significantly sometime soon (which is still possible although not too likely), we'll probably see superiorly intelligent machines inside the next 100 years.

Clearly, "computers" don't have intelligence. Softwares designed to react upon a situation on a able computer do. I do not think humans are stupid enough to get ruled by their own creation.

But more CLEARLY. This topic isn't talking about these computer advancements. The question was... "Do you agree on the idea of World Government and why?"