Is a world government desirable?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

A world government, or global government, is the concept of a single political authority for all humanity. Its feasibility and institutional framework are uncertain, but is it even desirable? Is it the way to lasting peace and global solutions? Or would it lead to a dystopian nightmare?

Arguments

A world government is desirable

• Argument for A world government would allow us to deal with problems that are global in nature, such as global warming, climate change, ocean and air pollution, pandemics and others.
  • Objection There're other ways to deal with such problems that don't require a world government, such as international treatises, free-market, activism, etc.
• Argument for More effective coping with climate, pollution and pandemics.
• Argument for World peace.
  • Objection In exchange for totalitarian government? That's a rather optimistic presumption.
• Argument for No armies (only police), no weapons of mass destruction (= economic bonus).
  • Objection How would a global authority enforce compliance with whatever policies and laws they intend to impose upon a local population that decides they'd rather do things their way, without harming anyone else? If the answer is "the police", then what makes them any different from a standing army in that case? If compliance is voluntary, then why can't most of these other objectives be accomplished without submitting to a "world government" in addition to such constraints?
• Argument for Free movement of people (no entry permits).
• Argument for Free circulation of goods (no border tax).
• Argument for Rational network of transport (like trans-continental highways and railways).
• Argument for World football superleague above national leagues.

A world government is not desirable

• Argument against A world government would make a world dictatorship possible.
  • Objection A world government would incorporate every political mechanism known to make such dictatorships virtually impossible.
  • Objection An unpopular world government would eventually fall.
  • Objection World dictatorships are possible even without a world government, as has been suggested multiple times by near-global empires such as the British.
    • Objection Even if world dictatorships are possible without world governments, they are more likely when the whole world has one government.
• Argument against A world government is not feasible so we should not pursue or even desire it.
  • Objection Why is it not feasible?
  • Objection The UN becoming world government is unfeasible.
  • World governement established in the traditional (imperial) way is feasible and probable, though in my 2023 estimation not yet foreseeable.
• Argument against Independence and self-determination are impossible if the same government is imposed upon all of humanity.

'Desirable' for whom?

•  Comment The question seems somewhat ill-posed.

See also

• Is capitalism sustainable?

External links

• Wikipedia:World government
• World government in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The big idea: is world government possible?
• It is time to consider the advantages of a world federal government