Seriously, how would a global democracy work?
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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?
You might be interested in the idea of World Federalism
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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 parliamentthen 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".
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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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.
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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.
Same sex relationships are another one, I'd wager less than half the global population are in favour of gay marriage.
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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?
Honestly we would need to create a new way of making it work.
We have yet to see a new type of governance that was developed with our current tech capability taken into account.
There is no reason we can't have medicament increased representation, and major decisions could easily get public opinion on, but we are trying to build on methods that are hundreds of years old.
I'm sure there has been many students that have written papers about a novel form of governance, would be interesting if she country actually tried it. Communism didn't work so good in reality inspite of how it looks on paper... And neither did democracy apparently
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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?
Unironnically: Crypto, bro.
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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.
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.
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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).
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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
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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?
I found the book another now very insightful and it kind of touches on this
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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?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Well, step 1 would be doing something about the US. The US wields enormous power and influence around the world despite having a relatively small population (compared to how much influence it has). What you're proposing is that every person in Africa, China, Southeast Asia, etc, should have equal say in what happens in the world as an American - I agree with that, as anyone who believes in democratic ideals should. But countries like the US that benefit from the current arrangement would never allow it, and are well armed enough to be a serious impediment to that goal.
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I found the book another now very insightful and it kind of touches on this
Well don't just leave us hanging.
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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?
Everyone would need infrastructure, not only internet access, but also power, a smartphone and/or a PC.
Still millions of people live in areas where they don't even have reliable electricity acces, or don't even know how to read and write.
How would these people, that live of soley their land, buy a smartphone or PC and internet access and be able or know how to use it?You first need world education, basic world infrastructure (water, electricity) before you can even dream of internet access.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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Well don't just leave us hanging.
I wouldn't be able to do it justice, but it's a short read.
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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?
wrote last edited by [email protected]In liquid democracy, you can assign representatives in general or by topic or by individual decision or choose yourself on the same degrees of default vs override.
This works well across levels too. Assign someone you trust to represent your interests and concerns on the city level and it could propagate to local to county to county to Union to continent to transnational. Or you choose different people, or decide on some topics or things for yourself.
Pirate parties use a liquid democracy patform in multiple countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
There can't be a single level of democracy. You need multiple levels of local to global.
If you have local institutions it's not very difficult to collect and distribute tax across levels.
For crime, you certainly need strong checks and balances, across levels.
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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)....
