World government?

[tzijlstra]

Governance of the masses, that would truly be a disaster.

The IQ of a crowd is inversely proportional to it's size and you're talking about a global crowd that includes everyone in the world.

Can you imagine what kind of policies would be popular. The abolition of taxes for example, I expect would gain much support.

 

It all depends on how you arrive at the topics that can be voted on, I would imagine a committee of elected wise folk would set the agenda and put up votes depending on the issues of that time.

 

Greece didn't fail because it got rid of the Drachma.

Greece failed because they way they ran their country was incompatible with the rest of the EU.

 

Don't bother paying taxes, don't bother collecting taxes, give everyone in the puclic sector a huge pay rise and fund it all with government loans.

 

Sort it out "mañana"

 

The problem is there's loads of other countries that will behave just like Greece given half the chance, which is why it's hard to bring them all under one government.

 

Yes that is true, which is why it pays to look at what is happening in certain countries that are corrupt at the moment, they have a sub-economy in other coins to avoid inflation etc. Dollars are universally accepted in plenty of countries around the world. Replace the dollar with a global coin and countries that don't sort their mess out will be forced to run a sensible government or continue to suffer by not controlling most of its own trade.

[unbeliever]

It all depends on how you arrive at the topics that can be voted on, I would imagine a committee of elected wise folk would set the agenda and put up votes depending on the issues of that time.

 

There has been a long running direct democracy experiment in the US, specifically California, along these lines.

It's not going well as I understand it.

[L00b]

It all depends on how you arrive at the topics that can be voted on, I would imagine a committee of elected wise folk would set the agenda and put up votes depending on the issues of that time.

Do you mean writing the EU's OLP model large, with the Parliamentary body replaced by direct online vote?

 

What could possibly go wrong, when the Peter Sutherland of this world actually set the agenda...

Yes that is true, which is why it pays to look at what is happening in certain countries that are corrupt at the moment, they have a sub-economy in other coins to avoid inflation etc. Dollars are universally accepted in plenty of countries around the world. Replace the dollar with a global coin and countries that don't sort their mess out will be forced to run a sensible government or continue to suffer by not controlling most of its own trade.

Going by the ever-increasing list of failed states (most of Africa, some South American and Asian ones, and now lately augmented by a non-trivial number of formerly-functioning and -wealthy middle eastern ones), more and more countries are just continuing to suffer indeed. Even the Chinese have started to give up on Africa, and God knows they'd made better inroads than most in recent times at sorting out the place viably and durably.

 

So, nice and laudable argument...but reality says it just doesn't fly in practice. Instead, we get unprecedented migratory flows, of an increasingly global scale

Edited May 10, 2016 by L00b

[Cyclone]

It all depends on how you arrive at the topics that can be voted on, I would imagine a committee of elected wise folk would set the agenda and put up votes depending on the issues of that time.

So you end up with a popular decision instead of a clever or appropriate decision.