This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a huge problem, but I don’t really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:
- not everyone has internet access
- not everyone that has access has unfettered access
- It’s hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
- it’s hard to verify elections haven’t been tampered with
- what happens when violent crimes are committed?
- how do taxes work in this system?
- how do armed forces work in this system?
I don’t think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don’t know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?
It would be like EU, but worldwide.
As for internet voting, nah, you can’t preserve anonymity while ensuring election integrity
Yeah, this is simply the correct answer. Everything else I’ve read here ranges from overcomplicated to completely insane.
Why are people so obsessed with digital/internet voting?
Just use normal ballots, with pen and paper, and have a little patience while it gets collected, mailed and counted!
Or an EVM
I think internet voting for the less important things tonbe voted on. Like in addition, not to replace current big elections.
Or atleast what VOLT and the EUROPEAN FEDERALISTS want the EU to reform into
Given that a decent chunk of the world holds political views I find repulsive, most notably around women’s rights, this sounds like a terrible idea.
Make it hierarchical. Every 50-100 people in their little community elect a leader. Then, all those leaders get together into groups of 50-100 and elect a leader of that group. And then, all the leaders of those groups, et cetera you get the idea.
Do away with this concept where people are voting for random dickheads in faraway lands who will never interact with them, they have no daily concept of and no familiarity with, and there is this weird middleman involved of a distant organization that is deciding who out of hundreds of millions of potential candidates are the 2-3 that are permitted to be on the ballot of us to vote for. Do away with the team sports aspect where people are coalesced into artificial groupings with colors assigned to them and then the default is for them to vote for whoever’s got the right color attached to them.
Obviously it doesn’t mean that whoever’s at the very top of the pile gets unquestioned power. You could have it as a sort of parliamentary system, where the top person carries executive power and then ones below them (or maybe 2 levels down) are the parliament or legislative branch. And then the courts are just separate from that, similar to today.
Maybe make it so that anyone who can gather 50 votes can be in the L1 grouping. So you can choose to organize yourselves into little communities without needing to be in the same location or having districts drawn by some suspect person. All the people who work at one company, all the people who like Linux, all the people who care about one racial or cultural grouping’s issues can always put their person in L1 if there are enough of them. And then, any number of the L1 people can put in an L2 person. And so on.
Maybe there are flaws, but I feel like the lack of information and day-to-day familiarity with the people you’re voting for, and the barriers to entry for ordinary people, are some of the biggest problems with all of this right now. It would be dope as hell if everyone who frequents one particular game store or college or housing project could get a couple of their people up into the very lowest levels of government just by all deciding. But, the person they’re going to pick is based on actually knowing and respecting (at least vaguely) that person, not on TV commercials. And then the L1 people can do likewise, they obviously will start to know each other and they can develop some consensus about who should go up to the city council on their behalf or whatever.
This is just my random pipe dream but I think it is a good idea
I have a similar thought about 100-1000 person groups at the base level. I think the basic unit of organization would need to be geographical, for a couple of reasons: one, I think it’s important for us as humans to be able to meet and talk to your fellows (and your elected officials) in person, and two, I think a purely online bloc would be vulnerable to technological capture. Like, an attacker could MITM an entire bloc and manipulate how they vote. I think interest groups / parties / factions etc. will still happen but I wouldn’t want to organize voting around them.
This is representative democracy which is pretty much how most western-style democracies are today…
The risks you’re trying to mitigate are somewhat mitigated in a structure like the European Union has: the European Parliament, European Council, Council of the European Union, and European Commission, etc.
Take a moment and think about what the global conditions were like 300 years ago, and think about how things improved every 50 years since then.
Around 1725, most of the world was rural, poor, and ruled by monarchies, with low life expectancy and little technology. By 1775, Enlightenment ideas and early industrialization began shifting societies. In 1825, machines and railroads transformed economies. By 1875, electricity and vaccines improved life. In 1925, cars, radios, and modern medicine spread. By 1975, civil rights, global trade, and computers reshaped the world. And today? Well, you can probably tell how our modern lives are better today than they were in the 1970s.
To put things in perspective, in the 1800s, only around the 10% of the world was literate, but today only around 10% are illiterate. Similarly, in the 1800s, more than 90% people were living in extreme poverty, but today that’s around 10%. The same goes for many other stats. What does this tell us? It tells us that things do get better with time. Even though we went through plagues, wars, famines, droughts, and genocides we did come out the other side better than we did before.
So maybe, just maybe, we don’t need a global government. Maybe vastly different people separated by culture, land, and history shouldn’t be forced into a system with people they don’t understand very well. Maybe it’s better for us to respect the concept of sovereignty that has persisted throughout history, and focus on strengthening the trends that have brought us tremendous progress over time… like improving the access and quality of education globally, developing and sharing new advancements in medicine, innovating new technologies to make our lives easier, pushing for and protecting civil rights and individual liberties, and generating wealth and prosperity through market economies.
The point is that maybe it’s better that we focus on improving what we know works from historical trends instead trying to create a global government, which will certainly create a whole new set of issues. Perhaps what we need is more dialogue and cooperation through forums like the UN instead of consolidation through a world government.
These don’t need to be mutually exclusive though. A lot of the progress in Europe the past 80 years is a result of the improved cooperation brought by the EU.
The EU isn’t like the UN, where everyone is equally represented (sans veto powers), but is a democratically elected super-national body with opposing super-national political factions. I can see a concept like that working on a global scale some time in the (relatively far) future.
The EU consists of a bunch of European countries that are similar culturally, economically, and politically. It makes sense for them to form a union that aims to achieve their common interests. A lot of similar unions exist like ASEAN, Arab League, African Union, etc. These are still different than having a single government for the entire world. There are way too many differences for that to work, different cultures, unequal economies, different religions, different politics, etc. This global government would end up trying to appease everyone to maintain the unity, but this would ultimately lead to have no teeth. In other words it’ll be reduced to what the UN is now.
Oh, I definitely meant far future. While the differences are far too big today, I can see gradually increasing cooperation between e.g. the EU and African Union at some point culminating in the construction of a governmental body that has some regulatory power over them both.
Once such a body exists, I can imagine that it over time accumulates power, bringing the two unions even closer together. The EU started out as a relatively small organ, and has grown gradually to what it is today over many decades. My point was that if some “global government” ever forms, I think that kind of gradual process is how it will happen. Starting out with trade agreements, and then gradually regulating more aspects of government.
I mean that’s a completely fair point of view. If we make the assumption that humanity will continue to progress with time, even if there are periods of regression, then I could see where you’re coming from. Humanity did evolve from being nomadic tribes to creating settlements of tribes to creating nations from settlements to creating empires from nations to today where we’re forming unions of empires and nations. It’s logical to think that with time we’ll have these unions merge and create a higher authority, and if we follow this trajectory it should eventually lead to a global government. I just hope we don’t go extinct before that happens.
You need social proximity for democracy to work, because that’s how you have conversations about issues. We would need a shared global culture and factors that mean people at every level of society have friends distributed around the world. The specific rules and bureaucratic procedure are less important, the main thing is people in different places need to become more connected to each other.
You seem to have a funny definition of democracy…
In real definitions, police, taxes, anonymity, internet etc. have no place. Democracy means (in simple words) that the people vote for their government. The other aspects can differ.
Look at real existing countries outside of your own. Their systems have huge differences while many of them are democracies.
This would literally never work unless there is international nationship, that is to say, democracy doesn’t work unless there’s a sense of belonging to the same nation, otherwise one group will always feel the other is imposing something on the other.
Well, step 1 would be doing something about the US. The US wields enormous power and influence around the world despite having a relatively small population (compared to how much influence it has). What you’re proposing is that every person in Africa, China, Southeast Asia, etc, should have equal say in what happens in the world as an American - I agree with that, as anyone who believes in democratic ideals should. But countries like the US that benefit from the current arrangement would never allow it, and are well armed enough to be a serious impediment to that goal.
I think perhaps something like a Grey Council from Babylon5 would be nice.
A single government to preside over the whole world? It just can’t work, ever. How is a president in India supposed to govern Iraq?
Federal republic or swiz model (which is a federation). Just yk bigger. Decentralised. Good example of how that would be is germany. There would be the top level: global parliament
then regional/continental determined by cultural / geographic similaritys so example a european council, indian, north american (excluding mexico), latin american, central african, arabic, west african and so on
Below that basicly like country borders today down to sub regional administration and then munincipalities/citys
Its not one person as the “head” but always a council.
The problems you listed arent problems. One can either vote in paper or online. Lots of examples there that it works, doesnt get tampered with and the annonymity is also perserved.
Crimes are on the country/munincipalities levels and should be handled there
Tax is global as are the armed forces
I think something like this is the most reasonable, and we’re already closer to it than at any previous point in history. We have the EU, the African Union (AU), and I think there’s a South American union as well (?) there’s also the US, which is a bit between a union and a single state (US states have more autonomy than regional municipalities most other places, but far less than any full-fledged county).
I think that if a “global government” ever develops, it will be due to these unions forming an overarching union. The major hurdle is that we’re a very far way off anybody wanting to concede any governing power to an organisation above the “continental union” level. Even holding the EU together is non-trivial, because a lot of people feel that too much power is concentrated far away in Brussels.
Regarding judicial systems and military forces, the UN has showed that it’s possible to have a kind of global system for this, but it’s still a far stretch from anything that could be called a “global judicial system with enforcement powers”.
Everyone would need infrastructure, not only internet access, but also power, a smartphone and/or a PC. Still millions of people live in areas where they don’t even have reliable electricity acces, or don’t even know how to read and write. How would these people, that live of soley their land, buy a smartphone or PC and internet access and be able or know how to use it?
You first need world education, basic world infrastructure (water, electricity) before you can even dream of internet access.
There’s no good reason not to have a global direct democracy
It’s just old sacks of shit that don’t want to give up power
Despite not everyone having internet, more people would still end up participating in the process than our current systems.
Direct democracy sounds good on the surface, but it’s an impractical system when you actually into it. For example, direct democracy can overwhelm voters with complex issues they may not fully understand, leading to uninformed or emotionally driven decisions. Participation tends to be inconsistent, with only a small, active minority shaping outcomes. The process itself is often slow and expensive, requiring frequent referendums that delay urgent action. There’s the risk of majority tyranny, where the will of the majority can override minority rights, and it’s vulnerable to manipulation by well funded interest groups. Complex policies are also often reduced to oversimplified yes/no choices, bypassing the expertise and deliberation that’s required.
We don’t have direct democracy because it’s only practical in small scales. Once you get outside of your immediate communities like neighborhoods, schools, families, the system just doesn’t work. There’s a reason why the evolution of political system led us to where we are. History has shown that the best form of governments are liberal representative democracies with strong checks and balances. We should strive for that.
We’ve never really had direct democracy at scale becauseit was physically impossible.
But now we have the technology to implement it.
We have the technology to implement it. It’s extremely questionable as to whether we have the society to practice it.
It’s not a matter of technology, the concept is just inherently flawed. Even if every person could vote instantaneously and have their votes counted immediately, it still wouldn’t work because direct democracy requires everybody to vote on every issue. There’s just way too many things going on in the world for this to be feasible. Direct democracy is only works on small scales, and it’s just not a good form of government beyond that. This is why you rarely see direct democracy in history, the evolution of history has favored representative democracy as the superior form of democratic governance because it’s more practical, efficient, and flexible.
Democracy doesn’t require every person vote on every issue.
Also there has never been a direct democracy in human history because it has never been technologically possible, no Greece was not a direct democracy.
You’re kind of just grasping at straws here.
If it feels like a bad system to you then that’s a you problem.
I agree. I think with a robust enough proposal, there are a lot of people with power who would be willing to get on board. Some people though… they’ve shown that they’re willing to kill huge numbers of people to maintain and expand their power, and I don’t know that that kind of powermonger can be dealt with gracefully. And I think an internet-native global democratic movement would have to be started by people with internet access, and one of its goals would have to be providing, to the best of its ability, internet access to everyone.
I found the book another now very insightful and it kind of touches on this
Well don’t just leave us hanging.
Personally i think it would have to work as a series of institutions that each person is part of. Maybe a geographic organization that acts on municiple levels and coordinates with other municiple level orgs with a higher level org that coordinates agendas and the like.
But there some things that would make sense being technically bound by skill set. So more anarcho sydicalist structures for technocratic orgnizations as well.
Its honestly why i try to join democratic orgs where i can. My insurace is a mutual fund, my bank a credit union, grocery coop, electric coop, etc A lot of my software is devoloped in KDEs system whish is pretty democratic as well.
Im saving up with the intention to create a dual community land trust and housing coop in my area as well. Just taking back ownership out of autocrats hands where i can.
This guy fucks. Those are really simple and really effective ways to make a real impact without a lot of effort.
Change your electric provider to a coop and now you’re chipping away at corporate interests while investing in your own community one bill at the time.
Same thing with banks, software has become so accessible that most Credit Unions will have apps and websites that are as good, if not better than any big bank. And you can rest assured knowing that your saved money is helping the guy down the street run his restaurant and not funding dead babies in Gaza.
