Against World Government

 

There are many reasons that I'm opposed to world government.  One of them is that the concept of world government is utterly opposed to science.   

Society cannot progress without experiment, and experiment cannot be effective without comparison.  Different people must be governed differently so that we can learn precisely in and through this difference.

(This is analogous to resistance against monoculture.  Imagine if one language eliminated all other languages.  Imagine what damage this would do to the science of linguistics.  The science would be utterly ruined.  Similarly, for the same reasons, I oppose one religion dominating and eliminating all other religions.  We must fight to preserve the languages and religions of, for instance, Native American peoples, which are getting eliminated by global capitalism.  And just as linguistics as a science cannot progress without a multiplicity of living linguistic traditions, similarly, political science and theory cannot exist without multiple polities.)

A movement for world government is a movement for dogmatism, absolutism, ignorance, narrowmindedness, bigotry, and prejudice.

A world government would be so huge that, like a giant, heavy ship, it would be difficult to change course when it's headed for an iceberg.  Smaller governments are much more adroit and adaptable to changing material conditions.  Thus they will be run much more responsively and intelligently.

For this reason, I don't actually think that world government is actually even possible.  It would have such swollen bureaucratic momentum, it would be so unresponsive, that it would quickly collapse.  Total centralization of power sounds strong but it is actually inflexible, brittle, easily broken.  A world government would be maximally unstable.  (We will see if AI and other technology changes this, but I doubt it.)

I think the mid-to-late 1990s (the "end of history") was the closest we ever came, and possibly will ever come, to world government, with the United States of America acting as the "policeman of the world" in Bosnia and Kuwait.  This geopolitical situation was inherently unstable and quickly collapsed.  (I've written about this before.)  It was also the height of western imperialism - see, for instance, Nigeria, where environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was murdered by the dictatorial government working for the extractivist Shell Oil in 1995.  It was a profoundly unjust system.  World government is probably impossible, but even if it were possible, it would be undesirable.

Nonetheless, I do consider myself to be a cosmopolitan - a citizen of the world.  This only makes sense as a voluntary moral, ethical stance - not a legal, coerced position.

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