# Why don't we establish a world government? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 3, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885 "2013-03-03T03:58:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/21 "2013-03-03T07:11:07Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > That is, quite obviously, a bullshit comparison. Not really. You’re furious at the idea that people like me have our votes count the same as yours. I’m not sure how that’s dramatically different than all the people who objected to blacks getting the vote on the belief that blacks were somehow culturally inferior to whites. The principal behind democracy is that everyone’s votes should count and that we shouldn’t discount votes based on the culture people were raised in. That doesn’t mean I think the OP wasn’t silly for reasons I already outlined but that hardly justifies bigoted bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/22 "2013-03-03T07:20:29Z")
What makes you think a majority of the world’s population want things you think are a good idea? For example, it’s perfectly possible that a simple majority would prefer women to lose voting rights and be second-class citizens. Certainly the people in other nations who you say won’t outlaw animal cruelty will vote against your animal protection laws – what if they’re the majority? They might well _take away_ the animal protection laws we have over here. Majority rule is less attractive when you’re the minority. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/23 "2013-03-03T08:10:13Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Not really. > > You’re furious at the idea that people like me have our votes count the same as yours. They’re not like you. You grew up in a democracy. You’ve accepted that playing by the rules is more important than winning. That makes you nothing like the people he was referring to. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/24 "2013-03-03T08:31:38Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > They’re not like you. You grew up in a democracy. You’ve accepted that playing by the rules is more important than winning. That makes you nothing like the people he was referring to. Last poll I saw, only 25% of Americans believe torturing suspects is never justified. So fundamentalist Muslims are hardly the only people who have a problem with this. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/25 "2013-03-03T08:35:32Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Last poll I saw, only 25% of Americans believe torturing suspects is never justified. So fundamentalist Muslims are hardly the only people who have a problem with this. God knows, no country is perfect. But a nation has to achieve a certain critical mass of citizens who actually believe that other people can be allowed to disagree with them, for a democracy to work. For all your criticism, the U.S. has reached that critical mass (although you may need to work on maintaining it). Other countries haven’t. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/26 "2013-03-03T08:35:53Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > They’re not like you. You grew up in a democracy. I certainly wasn’t born in one, nor did I grow up in one. Based on his logic, it’s outrageous that the votes of immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Russian, China, Poland and countless other places count the same as his. There’s a word for that. Bigotry. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/27 "2013-03-03T08:38:46Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Last poll I saw, only 25% of Americans believe torturing suspects is never justified. So fundamentalist Muslims are hardly the only people who have a problem with this. I’m not sure why you’re mentioning “fundamentalist Muslims” since lots of countries that aren’t ruled by “fundamentalist Muslims” engage in torture. Anyway, Bryan was talking about democracy and countless democracies, not just the US have engaged in torture. They, like the US, just try and redefine torture so that it doesn’t count as such. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/28 "2013-03-03T08:40:41Z")
If the people in living those countries believed in democracy, they’d be living in democracies. Immigrants, OTOH, chose to live in a democracy. That’s the difference. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/29 "2013-03-03T08:47:20Z")
> [@Anonymous User](#): > > For example, the world government will be able to make animal cruelty laws. I find this hard to believe. The majority of people live in countries where there aren’t even adequate-to-me human cruelty laws. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/30 "2013-03-03T09:10:27Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > If the people in living those countries believed in democracy, they’d be living in democracies. With all due respect, that’s complete bullshit. Based on that logic, Black South Africans believed in white rule and up until the 1960s, just about all other Sub-Saharran Africans did. I know lots of people like to believe that Russians didn’t believe that living in a democracy was better than living under a dictatorship until 1991, but that line of thinking is utterly stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/31 "2013-03-03T09:16:07Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I’m not sure why you’re mentioning “fundamentalist Muslims”… Because I assumed that was one of the things **Bryan** had in mind when he said “slug-brained theocratic and/or dictatorial backwater with no traditions of freedom”. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/32 "2013-03-03T09:59:36Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > With all due respect, that’s complete bullshit. > > Based on that logic, Black South Africans believed in white rule and up until the 1960s, just about all other Sub-Saharran Africans did. > > I know lots of people like to believe that Russians didn’t believe that living in a democracy was better than living under a dictatorship until 1991, but that line of thinking is utterly stupid. Perhaps I exaggerated a bit. Still, there seems to be this attitude - especially among Americans - that the rest of the “non-free” world is yearning for democracy. I don’t believe this is true. I think people want more freedom for themselves, but not necessarily for their neighbors; they see freedom as a tool rather than an end in and of itself. So long as people think like that, I want them to have no power over me. ---
**Author:** ![Ferengi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@Ferengi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferengi)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/33 "2013-03-03T10:50:11Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Still, there seems to be this attitude - especially among Americans - that the rest of the “non-free” world is yearning for democracy. I don’t believe this is true. I think people want more freedom for themselves, but not necessarily for their neighbors; they see freedom as a tool rather than an end in and of itself. So long as people think like that, I want them to have no power over me. 1.) You’re conflating freedom with democracy. By it’s very nature, democracies require the curtailment of individual freedoms. 2.) Plenty of Americans don’t believe in freedom as an end in and of itself, including yours truly. I support freedom because I think it provides the best framework for happiness. Other Americans flatly reject freedom, such as the extremist sect of the Christian right who want to dictate our sexual behavior. There are also Americans who pay lip-service to freedom in order to escape responsibility, such as paying taxes. Finally, there are [shills](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59539-2005Apr16.html) who espouse freedom when they don’t believe in it. I think you overestimate the American population’s desire for freedom. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/34 "2013-03-03T11:30:28Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I certainly wasn’t born in one, nor did I grow up in one. > > Based on his logic, it’s outrageous that the votes of immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Russian, China, Poland and countless other places count the same as his. > > There’s a word for that. > > Bigotry. I don’t particularly like the fact that people in Utah have a say in my civil rights. I’d be \*really \*displeased if Saudi Arabia got a vote, too. Does that make me a bigot? ---
**Author:** ![Ken001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/43a26b/32.png) [@Ken001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ken001)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/35 "2013-03-03T12:05:25Z")
If you consider the history of human development it is inevitable that eventually there will be one government to rule them all. Probably a federalist government initially to allow for differing national aspirations but ultimately, yes, we will see a world government. Common laws of commerce, civil rights, crime, and restitution are what we need and the gaps are slowly closing. The flip-side is corporate nationality which science fiction writers have predicted. That is a nasty future where your loyalty is to the company and not to your fellow citizens. I hope we never see this but with tax havens and global financing it is an end run game. Seriously, the tossed coin is in the air. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/36 "2013-03-03T13:35:56Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I don’t particularly like the fact that people in Utah have a say in my civil rights. I’d be \*really \*displeased if Saudi Arabia got a vote, too. > > Does that make me a bigot? What model of world government are you thinking about. Because a world government is not going to resemble country levl government anymore than municipal government resembles the Federal Government. And. Yeah, yes it does make you a bigot. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/37 "2013-03-03T13:54:05Z")
> [@Ken001](#): > > If you consider the history of human development it is inevitable that eventually there will be one government to rule them all. Most of the tens of thousands of years of human development have gone unrecorded. So don’t know how really long long trends in human history play out. In terms of reduced violence, we’ve been on a pretty good run since the Renaissance, but most trends come to an end. Here’s what Churhill said in 1940: > [@](#): > > But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. That kind of world government could easily have been established by now if things had gone a little differently. Hopefully the good run we are in has a few more centuries to go. As for a good happy world government, it would face rebellions from nationalist movements. So things wouldn’t be happy for long. Voluntary international organizations are fine. But it had better be voluntary, allowing signatories to change their minds and leave peacefully. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/38 "2013-03-03T13:54:17Z")
A one World government is indeed inevitable. And it will, inevitably, be brutal & terrible. Because Man is the animal that makes mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/39 "2013-03-03T13:57:06Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > > [@Miller](#): > > > > I don’t particularly like the fact that people in Utah have a say in my civil rights. I’d be \*really \*displeased if Saudi Arabia got a vote, too. > > > > Does that make me a bigot? > > Yeah, yes it does make you a bigot. Since when is disliking a national government “bigotry”? If disliking Saudi Arabia is bigotry, how about dislike of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or WWII era Japan or Genghis Khan’s Mongolian Empire? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2013, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885/40 "2013-03-03T14:02:04Z")
International groups like the WTO or ICC are the nucleus of a world government. The current world government has no independent military (the UN security council doesn’t really count) which can do things like kidnap people with warrants out for them under the ICC. I’d like to see that, who knows when that will happen. Also I don’t like the idea of China and India having so much say so over my life. Or a lot of socially conservative nations like the middle eastern ones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-we-establish-a-world-government/651885.md?page=3)