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I have felt, increasingly, like the only way to deal with this and many similar problems (global warming, growing wealth inequality) is a legitimate global gove

I have felt, increasingly, like the only way to deal with this and many similar problems (global warming, growing wealth inequality) is a legitimate global government with real authority. Unfortunately, it feels like the public appetite for institutions like that has never been lower, and all the smart people seem to be obsessed with decentralization.

tomohawk 8y ago
If this is a problem that concerns you, get off your behind and do something about it. Whining that there isn't some all powerful government to take care of every problem for you is not productive.
- labster 8y ago
  It's not about power at all, it's about scale. Some problems can only be effectively addressed at the global level, like biological weapons or environmental pollution. Anything that can cross a border without a way to stop it.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
If you aren't familiar with it, read up on emergence. I think a global government will be an emergent process. We are already seeing countries form big blocks, like the EU. For all that the EU is the one I hear about the most on HN and elsewhere, it is hardly the only one. These big blocks of countries are de facto super states. I think our best hope of a world government will grow out of that growing conglomeration, plus diplomatic relations between such groups. I think that is our best hope because emergent (bottom up) solutions seem to generally be far more solid answers than top-down solutions.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
  > For all that the EU is the one I hear about the most on HN and elsewhere, it is hardly the only one. It's the one people talk about most because it's the one with the most actual integration and power. The others are much looser.
rectang 8y ago
I'm surprised that we haven't seen more outright violence and murder by those who feel they have nothing left to lose, such as in this case bereaved relatives of victims fallen to antibiotic-resistant infection.
hackermailman 8y ago
In my naive opinion, the least shitty modern political theory I've found so far is Murray Bookchin's scheme for municipalism, where it's an Athenian style, decentralized democracy with horizontal instead of vertical power structures. The best part of this scheme is it can implemented within a state like Pakistan so these peasants can organize their own affairs with each other on a community basis for things like clean water or agriculture trading. People are hesitant to usher in a global power because nobody in the elite circles of such a power would bother listening to the concerns of the far removed people affected by their laws, it's more likely they would just implement ideology they think is best and become a prince ruling over a colony. If anybody knows of any universities with an active political theorist department or journal that isn't recycling 20th century ideology I'd be interested.
- campground 8y ago
  The thing is there is a global power structure now, it's just not accountable. This is always my problem with anarchism. There's never not a power structure. The difference is whether or not the power structure has been designed with people's individual rights as a core principle.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    The idea is to build a power structure that resists turning into an absolutist pyramid. The classic liberal three branches of power is such a scheme, for instance. But it can be decentralized even more, see Switzerland.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I've had an idea for a while, where you basically build a government as a service. The way you do it is this: 1) You create a non-profit organization and hire a few people. 2) You create a website where every law proposal that goes through parliament/congress/whatever is displayed on the website, and you give each citizen one vote on this website on each proposal. 3) Your people run for members of parliament in the next election. 4) Here's the kicker: You promise that all of your elected members of parliament will unanimously vote on each decision whatever the vote on the website was. If a majority of citizens voted yes on a law, your people will also all vote yes and (hopefully) pass it. 5) Citizens are incentivized to elect your MPs because they are basically direct democracy, transparent and accountable. 6) You explain each proposal in layman's terms, and how it will affect people, so they're more informed on how they vote. The good thing about this is that it's backwards-compatible with democracy and it's in the people's best interests to vote for your people. They do need to trust that you'll do what you say, but standard checks and balances apply there (you won't be elected next term if you don't). You also need to solve the electronic voting problem, which is hard, but this protocol is probably better than the one we have now where MPs vote based on lobbyists.
icelancer 8y ago
>> it feels like the public appetite for institutions like that has never been lower Increased access to information and decentralized media allows people to see the potential (and often real) corrupt nature of centralized power, so this isn't that surprising. When you coalesce power into a centralized entity, you remove accountability and provide perverse incentives to those who wield power. It's a natural consequence of faster and more free trade of information, goods, migration of peoples, etc.

tomohawk 8y ago

If this is a problem that concerns you, get off your behind and do something about it. Whining that there isn't some all powerful government to take care of every problem for you is not productive.

labster 8y ago
It's not about power at all, it's about scale. Some problems can only be effectively addressed at the global level, like biological weapons or environmental pollution. Anything that can cross a border without a way to stop it.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

If you aren't familiar with it, read up on emergence. I think a global government will be an emergent process. We are already seeing countries form big blocks, like the EU. For all that the EU is the one I hear about the most on HN and elsewhere, it is hardly the only one. These big blocks of countries are de facto super states. I think our best hope of a world government will grow out of that growing conglomeration, plus diplomatic relations between such groups. I think that is our best hope because emergent (bottom up) solutions seem to generally be far more solid answers than top-down solutions.

TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
> For all that the EU is the one I hear about the most on HN and elsewhere, it is hardly the only one. It's the one people talk about most because it's the one with the most actual integration and power. The others are much looser.

rectang 8y ago

I'm surprised that we haven't seen more outright violence and murder by those who feel they have nothing left to lose, such as in this case bereaved relatives of victims fallen to antibiotic-resistant infection.

hackermailman 8y ago

In my naive opinion, the least shitty modern political theory I've found so far is Murray Bookchin's scheme for municipalism, where it's an Athenian style, decentralized democracy with horizontal instead of vertical power structures. The best part of this scheme is it can implemented within a state like Pakistan so these peasants can organize their own affairs with each other on a community basis for things like clean water or agriculture trading. People are hesitant to usher in a global power because nobody in the elite circles of such a power would bother listening to the concerns of the far removed people affected by their laws, it's more likely they would just implement ideology they think is best and become a prince ruling over a colony. If anybody knows of any universities with an active political theorist department or journal that isn't recycling 20th century ideology I'd be interested.

campground 8y ago
The thing is there is a global power structure now, it's just not accountable. This is always my problem with anarchism. There's never not a power structure. The difference is whether or not the power structure has been designed with people's individual rights as a core principle.
- nine_k 8y ago
  The idea is to build a power structure that resists turning into an absolutist pyramid. The classic liberal three branches of power is such a scheme, for instance. But it can be decentralized even more, see Switzerland.
StavrosK 8y ago
I've had an idea for a while, where you basically build a government as a service. The way you do it is this: 1) You create a non-profit organization and hire a few people. 2) You create a website where every law proposal that goes through parliament/congress/whatever is displayed on the website, and you give each citizen one vote on this website on each proposal. 3) Your people run for members of parliament in the next election. 4) Here's the kicker: You promise that all of your elected members of parliament will unanimously vote on each decision whatever the vote on the website was. If a majority of citizens voted yes on a law, your people will also all vote yes and (hopefully) pass it. 5) Citizens are incentivized to elect your MPs because they are basically direct democracy, transparent and accountable. 6) You explain each proposal in layman's terms, and how it will affect people, so they're more informed on how they vote. The good thing about this is that it's backwards-compatible with democracy and it's in the people's best interests to vote for your people. They do need to trust that you'll do what you say, but standard checks and balances apply there (you won't be elected next term if you don't). You also need to solve the electronic voting problem, which is hard, but this protocol is probably better than the one we have now where MPs vote based on lobbyists.

icelancer 8y ago

>> it feels like the public appetite for institutions like that has never been lower Increased access to information and decentralized media allows people to see the potential (and often real) corrupt nature of centralized power, so this isn't that surprising. When you coalesce power into a centralized entity, you remove accountability and provide perverse incentives to those who wield power. It's a natural consequence of faster and more free trade of information, goods, migration of peoples, etc.