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?

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
    2·
    11 hours ago

    Oh no, I’m not happy about the US falling apart, because the military strength is still there, and that creates a very dangerous situation. We could see a situation where a president starts WWIII and nukes China or something, just to distract from internal problems. The right is much better equipped and has more clarity of vision, while the left is weak, disorganized, unarmed, and confused. In the event of chaos and a breakdown in government, it’s hard to imagine that anything good would come of it.

    In my ideal world, the US gradually draws back from international commitments while refocusing on domestic problems, accepting a smaller role and (after addressing domestic issues) competing with China through soft power, regarding who can offer developing countries the best deal.

    Unfortunately, nobody seems to like my approach (people even call me an accelerationist despite my perapective being pretty much the opposite of that), so we’re going to crash at full speed. Hopefully the rest of the world survives.

    I think it’s just American culture, we can’t accept potentially being #2, or not being Superman, or not pouring all our money into bombs.