I’m another one for it, and who believes it is inevitable. I don’t expect to be around to see it in action, but if I was and didn’t like it, I just wouldn’t obey it.
It doesn’t matter how powerful a government is - as long as they need a workforce, they can’t kill or lock up everyone.
The government would be so ineffectual as to be meaningless. Lots of people talk about the concept of world government as though it would be a solution to our problems.
The mere formation of a world government would itself require us to solve all sorts of problems. World government is the end of the road, not a solution to any of our present problems.
My own government isn’t elected by Bengalis.
I know my government won’t take away my rights because it hasn’t. Other people’s governments *do *take away their rights. If those people elected my government, who’s to say it won’t do the same to me? After all, they have a history of being ruled by bad people - apparently that’s what they want.
This is a key point. I think it is inevitable that we will eventually have OWG because I think we will eventually solve a lot of our current problems. (And if we don’t there won’t be anyone left to tell me I was wrong!) Again, my vision of OWG is not Khan Noonian Singh and a world awash in the blood of innocents. It’s a gradual evolution due largely to the liberalization of the world. Bangladesh and Rwanda aren’t going to take over the world. If they are part of a OWG, it will either be because they developed to the point of being capable of participating as partners with the US and western Europe or because they had it imposed on them by more powerful and progressive countries.
Who says I hate them? Oh right, you who thinks that everyone who advocates for a fairer system is instantly a money-hating communist. Next time, be a little more careful in your reading and you won’t make such an asinine assumption.
Bill Gates is rich because the system in which he prospered under allows him to be. With an estimated half of the world living on dollars a day, a system that incorporates them into the equation will obviously have consequences for those getting rich off the backs of your now fellow countrymen. I’m not saying its impossible to be rich in this system, but it would be harder doing it the same old way, especially if we had a OWG making regulations uniform throughout the world. You want to open an SUV factory there? Fine, but you pay them the same as you would the workers in Detroit, and you give them the same benefits and health plan.
Besides, you somehow missed the fact that I said the invited countries to the OWG would be more economically and socially equal, criteria that the EU use to help determine whether or not to invite new countries into their organization. But obviously assuming that I would want the US and Bangladesh in their current state merged together into one country and sharing resources makes your argument a hell of a lot more convincing, if a hell of a lot more false, so I’m not surprised you decided to take that route.
Wealth doesn’t magically appear. Your respond didn’t take into account inflation, which is one reason why a movie doesn’t cost a nickel anymore, and a house isn’t $1000 unless you’re in Detroit. There will always be poor but a system with a little more protection than the US now would suffice for me: plenty of protections, but still the ability to do something dimwitted like gamble your life-savings away
All this is the exact reason why we need a OWG to force labor costs and infrastructure to be equal across nations. Labor in Somalia shouldn’t be cheaper than in the US. And if taking away Jennifer and everyone else’s SUVs is the only way to make sure that guy in Bangladesh doesn’t starve to death, then it should be the right thing to do
Democracy is not a fix-all solution for all of the world’s problems. Like the other poster said, China’s prospering. A OWG would actually help your demands that democracy and rule of law govern member countries
Burma, as it is currently, wouldn’t be invited to join. If they ever were, they’d have to make a lot of changes, and only then could they partake in the shared prosperity from the rest of the member nations. There’s also nothing preventing the raising of economic and moral standards in that country so that they can join the OWG, which kind of makes my point for me
If Brussels is able to be pressured from southern Asia, then your worries are moot. You can pressure them just as well as any south asian from the comfort of Canada as those guys can from the comfort of south asia. Why didn’t you take into account that the argument works both ways?
Besides, this is the 21st century. Big protest rallies are not the only way you can pressure governments. You can still make a difference through the internet, phone calls, and supporting special interest groups that actually can travel to remote locations in person. That is why I said this kind of fear is a red herring. Its totally unfounded that suddenly everything you enjoy will be taken away by some foreigners. You have the same power
I’m not against the rich. If you can imagine a society where everyone can be rich then I’m all for that. If you trace our argument back a few posts, I only said that I would not mind the rich being diminished so that the poor have a fighting chance to survive. Again, this doesn’t mean that I’m against the rich, I simply see the Bill Gates’ of this OWG less likely. I want everyone to be not a dirty cup of water away from death. I want the poor to be able to at least afford clothes, food, and shelter. I’m not against the rich, but if somebody’s a billionaire and other people are scraping together garbage for dinner, then something has to be done to redistribute the wealth (yeah, I’m for that if there’s no other recourse). I think people take this aspect of my beliefs and blow it up into something bigger than it is. Just to repeat: I’m not against wealth, but in a OWG, nobody will be able to look for cheap labor in foreign countries because all labor will be the same cost regardless. And if the government decides Region 1 has crappy infrastructure, they can and should redistribute tax money from richer Region 6 into 1. I see nothing wrong with that under a OWG and in fact, such justice would only be possible under a OWG
Don’t assume ignorance for laziness 
I chose Gates because everyone knows he’s the richest guy in the world. He could be making his fortune off moon rocks and I would still choose him. Its not personal
Or maybe its through no fault of their own that they are ruled by bad people. Its easier to take over a small destitute country that can’t fight back.
Your logic would ignore changes in the world since pretty much all of the European civilizations used to be ruled by monarchs. People change, countries change.
Besides, as I said before, countries with little parity to the EU in terms of economic and social values wouldn’t be invited to join. These OWG Bengali’s aren’t your current Bengali’s.
Since your government hasn’t taken away your rights, and you said that factors into your decision, I assume you think it can never take them away? I assume you’re satisfied with how your civil liberties are right now and don’t think that any slippery slope can happen?
So you enforce global labor price equality? Through a one-world government? Are you mad?
You do realize that no country enforces labor price equality within it’s own borders, right? So if Boeing pays $35/hour for machinists in Seattle, they are perfectly free to open a plant in North Carolina where they pay machinists $20/hour.
You seriously think it would be a good idea to pass a law that machinists throughout the United States have to be paid $35/hour, no more and no less?
You want every wage set by a government bureaucrat. You want to eliminate capitalism. Nice. That’s a great plan there, Sparky. Hey, at least if you get your wish you’d eliminate the wealth differential between Somalia and Belgium. For about five minutes. And then your government bureaucrats are going to be dragged into the streets by enraged mobs and beaten to death.
Because:[list=a][li]Why would I accept another layer of government on the tenuous promise that I’ll be able to pressure it? What does that gain me?[/li][li]It’s clear by your statements that my comfort disqualifies me, anyway. If somebody in Bangladesh is suffering, that’ll end up taking priority and me pointing out that screwing up Canada won’t in any way help Bangladesh will fall on deaf ears because it’ll be assumed that I’m operating solely out of greed and/or selfishness.[/list][/li]
But the foreigners don’t have anything I want, or at least nothing that I need to pressure an OWG to appropriate on my behalf. I can get what I want through trade. A Bangladeshi, however, has very little and will be highly motivated to get the OWG to try to get my stuff for his benefit, because he needs it and a sympathy-driven OWG will put his needs above my comfort.
Put simply, the problems of the Bengals are not sufficient to encourage me to jeopardize my own country by placing control in the hands of people who don’t even live here.
Well, I wouldn’t mind them not being diminished because it’s unclear at best how diminishing them helps the poor at all.
It’s not Bill Gates and his billionaire buddies that are causing this, though. To continue using Bangladesh as an example (and I was actually there through much of 1979, incidentally), how much do you actually know about their system of government? The people stealing from the Bengals aren’t the Bill Gateses of the world - they’re the government officials of Bangladesh itself.
Unlikely. At the very least, differing nations have differing birth rates. Figure a typical blue-collar job is a semi- or unskilled factory worker, aged 20-30. Simple economics says countries that have a lot of un- and underemployed young men can fill these jobs more cheaply than nations where such men are relatively rare, as they are in Japan and Western Europe where college educations and low birth rates since 1970 have reduced this cohort significantly.
So bascially all labour will be the same cost when all places are the same, i.e. never.
What if Region 1 is full of notoriously corrupt local politicians? Does the OWG have the right to replace all levels of local government with its own [del]stooges[/del] staff?
There are far better candidates, including various members of the Saudi royal family who use and maintain their wealth by indeed casually exploiting their own population far beyond anything Gates has ever done to anyone. As far as I know, for example, Bill Gates has never beheaded anyone in a public square.
I don’t see how inequal labor costs are fair. I would, however, be perfectly willing to have a range of wages for a specific job based on local inflation rates and living standards. The minimum standard should be a living wage in whatever local province or state the worker lives in, though.
Capitalism can still happen, just not unchecked. It is not unfair or socialist to protect workers from exploitation. You keep throwing around these accusations like its a bodily function yet all you have are opinions. So unless you’re going to back them up with some kind of psychological assessment on why dirt poor Haitians who are being paid a quarter and hour to make $15 shirts for Disney will actually be upset if I mandate they get the American minimum wage, then go away, your arguments will be ignored.
You’re right, the first-world, rich countries would have less to gain from integrating the likes of the Congo or Cambodia into a single government. But if you’re going to frame it in terms of gains for you, then I would like you to simply admit that you don’t feel like helping these people if you can’t profit from it. Because your argument about greedily gaining something is callous and an example of the exact kind of selfishness that a OWG would do well in minimizing.
Your comfort would be well and good if it didn’t come at the expense of someone else’s survivability. But I’m not going to take your house and give it to a family living in huts. Even in first world countries, there are poor and homeless. I don’t expect a OWG to be able to get rid of that entirely, not until the aforementioned elimination of resource allocation due to the invention of Star Trek-like replicators. You are afraid that somehow you’ll be run out of your house by the Bolsheviks. That’s a fair concern. All I can say is that I would not support that kind of OWG any more than I would support a government in the US that wanted to do that.
I think your problem is that you’re projecting every kind of worse-case scenario onto me. Kindly quit that. Next time, just ask me what kind of solution I would propose.
Psh. You talk as if I actually am taking over the world already. All I’ve said so far is that some richer people will have their finances decreased and some poorer people will have theirs increased. We still have plenty of time to get to issues like yours. I don’t think humanity’s going to lose their ethnic and cultural identity so quickly that I wouldn’t plan for such a thing. Of course the first reaction by the richer countries will be to protect their own and the poorer countries will be to loot as much as they can. But simply throwing shit against the idea of a OWG doesn’t help. There will still be local governments and there will still be local controls.
For the same reason why Mississippi isn’t raiding the coffers of, for example, Vermont, is the same reason why I wouldn’t like Bengalis take your house and your car. Hell, I can give an even better example. California’s the largest and by definition the most influencial state in the country. But even with our crippling debt, we’re not, and we cannot, go over to neighboring Oregon or Nevada and steal their money.
You dont like the idea of a OWG, fine. But for you to assume the worse in order to derail any talk of it is dishonest. An OWG can work, it will have problems, and some people may not end up better than they are now. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to sell your kids to slavery so some guy in Afghanistan can have a meal.
Seriously? You dont get how higher taxes on the rich and lower ones for the poor can help the poor? This country used to have the poor stacked up 4 families deep in a single tenement apartment as the rule. It was only through regulations, lawsuits, and labor/consumer protection laws that even the poor get to be treated like people. If you think that preventing the rich from doing whatever they wanted to their workers is bad, then I can clearly see how you wouldn’t give a damn about kids starving to death in Africa.
Then maybe a OWG that can force their government to stop will protect both the Bengalis and Bill Gates. But without it, we’re either left with sanctions, invasion, or supporting some homegrown revolution that may simply bite us in the ass later. Only a OWG with enforcement powers can make such corrupt governments disappear without calling a vote with other corrupt governments or begging member nations of a league to “oh please will you send some troops?” kowtowing. As I said before, such problems may be eliminated by the time the OWG is established, we certainly won’t be inviting Bangladesh as its currently constituted into the OWG. But if corruption pops up, we wont need to wait long to fix it. And if you’re asking how I’m so confident a OWG will be incorruptible itself, well, I can’t, but then again this is a hypotetical scenario about how a OWG could work, isn’t it?
You’re forgetting that we wouldn’t have differing nations. This OWG will be collecting taxes from the combined working force of all its territories and allocating them thusly. The old Japanese and Western Europeans would be supported by the working force of the youth in Iran and China vice versa.
I’ll ignore the snarky remark 
But yes, if Region 1 is notoriously corrupt, then they will be arrested and thrown in jail. You act as if nobody working in government is not corrupt, which is a nice little theme that anti-government people have been able to work into the public consciousness but has no basis in fact. The corrupt will be replaced by competent and non-corrupt people when they are found out, just like in your local government and country. An OWG would be no different except in scale.
Laaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyyyy… :rolleyes:
Plus, his name is short and easy to type. The only person I would consider changing him to in my example would be Max Lee or Bob Pod