A stronger United Nations is the absolute worst thing that can be done to ensure peace. The world environment is constantly changing, and what is needed is many little experiments going on all over the world to find solutions best adapted to the local environment. That cannot happen if all world policy is dictated from a single place.

In addition, don't be so sure that the values you hold are held by the majority of people on the planet. If we implement a world wide democratic system, many of the rights you enjoy may soon be voted out by majority opinion.

The best way to ensure peace is to harness the worst aspects of human nature, not the best. In practice, this means selfishness, which means making money from trade. Relying on people to be good is a guarantee of failure.

Stick to chemistry, John Avery. You're out of your depth on world governance.

You don't have to read too far to see this bloke wants the world ruled by the elite, & he considers himself one of them.

Only an utter fool would attribute the lack of a world war to anything that happened at the UN. It was, & still is MAD, mutually assured destruction that has kept the threat of major world war at bay.

The fact that the US could obliterate both China & Russia simultaneously, & get their entire leadership in that has kept the threat well down.

The fact that they had a pretty fair chance of doing almost the same to the US, & probably get it's leadership in that too, has not been detrimental either. Elites only start wars if they are pretty sure they can win, & personally profit by them.

On the other hand, elites & bureaucrats are definitely the worst people to run anything. When you think about it you can see that China only started to prosper for the masses, after the cultural revolution. Having one of those worldwide, would probably do more for the common man than any UN or anything similar.

Not too sure about that either, when you consider the idea that the French Revolution was actually only a change of elites.

The only time a world government would be helpful to the majority is if a true external threat appears, although little green men are probably less dangerous to us than any grouping of our own elites.

So the solution for the problem that states are too big is... an even bigger state.
The solution for the problem of big brother is... an even Bigger Brother.
The solution for concentration of power is... an even bigger concentration of power.
The solution for tyranny is... an even bigger tyranny.

Go figure...

Yes, the lion will one day lie down with the lamb, and go vegan. Yes, one day, if we all simultaneously link arms and say "Om", all will be sweetness and light.

Yes, imagine no heaven, no countries, no possessions, a world where people fundamentally change their human nature spontaneously, somehow, where everybody shares everything, loves each other and lives in eternal peace.

Wouldn't it be lovely ? To work in such a society ? But revolutions all need more, not one but three components: uncritical workers (let's call them "Stakhanovites"), managers (let's call them "Lenins" or "Stalins") and executioners (let's call them, Dzerzhinskys, or Yagodas, or Yezhovs, or Berias, or Andropovs, they're all much the same; I don't know the names of major Chinese or Cambodian or Cuban or Romanian executioners).

So, brother and sister, when the New Day comes, which are you going to be ?

Fatuous nonsense: Russia and Ukraine sharing a government ? India and Pakistan ? The Saudi fascist dictatorship and the Iranian fascist dictatorship ? Britain and the EU ?

All Utopias lead almost immediately to fascist states. After all, all those who disagree, who aren't 'with the program', must somehow be extracted, for the Good of the People. Nobody is allowed to point out necessary adjustments to the Perfect Plan, even as the All-Knowing Leadership makes them.

Joe

Too many competing interests and old men with far too much
power/those who would change things with a rational plan, achieved via a series of first place preliminary steps. First being a war on poverty/want. Second the revesal of ongoing desertification/the emptying out of drought caused refugee camps.

Easy enough if the arms race is replaced using say a fifth of those committed resources, to the rollout of MSR thorium. Because it is something we cannot run out of/these reactors can also double as waste burners that very safely, progressively reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear waste, all while providing the world's cheapests most reliable, safe, clean, carbon free power!

The second is the roll out of deionisation dialysis dsalination that provides 95% potable water at quarter of the cost of traditional desalination. Also cost effective for broad scale cultivation/food/fibre production.

These two in combination are the only truly affordable option that will be available 24/7/capable of relatively rapidly reversing both desertification/climate change similtaneously.

When we have eliminated poverty/unmet need, we will have also eliminated the basic reasons nations choose to go to war! In its place dozens of now more prosperus nations engaging in trade that grants multiple benefits to others.

Replicated across the world, and it could be? We could agree to set up a guiding comitte with all nations represented, to nut out a workable arrangement for the UN that one, gives it teeth/two removes the power of veto, or the ability of the better resourced to buy power/influence.

There would also need to be a companion body with power to prosecute, as the essential anti corruption body! Would need among other things, the power to compell and test evidence with covertly deployed, space age lie dectection! Possible if we start right now and beaver away for a couple of centuries.

Or alternatively, do all who have preceeded us, thrown into the too hard basket or confine it to cloud cooku land, where most protagonists will declare it belongs!?
Alan B.