We all know that nightmare, right? A One World Government with the world divided up into semi-autonomous economic zones, controlled by a single central bank with single currency for all, with everyone under constant surveillance and ... well, like I said, you all know the nightmare.
So, here's the thing: what if it doesn't have to be a nightmare? Allow me to play devil's advocate (hey, it's what I do).
You know, a single world government is probably inevitable, at some point. Instant communications and high-speed transportation can't help but weave the world more closely together, and that sort of process only leads in one direction. But what if the government that emerged on the other side was a democratic republic, one that gave every citizen a voice and inalienable rights? The dream (well, my dream) would be a parliamentary population, an ongoing global senate in which every citizen is a senator, able to vote not just for people but for treaties, for laws, for regulations. People often sneer at the idea of individual people being given the same say in legislative matters as are elected officials (though not so often as they used to, I've noticed....) The fact is, that if the people could decide the law for themselves, most of the problems that plague society would vanish rapidly.
The War in Iraq? Over, and years ago. Ditto Afghanistan. The War on Terror as well. The War on Drugs would in all likelihood have been history a decade ago, and would certainly be over today. The tax code would be marvelously simplified, as there is no question but that a series of arcane tomes longer than most encyclopedias is universally despised and feared more than any text since the Necronomicon.
Problems of political corruption would be greatly ameliorated as well. Bribing a few congressmen is one thing; bribing the entire population, quite another. Even a bribe that amounted to just a few hundred dollars a head would quickly run into the hundreds of billions. Should any group come to feel that such a bribe is necessary, the bribing would at least have the virtue of being a very public thing, rather than the furtive scrambling that takes place now.
Oh, yes, and one other (and very important) thing: participatory democracy would be very resistant against the psychopathic personality types that currently dominate the legislative houses of the world (not to mention the governments of almost every previous society). Psychopaths are, after all, only 1% of the population, and in a direct democracy they would be greatly outnumbered.
A virtual democracy might seem an impossible dream, but achieving it would be surprisingly easy. All it would take would be a repudiation of the serving government (on the grounds of numerous actions voiding the constitutional contract), and the signing of an alternate constitution that at first will apply to a sort of virtual state. New, virtual laws, existing in parallel to the existing legal structures but not yet in force, are then created in a wiki-congress composed of anyone who signs the contract. As the body of virtual law grows, attention will naturally be drawn to it, at first as a curiosity if nothing else. The evident sanity of the virtual law, in comparison with the rampant contradictions, injustices, and outright abuses of the existing code will become apparent to many, and implicit in that sanity the wisdom of direct democracy will impress itself into the minds that see it.
Now, the great thing about a virtual democracy is the scalability of it, it's almost fractal nature. The challenge to the current system doesn't have to be direct, not at first. Start by applying the philosophy at small scales - neighborhood associations, unions, clubs, and corporations. Think of this as planting seeds in the polity's connective tissue. Once participatory governance has begun to pervade the background of life, a push could be made to bring urban governments under a similar system of governance, in effect chewing giant political holes in the organs of the state. From there, it's a smooth (though possibly more abrupt than expected) progression towards a global democracy that hollows out the pre-existing control grid until the brittle shell finally cracks and what I like to call the demosphere is born.
Until time travel is invented, I won't be able to go back to the Cretaceous and hunt dinosaurs, and none of you will be able to turn back the clock to the constitutional order of 1776. That contract was publicly broken and discarded by the elites back in 2000, and what lip service it's received since has been increasingly strained. Of late, it's grown perfunctory and often downright sarcastic. So, it's gone and done with; best it be laid aside as a memory cherished by all who love freedom, for a memory it has become. Memories can be learned from, but they cannot inspire, for inspiration requires vision ... and a vision that inspires the masses to take their destinies into their own hands might spur change faster than any of us imagine possible.
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Probably a bit more eloquently than it will appear on his site, too, as I'm writing in my mother tongue here....
