This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a huge problem, but I don’t really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:
- not everyone has internet access
- not everyone that has access has unfettered access
- It’s hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
- it’s hard to verify elections haven’t been tampered with
- what happens when violent crimes are committed?
- how do taxes work in this system?
- how do armed forces work in this system?
I don’t think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don’t know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?
That’s the best system in my opinion. I’ve been trying to write-up an outline over on PLT that’s not overly complicated, but I’ve been busy(i.e. lazy). 50 works out really well for a scaling factor:
50 people to a Block
50 Blocks to a Township (2,500 people)
50 Townships to a County (125,000 people)
50 Counties to a State (6M people)
50 States to a Nation (312M people)
50 Nations in the World (15B people)
Every level has a Council, every Council elects a Representative for the next council up. Every Representative has a direct constituency small enough to know everyone personally. Every citizen has a direct line of 5 Reps to the President.
Entwined Jurisdictions can caucus together (multiple Townships might compose a town, for example, and several Counties might compose a metropolis). Jurisdictions at every level should be redrawn with the census to keep population roughly equal, which should be determined democratically.
Honestly the basic structure of the US is pretty close to this, except the Township level, which is arguably the most important. Most people have no representation between the individual and municipal level(besides HOAs, but that barely counts). Also the House Reapportionment Act was a mistake.
This might actually be something we can effect from grassroots. If we can build our local community, start group chats with our neighbors, host Block meetings, etc., we can spontaneously choose representatives to go to our city council meetings and voice our concerns.
My city has neighborhood associations with elected leaders. They are totally voluntary and have basically no authority or budget, but they can pretty easily get the ear of coucil members
I think this is pretty much the answer regardless. If the people are educated and organized and they fight, then over time it’ll come better and better. If the people are not organized, then the best “system” in the world isn’t going to do a damn thing to prevent the end.