One world government?

[Chas]

Okay, so how different would things have to be for a one world government to work? How radical of a change do you think society would have to undergo for it to be possible? Or, regardless of any sort of change, would a one world government simply not be the ideal situation for world peace and consensus?

It might happen when everyone starts speaking the same language. Right now there are about 7000 languages spoken in the world. In about a 100 years it will be around 3500. Eventually it might come down to one language.

Sure, because there are no multi-lingual countries today. Uh-huh.

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General observation:

No one has described this one government that is impossible. Until you do, it's empty rhetoric.

[Anomalocaris]

What about a one world government that strictly served the needs of the people as a whole? Where corporations were kept under heavy regulation from creating monopolies or destroying the ecosystem... The rich would be heavily taxed and their wealth redistributed amongst the rest of the world.

I am being an idealist though, and I realize some people are more so taking the realist perspective, as Blackout stated. The situation I am assuming is a world where people no longer feel the need to control people and everyone has come to a point where greed, malicious intent and the rest of it is simply not part of the human psyche anymore... obviously UNrealistic hahaha

People have conflicting interests. When you say "strictly serving the needs of the people", which people and which needs? The act of serving one group of people and need would be seen by another group as failing to serve their group and their needs.

BTW, a world in which both wealth are taxed heavily and people no longer feels the need to control other people is a word in which the most effective and enduring fundamental reason for and method of progress would have been removed.

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One world government won't work because there would be no one to challenge that authority. I on the other hand do agree that we need to lower the current count of governments. Maybe 3 strong governments would be the best bet. Too many powers and we get all the conflicts as we see today, too few and a dictator is bound to rise up and ruin everything, so a balance is necessary.

Considering most significant challenges to authorities of influential nation states do not come from abroad, the same influences which can challenge authority of powerful nation states today can challenge the authority of a world government just as well.

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It wouldn't work, unless we had first achieved consensus. That we do not have but one government suggests that we have not.

Government is not achieved through consensus. It is achieved through cunning manipulation of human psychology.

[DeistPaladin]

I tend to think that either humanity one day achieves one government for the world or we'll go extinct.

The problems inherently presented by our technological adolescence (international trade, workers rights, environmental concerns, terrorism from religious fanatics and most urgently the proliferation of WMD) are impossible to solve by many nations working independently nor can they be practically addressed by one superpower imposing its will.

Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaida would love to get their hands on a nuclear bomb or the technological savvy needed to create one. How long before that happens? Given enough time, anything is possible. Gradually, as one nation after the next is able to get its hands on nuclear technology, the odds increase that one will release that technology to the hands of dangerous groups. One government for the world could better secure that technology. One government for the world could better regulate the environment and business practices that pollute it. One government for the world could enforce a global minimum wage and other protections for workers everywhere.

The UN is a good start. The end product might look something like how America is for its states that are part of the union. National governments would become another tier to the pyramid structure (i.e. city then state then national and finally global). Hopefully, the global government would be a democratically elected one.

[Anomalocaris]

Or how would it NOT work? What flaws would a one world government have?

the greatest failing of a single world government is it would have little or no incentive to carry out multiple simultaneous experiments in different forms of government as Is carried out on earth today with different political and economic systems is autonomous nation states. As a result the world government would have poor capabilities in assess how changing social outlook, demographics, technology, economic structure and so forth should effect how how it governs. Such a government would likely fall increasingly upon founding documents, rigid principles, ideological dogma, and traditional ways of doing things to justify itself because it would lack clear experimental guidance on how it should change to best lead a changing world.

A world government may well come close to being founded upon the governmental wisdom of humanity as these have accumulated up to the moment of the world government's founding. As a result it well work reasonably well at the beginning and better than majority of the national governments it supplanted, and thus become instrumental in securing a period of unusual prosperity, stability and progress after its founding. But eventually its own monolithic nature would prevent it from adapting to the progress which it may itself have facilitated or promoted, or which may have happened out of its control, and it would become increasingly a burden to greater and greater segments of the population and economy.m

So you might say a world government can give humanity a lot, by extracting all the golden eggs that are in the goose at the moment the world government killed the goose.

[Cyberman]

Time in nigh.

But I'm holding on.
I wanna be your number one.
Number one - number one.

[Anomalocaris]

Has anyone ever thought about this?

How exactly do you think a one world government would work? Or could it work? Is it possible for a one world government to act for the interests of the people rather than the corporations?

Or how would it NOT work? What flaws would a one world government have?

Would social darwinism eventually cause the world to revert back into separate regions/states etc.?

I am very interested in this idea of a one world government and I'm trying to get everyone's perspective on it.

Could it work? How different would the world and its inhabitants have to be before this could even be considered a possibility? Would population control be necessary for a globalized world? How could it work with over 8 billion people in the world? Or could it?

Suppose the North Korean government was the only government in the world. That would be bad. Suppose ISIS ran the world....that would be bad. While many governments increase the chances that there will be some bad governments....it also increases the chances there will be some good governments.

That's a bullshit reason. There is no compelling reason to think a citizen born into a world with one government is likely to experience a worse form of government then if he had been into a world of many national government, unless you can suggest why world government is likely to be worse than the average national government.

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Time in nigh.

But I'm holding on.
I wanna be your number one.
Number one - number one.

We do have way to much tolerance for idiocy.

[Aoi Magi]

One world government won't work because there would be no one to challenge that authority. I on the other hand do agree that we need to lower the current count of governments. Maybe 3 strong governments would be the best bet. Too many powers and we get all the conflicts as we see today, too few and a dictator is bound to rise up and ruin everything, so a balance is necessary.

Considering most significant challenges to authorities of influential nation states do not come from abroad, the same influences which can challenge authority of powerful nation states today can challenge the authority of a world government just as well.

Actually governments do worry about other governments, and it is one of the primary reasons why we don't see as many wars. If a single superpower establishes itself without any opposition, people and states won't stand much of a chance against it. When we think of a government we imagine a democratic system where actual power is still somewhat with the people, but with a one world government that wouldn't be the case, it would be like being under a single king who if good, might make the system work, but if bad, then it would devastate the entire world.

[Anomalocaris]

That major governments are concerned with threats posed by other governments in most cases would seem to make them act more repressively than it otherwise would towards its own citizens. So a world government would be less repressive simpky because it lacks such external threat

[Chad32]

That's why I go with the idea of allied countries with representatives meeting together somewhere. I'm under the impression that the UN doesn't work as well as it should, though. You're think it would have solved the Israeli-Palestinian problem by now.

[paulpablo]

Has anyone ever thought about this?

Possibly Hitler, some Muslims, maybe Japan, probably loads of emperors, the Brain from pinky and the brain, definitely, he tried a new plan every night.