One World Government
by JayBandit • Jan 13th, 2008 at 8:33 pm •
As I’ve said in the past, I’m a big fan of conspiracies. They are entertaining at the very least. I have heard various reports of how they’re going to try and form some North American joint country…but this takes that even further. I have to say they make some interesting points:
- The “Amero” just sounds more fun than the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, & Mexican peso; so I’ll drink the kool-aid on that one.
- The whole thing at the end about RFIDs gets to be a bit much for myself. RFIDs do not have an infinite range, and they need a power source if they’re going to store as much information as people hope they might in the future (monetary & identification information).
- The talks of us infringing our own rights for the sake of safety is beating a dead horse it seems; yet people still don’t seem to see this happening before their very eyes. There was quite an uproar when the PATRIOT Act was established, but only a few short years later we have just accepted it as another “thing” that the government is able to do.
Any Questions?
EDIT: Augur sent me this interesting story about chipping criminals in England…
Comment by augur on 14 January 2008 at 8:56 am:
This is some crazy shit. Thanks Jaybandito, eh
Comment by ty on 14 January 2008 at 12:51 pm:
THE BIBLE SPEAKS ON THIS…….I ADVISE THE WORLD TO GET READY…GET TO KNOW YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST….LEARN YOUR WORD….BE BAPTISTED IN JESUS NAME RECEIVE THE HOLY GHOST AND LIVE ACCORDING TO HIS WORD CAUSE HE IS GOING TO RETURN SOON….
BE BLESSED
THE TRUTH
Comment by Brian on 14 January 2008 at 1:02 pm:
I’m sold.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 14 January 2008 at 2:20 pm:
The trend in human organizations seems to be toward governments which encompass larger and larger communities. Families > Tribes > Towns > Cities > City-States > States > Nations > Regional Governments (EU, NATO) > then eventually a world government.
I personally don’t understand why this trend is bad??? These conspiracy theorists make a huge deal out of a one world government but I’ve never heard arguments for why that would be a bad thing…wouldn’t it mean an end to war? The EU pretty much guarantees an end to war in Europe, the location of humanity’s worst wars.
Comment by Brian on 14 January 2008 at 3:22 pm:
Prepare for Tom’s wrath in 3…2…
Comment by J. Prescott on 14 January 2008 at 3:31 pm:
The EU doesn’t guarantee an end to war in Europe. I mean a lot of those wars you are referring to began as civil wars. I refuse to doubt in Europe’s ability to make war on itself.
Comment by tet on 14 January 2008 at 4:01 pm:
*chuckle*
Billy Joe, the capacity for human corruption is quite possibly limitless. If there is one world government, there is no place for a disaffected or endangered person to go if that government becomes a despotism. Orwell described such a dystopia as a “boot smashing into a human face forever.”
In addition, we’re going to need some varied solutions to the problems that are going to be faced by humanity in the next couple generations. We are about to be given the ability to affect evolution, not only of ourselves but also of every living thing on earth. These are Godlike tools and we need the maximum number possible of experimental groups trying different things to solve the problems that will be created by these new powers.
Large empires have a tendency to move toward trying one solution on a large-scale. This is exactly the opposite of what we need.
I figure that the kind of world government that we’d end up with would more resemble the Roman Empire, Soviet Russia or the Caliphate than the benign Federation of Roddenberry’s Star Trek. That’s personal opinion. However, the big danger of such a world-spanning empire is demonstrated by history. “Water-control” empires only fall from without. This means that if the government controls the water supply, it can only be defeated by an outside entity–a civil war is not possible. This means that if we get a bad world-government, we’re stuck with it, possibly until the extinction of mankind on earth. I consider this too much of a danger to allow.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by JayBandit on 14 January 2008 at 4:22 pm:
Billy Joe, are you serious? The reason I made this post is because of how much the near future is echoing the “radical” theories of the past: Marx, Orwell’s “1984″, Fahrenheit 451, etc.
I think the larger the government, the easier it is to take advantage of the system for those in charge. As that one quote said in the movie, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
John Dalberg-Acton also said, “Great men are almost always bad men.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
Comment by J. Prescott on 14 January 2008 at 5:30 pm:
Question for Tom -
I will not question your historical arguments about being the ability of internal force to topple an empire, although I think one could make solid arguments that it is possible and that internal contributed to the fall of “water control” empires. Thats a reasonable position, and we can assume that was historically true.
Essentially, unless I am misreading your post, is that you doubt that tangible, necessary change is possible in a one world government because it would be so monolithic, so entrenched. However, would historical evidence be pertinent to your conclusion that once established, a world government would not change? Historically, if a group of individuals were sufficiently put out, and change appeared to be hopeless, that group could always leave. If there was a one world government, and assuming that there are no terraforming technologies or means of fast enough travel to allow people to escape from that government’s immediate grasp, people would have a greater impulse to fight for change. Wouldn’t the calculus change?
Comment by tet on 14 January 2008 at 6:11 pm:
You remember, Prescott, that I have said in here that I expect that the concept of secrecy will be completely meaningless by 2016. If it will be technologically impossible to do anything without detection this soon in development of the next civilization, by the time a world government would be established, the means would be so old-hat and entrenched as to be trivial.
Any power structure in place has a tendency to want to continue there. Future power structures will have a near-infinite capability to monitor anyone or anything that could possibly present a danger to the status quo. They could act to prevent any meaningful change long before those who wish to enact the change or escape the planet entirely could do so.
One of the problems I have with writing any kind of exciting SF set in the future is that, realistically, the spy thriller will be dead in a decade. If the enemy agents can be monitored from the time they enter the country and identified by their biological signs, how could a James Bond or Tom Clancy kind of story evolve.
Hell, husbands and wives won’t even be able to cheat on one another in another few years.
So, the freedom fighters in a world-government state could be dead within minutes of uttering their first revolutionary statements.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Allan Niemerg on 14 January 2008 at 8:21 pm:
I figure that the kind of world government that we’d end up with would more resemble the Roman Empire, Soviet Russia or the Caliphate than the benign Federation of Roddenberry’s Star Trek.
Wait, Tom, I thought you were on record as saying that government as we know it will be gone in the next half century. Has something changed, or are you just expounding on the dangers of one-world government?
As for myself, I agree that personal privacy will soon become extinct. But it won’t do so because of some all seeing government but because people find the benefits of technology will outweigh the resulting loss of privacy. I myself worry very little about the threat of some overarching “world government.” I think in the next 50 years we will see a “golden era” in personal freedom and autonomy.
Comment by tet on 14 January 2008 at 10:04 pm:
What I’ve said, Allan is that the United States as we know it will not exist in twenty-five years or less. Mankind is perfectly able to come up with all kinds of incredibly evil forms of totalitarianism using upcoming technology.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by thetodd on 15 January 2008 at 6:06 pm:
Tom,
For a while, I’ve wondered why you envisioned continued technological progress leading to smaller units of government, but I never got around to asking. I’m glad to see your answer now.
I’ve envisioned the opposite. The way I’ve seen it, technological progress has made (and will continue to make) the individual more powerful. Our leaders have gone from being able to club a few people over the head to leading an army of a thousand archers to being able to wipe out cities. Our weakest have gone from defenseless to being able to stab you to being able to take down a building or a room full of people with a homemade bomb or machine gun.
I imagine this trend will continue. For instance, in the near future, I’d not be surprised to see biological tools and knowledge become cheap and widespread enough such that any average Joe could create a homemade pathogen by following instructions found on the internet.
As the power of individuals grows, it seems to become more and more necessary to prevent individuals from wanting to cause destruction in the first place and from carrying out their destructive desires. Imagine if individuals became so powerful that they could all launch nuclear weapons at will. Humanity wouldn’t last long if there were anywhere near as many discontent people as there are now.
I don’t see a way to counteract the powerful discontent without cooperation on larger and larger scales by the content majority.
I’ve had this question on my mind today, and I figured I’d see if any futurist philisopers had thought about it. I found this interesting paper by Nick Bostrom
He makes an argument similar to mine, but in my opinion, he does a much better job of it than I do :)
Comment by thetodd on 15 January 2008 at 6:13 pm:
Oh, and in case anyone misinterprets my post, I absolutely do not support implementing a world government in today’s world.
I only mean that such a government (or, more accurately stated, a single ultimate authority, be it a world government, supercomputer, borg hive-mind, or who knows what else) could become desirable if technological trends continue.
Comment by tet on 15 January 2008 at 7:34 pm:
I’m starting Charlie Stross’ Accelerando on the recommendation of my friend, Mike Taht. It is dealing with exactly the changes that your article is talking about.
You read my futurist stuff from last year, right, Todd? It seems that you and I are in agreement with a lot of it. I was saying that there’ll be a conflict between the tendency to centralize and the tendency to shatter into smaller components and the victory of one side or another will set the future of humanity. The result may also provide the answer to the Fermi paradox.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by thetodd on 15 January 2008 at 8:10 pm:
I’m going to take a look at those old posts again. I read them a long time ago on Augur’s suggestion, but I don’t remember them, and I’ve only recently started to frequent Urbanagora and become more familiar with everyone here.
By the way, I’ve also read Accelerando. A couple of times, I thought the flow was disrupted by overuse of “futurist buzzwords” (I can’t think of a better way to word it right now, but, well, there’s a reason there’s an “Accelerando Technical Companion” to look up all of the definitions), but overall, I liked it a lot.