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City-states will not get us off the planet in any significant way; nation-states are struggling to as it is. As far as I'm concerned, any step away from world g

City-states will not get us off the planet in any significant way; nation-states are struggling to as it is. As far as I'm concerned, any step away from world government is retrograde. I no longer believe I'll see it in my lifetime though.

dmichulke 9y ago
I'd say the opposite is true. World government may become a dictatorship (you can see the process in Turkey, Poland and the US) and the only viable individual action against a dictatorship is voting with your feet. If you don't have somewhere to go to, you're f'ed. As the article mentions - it's not a coincidence that the most innovative and prosperous states in the past were city states (Athens, Florence, Venice, Genoa, the German states later on, ...) because they had to be nice to their citizens, otherwise they'd just move that 30 km away. In a way, many small states resemble a rich supply of "states" where you can live in. Having a world government is asking for a power monopoly and you know how these tend to behave.
- return0 9y ago
  > were city states They were not however geographically confined to their city-state, but controlled militarily a number of outposts , making them mini-empires in places where there were yet no borders.
  - dmichulke 9y ago
    I think the minimum distance from any point within the territory to a border is more important for this dynamic to hold than the maximum distance between two points in the territory.
    - return0 9y ago
      it is not even that important to define territory. venice for example cared about the naval routes rather than territory.
dalbasal 9y ago
This is a very specific concern. I would rephrase it, slightly. Will a world made up of nation states do better at getting us off the planet than a world of city states, or one that includes them. It's hard to say much about a world divided up completely differently, but I do think a higher resolution political world is likely to aggregate efforts a lot more.
return0 9y ago
Isn't a WORLD government far worse than 200 democracies? I can imagine 3.5 billion people oppressing the other 3.5 billion others. With nation-states at least you can choose your oppressors.

dmichulke 9y ago

I'd say the opposite is true. World government may become a dictatorship (you can see the process in Turkey, Poland and the US) and the only viable individual action against a dictatorship is voting with your feet. If you don't have somewhere to go to, you're f'ed. As the article mentions - it's not a coincidence that the most innovative and prosperous states in the past were city states (Athens, Florence, Venice, Genoa, the German states later on, ...) because they had to be nice to their citizens, otherwise they'd just move that 30 km away. In a way, many small states resemble a rich supply of "states" where you can live in. Having a world government is asking for a power monopoly and you know how these tend to behave.

return0 9y ago
> were city states They were not however geographically confined to their city-state, but controlled militarily a number of outposts , making them mini-empires in places where there were yet no borders.
- dmichulke 9y ago
  I think the minimum distance from any point within the territory to a border is more important for this dynamic to hold than the maximum distance between two points in the territory.
  - return0 9y ago
    it is not even that important to define territory. venice for example cared about the naval routes rather than territory.

dalbasal 9y ago

This is a very specific concern. I would rephrase it, slightly. Will a world made up of nation states do better at getting us off the planet than a world of city states, or one that includes them. It's hard to say much about a world divided up completely differently, but I do think a higher resolution political world is likely to aggregate efforts a lot more.

return0 9y ago

Isn't a WORLD government far worse than 200 democracies? I can imagine 3.5 billion people oppressing the other 3.5 billion others. With nation-states at least you can choose your oppressors.