This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a huge problem, but I don’t really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:
- not everyone has internet access
- not everyone that has access has unfettered access
- It’s hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
- it’s hard to verify elections haven’t been tampered with
- what happens when violent crimes are committed?
- how do taxes work in this system?
- how do armed forces work in this system?
I don’t think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don’t know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?
Random selection from a pool of candidates might work … this way a random nobody, without too much funding can be elected. Also look in different other voting methods, like quadratic voting.
I think perhaps something like a Grey Council from Babylon5 would be nice.
Make it hierarchical. Every 50-100 people in their little community elect a leader. Then, all those leaders get together into groups of 50-100 and elect a leader of that group. And then, all the leaders of those groups, et cetera you get the idea.
Do away with this concept where people are voting for random dickheads in faraway lands who will never interact with them, they have no daily concept of and no familiarity with, and there is this weird middleman involved of a distant organization that is deciding who out of hundreds of millions of potential candidates are the 2-3 that are permitted to be on the ballot of us to vote for. Do away with the team sports aspect where people are coalesced into artificial groupings with colors assigned to them and then the default is for them to vote for whoever’s got the right color attached to them.
Obviously it doesn’t mean that whoever’s at the very top of the pile gets unquestioned power. You could have it as a sort of parliamentary system, where the top person carries executive power and then ones below them (or maybe 2 levels down) are the parliament or legislative branch. And then the courts are just separate from that, similar to today.
Maybe make it so that anyone who can gather 50 votes can be in the L1 grouping. So you can choose to organize yourselves into little communities without needing to be in the same location or having districts drawn by some suspect person. All the people who work at one company, all the people who like Linux, all the people who care about one racial or cultural grouping’s issues can always put their person in L1 if there are enough of them. And then, any number of the L1 people can put in an L2 person. And so on.
Maybe there are flaws, but I feel like the lack of information and day-to-day familiarity with the people you’re voting for, and the barriers to entry for ordinary people, are some of the biggest problems with all of this right now. It would be dope as hell if everyone who frequents one particular game store or college or housing project could get a couple of their people up into the very lowest levels of government just by all deciding. But, the person they’re going to pick is based on actually knowing and respecting (at least vaguely) that person, not on TV commercials. And then the L1 people can do likewise, they obviously will start to know each other and they can develop some consensus about who should go up to the city council on their behalf or whatever.
This is just my random pipe dream but I think it is a good idea
I have a similar thought about 100-1000 person groups at the base level. I think the basic unit of organization would need to be geographical, for a couple of reasons: one, I think it’s important for us as humans to be able to meet and talk to your fellows (and your elected officials) in person, and two, I think a purely online bloc would be vulnerable to technological capture. Like, an attacker could MITM an entire bloc and manipulate how they vote. I think interest groups / parties / factions etc. will still happen but I wouldn’t want to organize voting around them.
This is representative democracy which is pretty much how most western-style democracies are today…
The risks you’re trying to mitigate are somewhat mitigated in a structure like the European Union has: the European Parliament, European Council, Council of the European Union, and European Commission, etc.
Hah. This is how communism worked in the first few years after the Russian Revolution - what is now referred to as anarcho-communism. The Bolsheviks corrupted the whole thing, of course.
It’s slightly amusing to see people rediscover communist power distribution from first principles. You’ve added the wrinkle of digital communes instead of labor communes, but it’s roughly the same.
Makes sense. Yeah, a lot of things sound great until you put them into practice and then there are 50 different problems with it that were not present in the original purely in the mind genius version.
Make it hierarchical. Every 50-100 people in their little community elect a leader. Then, all those leaders get together into groups of 50-100 and elect a leader of that group. And then, all the leaders of those groups, et cetera you get the idea.
That’s the best system in my opinion. I’ve been trying to write-up an outline over on PLT that’s not overly complicated, but I’ve been busy(i.e. lazy). 50 works out really well for a scaling factor:
50 people to a Block
50 Blocks to a Township (2,500 people)
50 Townships to a County (125,000 people)
50 Counties to a State (6M people)
50 States to a Nation (312M people)
50 Nations in the World (15B people)
Every level has a Council, every Council elects a Representative for the next council up. Every Representative has a direct constituency small enough to know everyone personally. Every citizen has a direct line of 5 Reps to the President.
Entwined Jurisdictions can caucus together (multiple Townships might compose a town, for example, and several Counties might compose a metropolis). Jurisdictions at every level should be redrawn with the census to keep population roughly equal, which should be determined democratically.
Honestly the basic structure of the US is pretty close to this, except the Township level, which is arguably the most important. Most people have no representation between the individual and municipal level(besides HOAs, but that barely counts). Also the House Reapportionment Act was a mistake.
This might actually be something we can effect from grassroots. If we can build our local community, start group chats with our neighbors, host Block meetings, etc., we can spontaneously choose representatives to go to our city council meetings and voice our concerns.
This might actually be something we can effect from grassroots. If we can build our local community, start group chats with our neighbors, host Block meetings, etc., we can spontaneously choose representatives to go to our city council meetings and voice our concerns.
I think this is pretty much the answer regardless. If the people are educated and organized and they fight, then over time it’ll come better and better. If the people are not organized, then the best “system” in the world isn’t going to do a damn thing to prevent the end.
My city has neighborhood associations with elected leaders. They are totally voluntary and have basically no authority or budget, but they can pretty easily get the ear of coucil members
It would be like EU, but worldwide.
As for internet voting, nah, you can’t preserve anonymity while ensuring election integrity
Yeah, this is simply the correct answer. Everything else I’ve read here ranges from overcomplicated to completely insane.
Why are people so obsessed with digital/internet voting?
Just use normal ballots, with pen and paper, and have a little patience while it gets collected, mailed and counted!
Or an EVM
I think internet voting for the less important things tonbe voted on. Like in addition, not to replace current big elections.
Or atleast what VOLT and the EUROPEAN FEDERALISTS want the EU to reform into
Given that a decent chunk of the world holds political views I find repulsive, most notably around women’s rights, this sounds like a terrible idea.
Yeah, lol. This person clearly hasn’t thought through the consequences of letting india, the muslim world, and latin america vote on things that will impact their own nation.
Then again, it could mean improvements in the most backwards nations.
The world is going to suck either way. It’s not like gay executions stop being a thing if they’re on the other side of the “Western” bubble.
Very much depends. The biggest driver of liberal social stances is economic prosperity. The biggest driver of economic prosperity is giving people the opportunities and resources they need in order to seek a more prosperous future for themselves. A world democratic government would presumably result in some sort of wealth redistribution from currently prosperous areas to currently poor areas. But the question is, how would that money be spent? If it were spent well, I would expect more liberal world views to emerge in currently poor areas in a generation or two. During that time, currently prosperous areas would see either stagnation or regression in their views. If spent poorly (say, if it were snapped up by local warlords or unscrupulous bureaucrats)…
But the question is, how would that money be spent?
We’re so far away from anything that could happen any time soon it’s almost a weird question, haha. Which was more my own answer to OP.
I’d argue that to be a global direct internet democracy it’d have to effectively prevent corruption. And square any number of other circles.
It really does seem like social progress follows some kind of wealth and stability. That’s good in that it means a virtuous cycle can be created, at least in theory, but I don’t understand why it’s so. Can’t you scrounge and reflect at the same time? And what of the working class progressives of the 20th and 19th centuries? A very different logic seems to have existed then, and I just can’t read it.
Same sex relationships are another one, I’d wager less than half the global population are in favour of gay marriage.
By a lot. Not to mention trans rights
You need social proximity for democracy to work, because that’s how you have conversations about issues. We would need a shared global culture and factors that mean people at every level of society have friends distributed around the world. The specific rules and bureaucratic procedure are less important, the main thing is people in different places need to become more connected to each other.
Take a moment and think about what the global conditions were like 300 years ago, and think about how things improved every 50 years since then.
Around 1725, most of the world was rural, poor, and ruled by monarchies, with low life expectancy and little technology. By 1775, Enlightenment ideas and early industrialization began shifting societies. In 1825, machines and railroads transformed economies. By 1875, electricity and vaccines improved life. In 1925, cars, radios, and modern medicine spread. By 1975, civil rights, global trade, and computers reshaped the world. And today? Well, you can probably tell how our modern lives are better today than they were in the 1970s.
To put things in perspective, in the 1800s, only around the 10% of the world was literate, but today only around 10% are illiterate. Similarly, in the 1800s, more than 90% people were living in extreme poverty, but today that’s around 10%. The same goes for many other stats. What does this tell us? It tells us that things do get better with time. Even though we went through plagues, wars, famines, droughts, and genocides we did come out the other side better than we did before.
So maybe, just maybe, we don’t need a global government. Maybe vastly different people separated by culture, land, and history shouldn’t be forced into a system with people they don’t understand very well. Maybe it’s better for us to respect the concept of sovereignty that has persisted throughout history, and focus on strengthening the trends that have brought us tremendous progress over time… like improving the access and quality of education globally, developing and sharing new advancements in medicine, innovating new technologies to make our lives easier, pushing for and protecting civil rights and individual liberties, and generating wealth and prosperity through market economies.
The point is that maybe it’s better that we focus on improving what we know works from historical trends instead trying to create a global government, which will certainly create a whole new set of issues. Perhaps what we need is more dialogue and cooperation through forums like the UN instead of consolidation through a world government.
I think we probably agree that OP is being overly ambitious and idealistic, but…
Maybe it’s better for us to respect the concept of sovereignty that has persisted throughout history
How do you read history and go “ah yes, everyone always respected borders”, or even “everyone respected borders the subset of the time they agreed to do so”.
I don’t just mean the famous historical war examples, either, but like, recent history and diplomacy.
That’s not what I meant, I meant that the concept of sovereignty has persisted over time. Different groups of people have sought out their independence and they go to great lengths to protect it. I obviously didn’t mean that sovereignty was protected throughout history because that’s clearly not true. The world is filled with empires and invasions. However, I think most people today agree that this was bad. I think a lot of people today would see a modern global government in a similar negative light as it would greatly favor regions in the world that are already rich, heavily populated, and strong. In other words, countries like the US and China would still end up dominating and poor regions would still be screwed over.
You’re probably right about that, although the reasons people want their own country to be independent are usually going to be less well-though-out or noble. Neither the US nor China are in favour of more global democracy. China prefers the ability to bully smaller states with no recourse built in, and the zeitgeist in the US is towards total isolationism.
But anyway, that’s a bit beside the point. I did think you meant there was some kind of traditional idea of who gets sovereignty, because it’s advanced that way sometimes. The real situation is more of a clusterfuck. Civilising the savages, liberating the workers and expansionism because god said so (or because good is dumb for secular fascists) are just as often trotted out, and usually people don’t give their internal separatist movements the time of day even when they’re all about avoiding union with their culturally distinct neighbors.
These don’t need to be mutually exclusive though. A lot of the progress in Europe the past 80 years is a result of the improved cooperation brought by the EU.
The EU isn’t like the UN, where everyone is equally represented (sans veto powers), but is a democratically elected super-national body with opposing super-national political factions. I can see a concept like that working on a global scale some time in the (relatively far) future.
The EU consists of a bunch of European countries that are similar culturally, economically, and politically. It makes sense for them to form a union that aims to achieve their common interests. A lot of similar unions exist like ASEAN, Arab League, African Union, etc. These are still different than having a single government for the entire world. There are way too many differences for that to work, different cultures, unequal economies, different religions, different politics, etc. This global government would end up trying to appease everyone to maintain the unity, but this would ultimately lead to have no teeth. In other words it’ll be reduced to what the UN is now.
Oh, I definitely meant far future. While the differences are far too big today, I can see gradually increasing cooperation between e.g. the EU and African Union at some point culminating in the construction of a governmental body that has some regulatory power over them both.
Once such a body exists, I can imagine that it over time accumulates power, bringing the two unions even closer together. The EU started out as a relatively small organ, and has grown gradually to what it is today over many decades. My point was that if some “global government” ever forms, I think that kind of gradual process is how it will happen. Starting out with trade agreements, and then gradually regulating more aspects of government.
India manages with a population of over 1.4 billion people. It’s a mere six-fold increase from there to the planet, so probably whatever India is doing.
Ive had that opinion for a while too. Though my understanding is that cultural enforcement of norms and rules is big part that minimizes some of the need for a stronger state. Though this also has issues such as caste system and strict gender roles in some areas (speaking broadly about 1.4 billion over a huge land mass, so plenty of exceptions and the like).
You seem to have a funny definition of democracy…
In real definitions, police, taxes, anonymity, internet etc. have no place. Democracy means (in simple words) that the people vote for their government. The other aspects can differ.
Look at real existing countries outside of your own. Their systems have huge differences while many of them are democracies.
This would literally never work unless there is international nationship, that is to say, democracy doesn’t work unless there’s a sense of belonging to the same nation, otherwise one group will always feel the other is imposing something on the other.
That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government.
So, I used to have similar thoughts. Then I got into politics and figured out why it’s naive.
I had a whole lecture about it written out, but you don’t know me or why you should believe me, so I’ll skip it. What I will say is that you can’t really start from scratch here. People’s lives and livelihoods hang in the balance, they’re not going to shake everything up just because you have a proposal. When a law changes people listen to it because there’s an implied threat of force of some kind, and the implied threat of force itself comes from an existing power structure.
Real societies can be stable because there’s a cold, self-reinforcing logic to how that power is gained. It’s not anything spooky, just kind of dumb and depressing.
So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be?
Just convincing people that the lives of foreigners are worth something is hard right now, unfortunately.
World government seems inevitable in one form or another, because there are shared resources, but it seems like it’s at least a century out, and one of the paths to it is just a gradual deepening of the international legal system that actually exists.
You might be interested in the idea of World Federalism
Federal republic or swiz model (which is a federation). Just yk bigger. Decentralised. Good example of how that would be is germany. There would be the top level: global parliament
then regional/continental determined by cultural / geographic similaritys so example a european council, indian, north american (excluding mexico), latin american, central african, arabic, west african and so on
Below that basicly like country borders today down to sub regional administration and then munincipalities/citys
Its not one person as the “head” but always a council.
The problems you listed arent problems. One can either vote in paper or online. Lots of examples there that it works, doesnt get tampered with and the annonymity is also perserved.
Crimes are on the country/munincipalities levels and should be handled there
Tax is global as are the armed forces
I think something like this is the most reasonable, and we’re already closer to it than at any previous point in history. We have the EU, the African Union (AU), and I think there’s a South American union as well (?) there’s also the US, which is a bit between a union and a single state (US states have more autonomy than regional municipalities most other places, but far less than any full-fledged county).
I think that if a “global government” ever develops, it will be due to these unions forming an overarching union. The major hurdle is that we’re a very far way off anybody wanting to concede any governing power to an organisation above the “continental union” level. Even holding the EU together is non-trivial, because a lot of people feel that too much power is concentrated far away in Brussels.
Regarding judicial systems and military forces, the UN has showed that it’s possible to have a kind of global system for this, but it’s still a far stretch from anything that could be called a “global judicial system with enforcement powers”.
Belgium (theoretically) has 7 governments. 1 Federal 3 Regional (geographically) 3 communities (by language)
So you have a representation by subsidiarity. If a matter is more related to ‘hard’ matters, the regions have jurisdiction. If dealing with soft matters like education or culture, the communities wil be able to make legislation. The federal government oversees matters they can’t be delegated to the regions or communities like taxes, defense, foreign policy,…
In this system a geographical representation and a cultural representation is present but my goodness, it doesn’t make things easier. It seems that cultural matters aren’t always aligning with geography.
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Nation States exist primarily as a bi-product of war. The Russia/Ukraine war, as well as the Israeli genocide in Palestine, show that global economics carry significant weight in modern warfare. IMO in the long run, we will see the role of nation states reduced to legislated authorities. while their provinces/states shoulder the majority of the actual administrative responsibility. International trade, defense, and regulatory agreements will become become global standards (like GAAP) providing the stability that nation states used to.
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The economy will not function to create artificial scarcity as the current economic status quo does. Taxes will not be something people think about regularly because our economies can sustainable provide for its citizens when there aren’t rich people carving out a massive slice for themselves.
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With war largely being a bi-product of scarcity and greed; armed forces will expand it’s role as a logistics entity. They’ll continue being the primary vehicle for disaster and emergency relief. International collaboration in training and deployment will be the norm.
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The global economy will boom as infrastructure and amenities are built for billions of people. Elections will become digital using block chain tech to verify integrity. Hopefully elections will shift away from electing individuals and towards electing policies.
In general I believe that the majority of shitty human behaviour should be expected in a dog eat dog world. As our global society shifts slowly towards egalitarianism, so will many of our contemporary problems fade away.
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Personally i think it would have to work as a series of institutions that each person is part of. Maybe a geographic organization that acts on municiple levels and coordinates with other municiple level orgs with a higher level org that coordinates agendas and the like.
But there some things that would make sense being technically bound by skill set. So more anarcho sydicalist structures for technocratic orgnizations as well.
Its honestly why i try to join democratic orgs where i can. My insurace is a mutual fund, my bank a credit union, grocery coop, electric coop, etc A lot of my software is devoloped in KDEs system whish is pretty democratic as well.
Im saving up with the intention to create a dual community land trust and housing coop in my area as well. Just taking back ownership out of autocrats hands where i can.
I’ve been kicking around the same idea of a “community land trust and housing coop” for the better part of a decade now. It’s on my short list of things I want to accomplish with my life that might be beneficial for society. Mixed housing community (large plots, multifamily dwellings, apartments, townhouses), support for cooperative company creation within the community, local store that sells the goods produced by the community (and online), plus actual facilities a community needs to thrive (community education auto/tech/farming/maintenance, help with transportation, etc).
I strongly feel like Cooperative based communities is the only way to gently guide us into a better future. It can compete within the commercialized world while still maintaining growth and development because the profits are being directly funded into the community as a whole. I think one imperative action that needs taken within the coop is the establishment and expansion into other communities so you create a network of these villages that can help sustain each other in harder times. Could even get already established coop’s like land-o-lakes or create other mass industry leaders so you’re not stuck with small ma and pa stores that can’t compete in this style of market we find ourselves in.
The realistic part of it is that we only have to convince a few neighbors at a time to grow it, and reach out to like minds to build the circle of communities. Right now my fights are paying off my house and saving money for it to build a equity base i can contribute and trying to nudge my communities credit unions to supporting coop housing loans.
Ive been too swamped but i was volunteering more with Habitat for Humanity too which would be a great partner for the land trust housing (where people own the invidual houses/condos) and the housing coop for people that dont want the indiviual responsobilty of ownership (but shouldnt be exploited by land lords all the same).
Tenent unions are really interesting options as well to get people organized and slow the grinding wheel down some. I wonder if a tenet union offering rental insurance, legal support, and price transparency might be a good starting place before full collective barganing.
This guy fucks. Those are really simple and really effective ways to make a real impact without a lot of effort.
Change your electric provider to a coop and now you’re chipping away at corporate interests while investing in your own community one bill at the time.
Same thing with banks, software has become so accessible that most Credit Unions will have apps and websites that are as good, if not better than any big bank. And you can rest assured knowing that your saved money is helping the guy down the street run his restaurant and not funding dead babies in Gaza.
