[OT] [HIST] Thoughts on World Government

<DISCLAIMER: I hope no one considers this post in poor taste. Current events
and news items have drawn my attention and brought these thoughts
to mind. I'm not making "light fare" of any real-world happendings,
which are awful.>

In the wake of what has gone on recently, we're seeing discussions (and
actions) in the legislatures of many nations on topics such as
  - unifying law enforcement capabilities (similar definitions of
terrorism, common extradition laws (at least within a power bloc),
harmonizing of international extradition/investigation laws, plans to
share data between agencies across national boundaries, greater liason between
agencies of law enforcement and intelligence across national boundaries)
  - unifying customs and immigration laws (or at least harmonizing them,
which isn't a far cry from unification) including things like a North American
Perimeter.
  - international cooperation from many nations to address problems of
global scope and to attack extranational asymetric threats

And these are only some of the moves we see afoot, not to mention the things
going on in NATO, the coalition building being engaged in by the US State
Dept. (sometimes with a bit of bribery or leverage, but coalition building
nonetheless), and moves afoot at the UN and the International Criminal Court.

And there is a movement afoot that realizes hotbeds of oppression, locales in
which proxy wars are fought, areas where despots are suffered... these
collectively end up representing a place for villains to recruit and therefore
are an international problem. Perhaps the solution will be containment,
perhaps liberation, perhaps diplomatic pressure, trade sanctions,
encouragement for the people to rise against their corrupt and oppressive
regimes, perhaps a marginalizing of proxy war fighting, perhaps some foreign
policy attention to world trouble
spots - the global nature of the new world is finally sinking in. One
nation's problems (internally or with its neighbours) can now be thought of as
a global issue, since any conflict can spill over with global reach.

Now, it is admittedly a long way from countries cooperating on issue X to
eliminating national borders and placing oneself under a central authority.
But let us just say that this may represent the building blocks of some form
of transnational governance... perhaps under the UN or perhaps under some
other collective body of nations.

We can see the strengthening of common law within "blocs" (which could
eventually include one another, thus forming a larger world-sized bloc).
Given the level of international cooperation and the way that these things
develop, this suggests an evolutionary trend towards common
governance - things like a Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(enforced), common law (at least for some things) across many countries,
common international conventions on crime and terrorism (and defence),
agencies within countries closely cooperating, and a general world movement
towards (slowly...) market economies and some form of democracy.

It strikes me that we may be seeing the precursor to the UN of the GZGverse.
The real world may be resembling art in this case (or maybe
Jon is just shrewd in guessing the direction trends are taking - he's
not the first to suggest this direction, mind you).

Perhaps the UN of the GZGverse was an entity built by international consensus
with roots in common law enforcement, global solutions to terrorism and
ecological and financial problems (caused by tightly interlinked market
economies), etc. which just evolved into a larger role as the entity that
keeps the nations from fragging Earth or one another completely.

I don't think "nations" will go away, even if we get some GZGverse-esque
World Gov't, because we still have a basic human need (sort of like the
needs for unity, security, freedom, etc) to differentiate ourselves -
this is what drives small groups to differentiate themselves (and individuals
from groups) into subsets of the larger whole. This won't go away... but
perhaps by 2183, a method of allowing this differentiation exists while the
larger governmental framework preserves the basic safety and integrity of the
world and deals with threats of global scope.

Just a thought, but current events seem to have given us some grist for the
mill.

Tomb

> On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 10:47:16 -0400 "Tomb" <kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca> writes:
<snip previous thoughts.
> We can see the strengthening of common law within "blocs" (which could
<Snip opinion>

Democracy is not a given (since most of the world still has problems
implementing same. And those of us who are about to start swelling with
nationalistic fervor, remember that none have implemented completely for all
groups (strictly my opinion I know) so it's not easy in practice.

In my strictly SF projection of the future democracy in practice withers to
form more then practice, sort of like a certain SE Asian country's
multi-cultural and held together by police/military presence.  Voting is
near universal in practice but selection is highly controlled. Another variety
would be the practice of Burma (Myanmar if you don't have the DOS (Department
of State) looking over your shoulder) where unacceptable elections just don't
come to fruition. Or the 'opposition' is informed just how far they can (and
can't) go in the process. Exceptions do exist there but few and far between.
Let's hope it is more like your model (if you think that is good, I don't)
then my campaign setting.

Gracias,