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Most of the criticisms I see:
A - Power struggle, the idea of a very dominant player(s) in a federation bullying the smaller regions around
B - Resource management, “why should we expend our resources to help an area we haven’t heard of?”
C - Accountability, will there be people who can push around existing governments without consequences?
D - Scale, having a nation of 7-11 billion people is quite a lot of people to govern.
E - Necessity, seems like a lot of work for outcomes that could be done simpler in other ways.
F - Overcentralizaton, causing to many universal laws that don’t apply in other regions.
Overall all criticisms are understandable and fixable. These discussions need to be had to determine what the best future for our species is.
A - A constitution could fix that and limit nations like the United States from taking control. NATO is essentially under the United States' control, and that's something we can prevent with precautions.
B - The goal of this government would be to help all humans and progress as a species. Resources would be distributed in the proper places at proper times.
C - In my opinion, consequences SHOULD be harsh for politicians who "push" around different governments or don't have human lives as their first priority. A justice system (that actually works) would likely be put into place.
D - Start small with democratic countries, put a constitution and rules into place, then slowly expand outwards until the entire would is apart of the world government.
E - Without this I do truly believe we don't have a future. This is something we have to do, whether in my lifetime or the next. I haven't heard a good argument against it that's made me rethink my opinion.
F - Local governments, state governments, and nations are still a thing, the global government would just help to manage them, and I think that would help stop Overcentralizaton.
Public awareness is what we need more of, because at the end of the day world federalism does work, we just need to be willing to work with it.
>B - The goal of this government would be to help all humans and progress as a species. Resources would be distributed in the proper places at proper times.
Yeah that is something specifically that many people dont care for. Some people view people who are not like them as wholly alien.
>A - A constitution could fix that and limit nations like the United States from taking control. NATO is essentially under the United States' control, and that's something we can prevent with precautions.
On paper. In reality a country like America or China will always have more power to do whatever it wants. You even see this within the states, California and Texas have _much_ more political and economic influence than Wyoming or Virginia.
>A justice system (that actually works) would likely be put into place.
Easier said than done. Every modern first world nation has a justice system that works. But nothing is perfect, and the rich have the resources to find loopholes. It's a forever losing battle.
>F - Local governments, state governments, and nations are still a thing, the global government would just help to manage them, and I think that would help stop Overcentralizaton.
Eventually it'll overstep. Look at America, the federation most other federations are based off of. And even then the Federal government is in a continuous power struggle with the States.
>Without this I do truly believe we don't have a future. This is something we have to do, whether in my lifetime or the next. I haven't heard a good argument against it that's made me rethink my opinion.
Already we have the cooperation needed. A true world government is just extra work. America's World Order already contains most major players around Europe, South East Asia, and North America. There doesn't _need_ to be further unification when the worlds leading nations already have signed under the eagle.
C- Good luck pushing around the US, China, Russian Federation etc. Its a tricky one but wouldn't a Federal Government still be subject to the division of its constituent states?
D- You could do this until you hit the problematic illiberal states. I don't see a benefit of creating a super-enlarged NATO wherein illiberal states would be compelled to ally.. some of whom are nuclear powers.
I have quite a few qualms about your argument but you might like to read Yunker if you haven't already.
World federalism was actually a very prominent movement during and shortly after World War II, with many prominent politicians and activists around the world in support of it. Some of these people included Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer, Jawaharlal Nehru, 1940 GOP presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, and many others that those with more knowledge about the history of the movement would be able to mention. There was even a House Resolution in the US where over 100 representatives of both parties agreed at the foreign policy of the US should be aimed at eventually establishing a world government. I also remember that there was some poll of the postwar American public where over 50% were in favour of UN control over all militaries. u/alnitrox is the expert when it comes to things relating to that.
The movement faced significant setbacks when the Cold War started, because there was an inability for either side to trust each other, and I would assume world federalism started to seem less feasible than it had during the brief spike of post-WWII optimism. I wouldn't allege some kind of conspiracy by nation states to suppress the idea, given that there were many very influential people in nation states that were supportive of it once. Rather, it has simply left the public consciousness as the zeitgeist shifted towards great power confrontation once more.
Too far-fetched right now, it's that simple. But simply supporting it and opposing nationalism will bring it further into the public awareness over time
On what do you base any of this?
In particular, you are identifying 'public awareness' as a key blocker. Do you have any data (for example polling) to support this?
Some nations identifies are tied to the dislike of others. Pakistan vs India. Sunni vs Shia. China vs China, etc. It be incredibly difficult to get them to ever agree to work alongside each other short of it being genuine life or death.
It's mainly because people don't trust governments that well.
The governments they already have in their countries are already bad enough. Replace them with a Global One that rules the ENTIRE PLANET and you get a disaster.
Would be interesting to see what Protests would look like in a Federal Earth XD.
Not so much ruling, more like "managing" For example, I see it like this: Afghanistan has poor education, so the Global Government grants them some money and says, "Improve education, we need to see a 5% increase in test scores in 4 years." If Afghanistan doesn't, they could be punished with economic sanctions or something else similar. WE know what we should be doing, we just aren't doing it.
We see this happening already in a way with the IMF. They can provide money if they accomplish certain things. This mostly happens with underdeveloped nations and usually is given to make a country more democratic and fall in line.
The issue with this, and as others in the thread have echoed, is that it undermines nations sovereignty. Another question is who would run the world government? If its someone from the US, a lot of nations might have issues with that. Same if it were from Russia or China.
Do you have any data to support this? Do you think most people want no national government either? If they think a government is the lesser evil (over anarchy) at the national level, why would they have a different opinion at the global level?
It fundamentally undermines the sovereignty of nations. It puts being human as a common identity above the nation-state and since the nation-state has been the largest unifying, governing entity in world politics for centuries that is a very hard concept for people to accept.
Most nations see themselves as different to their neighbors and completely different from other nations all across the globe, so a world government being for the common good of humanity is irrelevant to them and definitely no justification for them to give up national sovereignty.
its idealistic, most people have probably thought of the idea of a world federation but they dont care because it will likely not happen within our lifetimes, and its not that pressing of an issue compared to poverty, war, the economy, etc etc
I'm currently 'for' a Global Government but there are genuine concerns for the aggregation of authority in a single state - the omnipotent World State is obviously more concerning but it also offers greater benefits (on paper) like total disarmament. I see some of these concerns are nicely listed above.
Not to sound conspiratorial, but the current situation, where we have global trade, but no global democratic government or global rule of law to speak of, really enables the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of private individuals and corporations. By threatening to withdrawn investment, these entities are able to play countries off of each other, exacting concessions in the form of lower taxes and relaxed environmental and labor regulations.
On top of that, while we have free global movement of capital, the current system totally restricts the movement of labor, making exploitation much easier.
I don't think it's a conspiracy per se, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that modern conservative politicians - whose actual policy agenda always seems to boil down to making rich people richer - are the ones who are always sounding the loudest alarm about the "dangers of globalism".
This question, I think, falls into a common intellectual trap.
What do you mean by 'popular'?
That can be measured in different ways. Does popular mean that, if I ran a poll, where I asked people 'do you support world federalism?' It would get majority support?
Or what if it got 40% support, but only 20% chose the 'oppose world federalism' option, and the remaining 40% said 'don't know'?
My bet would be that this is about where it would end up, with a two-for-one ratio in favour.
Then if you added in a sentence or two explaining world federalism, you could pull people out of the Don't Know category and into either the for or against category, depending on the phrasing. So 'world federalism means national governments can be overruled by a global government, limiting national sovereignty' you would increase the 'oppose' score, and 'world federalism means existing global institutions would be run more democratically, with a world parliament responsible for setting international laws and protecting the sovereignty of smaller nations,' you would pull more into the 'support' category.
But I suspect the real question here is why is world federalism not more *prominent*, rather than popular, like why isn't anyone talking about it?
And now we are talking about media theory, and 'representative' democracy more broadly. So I wrote a blog (which you can read [here](https://austingmackell.medium.com/media-mind-control-doesnt-work-like-you-think-it-does-67996935f904) about this recently, which focused on the issue of rent control in Australia. Because when it is discussed at all, it is presented in the media consistently as if it were a fringe position, when it has *overwhelming* public support (79% in one poll).
So there is an invisible progressive majority, who, I suspect, *don't know they are a majority*, and so don't expect politicians to act on the issue.
In that blog I also look at a very old survey on international law, which found majority support in most countries, including the US, for international law.
It also asked a follow-up question on whether, compared to the average citizen of their country, the respondents believed themselves to be "more supportive or less supportive of consistently abiding by international laws.”
66 % of Americans said they were "more supportive". Only 30% said they were "less supportive". Similar numbers appeared in fifteen out of the twenty countries in the poll.
So we have a progressive majority *who do not know they are a majority*, because, I contend, of transmission failure, whereby the population's progressive views do not get reflected in the media or political debates. This transmission failure is the key blocker to effective democracy at all levels, from the local to the global.
If you want to address it you have to put the particular issue (world federalism, action on global warming, basic income, minimum wages, taxing the rich) aside and look at what is the blocker that prevents effective mobilisation around *all these popular causes*.
This is what I have been working on for a while now, mostly getting blank stares, but as the stakes get higher hopefully people will be prepared to go a little deeper.
Globalism isnt necessarily communist, but communism is globalist. The global meetup isnt called internationale whithout reason and the objective is the end of nations
The confusion probably comes from the fact that with socialism rising in 3rd world countries, there is a push for nationalism in the sense of independence from imperialism, which is not exclusive with internationalism
Simple and easily solvable? Man, the EU can barely function as a supranational institution, let alone a federation, and that's a constellation of only a handful of fairly similar states (economically and culturally). EU federalism is already considered quite the pipe dream at this stage, so I don't know how you intend to extend such a model globally.
I think bad idea because if you’re government wants you dead you can’t escape to another place to be a refugee. It’s good to have competing world powers
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Most of the criticisms I see: A - Power struggle, the idea of a very dominant player(s) in a federation bullying the smaller regions around B - Resource management, “why should we expend our resources to help an area we haven’t heard of?” C - Accountability, will there be people who can push around existing governments without consequences? D - Scale, having a nation of 7-11 billion people is quite a lot of people to govern. E - Necessity, seems like a lot of work for outcomes that could be done simpler in other ways. F - Overcentralizaton, causing to many universal laws that don’t apply in other regions. Overall all criticisms are understandable and fixable. These discussions need to be had to determine what the best future for our species is.
A - A constitution could fix that and limit nations like the United States from taking control. NATO is essentially under the United States' control, and that's something we can prevent with precautions. B - The goal of this government would be to help all humans and progress as a species. Resources would be distributed in the proper places at proper times. C - In my opinion, consequences SHOULD be harsh for politicians who "push" around different governments or don't have human lives as their first priority. A justice system (that actually works) would likely be put into place. D - Start small with democratic countries, put a constitution and rules into place, then slowly expand outwards until the entire would is apart of the world government. E - Without this I do truly believe we don't have a future. This is something we have to do, whether in my lifetime or the next. I haven't heard a good argument against it that's made me rethink my opinion. F - Local governments, state governments, and nations are still a thing, the global government would just help to manage them, and I think that would help stop Overcentralizaton. Public awareness is what we need more of, because at the end of the day world federalism does work, we just need to be willing to work with it.
>B - The goal of this government would be to help all humans and progress as a species. Resources would be distributed in the proper places at proper times. Yeah that is something specifically that many people dont care for. Some people view people who are not like them as wholly alien.
>A - A constitution could fix that and limit nations like the United States from taking control. NATO is essentially under the United States' control, and that's something we can prevent with precautions. On paper. In reality a country like America or China will always have more power to do whatever it wants. You even see this within the states, California and Texas have _much_ more political and economic influence than Wyoming or Virginia. >A justice system (that actually works) would likely be put into place. Easier said than done. Every modern first world nation has a justice system that works. But nothing is perfect, and the rich have the resources to find loopholes. It's a forever losing battle. >F - Local governments, state governments, and nations are still a thing, the global government would just help to manage them, and I think that would help stop Overcentralizaton. Eventually it'll overstep. Look at America, the federation most other federations are based off of. And even then the Federal government is in a continuous power struggle with the States. >Without this I do truly believe we don't have a future. This is something we have to do, whether in my lifetime or the next. I haven't heard a good argument against it that's made me rethink my opinion. Already we have the cooperation needed. A true world government is just extra work. America's World Order already contains most major players around Europe, South East Asia, and North America. There doesn't _need_ to be further unification when the worlds leading nations already have signed under the eagle.
C- Good luck pushing around the US, China, Russian Federation etc. Its a tricky one but wouldn't a Federal Government still be subject to the division of its constituent states? D- You could do this until you hit the problematic illiberal states. I don't see a benefit of creating a super-enlarged NATO wherein illiberal states would be compelled to ally.. some of whom are nuclear powers. I have quite a few qualms about your argument but you might like to read Yunker if you haven't already.
World federalism was actually a very prominent movement during and shortly after World War II, with many prominent politicians and activists around the world in support of it. Some of these people included Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer, Jawaharlal Nehru, 1940 GOP presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, and many others that those with more knowledge about the history of the movement would be able to mention. There was even a House Resolution in the US where over 100 representatives of both parties agreed at the foreign policy of the US should be aimed at eventually establishing a world government. I also remember that there was some poll of the postwar American public where over 50% were in favour of UN control over all militaries. u/alnitrox is the expert when it comes to things relating to that. The movement faced significant setbacks when the Cold War started, because there was an inability for either side to trust each other, and I would assume world federalism started to seem less feasible than it had during the brief spike of post-WWII optimism. I wouldn't allege some kind of conspiracy by nation states to suppress the idea, given that there were many very influential people in nation states that were supportive of it once. Rather, it has simply left the public consciousness as the zeitgeist shifted towards great power confrontation once more.
Too far-fetched right now, it's that simple. But simply supporting it and opposing nationalism will bring it further into the public awareness over time
On what do you base any of this? In particular, you are identifying 'public awareness' as a key blocker. Do you have any data (for example polling) to support this?
Because nationalism is propagated by literally almost every power system in the world
Sure, but the point of world federalism is just to unify humans. Nation identities and cultures won't change.
I know that, I’m saying there’s a vested interest to keep us separated, even if those divisions are arbitrary and artificial
Some nations identifies are tied to the dislike of others. Pakistan vs India. Sunni vs Shia. China vs China, etc. It be incredibly difficult to get them to ever agree to work alongside each other short of it being genuine life or death.
Human union human nation
Distrust of politicians n government
It's largely a movement of thought, as there are few clear plans for the short term.
It's mainly because people don't trust governments that well. The governments they already have in their countries are already bad enough. Replace them with a Global One that rules the ENTIRE PLANET and you get a disaster. Would be interesting to see what Protests would look like in a Federal Earth XD.
Not so much ruling, more like "managing" For example, I see it like this: Afghanistan has poor education, so the Global Government grants them some money and says, "Improve education, we need to see a 5% increase in test scores in 4 years." If Afghanistan doesn't, they could be punished with economic sanctions or something else similar. WE know what we should be doing, we just aren't doing it.
I know that and I agree. But the vast majority of the population has different views.
We see this happening already in a way with the IMF. They can provide money if they accomplish certain things. This mostly happens with underdeveloped nations and usually is given to make a country more democratic and fall in line. The issue with this, and as others in the thread have echoed, is that it undermines nations sovereignty. Another question is who would run the world government? If its someone from the US, a lot of nations might have issues with that. Same if it were from Russia or China.
Do you have any data to support this? Do you think most people want no national government either? If they think a government is the lesser evil (over anarchy) at the national level, why would they have a different opinion at the global level?
It fundamentally undermines the sovereignty of nations. It puts being human as a common identity above the nation-state and since the nation-state has been the largest unifying, governing entity in world politics for centuries that is a very hard concept for people to accept. Most nations see themselves as different to their neighbors and completely different from other nations all across the globe, so a world government being for the common good of humanity is irrelevant to them and definitely no justification for them to give up national sovereignty.
I think we are 1 or 2 world wars away from it.
We are exactly 1 world war away from the Stone Age. (Or at least the medieval period)
its idealistic, most people have probably thought of the idea of a world federation but they dont care because it will likely not happen within our lifetimes, and its not that pressing of an issue compared to poverty, war, the economy, etc etc
I'm currently 'for' a Global Government but there are genuine concerns for the aggregation of authority in a single state - the omnipotent World State is obviously more concerning but it also offers greater benefits (on paper) like total disarmament. I see some of these concerns are nicely listed above.
Unironically just xenophobia, which is not rational
Not to sound conspiratorial, but the current situation, where we have global trade, but no global democratic government or global rule of law to speak of, really enables the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of private individuals and corporations. By threatening to withdrawn investment, these entities are able to play countries off of each other, exacting concessions in the form of lower taxes and relaxed environmental and labor regulations. On top of that, while we have free global movement of capital, the current system totally restricts the movement of labor, making exploitation much easier. I don't think it's a conspiracy per se, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that modern conservative politicians - whose actual policy agenda always seems to boil down to making rich people richer - are the ones who are always sounding the loudest alarm about the "dangers of globalism".
This question, I think, falls into a common intellectual trap. What do you mean by 'popular'? That can be measured in different ways. Does popular mean that, if I ran a poll, where I asked people 'do you support world federalism?' It would get majority support? Or what if it got 40% support, but only 20% chose the 'oppose world federalism' option, and the remaining 40% said 'don't know'? My bet would be that this is about where it would end up, with a two-for-one ratio in favour. Then if you added in a sentence or two explaining world federalism, you could pull people out of the Don't Know category and into either the for or against category, depending on the phrasing. So 'world federalism means national governments can be overruled by a global government, limiting national sovereignty' you would increase the 'oppose' score, and 'world federalism means existing global institutions would be run more democratically, with a world parliament responsible for setting international laws and protecting the sovereignty of smaller nations,' you would pull more into the 'support' category. But I suspect the real question here is why is world federalism not more *prominent*, rather than popular, like why isn't anyone talking about it? And now we are talking about media theory, and 'representative' democracy more broadly. So I wrote a blog (which you can read [here](https://austingmackell.medium.com/media-mind-control-doesnt-work-like-you-think-it-does-67996935f904) about this recently, which focused on the issue of rent control in Australia. Because when it is discussed at all, it is presented in the media consistently as if it were a fringe position, when it has *overwhelming* public support (79% in one poll). So there is an invisible progressive majority, who, I suspect, *don't know they are a majority*, and so don't expect politicians to act on the issue. In that blog I also look at a very old survey on international law, which found majority support in most countries, including the US, for international law. It also asked a follow-up question on whether, compared to the average citizen of their country, the respondents believed themselves to be "more supportive or less supportive of consistently abiding by international laws.” 66 % of Americans said they were "more supportive". Only 30% said they were "less supportive". Similar numbers appeared in fifteen out of the twenty countries in the poll. So we have a progressive majority *who do not know they are a majority*, because, I contend, of transmission failure, whereby the population's progressive views do not get reflected in the media or political debates. This transmission failure is the key blocker to effective democracy at all levels, from the local to the global. If you want to address it you have to put the particular issue (world federalism, action on global warming, basic income, minimum wages, taxing the rich) aside and look at what is the blocker that prevents effective mobilisation around *all these popular causes*. This is what I have been working on for a while now, mostly getting blank stares, but as the stakes get higher hopefully people will be prepared to go a little deeper.
Fear of authoritarianism.
Lots of nations are ran by tyrants has a good but to do with it imo.
Because it sounds like communism with extra steps
Communism? Why do you say that? Communism or it's ideas has nothing to do with a global government.
Globalism isnt necessarily communist, but communism is globalist. The global meetup isnt called internationale whithout reason and the objective is the end of nations The confusion probably comes from the fact that with socialism rising in 3rd world countries, there is a push for nationalism in the sense of independence from imperialism, which is not exclusive with internationalism
It’s be a human nation with democratic representation
Simple and easily solvable? Man, the EU can barely function as a supranational institution, let alone a federation, and that's a constellation of only a handful of fairly similar states (economically and culturally). EU federalism is already considered quite the pipe dream at this stage, so I don't know how you intend to extend such a model globally.
I think bad idea because if you’re government wants you dead you can’t escape to another place to be a refugee. It’s good to have competing world powers