I've been wrestling with a response to the very good article and very good comments in the last post. I still haven't come up with a response that's adequate, but I don't feel like working more, so I'll throw up what I got. If you guys rip it to shreds, I'll just say, I could have written it a lot stronger...but I didn't, so there!
Anyway, have at it!
IMAGINE
Isn't that sweet?
Jeff's interesting previous post has gotten a lot of thoughtful comments from everybody. This is what this blog's all about! To greatly over-simplify their comments, Jeff seems to think World Government is inevitable and that it is not necessarily a good thing, Melkor seems to think World Government is inevitable and that it is a good thing. I've got my thoughts about whether it is good or bad, but it's the inevitability that I am taking exception to.
I've got to say, I think Melkor's ideal view is theoretically good, but when you put real people with real cultures and selfish motives (in other words, typical humans) in these positions of authority then the theoretically beneficial system becomes a ' what can it do for me and mine ' system. I think Melkor's IMF is the most perfect super-national actor, but that's one good actor among many bad actors, or maybe a better phrase would be 'one selfless actor among many selfish actors'.
The United States works as sort of a super-national system only because the many states that constitute it are (or were) basically one primarily English culture (those that were brought here forcibly, or immigrated from other cultures were absorbed into the culture until recently), with one language and one culture (more or less). When a place like Louisiana suffers a disaster, we have a sense of community and rally to its support, gladly supporting our government. Not because it makes economic sense for us to do so, but because they are kin. They are culturally our brothers. That is an important thing that both Melkor and Jeff seem to be ignoring in their praise (or at least idea of inevitability) of world management organizations. Same when a portion of the country is economically depressed. We are not terrbily upset that our tax dollars are spent helping to build up that area (even if, as RTP&GGrs, we think that the area should figure out how to pull itself up out of the mud). By contrast, the EU is made up of many countries and speak different languages and have varying cultures. It's no accident that Germany is highly efficient/prosperous/clean, while Greece is a 3rd-world backwater. The Europeans, or at least the elite of Europe see what the US has going for it and are trying to turn Europe into the same type of place. However, it is my opinion, that this won't truly be done until Europe is culturally as uniform as the United States. The German elite may want desperately to keep helping the Greeks live their lazy socialist welfare-state lifestyle in order to hold the EU together, but I predict that the typical German will not stand for this forever, unlike the way the West Germans have consistently stood and supported their slacker East German brethren. I predict Angela Merkel will pay at the ballot box whenever her party is up for elections next (though I'm not sure how dearly as she already is the European version of a conservative, and choosing the Social Democrats or Greens would only aggrevate the situation (uhm, but to parenthesize even further, Republicans and Bush were rightly slammed for their profligate spending and we sure showed them by electing Obama and Democrats into power, so who knows!)). Europeans from different countries do not view each other as brothers. They view each other as people to do business with who talk differently and act differently. Also, they each have their own army and cannot be brute-forced into cooperating if they really don't want to. That is another huge difference. If the Greeks say "fuck you" to the EU and continue their welfare-state ways, they may be penalized economically, but the EU cops (ha!) aren't going to march in and confiscate their businesses and property. If anything, the elites will bend over backwards to bail them out some more. If a Federal bailout were to happen in the case of a defaulting California, California would cooperate regarding the conditions or else.
Taking this to the next level we go to the UN where not much of anything works and it is basically the tyranny of the many leaches harrassing the few providers. It only exists at all because of the rich countries' magnanimous contributions (possibly liberal-elites' -misplaced- guilt about colonialism) and again, a desire of the elites of the rich countries to have this 'Imagine'-like one-world paradise. That the poor countries hold out their hands and take this magnanimity while at the same time spitting in the elites' faces is a source of both amusement and anger to me. The Imaginistas in the US and Europe may be able to Imagine there are no borders, but the rest of the world will laugh at them and take their money and land. The rest of the world cares very much.
The problem with the world-wide governing authorities is that cultures are different around the world. We don't have one people with similar interests, we have many people with divergent interests, all looking out for each group's own best interests.
