Now, I've been thinking about this alot lately. Alot of fiction I read is based off it, you know Earth unites, and they go and explore the universe, or fight some unimaginable enemy. However, I've been having some trouble seeing it. All the inherint problems, religion, cultures, how people feel they should be governed, philosophies, etc. So, I what I was wondering was this:
How would you go about it? How would you govern your masses? How would you supply them, educate them, what would your laws be, your taxes? Would you adopt religion as a handy tool, or banish it in the name of science? Would you allow freedom of the press, or would you destroy it in hopes of making your empire stable? There's countless other aspects that I forgot to mention, but you get the gist of it, and I'm wondering.

Now, I realize this may be out of reach for some of you, you may not want to be in such a position, or you may not think it will happen, but assume it did, and you are for the sake of the argument.

Now, assuming you guys have read Starship Troopers, that's about how my system would work. It made alot of sense to me, though, I think, for the sake of the people, I'd have to get rid of religion, as it puts such large bounds on society because of some of the moral codes it develops. Now, that's not to say killing humans is okay, but I think some things certain religions do are idiotic (Though, I won't go in further on this, seeing as that's not what the discussion should be about.). Cultures should be free to develop, they provide individuality, which I feel is crucial to human survival. I think the press should have to go through limited checks before being released to the public. I don't think it should be totally limited, but full out revolutionary magazines, unless for philosophical debate, would not be allowed(Yes, I am corruptibal, that is subject to change). Also, the government at the national level would have more power, as, how I see it, it is required to rule such a large dominion. I think education would be more advanced at lower levels, kinda like the Europeans do it. Teachers wouldn't be slip shod (They'd also be paid much more), they'd be subject to background checks, and they'd take very strict examination to get to teach, and they could only teach specific subjects, according to what they themselves were taught, it would also be free(education, that is, not teachers). I think taxes would be just as high as I needed them to fund the empire, which would probably be extremely high (That's a bit exxagurated, but, you know.). Alright, that's all I can think of right now, I'll end it here, point out flaws, and make your own plans for world domination

One way to do it is to let everyone do their own thing, and use everything to your advantage. That is, use your unseen power and influence to install your way as the "right way". This way, people will think they're ruling themselves, and will be fat and happy.

As for religion, yes, a lot of religions are stupid, but to outlaw it in general would be a bad idea. Disallowing state support of religion is fine... but unless they start murdering or stealing, not letting people practice their own religious views is mind control.

I would try to make it communist, but not like Russia and China. I would create communities like the ones in Israel that are communist farmers that lead a great life.

USSR insured their power in the baltics by screwing us in every way possible.

I think the only way to lead a whole planet would be an extremely powerful autocracy like that of which the Ancient Egyptians used. All of the people that lived in Egypt didn't just think, but they 'knew' that their pharaoh was god, and therefore they all followed him/her with nearly no opposition. They also achieved some of the greatest feats that the world has ever seen.

But of course, in this day and age it probably wouldn't work because of morals and ethics. Plus, people are smarter then they were back then and don't listen to everything that they hear. So other than an autocracy/dictatorship I think just establishing a stronger UN with some more rules. (same currency, same language, etc.) That way people could communicate and work together, yet still keep their cultures, religions, favored government, etc. It would kind of be like the Republic from Star Wars in a way.

Democracy will rule as universal domination.

I think that if you did something like that, people would find they had too much freedom, if there is such a thing, and it would be much, much harder to control. Also, I don't really fancy the idea of staying in the shadows.

As for the religion thing, maybe, but I think, to reinterpret my own view, that everyone should be taught to be open minded and that their religion isn't necessarily right, I think that would solve religion for the most part.


No, I don't think communism would work. For one, most governments cannot control what a city block thinks, certainly not a nation, and defianetly not the world. Besides, you'd have to set a standard for something like that, and with the entire world left to your reform, I think a standard would be hard to set (Just look at how differing everything is now).



/Agree with morals and ethics. Though, in the second sentence I presume you aren't talking about Americans, because they chew up absolutely everything the media tells them, so all you really need is control of the media to control the populations thoughts, Russia and Nazi Germany found out about this and used it to their advantage, China is too, currently, and it shows just how vulnerable people really are. Though, for the last part I don't particularly agree, getting everyone to switch to the same langauge is going to be difficult, the same currency would be extremely easy, a great example is the EU, but they haven't managed to bond together yet, so I'm not really sure how long it would take.


Depends on what kind've Democracy, specify plz

Drug everyone into a state of unconciousness and load them above super colony ships to Gantris V.

People who think global democracy works have no idea how democracies work.

Explain this claim.

Though I'm not cheeze (no way!), the first thing that came to mind for me was that the world is too diverse to be ruled by the wishes of the majority (if we assume that democracy will work perfectly, which will never happen anyway).

If I were to create a global empire, I would make it a totalitarian state which functions by the stick and the carrot method. Those who oppose the government are used as slaves and then destroyed in inimaginably painful and humiliating ways, and the others get all the benefits of not being rebels: education, medical care, ensurance, etc. The government is not directly interfering with buisness (except secret service). Religion is free... up to a point.

In my opinion, the more people you have to control, the harsher the methods must be.

...
Apparently the world has some kind of magical property that when it is x diverse, it is completely incapable of being ruled by a majority.
You go on to say that it especially won't work if democracy worked perfectly, which you then immediately ruled out as even being possible. Why someone would even write something just to make it null is beyond me.

you should probably word your posts better as this could not possibly be what you meant.

If you feel like measuring diversity in numbers, then yes. Imagine this:
There is a global voting on some very important issue, and we get the following results: 20% of the world population voted for option 1, 19.9% voted for option 2, 15% voted for potion 3, etc. So only the 20% will be happy with the results of the votings, while the rest will be dissattisfied. And when dealing with such huge masses of people, dissatisfaction of the population, combined with the ability to express it become very dangerous for the government system.
In bold. Maybe you meant to say "because" instead of "if"?
I think you misunderstood what I wrote. Explain yourself.

EDIT:
What I meant to say is that even if democracy would be perfect, it still wouldn't suit the hypothetic situation we're talking about.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 9 2008, 4:38 pm by JaFF.

From the original post, how can you have cultures freely develop if religion is abolished and the press does not have full freedom?

As for the Democracy issue, it works in Europe. The party with the most votes, even if it's only 20%, gets the majority and therefore rules.

Or, you could pull an America and make a 2 party system. That way, there's always a greater-than-50-percent majority.

How big is America anyways? 300 million? 310 million, something like that? At such a scale you might have thought it would break down, but it's still working. I don't see why it can't be applied to 6 billion. That's only like 20 times bigger.

Oh, and who has read 1984 by George Orwell? I might just do that.

What you described works only within one country. In global scale, however, that's not gonna work:
-Different mentality
-Different religions

What if some votings end up in India's favor without taking into account the interests of China?

Democracy works within one country because the people in it are somewhat similar (and/or those who are drastically different are only minorities, which have to assimilate or form groups... but that's a different question). Mixing different people into one big pot and expecting everyone to get along isn't gonna work.

That's all I have to say in this thread.

As much as I agree with Jaff, I must say that America is totally diverse, with many different cultures. But I will agree that putting Palestine and Israel in the same government is simply not going to work. (figure of speech)

I think too much culture would be dangerous to a global society, I think you would certainly need people who were somewhat samey to create the kind've environment you'd want, that is to say, one without too much conflict. Now, sure, there'll always be conflict, but with everyones views more or less the same, it would be minimized.

In America, there's more than two parties (Though, they aren't really a majority, and if you were reffering to a majority, disregard this)

Well, America, I think has just been really lucky over the past few centuries, I think the belief here in the American dream keeps it stabalized, and also the nationalism in thev military, country music, those things. Now, if the media continues what it's doing, it's all certainly going to change, and I don't think in America's case that's a good thing, I think the democrats will ruin certain things that keeps this country together, now, maybe they'll create other ones, however the ones currently will be destroyed. Furthermore, Democrats in the presidential seat may provide a new set of bonds, but breaking those to the military, cutting funds for the military, reducing individuality through a stronger national government, may mean the destruction of the country, or atleast a fall from power. Now, that's not to say they would cause it, it's already been started, by whom is irrelevant, but I feel the democrats would be accelerating it.


/agree with the China/India example. I think a better examply though is certainly the Middle East, almost always in conflict, and there only TINY differences in religion.

I'm going to have to stop you right there Jaff.
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority

What you are incorrectly referencing is known as a Plurality.


hhhhhmmmmm
"You go on to say that it especially won't work because democracy worked perfectly"
nah, I think I'll stick with if

We're done here.

As for the India/China thing, how is that any different than California wanting to destroy all guns and Texas wanting a gun for every person? (exaggeration, but you get my point.) Or any different from big corporations vs. poor interests, republicans vs democrats, ect.

@BAGLES
Ever read the Lord of the Flies? It's situation is this: a bunch of British children are all stranded on a beautiful island with plenty to eat, the same mentality/culture/religion. It's the perfect scenario for human cooperation, but as you can surmise from the tone of this post, it all goes to hell. They begin infighting, factionalising, and even end up killing each other. Little kids!
Anyway, the point is, it isn't diversity which creates adversaries.

And I don't think America has been lucky, except for the fact that our neighboring countries have never declared war on us (that is, we've never suffered great internal infrastructure damage due to war). The stability of America rests mostly on the design of the government, and while not perfect, it has been one of the best attempts of humanity to civilize itself in history. I think it's up there with the Greeks and Romans.

@JaFF
Has not America been dubbed the Melting Pot of the world? That is, taking people from all sorts of backgrounds, cultures, religions, mentalities, and putting them into one country and them getting along with one another? I think you need to think of more to say if you want to make a point.

What I mean is that it is entirely democratic.