The Path to World Government, Part II

STEP 1. GETTING STARTED

A central committee of some sort is needed to run things and it’s up to you to form one.  I picture a group of thirteen or so voting members each with an alternate to serve as a backup and/or replacement if needed.  Such a group could, I believe, best be formed by some sort of self-organization process-people stepping forward as candidates and deciding who among them are the best qualified.  Once the group is formed, it would select a chairman and an organization grow from there and go on to accomplish the remaining seven steps below.  Obviously some financing will be required along the way, but I’m sure that in your capable hands it will present no problem.

The following criteria are suggested for the committee members:

Qualifications: Noteworthy careers punctuated by missteps as well as successes.  Strong technical background.  Willingness to serve in a purely voluntary capacity.  Renunciation of any active role in the resultant world government.  Open-mindedness.  Willingness to swear that he or she would decide issues on purely rational grounds as opposed to political and/or religious ideologies.  Fluent in English. Ability to work with others.

Disqualifications: Current leadership position in any religious, political, or ideologically-centered organization.  Membership in the legal profession. Less than thiry-five years of age.  (Sorry about that.  Anyone under that threshold has not had enough time to make mistakes and learn from their consequences-a state oldsters like myself affectionately regard as maturity.)

STEP 2. CREATING A CONSTITUTION

Once the central committee is in place, it can guide the formation of a constitution taking full advantage of whatever outside help it can acquire.

First comes the word.  What is wanted, of course, is a constitution that will produce, not just any old world government, but a good world government.  A bad one could conceivably result in a world worse than the multinational circus we have now.

A good world government will require a comprehensive constitution the likes of which has never been seen-one that includes not just the mechanics of government but the structure of society as a whole-one that benefits not only from the wisdom of the past but from its lessons as well-one that utilizes modern technology but isn’t dictated by it.  The following may be helpful in that connection:

FUNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS:

If you were awake during your poly-sci classes, you are aware the reverence paid to the United States’ Constitution by masses of people all over the world.  And it is, of course, well deserved.  The drafters of the Constitution set forth in simple, clear language a set of universally-held aspirations: freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and of association.  Other of its provisions guarantee the right to assemble and to petition.  The protection of personal property is affirmed.  And it makes clear its provisions apply to all without discrimination.  In short there would be no better foundation for your new constitution than this document crafted by the thoughtful, well-educated, well-intentioned men we were fortunate enough to have had at the helm at a critical period in our nation’s history.

It must have been apparent to our Founding Fathers early in their considerations that a single body of law could not possibly be applicable to every section of their far-flung, diverse, fledgling country.  So what they arrived at was a bipartite approach known as the Federalist System in which certain basic statutes applied universally and other, state-originated, statutes could be introduced to satisfy local requirements provided, of course, they did not conflict with the constitution’s “core” measures.  Another feature of the Federalist System was that it left the states free to experiment with laws that, if proven useful, could be introduced elsewhere.  States would therefore serve, as former Justice Louis Brandeis’s observed, as “laboratories of democracy.”  If such a dichotomous political system was deemed necessary for the American colonies, the same logic would make it absolutely mandatory for the wildly fragmented world your constitution must attempt to enveloped.

But as remarkable as the U.S. Constitution was in its time and day, it cannot serve in its entirety as a suitable model for your world government constitution.  Listed below are a number of new factors that I believe must be taken into consideration.

THE FRAGILITY OF DEMOCRACIES:

Americans can take satisfaction in the way our side, democracy, has gained in modern times.  European monarchies, South American dictatorships and Asian autocracies have, in many cases, given way to regimes more like our own.  In the last forty years, free countries have more than doubled, partly free countries held their own, and the number of not-free countries has sharply declined.

Nevertheless, the relative success of democracy should not lead you to hubris in this regard.  You would do well to keep in mind that several major-country democracies have crashed and burned just in the last century.  A few that come to mind are:

The Russian Provisional Government before Lenin, 1917
The [republican] Kingdom of Italy before Mussolini, 1922
The German Weimar Republic before Hitler, 1933
The Czechoslovak Republic before Hitler, 1938
The Second Spanish Republic before Franco, 1939
Venezuela before Chávez, 1998

In countries such as Japan before the Second World War, Mabarak’s Egypt, and Hussein’s Iraq, democracies did not so much suffer a violent death as incur debilitating restrictions that eventually left them as good as dead.  Adding these nations to the turbulent countries of Africa and Latin America, that have cycled between one form of government after another, one has to conclude that there is no God-mandated rule indemnifying democracies from dissolution.  As  framers of the new constitution, you must be aware of the pitfalls ahead and do your best to include defensive measures in it  as suggested below.

PREVENTING SOCIAL UNREST

One sure-fire way to bring about governmental failure is exhibiting indifference to the needs of its citizens.  Whereas it is true abused masses can, in some cases, be kept docile for a surprisingly long periods, sooner or later, out of desperation they do rebel and demand change-often drastic change that may not be in their long term best interest and certainly not in society’s.

Millions of people throughout the world are denied basic nutritional requirements, potable water, decent housing, and opportunity for employment.  Not to mention adequate education and health care.

Income disparity has often proved a convenient (and understandable) target for discontent as have corruption, nepotism, favoritism, injustice, and related social misdemeanors.

And, if past practices are allowed to continue, environmental degradation can be expected to trouble the world more and more.

The traditional way to approach such problems is through legislation, but, by the time elected officials are bestirred to act, they are forced to deal with symptoms rather than causes.  As a result, statutory and regulatory measures seldom satisfactorily address the underlying entrenched conditions that caused the problems in the first place.  On the other hand, the framers of a new world constitution, would be in the enviable position of being able to anticipate these issues and create systems in which solutions were allowed to organically evolve.  In this connection you might find previous postings on this blog, under the “Economics” tab, helpful: “Rich Man, Poor Man” (Jan, ’11) and “Money Redefined, Part IV” (Sep, ’09).

AVOIDING FISCAL MELT DOWNS:

The nearly irresistible tendency on the part of democracies to spend themselves into bankruptcy and eventual dissolution is hardly a recent phenomenon.  Indeed it was identified back in 1787 by Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh who wrote:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy which is always followed  by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

Those of  you familiar with the insightful observations of Alexis de Tocqueville made during his visit to the colonies in 1831 will recognize the same perspicuous sentiments.

To ward off this common scourge of democracies, I would suggest a statutory vaccination of sorts-that is to say, language requiring that the equal treatment of individuals be interpreted literally.  By that I mean a governmental handout to any individual or group would have to be offered to everyone else as well irrespective of need, age, ethnicity, etc.  Food-stamps for some would mean food-stamps for all.  Farmers could not be granted subsidies unless comparable compensation was distributed to city folks.  Under this interpretation of the law, the insidious practice of favoritism would, I trust, disappear.  Coupled with a prohibition against governmental borrowing, such a clause would no doubt prevent your world government from succumbing to Mr. Tyler’s dire prognostications.

LIMITING GOVERNMENTAL EXPANSION:

Another destructive characteristic of democracies is their tendency to accumulate bloated, corrupt, irresponsive, and dysfunctional bureaucracies.  Unless your constitution expressly forbids it, a minor official of a governmental office responsible for planning highways might well advance his career by becoming the head of a new department devoted to building the highways themselves and, should he succeed, a subordinate within his new department is likely to follow his example by heading a division supplying highway materials.  And so government tends to encroach into every nook and cranny as the temptation for empire building results in an ever growing population of parasitic “public servants.”

To avoid this sort of runaway expansion, I suggest your new world constitution strictly limit governmental activity to “intellectual” functions thereby prohibiting its involvement in operations.  Such a provision would allow government to engage in highway planning but prevent it from constructing highways.  A group setting air pollution limits would have to rely on a private lab for its routine monitoring, and so on.  Whereas such restrictions would obviously curtail government activity, it would, at the same time, provide it with a major benefit-i.e., the flexibility that would allow it to view the operations it supervises objectively.  In case some private contractor underperformed, government would be in position to make needed adjustments-a self-corrective process that would be virtually impossible were the task done “in house.”  To confirm  the wisdom of this approach, one need only consider the decades-old scandal in K-12 public education that has been allowed to drag on for decades.

Prohibiting government from entering into operations is an explicit endorsement of free markets, the economic system that has proven itself to be the most effective means of delivering goods and services at the lowest cost.  This is not to say that private enterprise can be allowed to go unregulated.  On the contrary, the fact that government would be in position to observe the private sector impartially should make it a more astute regulator.  The recommendations provided in “Government Redefined” (see below) would counter the unwelcome imposition of over regulation.

CIRCUMVENTING LEGISLATIVE OBSTRUCTIONISM:

Whereas there is no question in my mind but that the ideals of the Founding Fathers should serve as the foundation for a worldwide constitution, I would just as strongly argue against using their prescription for the governmental structure that rests on that foundation.  In 1787, the Founders could rely on  a largely literate, fairly homogeneous electorate, experienced in democratic procedures-advantages that the framers of a world constitution would certainly not enjoy.  Moreover, having no working democracies to serve as an example, the Founder’s solutions were of necessity experimental.  Now I would think that the antics of Congress over the last two-hundred years would lend a more sober assessment of representative democracy.

In any case, I shudder to think of the consequences of any attempt to apply a one-man, one-vote rule to earth’s 6.5 billion people.  One has only to visualize the contentious election process and the onerous body of dogmatic, party-affiliated officials that would result to recoil against the project.  Even in the highly unlikely circumstance that a genuinely free, honest election were held, it would be even less likely to produce a propitious result.

The good news is that in this interconnected, Internet world, the framers of a new world constitution need not be bound by the techniques of the past.  The new proposed democracy need not be a representative democracy.  Today’s management recognizes that obsolescent middlemen add delay, expense, and disarray to commercial undertakings and have, therefore, found technological ploys around them.  Similarly, ways could be found to circumvent obstructive legislative bodies as well.  I have posited one such approach that avoids both legislative and executive branches.  Those interested can find “Government Redefined” on this blog under the Current Events tab.  It was originally posted in the April-June, 2010, Volume 5 issue.

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