Thread: World Government---is it THAT bad?

Originally Posted by Army5339

I think there is an upper population limit for any sort of democratic style government. That also goes for Republics. At a certain point, representation gets so watered down that it can no longer be considered representation in any meaningful definition. If it did, there would be so many representatives that any sort of governing body would have many thousands of participants, thus negating any usefulness.

Any large government needs to be more authoritarian as it grows in population.

I think that this is going to be one of the more serious domestic political struggles for the US as our population booms: how to keep representation at a truly representative scale. Could we have a House with 2000 members? Would it be effective?

Hence our founding fathers went with a federal system. The true representation and most of the power that affect our daily lives rest with the states. Then the states get together to talk about more important things that are not directly related to our daily lives, like war, trade with foreign nations, and negotiate state relations.

Our government had gone astray when the first power to levy income tax was granted by a constitution amendment. Government got its hands on a lot of money and saw a reason, a need, to grow, in order to justify such a seizure of private properties.

"The bureaucracy is expanding, to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy." -- unknown

Tt all starts with money. And people think corporations are greedy...

The closest the world has come to an actual World Government was probably the British Empire. We had another thread were i happily volunteered my country to rule everyone elses

As a general rule the tribal feeling gets bigger not smaller. As we travel more, so we embrace other peoples as being "like us" or at least "not that dissimlar from us". Equally as the rich travel to the poor the poor adapt, modiy, apsire, suck up to, the rich and we get a homogolation effect. All airports looks the same, for example.

Occasionally we get splits, but the splits tend to happen were the tribe only exists by force and when that grip is weakened, the people either have a long standing rivalry that they have not beaten out of each other, or they are effective nations within a nation. The Balkans, Iraq etc are obvious examples.

However it comes down to representation. The UN struggles with the overbearing power of the stronger states, but all members are dependant on the stronger states for enforcement of member resolutions.

A world government is likely to be the last thing that happens, before that there is likely to be a world currency (possibly called "plastic" since the de-facto implementation of world currency for many years has been the credit card).

Also prior to an offical WG would be treatment of borders. The EU model is probably how a world government "dropping of borders might work". If you enter at a border were non-"WG" members can affect first entry to a WG member state, you have to show your passport. internal land borders are largely unpoliced.

But i think to do the job probably would require aliens. Because if you look at the duplication or waste in the world, it really is obvious (standing armies, disconnected "national" power grids etc). However without someone to fight, the lone standing army of the WG would become a tool of tyranny (even if it was un-intentional) unless the representation of the people was far more sophisticated that any current nation state has managed.