The idea of a World Government isn’t all that new. Ancient rulers, even of such relatively tiny polities as Pharaonic Egypt made universal claims. Bigger entities such as Imperial China, or Rome could almost believe they encompassed the whole world, at least for practical purposes. Many regions of the globe have seen villages coalesce into counties and counties into countries. Each such change is marked by an increase in trade, and rising levels of security and prosperity. No wonder the idea has attracted such intellectual luminaries as Albert Einstein, HG Wells and Immanuel Kant. A few thinkers such as Adolf Hitler and the rulers of Imperial Japan tried rather hard to put these ideals in to practice between 1931 and 1945: but that didn’t seem to end very well . The whole matter is summarised rather admirably in this link to Wikipedia [1]
To all intents and purposes the world is now a single trading zone. Information travels instantly. You can get to anywhere important from anywhere important in 24 hours. So why not put the lot under a single judicial authority, one which has a monopoly on legitimate violence, and reap the benefits? These would not only be curing things like migration and climate change ( see previous posts) but would have the additional advantages of single regulation systems for matters as diverse as weights and measures, food standards and water quality. As other polities developed from colonies on the nearer planets ( we are sure that they will) a single Earth could more easily and efficiently conduct its trade and diplomatic affairs with them. The idea that this is happening in embryo via such bodies as the International Red Cross, the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations and a host of other Intergovernmental Agencies and Courts is easy to entertain. But the Wikipedia article will give you much more to chew on than we ever could.
We struggle to to see how such Giant Evils such as inequality, kleptocracy and environmental degradation can be solved without a World Government, at least within any safe time limit. However-always beware of a good idea, especially when you have it yourself! How might such a Government come about? By willing consent, or by armed force? We’ll look at that in the next post. And-here’s the big one-would it be quite the Utopia which some of the previous paragraphs suggest? We’ll look at that too, with the help of our latest recruit, one Edward Gibbon. In the meantime, find out how much money your country spends on Defence, Then ask yourself waht could be done with that budget if there was no need for it whatsoever, nor the taxes to pay for it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_government
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