From: bunker@physun.physics.mcmaster.ca (Alex Bunker)
Subject: Re: WORLD GOVERNMENT
Organization: Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 14:59:19 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.025352.7653@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:
>sm> Stephen McIntyre
>
>sm> [L]et's deal with some of Gary's questions, shall we?
>
>gs>   i) "What happens when such an army decides to violate human rights?"
>
>sm>    You needn't place all military power in the hands of the world
>sm>    government (which I'll label WG from here on.)  For example,
>sm>    you can allow each democracy (I'll explain this below) to retain
>sm>    its troops, while at the same time regulate the number of troops
>sm>    under the authority of the WG (perhaps, let's say, to 100,000
>sm>    members.)  These troops would be drawn from all participating
>sm>    nations.
>
>  I'm assuming the WG Army will easily have the power to overwhelm at least
>  one of the national armies, and ought to have the power to defeat the ar-
>  mies of the two most powerful national armies, in case the two nations
>  ally themselves. Otherwise, the WG Army isn't going to last long when pre-
>  sented with a decent national army. Sorta like the LAPD during the riots.
>  Again, I ask, what's to prevent the WG Army from using it's power to run
>  roughshod over the weaker nations? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as
>  they say, and given that a WG Army must have near-absolute power in order
>  to work, how does on avoid the corruption? Merely stating that it will is
>  not good enough. Also, the bulk of the national armies in the world today
>  aren't as "decent" as our nice Western militaries; most have no problem
>  with massacring innocent people. The Iraqi army, for example, is the rule,
>  not the exception. Lastly, would such an army have nuclear weapons? If
>  they won't, how do we get all the current (and future!) nuclear powers to
>  disarm?
>
>gs>  ii) "How does one get billions of people to agree?"
>
>sm>      Mass media.  It's happening now and will progress as time
>sm>      passes by.  How do you think tens of millions of people
>sm>      can agree now on a single subject?
>
>  Who will control this mass media? What about censorship? Freedom of opinion
>  leads to difference of opinion, which is the definition of disagreement.
>  
>  Name one subject that tens of millions of *randomly-selected* people agree
>  upon. Americans can't form one opinion on something as narrow as abortion;
>  why do you believe 5+ billion people (and increasing) will ever agree on
>  the substantive issues?
>
>gs> iii) "How does one introduce democracy to the majority of the world's
>
>sm>    Artful persuasion.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that
>sm>    the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, Western Europe, and other
>sm>    democracies /were/ to get together to form a hypothetical
>sm>    WG.
>
>  The total population you've mentioned is still less than half the world
>  total. What about majority rule? All the democracies in the world are
>  still a minority. And, what about getting all the above to agree? All
>  have had (and still have) major differences, political and otherwise,
>  with each other. OK, they often work together in the UN, but the UN is
>  micropotatoes compared to this WG of yours.
>
>sm>   They form certain treaties, create certain laws, and 
>sm>   devise certain stipulations in order to join this WG.  
>
>  Such as? And what do we do about nations that refuse to go along? How much
>  force is this nascent WG willing to expend on 10,000 Bosnias?
>
>sm>   All of these motions by the nations in this WG would grant 
>sm>   things like free trade and a unified banking system for
>sm>   those that are part of the WG, but would give stiff tariffs
>sm>   and so on to those countries not joined.  
>
>  You make it sound like the countries that have yet to join this WG are at
>  it's mercy. That's not true. For example, the countries that have oil. A
>  lot of countries went to a lot of trouble to try to get rid of Hussein.
>  What happens when most OPEC countries say "Screw the tariffs, oil is now
>  $200/barrel"? What will that do to the WG economy? Also, given that GATT
>  appears to be permanently stalled, and the world finance system is none
>  too healthy, do you plan on a massive economic re-organization as well?
>  Have you bitten off more than you can chew yet?
>
>sm>   On top of that, the main stipulation for joining the WG would 
>sm>   be for those nations to be democracies (that is, government
>sm>   elected by the people.)  
>
>  I wasn't aware democracy was something a nation could be coerced into. Has
>  there ever been a nation that was coerced into democracy, or did it arise
>  from within?
>
>sm>   Granted, it would be hard on many nations for awhile; but no one
>sm>   has ever said a change in government would be easy.  Besides, they
>sm>   would have a choice: either let the people decide who runs their
>sm>   government, or don't join the WG.
>
>  What do you do when one of those nations left out of the WG has nuclear
>  weapons? China, for example? They could really mess up this tidy plan.
>
>sm>   (Note:  I'm not saying all of this would be easy; indeed,
>sm>   it would take a tremendous amount of work from all nations.
>sm>   But in the long run, the WG would be essential if we're
>sm>   to live together peacefully.)
>
>  Why? Do we need the threat of force to be nice to each other?
>
>gs>  iv) "If there's no war, why would we need an army?"
>
>sm>    Good question. The answer is: humanity cannot be trusted.
>
>  This one statement smashes your whole argument to smithereens. Note that
>  you *didn't* say "Some humans cannot be trusted"; you've condemned the
>  entire species! How can such an untrustworthy bunch be given the kind of
>  power a WG needs? Wait, the WG Army and politicians and bureaucrats and
>  social workers will be eminently trustworthy, but the rest of us won't
>  be. At least come straight out and say you're an elitist!
>
>sm>    I hope one day we can survive without standing armies,
>sm>    but until the day comes when people don't care about
>sm>    either personal power or a disagreement with one's beliefs,
>sm>    an army will be needed.
>
>  Basically, "Behave or I'll smash your head in"? That works on children, and
>  not even all the time. Are all of us to be considered children before the
>  almighty WG? Also, do we end up as big one homogeneous mass? As far as I'm
>  concerned, one big blob of individuals with the exact same thoughts isn't
>  humanity.
>
>  Sorry, but your WG simply has too many problems to be practical. 
>
>
>--
>Gary Strand                      Opinions stated herein are mine alone and are
>strandwg@ncar.ucar.edu            not representative of NCAR, UCAR, or the NSF


Great! I knew that an atrociously hyperbolic statement in bold script
with exclamation marks would start the ball rolling. The reason I want
a world government 1)

The level of injustice in the world without 
one I find intolerable. I look at SU:Afganistan etc...
 and USA:Chile etc... as examples
of big rich nations picking on smaller nations  and working for the interests 
of a subset of the human race at the expense of the whole. Some nations 
through military strength have taken more than their fair share of
the worlds rescounces. What gives the right to the USA to use up
10 times as much unrenuewable rescource per capita than another country?
They only get away with it because they have a big powerful army
that stomps on any government that rises in the third world that
tries to stop being a slave state and actually work for the interest
of its own people instead of the multinational corporations (like 50's
honduras,Allende Chile and Sandanista Nicaragua)

2)

There are many issues facing the world that we need to act on on a global 
level. while garbage collection is suitable to be taken care of by
a local govenrment and health care is suitable to be taken care of by a 
national government there are issues of a global scale that are not 
dealt with properly because we are missing the level of government
that can best deal with this. These issues are population control,
environmental degredation, peace and security,
Labor legislation (to ensure an even global economic playing field)
etc... I am not asking for
an allpowerful monolith to dictate everything but a legislature to
take care of these issue which would not be taken care of otherwise
is all I am calling for.

And no 5 billion people can not agree on anything but neither can 
250 million but the USA seems to function pretty well as a country.
This world government would be a multi party legislature. I think
the best model is the European parliament. 

In the European parliament legislatures were elected representing 
political parties in their own countries but the soon saw people with
similar views from other countries and the banded together and soon
all the country lines had dissolved and instead european political
parties sat in parliament.
The same would happen on a global scale. Instead of Chinese and Indians
banding together to boss the rest of the world Chines,Indian, Japanese
,German,UK Social democrats would by competing aganint Chinese,Japanese
German,UK etc.. Conservatives. Actually in a world legislature these
would probably be the main two parties given the norms of politics
across the world. A small liberal party would probably be aligned
with the conservatives and a small green party with the social democrats
but it would basically be an opposition/government blocks scenario
and the opposition and government would span the globe.

ALEX
.
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