Why don't we establish a world government?

[R3d_Anonymous]

@Dissonance

I can claim that because they don’t care as much as you to have passed laws that meet with your standards. If they cared to the level that you want, they would already have laws that met your standards, thus they don’t care.

Okay, so maybe they don’t care. But has it occurred you that it may be out of ignorance? Just because other nations don’t care, you think the issue should be dismissed? If another nation is torturing (or nearly so) animals, and they don’t care, are you saying that nothing should be done about it?

@Dissonance

Ah, so we must pick up the white man’s burden to teach ethics and civilization to those savages. You do see how condescending this sounds, right?

I never said that; instead, what I meant was that with a global government, free education could be mandated for everyone. It may have seemed like that I implied that white men should go to other nations and educating people, but that wasn’t the implication. What I was trying to say was, if education was mandated (that’s all), then as a result, people would more educated. Thus, we would have an increased likelihood of them also being more civilized and ethical. Education, civilization, and ethicality are linked. This isn’t just about animal cruelty; it’s much more general than that. This is about making people in the world more educated so that unfair and unethical practices are less likely to develop than they are now. This is mainly targeting seriously underdeveloped countries where education is not good at all. Places where girls can’t attend school, or you have to pay money to go to school, or some other bullshit like that, are what mandated free education laws would help, because those are also the places where such unethical and unfair practices and ideas (again, not just about animal cruelty, but in general) are likelier to develop.

@Dissonance

French law states that “Foie gras belongs to the protected cultural and gastronomical heritage of France.”

@Dissonance

Cockfighting okay? It’s illegal in all 50 states in the US, but a lot of countries considers it part of their cultural heritage.

That is bullshit. Chinese foot-binding was also cultural and traditional, but it was abolished in 1911. India outlawed the expectation for women to throw themselves into the fire if their husband died in 1829; this still may and does exist in some areas, but the point stands. Just because certain practices are “cultural” and “traditional”, doesn’t mean that efforts shouldn’t be made to abolish them due to their lack of fairness and ethicality. Unfair and unethical practices are unfair and unethical; whether they are cultural and/or traditional or not should not affect the acceptance of them.

@Dissonance

Spain thinks it’s icky and bans it outside the Canary Islands (local cultural thing), but is positively in love with the idea of bullfighting as blood sport.

72% of the people in Spain reported that they have no interest in bullfighting, by the way. Anyways, same point as above, which is that whether a practice is cultural and/or traditional or not doesn’t mean that efforts shouldn’t be made for them to be abolished. The bull lives in extremely poor conditions, at least for 2 days before the bullfight in order to weaken it. One of the things they do is they give it crap to eat. But, that’s not nearly the worst of it. They stick a needle through its genitals, half-blind it, and do other things to annoy it. They piss it off even more using other various methods. At this point, you are approaching torture. Then the bullfighter goes and kills it in order to show off it’s confidence. The practice as a whole is seriously barbaric. This isn’t really a sport; they weaken the bull so much before the actual event so the chances are seriously rigged. Now, your point is: so what? The Spanish don’t care. Furthermore, it’s a tradition and a cultural thing, so don’t impose your beliefs on other people.

Like I said, just because other nation(s) doesn’t/don’t care doesn’t make it right, nor does it mean that we should just leave it alone. Essentially, you are just letting it slide. The animals are still in trouble and being cruelly and horribly treated. Are you just going to let that slide because “others don’t care”? Fortunately, I heard about Catalonia actually trying to stop bullfighting in Spain, so at least there is some care. And I have addressed the traditional and cultural issues above.

@Dissonance

Slaughtering cats and dogs for food ok? A lot of Asia thinks so, but it’s icky to a lot of Europe and the Americas. Lest we get high and mighty about how much more civilized Europe is than Asia in this regard, the slaughter of cattle is illegal in much of India, but try to get the Americas and Europe to give up their Big Macs. Hell, it’s only recently that the means of manufacture in modern industrial slaughterhouses in the West has come under fire for the amount of cruelty it uses.

This is a slightly different issue because it is about using animals for food, not for traditional and cultural practices. The problem with this issue is that the only solution would be to get everyone to go vegetarian worldwide if you really wanted to be fair about it. Make America and Europe give up their big macs, make Asia give up eating dogs and cats, etc. The chances seem extremely close to none for that happening, at least at this point. I think it would be more worthwhile (at least for now) if we focused on fighting animal cruelty that is based on traditional and cultural practices, not eating. At this point, in terms of animal cruelty, I am not focusing on it being used for food, but for practices like bullfighting, cockfighting, etc.

Anyways, there are other people’s questions/comments that I will address, like Ibn Warraq’s and msmith537’s that are actually a little more relevant to this thread about establishing a world government (animal cruelty is a specific issue, but there are many others such as equal rights, etc.), but I will have to do that at a later time, not now.

[pancakes3]

I’m pretty sure the existence of this very thread can tell you why a world government isn’t feasible. Some people just don’t want it. Get that issue out of the way before considering the logistics of executing something like that.

[BrainGlutton]

@Leaffan

Yes but, imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.

Hard, no; dangerous, yes.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Dissonance

I can claim that because they don’t care as much as you to have passed laws that meet with your standards. If they cared to the level that you want, they would already have laws that met your standards, thus they don’t care.

Ah, so we must pick up the white man’s burden to teach ethics and civilization to those savages. You do see how condescending this sounds, right? What animal cruelty laws do you feel the ‘uncivilized’ world is lacking that the civilized world needs to educate and impose on them exactly anyway? Banning foie gras? Europe can’t even agree on that, it’s banned in many European countries but France’s position is they can take our foie gras from our dead, cold hands. French law states that “Foie gras belongs to the protected cultural and gastronomical heritage of France.” Cockfighting okay? It’s illegal in all 50 states in the US, but a lot of countries considers it part of their cultural heritage. Spain thinks it’s icky and bans it outside the Canary Islands (local cultural thing), but is positively in love with the idea of bullfighting as blood sport. Slaughtering cats and dogs for food ok? A lot of Asia thinks so, but it’s icky to a lot of Europe and the Americas. Lest we get high and mighty about how much more civilized Europe is than Asia in this regard, the slaughter of cattle is illegal in much of India, but try to get the Americas and Europe to give up their Big Macs. Hell, it’s only recently that the means of manufacture in modern industrial slaughterhouses in the West has come under fire for the amount of cruelty it uses.

Again, I can assume that the rest of the world doesn’t care about as much or in the manner that you wish because it objectively doesn’t. If it did, you wouldn’t feel the need to ‘educate’ them out of their uncivilized, unethical barbarity to have the right view (yours) on the matter.

By the by, I’m a vegetarian and haven’t eaten meat in any form in almost 20 years. However I don’t feel the need to impose my beliefs on such matters to the rest of the world. Do you eat meat? Because though I personally consider that to be animal cruelty, I don’t feel the need to make it illegal here, much less in the entire world.

Actually, you can get hamburgers in India.

There’s no prohibitions on the selling of beef that I know of and lots of people there, particularly the 10% who are Muslim, have no problem with eating cows.

Conversely, Muslims throughout South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa tend to have phobias about dogs because generally speaking, due to history, the only dogs they’re familiar with are feral, wild ones who are quite dangerous.

It’s one of the things my father had a bit of a time adjusting to in the US, where dogs are loved and everywhere.

[Malthus]

@RickJay

Which of course is because too many of the world’s governments just aren’t in a position to be part of such a thing.

The idea of Canada being in some kind of EU-like union with Europe, the USA, Australia, Japan et al. is intriguing enough for me to consider the arguments for and against it. But democratic, free countries can’t be in any “government” worth the name with a country like Burma or Saudi Arabia; there are no significant shared values between our nations’ governments. Any shared govenrment will be merely a forum and will at best be an agent for charitable works - which, of course, we already have. They have a big HQ in New York City.

But the idea of a United Free World, which will eventually accept new applicants as they merit their inclusion, is very intriguing.

That’s always been my preferred notion.

Create a military, political and economic alliance which offers strong security and ecomomic incentives for joining. Make it a sperate entity from the UN.

Make the criteria for joining be - acceptance of a certain standard of freedom for citizens - such as real constitutional protections for minority rights which are actualy enforced - plus democratic or at least representational government power, and a reasonably effective rule of law. Meet these criteria, and your nation may join.

Presumably, such an alliance would be powerful enough to deter aggression from nations outside the alliance (and a term of membership would be not engaging in aggression against non-members except as part of an agreed strategy of self-defence).

This would, hopefully, provide incentives for nations to join - until one day, most or all are “in”.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Malthus

That’s always been my preferred notion.

Create a military, political and economic alliance which offers strong security and ecomomic incentives for joining. Make it a sperate entity from the UN.

Make the criteria for joining be - acceptance of a certain standard of freedom for citizens - such as real constitutional protections for minority rights which are actualy enforced - plus democratic or at least representational government power, and a reasonably effective rule of law. Meet these criteria, and your nation may join.

Is there anything this organization can do to reduce freedom, i.e. pass laws that restrict all citizens of all member states on some issue? Frankly, I wouldn’t want my country to join a group whose members had to satisfy some arbitrary level of freedom (which I presume wouldn’t be as high as Canada now enjoys) and then could work to drag the countries above that level down to that level, and once there, even lower.

If the level of freedom is, say, “2013 Canada” and nothing the new world body can ever do will cause it to drop below that level, well, you’ve cleared one hurdle. The next one is satisfactorily explaining why such a body is needed in the first place and what it would do.

[BrainGlutton]

@Bryan_Ekers

I don’t want my vote to be considered of equal worth as one from someone in a slug-brained theocratic and/or dictatorial backwater with no traditions of freedom.

Look, we don’t like to talk about it, but we do have our Red States . . . and they get to vote, yet . . . compromises, y’know?

[BrainGlutton]

If we go by Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations scheme and assume voters and representatives in a world government voting, at the global level, more or less in civilizational-cultural blocs most of the time, then we see that the civilization-blocs are balanced – none is big enough to overwhelm the others electorally.

[Trinopus]

@pancakes3

I’m pretty sure the existence of this very thread can tell you why a world government isn’t feasible. Some people just don’t want it. Get that issue out of the way before considering the logistics of executing something like that.

Some people also don’t want racial integration, or religious freedom for minority faiths, or rights for gays.

If your model for a government relies on unanimous consent, it isn’t going to happen.

If, however, the model is like the model for the industrialized democracies, where legitimacy does not depend on unanimity, a world government is entirely possible.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@BrainGlutton

If we go by Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations scheme and assume voters and representatives in a world government voting, at the global level, more or less in civilizational-cultural blocs most of the time, then we see that the civilization-blocs are balanced – none is big enough to overwhelm the others electorally.

Well, Sam Huntington is a racist piece of shit who can’t handle the idea of brown people coming into the US.

Beyond that, it takes a special kind of stupid to think that dictatorial governments are remotely representative of the people they represent.

Joseph Stalin was an atheist, but no one thinks that most Russians under his rule were and similarly Pieter Botha may have believed that Blacks were inferior to Blancs(whites) but no serious person thinks that most South Africans agreed with him.

Similarly, no one has been surprised that following the fall of Mubarak that relations between Egypt and Israel(the nation of “the descendant of apes and pigs” according to Mubarak’s replacement) have gone to shit.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@John_Mace

I never said such a devastating war was likely. I only said it was more likely than a World Government, as envisioned by the OP, which is extremely unlikely.

A world government as described by the OP is more likely than any sort of mass nuclear war both in the near and especially the far future.

GO and reread the OP. That’s not what he’s talking about.

Rereading the OP, I think he used a very bad example (animal cruelty) but these economic ties are the building-blocks of future political union.

Ar you joking? The break up of the USSR has splintered nations into lots of different smaller political enclaves, and we still don’t know how it’s all going to work out. You are too focused on the Eastern European Republics of the ex-USSR and are ignoring the many Central Asian Republics.

Even the Central Asian Republics (except for Turkmenistan) have become more closely integrated with the rest of the world without the Soviet restricts on the flow of goods and ideas.

It’s not balkanizing yet, because it’s a totalitarian state. There is no comparison to the US, which is a recent invention and doesn’t encompass areas of significant ethnic diversity like China. Link.. The US is unlikely to split up in the foreseeable future. There is no state that would secede right now if offered the choice. Not so for China. You have heard of Tibet, have you not?

All these minority areas are very lightly populated and many of them are actually being filled with Chinese settlers. If India could keep its very diverse state together, China with a longer history of political unity, a stronger civil society, and a dominant ethnic supermajority can do so far more easily. Incidentally, I think even the Dalai Lama is demanding just Tibetan autonomy rather than independence.

[Trinopus]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

A world government as described by the OP is more likely than any sort of mass nuclear war both in the near and especially the far future. . . .

Whoo… Much as I would wish this were correct, I don’t think it is. The likelihood of such a war anytime soon is very close to zero, but the chances of a world government anytime soon is even closer to zero. A war might happen by accident; a government, never.

In the long run? Alas, I still would have to favor the war. Again, it could happen by accident, and, worse, nuclear proliferation will increasingly favor the chances of it happening at the direction of a rogue nation or crackpot dictator. Yet a world government could only come about at the express agreement of nearly all nations on earth. It’s more likely as time goes by, but it still remains second to the chance of a nuclear smash-up.

(What is, perhaps, even more alarming is how many people would declare that they would prefer the war to the government! The old “Better Dead than Red” squadron has not been fully demobbed.)

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Dissonance

Wait - you want a permanent force assigned to the UN based upon an organization formed from foreign mercenaries with a policy of no questions asked about personal history in exchange for service and a fresh start? You know a lot of FFL personnel after WW2 were former members of the SS? This is what you want to base your international human rights enforcing armed force on?

Speaking of the SS, the Waffen-SS (along with the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War) can also offer some pointers on how to structure a multinational force, regardless of ideology.

[Rune]

Most decisions are best made as close to the citizens as possible. Democracy above a certain size is just another word for corruption and tyranny.

In addition the larger the government the more compromises have to be made. Laws like those for animal cruelty would have to adhere to the lowest common denominator of a shitload of people with different opinions and agendas. Try getting a ban on halal-butchery through a world government. Many of the laws with regard to animal cruelty in effect in Denmark are stricter than those minimum requirements in effect in the EU.

Besides there’s a whole bunch of people that I simply want to deal with as little as possible. I don’t care what they do in their own countries, but I want them to have absolutely no say on what goes on here.

[Malthus]

@Bryan_Ekers

Is there anything this organization can do to reduce freedom, i.e. pass laws that restrict all citizens of all member states on some issue? Frankly, I wouldn’t want my country to join a group whose members had to satisfy some arbitrary level of freedom (which I presume wouldn’t be as high as Canada now enjoys) and then could work to drag the countries above that level down to that level, and once there, even lower.

If the level of freedom is, say, “2013 Canada” and nothing the new world body can ever do will cause it to drop below that level, well, you’ve cleared one hurdle. The next one is satisfactorily explaining why such a body is needed in the first place and what it would do.

The purpose of an international organization such as this would be dual - to prevent offensive wars on the one hand and to foster trade and development on the other. Aside from policing the membership criteria (i.e., you have to be a free country to join, with a real rule of law), it would have nothing whatsoever to do with the purely internal matters of the member countries.

The organization would, essentially, be in the nature of a military alliance rather than a “world government”. To an extent of course these alliances already exist, but they are still animated by historical accident and not rational and directed principle.

How the world develops after all countries have joined and the issue of offensive warfare becomes moot is an issue for the future.

[Dissonance]

@Anonymous User

Okay, so maybe they don’t care. But has it occurred you that it may be out of ignorance? Just because other nations don’t care, you think the issue should be dismissed? If another nation is torturing (or nearly so) animals, and they don’t care, are you saying that nothing should be done about it?

Now where did I say nothing should be done about it? Oh yeah, I didn’t. I was responding to your proposal that a world government be established to ‘fix it’.

I never said that; instead, what I meant was that with a global government, free education could be mandated for everyone. It may have seemed like that I implied that white men should go to other nations and educating people, but that wasn’t the implication. What I was trying to say was, if education was mandated (that’s all), then as a result, people would more educated. Thus, we would have an increased likelihood of them also being more civilized and ethical. Education, civilization, and ethicality are linked.

I’d suggest you look up the origin and meaning of the white man’s burden. You’re just digging the hole deeper here by insisting the problem is foreigners are uncivilized and unethical for not sharing our (or your) mores and values.

This isn’t just about animal cruelty; it’s much more general than that. This is about making people in the world more educated so that unfair and unethical practices are less likely to develop than they are now. This is mainly targeting seriously underdeveloped countries where education is not good at all. Places where girls can’t attend school, or you have to pay money to go to school, or some other bullshit like that, are what mandated free education laws would help, because those are also the places where such unethical and unfair practices and ideas (again, not just about animal cruelty, but in general) are likelier to develop.

Okay, but you’re the one who chose animal cruelty as the example of the problem world government would fix. I’m asking, and still waiting, for what exactly you mean by this, i.e. what cruel practices towards animals does the ‘uncivilized’ and unethical world have that the civilized world doesn’t that they need to be civilized and educated on so that they may become the ethical people you so want.

That is bullshit. Chinese foot-binding was also cultural and traditional, but it was abolished in 1911. India outlawed the expectation for women to throw themselves into the fire if their husband died in 1829; this still may and does exist in some areas, but the point stands. Just because certain practices are “cultural” and “traditional”, doesn’t mean that efforts shouldn’t be made to abolish them due to their lack of fairness and ethicality. Unfair and unethical practices are unfair and unethical; whether they are cultural and/or traditional or not should not affect the acceptance of them.

It’s not bullshit. Foie gras is something that France (surely part of your civilized, educated and ethical world) still allows and in fact refuses to give up, considering it their cultural heritage. The same applies to cockfighting. ‘Civilizing’, ‘educating’ and ‘teaching ethics’ isn’t going to change it.

72% of the people in Spain reported that they have no interest in bullfighting, by the way.

No interest in doesn’t mean opposition to. It’s still a national blood sport in Spain (and Portugal, etc) that you can watch on TV. Again, surely Spain is part of your civilized, ethical part of the world, right?

Now, your point is: so what? The Spanish don’t care. Furthermore, it’s a tradition and a cultural thing, so don’t impose your beliefs on other people.

Like I said, just because other nation(s) doesn’t/don’t care doesn’t make it right, nor does it mean that we should just leave it alone. Essentially, you are just letting it slide. The animals are still in trouble and being cruelly and horribly treated. Are you just going to let that slide because “others don’t care”?

No, my point isn’t to say so what and nothing should be done about it. My point is questioning the need or wisdom of a world government to solve this problem, and pointing out to you that the ‘civilized, ethical’ world has a beam in it’s own eye when you condemn these still as yet unspecified motes in the eyes of the uncivilized, unethical and uneducated world. Again, what specifically are these places lagging behind the civilized world vis a vis animal cruelty?

This is a slightly different issue because it is about using animals for food, not for traditional and cultural practices.

You’ve got a strange idea of what makes up culture and tradition if food isn’t a part of it. By the way, foie gras is food.

I think it would be more worthwhile (at least for now) if we focused on fighting animal cruelty that is based on traditional and cultural practices, not eating. At this point, in terms of animal cruelty, I am not focusing on it being used for food, but for practices like bullfighting, cockfighting, etc.

Ah, there’s that beam in your own eye that you refuse to see while staring at this (still unspecified) mote in the eyes of others. What exactly is the “etc” in bullfighting, cockfighting, etc? You’ll note that I was the one who had to bring up bullfighting and cockfighting as presumed examples of what you consider this animal cruelty problem to be that you think a world government needs to be set up to address. I mean, veal is okay, it’s food. Eating cats and dogs is okay, but I assume you’d have a problem with dog fighting as blood sport. Eating cattle and chicken is okay, it’s a food, never mind now cruel their lives may be in a modern industrial meat industry. Battery cages okay? Forced molting of poultry? Debeaking so that the poultry don’t go about killing each other from being packed in so tight? It’s not animal cruelty, or at least not the animal cruelty you want to focus on in your effort to stop animal cruelty via world government?

Anyways, there are other people’s questions/comments that I will address, like Ibn Warraq’s and msmith537’s that are actually a little more relevant to this thread about establishing a world government (animal cruelty is a specific issue, but there are many others such as equal rights, etc.), but I will have to do that at a later time, not now.

Whoa. You’re the one who framed this debate on the issue of ‘fixing’ animal cruelty, not me. I didn’t write an OP saying world government is a good idea and we should make one and list animal cruelty as the only specific example of what it could fix. If you feel the issue to be irrelevant, you shouldn’t have used it as your only concrete example of what you want a world government to fix. You might also note that animal cruelty is hardly the only thing I’ve commented on in this thread. I’m just trying to call you to task to explain what the animal cruelty problem is outside of the civilized world, and why you feel a world government is needed or would be desirable to go about fixing it, especially in consideration of the blind eye you turn on practices of the civilized world.

@Ibn_Warraq

Actually, you can get hamburgers in India..

I know, that’s why I said the slaughter of cattle was illegal in much of India, not the consumption of it. Everybody’s favorite source:

Slaughter of cattle is allowed with restrictions (like a ‘fit-for-slaughter’ certificate which may be issued depending on factors like age and gender of cattle, continued economic viability etc.) in fourteen states, it is completely banned in six states, while there is no restriction in four states.
…
Many illegal slaughterhouses operate in large cities such as Chennai and Mumbai. While there are approximately 3,600 slaughterhouses operating legally in India, there are estimated to be over 30,000 illegal slaughterhouses.

[BrainGlutton]

@Rune

Most decisions are best made as close to the citizens as possible. Democracy above a certain size is just another word for corruption and tyranny.

:dubious: And what size would that be?

[Ibn_Warraq]

@Rune

Most decisions are best made as close to the citizens as possible. Democracy above a certain size is just another word for corruption and tyranny.

Au contraire.

In my experience, local governments at the city, county, and state level have vastly more corruption than the much, much larger federal government.

Rhode Island, my home state, is a perfect example. We’re the smallest state in the country and are so famous for our corruption that we had the former Mayor of Providence run the city from jail.

[R3d_Anonymous]

Dissonance, Ibn Warraq, and msmith537, my replies to you are currently under construction. They should be up in a few hours.

[Lemur866]

Here’s the thing.

How is this world government supposed to function? Like, if Syria has a civil war, the world government would step in and put a stop to the civil war? Except does that mean helping the rebels, or helping the government? If the world government troops are supposed to be under the control of the world government, not the national government, who decides when and where to deploy those troops? Under what authority? How are the decision makers chosen? Democratically? By appointment from the national governments?

If the idea is that China and Russia and the United States and France and the UK and a couple other major power states must unanimously decide to approve military action by the world military, how exactly is that different than the UN forces of today? If the world government doesn’t have the power to appropriate funds to pay for this world military, and it relies on donations from national governments, is that really going to work? Either the world military will be entirely ineffectual, or it will be an organ of whatever superpower dominates the world government.

The problem for a world state is, what exactly do we get out of it? What do citizens of liberal democratic countries get exactly? We get the chance to send troops and money to each and every third world hellhole that is experiencing poverty and war? We’re obligated to stop every war and civil war and uprising? We’re obligated to send money and development aid to every place that’s poorer than Alabama?

And why exactly are the governments of the aforementioned third world hellholes going to agree to be governed by the world state? They rule these countries for their personal benefit. Asking them to step aside to allow the world state to improve things is like asking Tony Soprano to stop running organized crime. You can send in troops to arrest Tony, but he isn’t going to stop being the boss just because you asked nicely.

So is the world government going to be a creature of the developed world, where we topple dictators and occupy the third world? How’s that going to work out for us? Or do we accept the legitimacy of authoritarian governments and deal with them as they are? Or not? Authoritarian governments, like, say, I don’t know, China? What’s our plan for democratizing and liberalizing China? Or are we only going to liberalize tiny little countries that can’t fight back?