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?

  • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    2 days ago

    Yeah, lol. This person clearly hasn’t thought through the consequences of letting india, the muslim world, and latin america vote on things that will impact their own nation.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      20 hours ago

      Then again, it could mean improvements in the most backwards nations.

      The world is going to suck either way. It’s not like gay executions stop being a thing if they’re on the other side of the “Western” bubble.

      • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        15 hours ago

        Very much depends. The biggest driver of liberal social stances is economic prosperity. The biggest driver of economic prosperity is giving people the opportunities and resources they need in order to seek a more prosperous future for themselves. A world democratic government would presumably result in some sort of wealth redistribution from currently prosperous areas to currently poor areas. But the question is, how would that money be spent? If it were spent well, I would expect more liberal world views to emerge in currently poor areas in a generation or two. During that time, currently prosperous areas would see either stagnation or regression in their views. If spent poorly (say, if it were snapped up by local warlords or unscrupulous bureaucrats)…