I believe that in my heart as well. However, we don't currently live in a world with a federated global government. The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens.
How would you spark a revolution in people's thinking?
One must make a strong justification for why treating the citizens of the world the same as an American is good for Americans.
If we treat the world like we treat our citizens, then perhaps this leads to greater prosperity, more shared understanding about the rights of man, rule of law, and how to resolve conflicts (see the lately faltering "No two countries with a McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other" rule).
Lately, this has been harder to justify as Americans have felt scared of foreign terrorism (not making a value judgment on that fear, but that the fear exists is real). Because of this the "evangelize to the world" feelings of the Cold War have given way to "protect us from the world - we need to get OURS."
Many (including me) would argue this is short sighted. Best way to combat the narrative is to talk about the impacts of retreat from the world, and of arms races, etc. Communicating nuance, history, etc is hard. :/
I believe I proposed something like a "no executive" world government, where you had international laws, defined by treaties, and a commitment by some treaty signatories to "arrest" any state actor which broke them. If this coalition of "world police" (which are, of course, armies) were powerful enough, I believe this could lead to less lawbreaking by governments (from the USA to Zimbabwe). Note, the commitment is not to start wars/invade, but specifically to arrest e.g. presidents or generals. You can't do this without an army, but the objective is considerably different from invading, neutralising any opposing forces, and securing a place.
Of course, persuading people something like this is a good idea, your actual question, is just about the hardest problem I've ever thought about solving. I still don't really know where to begin, but I'm interested in teaching people epistemology before other things, as a means to halt the "post truth" stuff (which has been going on for years, not only recently!)
By the way, if anyone wants to work on these idea with me - I'm calling the concept "World Peace, Inc" in my head - please get in touch with me (clues in profile). I'd love for this to be my job rather than the hobby I don't have time for.
You know that what you're doing here is creating a world-dominating monopoly on the use of force, and whomever ran that army would be the defacto leader of the world, right?
We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value. For the United States, it's the constitution (ostensibly), for others it's different reasons.
Federations of nation-states contributing to a global force might work without totally corrupting, but not a single "no-executive" force. Further, if everyone contributes forces then countries can opt-out and go their own way... for their own interests. (See the UN)
Coming to an understanding between 10 people on what pizza to order is hard. Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult.
> whomever ran that army would be the defacto leader of the world
That is specifically why I don't permit an executive. This isn't one army, it's an alliance of armies. They were (in my original proposal, not in the comment above) controlled by a council of heads of government who had to take (arrest) suggestions from the chief prosecutor of the international court, but were forbidden to take other actions collectively.
In fact, I recall suggesting that such a group of allies would promise to use force only to defend direct attack on their own borders, and to execute arrests.
> We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value.
I'm not sure I was ever offered a choice of whether or which nation to join, nor given any arguments for it. The reason(s) for their formation are certainly not rational - they are an emergent phenomenon!
> the UN
The UN is a diplomatic mission, which aims to give nations who come into conflict a neutral space in which to talk to one another like grown ups (or, often, not like grown ups.) It is a fundamentally different goal to an organisation which aims to use the traditional enforcement of rule of law to coerce those with political power to act within at least some behavioural boundaries.
> Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult.
Actually, again, this hypothetical force only has arrest power over international crimes - specifically, crimes which are committed by people wielding state power. This includes members of governments, civil services, uncivil services (police, army), and so on, but most definitely not civilians.
(An interested edge case I considered was the idea of an impromptu Texan militia who attempted to invade Mexico. I can't remember whether I decided they had designated themselves a pseudo-state or not by doing it. The same reasoning about whether jurisdiction should apply also works for most terrorists, anyway.)
Thank you for the rebuttal. These are definitely potential alternatives but I think they all lead to the same place. When it comes down to stopping a determined belligerent, you have to beat them on whatever the battlefield happens to be.
The group of allies comments make sense, but that assumes a super-state group of allies with shared values are willing to band together to share those values (NATO is a prime example of this, but it's not ALL countries of the world, just those nations that felt the need to counter Soviet / Russian influence)
> controlled by a council of heads of government who had to take (arrest) suggestions from the chief prosecutor of the international court, but were forbidden to take other actions collectively.
In order to effectively "arrest" activities of other countries outside of your typical shame, embarrassment, sanctions or other incentives you need to be able to pull together a force that is more powerful than that country.
In the case of 1-4 party hegemony this isn't really plausible, and that's the current situation (in my opinion). At a minimum you'd get hegemonic blocs like (totally random because they're not opposed but they're known blocs) BRIC vs. NATO.
Once a single country (or cartel of countries) has enough of a deterrent or military force, then they can (effectively) do whatever they would like, including go against any collectively forbidden actions. I'm not saying this is what _will_ happen if countries happen to think participating in a global order is a good idea and are friendly, but that's not the historical precedent. I'm not sure how to counter that, short of the current blocs or potential other future arrangements.
> I'm not sure I was ever offered a choice of whether or which nation to join
The reasons for a number of nation-state formations are very much rational. That said, they are not necessarily permanent or as binding as people think. The idea of being "French" is pretty powerful. If you live in Alsace, maybe you waffle, but it's a unifying thing that has territory tied to it due to a long history. Different for more recent Western assignments of borders, surely and you see the results of that. Just because you're a citizen doesn't necessarily mean you're part of the nation, but my guess is that you probably come to identify somewhat with your country at some point?
The problem of how to assemble the coalition in the first place remains unsolved, indeed. You also need buy in from a major player in each bloc, as you suggest. I believe my original idea was for it to start small (but diverse), and grow over time with success.
My entire scheme is to strike down the convention that someone is only put on international trial after they have lost a war and been captured (I would like justice to be done without having a war first.) this may not be possible, but is surely worth a try.
Re: citizenship, I strongly believe that these feelings of belonging are learned, indeed are engineered in us in much the same way as a religion. My objection is that, observing the emergent behaviour of a system where everyone is under either of these spells, they lead to undesireable behaviours (aggression, proselytising, belief that evil acts are justified, sometimes even committing the evil acts willingly). Both of these systems were, hypothetically, supposed to make people behave better, not worse!
> Of course, persuading people something like this is a good idea, your actual question, is just about the hardest problem I've ever thought about solving.
It's borderline impossible. People are social animals. While they don't necessarily form hierarhical societies, they are easily swayed by someone who offers simple solutions to their complex problems and have a bias towards following others vs being their own individual sovereign.
> "World Peace, Inc"
Alright Tony Stark :) Are you recruiting Avengers and trying to successfully privatize world peace?
Sadly, I'm not a billionaire. And privatise is a strong word - I think governments do a crappy job of it and I'd like to try! (I have stood for election, but winning while being nice is hard. note: I haven't stopped trying.)
Do keep in mind that Trump received 63M votes out of a total population of 319M (~20%). Even if you consider the election a referendum on globalization (and there are many reasons besides nationalism that people may have voted for Trump, as well as reasons that an anti-globalist might have voted for Clinton), that's pretty far from a majority.
Similarly, Brexit received 17.4M votes out of a total UK population of 64M (~26%).
There are certainly a non-negligible number of people who believe in borders and nations and patriotism, and they can't and shouldn't be overlooked. But "majority" is stretching it.
As for how to spark a revolution in people's thinking: you make your case to the young & open-minded, explaining why it's a good idea, and then you wait for the old and stubborn to die off. Some people will never change their mind, and you can't force them to. Everyone dies eventually, though, and if something is actually a good idea then future generations will have a chance to remake the world in their image.
The claim made based on the election results was about what it showed about the belief of the "majority of the citizens", so that's the right denominator, but if it matters Trump also didn't get a majority of eligible voters, or a majority of registered voters, or a majority of actual votes cast, or a majority of votes cast for one of the two major party candidates.
Technically, the writer did use the term "majority". That's not really the point though.
There's this obnoxious US attitude that is really wide spread in the population that the US is the best, and that Americans are noble, even though they mess up occasionally.
It's to the point where even when criticizing their own country, Americans will write that the criticism is in the spirit of improving the greatest nation on Earth, etc.
It's just a really noticeable and obnoxious pattern, even among allies. It seems to be very, very deeply ingrained.
I don't perceive people of other advanced Western countries being so jingoistic. Canadians don't crow about how Canada is the best. We might have unrealistic views that we are e.g. more tolerant, or accepting than we really are, but the US attitude is really jarring, even among friends.
Depends what you're using it for. The parent poster seemed to be implying a wish-list for a future utopian society, in which case the right denominator really is the whole population. (Or even more accurately, the set of all human beings that will be born in the future, but this causes issues with the numerator, since unborn humans don't exist yet.) The fact that children are legally prevented from voting has no bearing when you're talking about a future legal system that doesn't even allow the concept of national sovereignty; only their opinion matters. Indeed, there's reason to believe that their opinion may vary significantly from the majority opinion of people several decades older than them.
> The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens.
Trump didn't even get a majority of the votes cast (or even just the votes cast for major party candidates), much less support from the "majority of the citizens".
How would you spark a revolution in people's thinking?