Many people are afraid of the idea of a One World Government, and I know why. We’ve seen, whether directly or unconsciously, the damage that too much power in too few hands tends to cause. For these people, the idea of a One World Government is something like rolling the die and hoping you get a benevolent dictator, every time, or something like that.
The way I see it, having a One World Government isn’t much worse than what we have now, in that respect. There would be more riding on a single regimen with a One World Government, but the risk is at best overall the same: just instead of 25% of countries being, for example, dictatorships, there’d be (to make a very simplistic calculation) a 25% chance of the One World Government being dictatorship.
If you can gamble with authority within an individual nation, why not gamble with authority for the whole world? It’s not that different really: for entire groups of millions of people it’s already either a fascist, communist, poor, or whatever country or a free, rich or whatever country by chance, and it makes little difference to the person caught in one of those groups whether we gambled on the level of their own state or on the level of the whole world.
A One World Government would likely turn out like the majority of those countries, in whatever respect we’re measuring. For example, the new One World Government could have governmental checks and balances, civil rights, freedom of speech, socialized health care, and so on.
So, that was why a One World Government wouldn’t necessarily be worse, now let’s talk about why it would be better.
Would you ever expect there to be a war between, for example, Nebraska and Kentucky? I mean, the closest thing we have to war there is football. Basically, the states of the US pretty much coexist in harmony. Similarly with a One World Government the whole world could finally cohabitate in peace.
Why? Because they’re all under the rule of the same government. There’s simply no context for war. And if they need financial help, resources, disaster relief, or whatever, they probably get it, and unlike how it’s often done between countries, it’s not even a lend. With a One World Government, this state of national harmony would exist across all the districts of the world.
Wealth imbalances may still exist, but it wouldn’t be nearly on the scale of what we have now. You wouldn’t have the citizens of some district starving to death while the citizens of others are dying of obesity, for example, and you wouldn’t have one district consuming 80% of the world’s resources, like the USA currently does. (This could imply a much more meager lifestyle for Americans, but we’ve had that a long time coming. It’s not healthy for us to be raping the biosphere like this anyway.)
In the most ideal case, we could learn from the state and histories of 195 different countries and take the best characteristics of each of them to form our new government. But of course, all countries are already free to do that and look how far the possibility of doing that has gotten them. It all depends, though, on the mechanisms by which the One World Government arises. Better to help ensure that it arises on positive grounds by being proactive about it than to just hope that, when it happens, it’s not a plutocracy or something, which is probably where we’re headed otherwise.
Edit: Here’s a conversation on the topic I had with someone on Facebook, which might clarify some details:
Nas Cisse asked a question .
Can you make “War” impossible?
If you think so, how?
Please explain in detail.
Me: By instating a One World Government.
Nas Cisse: So the New World Order is a good thing?
Me: Not positive, but I think it is. I’m not conspiracy-minded so I don’t believe all sorts of terrible things about the “New World Order.” I wrote an essay about the benefits of a One World Government here: https://philosophy.inhahe.com/2018/04/10/a-one-world-government/
Nas Cisse: So you don’t believe in the saying “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”. You would say absolute power has a 25% chance of corrupting, and it’s worth taking the 75% chance that it doesn’t corrupt?
Me: I think the overall chances of corruption by one government aren’t any worse than the chances of corruption of any of the ~200 governments we already have. It’s just that in the case of many governments, the chances average out, while in the case of one, it’s all or nothing. I guess I believe in taking that chance. Even if it’s corrupt sometimes, it can change, so it still averages out in a way. And you can mitigate the chances of corruption by having checks and balances, a democratic republic, etc.
Nas Cisse: So a benevolent Federal World Government would turn every country into one of its states, and each state would vote for the democratic leaders of this Federal World Government.
Taking the concept of America, and overlaying it on Earth instead of on the 50 states, and allowing each state (formerly country) to vote.
Theoretically this would just make everything operate as America, which wouldn’t be half bad, if America is the place that everyone is running to, by definition that means it’s superior than where the people are running from, and also means that the model under which it runs is superior to the models that the people are running from are under.
Do you think America can be practically superimposed onto China though, or is there something about China’s benefits from its one world governance that works for that many people?
Me: Can you rephrase your last question? I didn’t understand it very well. But I probably won’t have an an answer for you anyway. To be honest my knowledge of politics is rudimentary, and I know even less about international politics
Nas Cisse: If we make everyone on Earth American, and make every country one of the States of America, and keep all of America’s laws as is, would that be similar to what you’re imagining?
Me: It’s open-ended, but I think America’s system is relatively good, and I tentatively agree with your reasoning of why it must be the best. But if we just keep the basics of America’s systems and change a lot of the details that would be okay. Or even if we invent a totally new system loosely based on American principles but learning from our own history..
Me: I don’t know if it should be called America or not. That might make many nations view it in a negative light and make integration harder.
Me: (Of course, more than what it’s called, it matters from what direction this motion toward integration happens)
Nas Cisse: Right, it would be just like America, but under a different name, and the size of Earth. Do you think that could work?
Me: I hope it can work. It’s possible that there may be culture clashes, where some cultures want different kind of governments or economies, like dictatorships or communism. It’s also possible that there’s no way to get all the countries to agree to become parts of America without a world war, and in the event of a world war it seems that everybody would be nuked so it would defeat the purpose.
Me: Other problems would be differences in ideas about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, civil rights, etc. But perhaps those decisions could be delegated to the individual states.
Me: ..in which case we’d have to compromise on our ideology a little
Me: it may seem to raise the question, if differences as fundamental as those are delegated to individual states, then what’s left to be universal? and i think the answer is that the important thing is a better balance of wealth, resource use, a total lack of wars, etc.
Nas Cisse: So war is when 2 opposing ideologies both seek to occupy the same time and space. And 2 incompatible entities cannot occupy the same time and space anywhere in nature. In order for one to win, the other one has to lose. In order to determine a winner, there has to be war. So there can be no progress without war.
Would you agree?
Me: I don’t know, maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I’m hoping there are paths toward integration that don’t involve war. For example, we can give people the freedom to live by their own ideologies as I mentioned above, by delegating those differences to the individual states. And you could entice everyone to join the integration to balance out the wealth and eliminate war.
Me: and also to facilitate trade and travel
Nas Cisse: I like that idea.
All of you who agree with this ideology, this is your land to freely express yourselves amongst your peers, nobody will interfere.
If your ideology involves you hurting someone else though, you will have to be on a land where you will be with others whose ideologies include hurting other people.
