Is it possible to rule the world?

Is world domination or united world of any form possible? Is it possible for it to work without collapsing and split into different countries again? What would it require to stay like that? Is it impossible with democracy and only possible under strict dictatorship that removes right of people? And so on.

Asking about this since I'm kind of wondering whether that will ever happen or what would happen if someone succeeded in conquering the world.

So I suppose the question is whether or not an empire can scale up to that level? While there are surely coordination and bureaucracy problems with running a country that large, I don't think they're of a different kind than any other large country. The same techniques that keep any scale of country together would be equally applicable, if proportionately more costly to apply. Nationalism, etc.

I suppose there might be some kind of mathematical limit to the size of a country based on a number of factors that depend on how you're running it, but I don't see how we could ever arrive at the formula. If there's a "line" somewhere that's the maximum size of a country, we have no idea what it is and whether or not the Earth falls above or below it is pretty much arbitrary.

edited 20th Nov '12 10:09:42 AM by Clarste

I think that an united world — some sort of democratic, federal organization which has the monopoly of the use of force — is possible, and even necessary. Given our technological achievements, we really cannot afford war any more — at least not any kind of war between superpowers, like the one we barely avoided a few decades ago. And our ecological problems also need to be dealt with globally.

A single person, or a small group of people, ruling the whole world through dictatorial methods would be, instead, almost impossible. Not entirely impossible, perhaps, but it would be a very unstable situation: such a centralized system could not react to events and rebellions quickly enough to guarantee its own survival. Perhaps if it had some sort of huge technological advantage...

edited 20th Nov '12 10:16:00 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I anticipate that we'll very slowly move towards a democratic sort of global government. People tend to like the idea of voting once they get to do it. And with technology becoming increasingly complex and causing ease of communication, that's just going to take care of a lot of problems. I think that the vast majority of current national governments will remain as a form of more local government, though.

As for a dictatorship, everything Carc just said applies. You would need a vast tech advantage, and you'd have to make sure that your enemies are completely unable to get access to it in order to retain such control over the entire globe.

I'm not sure if it would be a desirable thing even if it was possible, unless it was a very loose confederation of mostly-sovereign powers.

One of the main catalysts for political reform in many countries is the ability to examine the policies of other countries and determine what effect they've had in those countries. A one world government would take that away. Society would stagnate as people learned to accept any failures of government as "just the way things are".

Even under one government the world's never going to be homogenous. Even within large countries like US and China the local governments differ from each other, particularly in between the States in the US where they even have different laws.

One man ruling in the world COULD be possible. But he(or she)'d have to be loved by most of the population. it'd need to be a very slow take over. Some areas will just flat out HAVE to be occupied for a while, and there will always be some rebels.

A de-centralized united world government could work though. break the world down into areas.

This would be a good thing. for one thing, the world could stop wasting trillions on military spending(a few modified carriers could be kept around for natural disasters though, carrying helicopters, and landing craft for bringing in supplies). For another, space exploration could be properly funded.

I'm baaaaaaack

@Ira, yeah that's what I was getting at. It would be ok if it was sufficiently decentralized, but it would be very difficult to get the entire world population to reexamine "global" laws, just as in the US it's pretty hard to influence federal law without large amounts of money.

edited 20th Nov '12 5:52:26 PM by Topazan

Yeah, I agree. Though that would still be far from what I'd called a "loose" confederation.

Well, I would still say the fewer global laws, the better. I would only agree to it if there were strong limitations on the power of the global government and strong protections to the sovereignty of more local governments.

Aside from the possibility of world government ending war, I'd rather that power was even more distributed than it already is. Let's have more city-states, like Singapore and Hong Kong. :P

How much would a global government have to deal with? Only the most global crimes would fall under it's jurisdiction (with everything else being dealt with at some kind of local level) and beyond that we've got climate change, interstellar diplomacy, global military, space exploration and what? The moon? International waters? What else would it actually deal with that couldn't be better dealt with at a local(er) level?

edited 20th Nov '12 6:11:09 PM by Silasw

Not much, but that doesn't mean it won't try. Special interests would have much to gain by influencing it, and they would gain acceptance on humanitarian ground. (Our competitor's product is a danger in every country, not just one! We need a global ban!)

edited 20th Nov '12 6:11:42 PM by Topazan

Well, this sort of thing is just speculative now. Somehow we'd have to get fair and equitable trade all around the world. And we'd have to have another world with a significant population and their own government to have any need for interplanetary trade laws.

I dunno, I think a world where a world government happens might look vastly different from what any of us are anticipating. It certainly isn't going to be a dictatorship.

Historically, holding together a large, diverse and far-flung empire has required the voluntary consent of the governed. You can only force a group of people to comply with you for so long. What this implies is that nations today would have to voluntary give up a substantial measure of their own national sovereignty to a central governing authority. They would only do that if the benefits of joining significantly outweighed the costs of standing alone.

But at the lesser end there is also "hegemony", where a central power exerts significant influence, rather than direct control, over other people or countries. It's been repeatedly argued that the so-called "American Empire" is based off of a combination of economic and military hegemony, rather than direct political control.

Also, there is the question as to why somebody or a group of people would want to rule the world. What is the purpose? Do you really want to rule over Afghanistan or the war-ravaged areas of Africa? Or tiny remote villages? Probably not. You want to rule the parts of the world that are worth ruling over.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

A single person ruling the world would likely work themselves to death in short order.

Look how much a single term can age a president in the USA. And they are only a portion of the government..

The only way I see this happening is in response to some sort of global-collapse. If society were somehow destroyed, the remaining people might look to some sort of authoritarian savior figure to come bail them out.

Which implies that one way of becoming that savior figure is by causing the collapse in the first place. How to cause that to happen is the question.

Mineral resources. Afghanistan's sitting on a trillion dollars in valuable metals, not to mention Africa tends to be the source of a lot of rare earth metals* used to make computer hardware.

Linguistically, running a global nation would be hell. That's not even including insurmountable cultural problems in crafting laws for the entire globe to follow, unless the central government had less authority than "ruling the world" would normally entail.

* Don't hold me to the specific terminology here. I do know there's a rebellion getting out of control in the Congo, and the reason we care (besides the killing) is that the Congo sits on something like twenty-four trillion dollars' worth of minerals.

Hell, one of the reasons I say the U.S. needs to invade and conquer Australia is because they possess the world's largest reserves of uranium.

edited 21st Nov '12 8:50:34 PM by Zephid

I wrote about a fish turning into the moon.

Afghanistan and Africa may be sitting on mineral wealth, but the land is inhabited by people who would probably not take too kindly to a foreign power trying to set up shop there, if the past several centuries of human civilization is any indicator. And unless somebody is going to advocate doing the unthinkable, the people are going to stay.

And why invade Australia? What, they won't trade? Come on.

I would have to agree that the most likely way for a single ruling person or body to take power would be after some sort of global catastrophe and collapse. But it would have to somehow keep much of the technology, especially communications and travel infrastructure, intact. Unfortunately, those tend to be the first things to go in the event of a massive collapse.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

I'm personally a fan of the theory that we will all unite once we have someone to unite against, be it aliens, rebellious space colonies or something else. Once we can draw a line and say "we are the people of earth and you are not" we will be that bit more likely to unite as "the people of earth".

Of course they'll trade. We're very friendly with each other. They'll just never trade all of it.

I wrote about a fish turning into the moon.

The key to establishing a one-world government is developing communication and transportation technology to the point where geography becomes meaningless. We only form countries the way we do because travel time means that people in one region of the world will develop in ways different from people in other regions. But if you can carry on a conversation with someone half-way around the world as easily as with your next door neighbor, that kinda falls apart.

The one catastrophe I can think of that would leave most of the infrastructure intact would be a pandemic of some kind.

So the key to becoming world dictator is developing a bioweapon.

Well, at least we've got communication down pat, I think.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

That level of communication technology isn't widely available everywhere, and there are still language barriers in place (though those should naturally erode (albeit, slowly) with advancements in communication).

The only way this would be possible is for there to be an effective global consent to such a manner of governing. It would take a severe and drastic problem to convince or coerce enough of the planets governments and people to drop a massive amount of human baggage. Either that or a strong and wide spread change in humanity as a whole that affects how we think and feel in a group setting and in a invidual setting.

A host of philosophies, life styles, religions, economic issues, old histories and grudges, and a host of other various influences making this occurence extremely improbable at best.

Who watches the watchmen?