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Comment by PoachedSausage | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what it is about a world government that some find unpalatable. The world is facing a series of problems that defy the boundaries of traditional nation-states and innovation in the governance and state building space seems to have ground to a halt with the Treaty of Westphalia.

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Listen to how Californians talk about how their tax dollars are used to support Southerners and Midwesterners. Take that cultural/political/ethnic disconnect and cube it. Then you might approach the level of drama that we'd see if a world government with actual teeth was proposed and implemented.

I can only begin to imagine the scale and scope of the issue. Humanity is not nearly close enough culturally where such an organization can realistically be suggested.

They talk about it but they don't secede the Union because of the benefits to Californians. It's all about balance.

> because of the benefits to Californians

Sorry if this is naïvety and I can't speak for anyone other than myself but at least for me there's an irrational "love" element that I cannot silent. We fight for political control but my "tribe" is the entire country, not my region. Personally, the day I start talking about how it is economically beneficial to stay in the union is the day I start preparing for the union to dissolve.

We already have the global free flow of capital, goods, information and pollutants in the oceans and atmosphere. At what point do we accept that we already have some aspects of world government and take steps to formalize it. I don't think cultural homogeneity is necessary or even desirable.

I quite like Neal Stephenson's idea in Diamond Age of some sort of enforceable world economic protocol.

Imagine how socially liberal European atheists would feel about voters living in middle eastern theocracies being able shape the laws about how their daughters could dress. Now imagine the reverse.

Why would anybody be happy letting people with such fundamentally different belief systems make their rules?

That's an excellent point, which is why I think that the transition if it ever comes will be a gradual one somewhat comparable to the enlightenment for Europe.

Of course this has the potential for conflict as well.

In the mean time we seem to be on a regressive path and for now further unification is over the horizon. The cause - at least, in my opinion - was that the unification attempts that were made were made in bad faith, for short term economic reasons rather than for long term stability reasons.

We already have that.

For example, the US was instrumental in enacting the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, so a government that I don't get to vote for had a direct influence on the laws of my country (UK).

There is some distance between the US and the UK but it's still comparatively modest compared to the world as a whole.

If, for example, Asian and Middle Eastern countries influenced the law of this hypothetical world government in proportion to their population, then the UK might be compelled to execute violators of the drug laws you refer to.

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