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?
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.