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The United Nations is not a world government. Please keep repeating this until it sinks in. It's a treaty organization designed to prevent another world war. A

The United Nations is not a world government. Please keep repeating this until it sinks in. It's a treaty organization designed to prevent another world war. As such, it's worked kinda sorta okay. Not great, but you could argue that it worked, so that's something. It's also provided somewhat of a permanent diplomatic forum, that's pretty good too. There are a lot of technical reasons why the UN is not a world government and can never be. The biggest is that there is no representation of the actual people being governed there. Because it's a treaty organization, it just has the representation of the world governments. Unfortunately, we live in a world where your government's interests and your own do not always align very well at all. It's also bound by treaties. Treaties have a tendency to be interpreted all sorts of ways by the various parties involved. The more parties, the more room for interpretation there is. There's also no feedback loop for the possibility that they might do something wrong. There's no independent judiciary, there's no rule of law. I could go on, but it should be obvious. The UN isn't a world government. Folks can pretend that it is, and the UN itself can labor under the illusion that it is, but structurally it isn't made to be one. So sure, let WHO do it's thing and let various nations pitch in to put those little blue helmets on guys to try to prevent conflict. Lots of good things for the UN to do that kind of fall under the "treaty org to prevent future world wars". But asteroid defense? Not even close. Not unless there's a chance the Russians might start lobbing asteroids at the US or something.

andrewfong 13y ago
I'm not sure why, if the WHO falls under the UN's mandate, that asteroid defense wouldn't. They're both collective efforts to monitor and combat things that aren't human. Moreover, there are obvious military applications for certain asteroid defense techniques. For example, if the U.S. was planning a Bruce Willis-style nukes-in-space approach to deflecting an asteroid, I guarantee the Russians would care (and vice versa).
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  I think there are a lot of things the UN ends up doing simply because it provides a somewhat permanent diplomatic forum for nations of the world. That's fine. I'm not saying that the UN won't end up handling asteroid defense, or various other world-government-ish things. I'm saying it wasn't designed to do so. Big difference. I don't know how far you stretch the intent and structure before something breaks. If I had to bet, that's a long way away. But still, people should be aware of what's going on. The results you get from UN programs are not always going to be what you expect, and there's good reasons for that. Or to put differently, if the UN evolves into doing something for everybody, it stands a significant risk of losing focus on its initial mission. Over the next few decades, the organization could easily become a destabilizing force in the world instead of a stabilizing one. There's no corrective action to tell the UN that it's a victim of scope creep, so they could decide to try to do dang near anything, whether it's a good idea, whether the tools exist, whether it's just some half-baked crackpot idea, or whether it's just an elaborate bribery scheme. There's no feedback loop -- one of my initial points. Anything you can imagine, you can imagine the UN doing. That's not a recipe for a healthy future for the world.
rwallace 13y ago
Indeed it is neither necessary nor appropriate that the UN itself take on the job of asteroid defense. What it can reasonably and appropriately do is say to national governments such as the US and Russia, which possess space agencies, "hey, it would be good if you guys could get something moving on this" and "if it would help to have a forum for international coordination of efforts, that's what we're here for".

andrewfong 13y ago

I'm not sure why, if the WHO falls under the UN's mandate, that asteroid defense wouldn't. They're both collective efforts to monitor and combat things that aren't human. Moreover, there are obvious military applications for certain asteroid defense techniques. For example, if the U.S. was planning a Bruce Willis-style nukes-in-space approach to deflecting an asteroid, I guarantee the Russians would care (and vice versa).

DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I think there are a lot of things the UN ends up doing simply because it provides a somewhat permanent diplomatic forum for nations of the world. That's fine. I'm not saying that the UN won't end up handling asteroid defense, or various other world-government-ish things. I'm saying it wasn't designed to do so. Big difference. I don't know how far you stretch the intent and structure before something breaks. If I had to bet, that's a long way away. But still, people should be aware of what's going on. The results you get from UN programs are not always going to be what you expect, and there's good reasons for that. Or to put differently, if the UN evolves into doing something for everybody, it stands a significant risk of losing focus on its initial mission. Over the next few decades, the organization could easily become a destabilizing force in the world instead of a stabilizing one. There's no corrective action to tell the UN that it's a victim of scope creep, so they could decide to try to do dang near anything, whether it's a good idea, whether the tools exist, whether it's just some half-baked crackpot idea, or whether it's just an elaborate bribery scheme. There's no feedback loop -- one of my initial points. Anything you can imagine, you can imagine the UN doing. That's not a recipe for a healthy future for the world.

rwallace 13y ago

Indeed it is neither necessary nor appropriate that the UN itself take on the job of asteroid defense. What it can reasonably and appropriately do is say to national governments such as the US and Russia, which possess space agencies, "hey, it would be good if you guys could get something moving on this" and "if it would help to have a forum for international coordination of efforts, that's what we're here for".