Stormbay - Once we have contact with other life,humans will begin to understand how illusionary are their beliefs. Then we may begin to live together, instead of against each other.

I hope that is what happens, but the trouble is humans have a long history of not accepting truths they do not want to know about. The aliens may be branded as evil or a plot of the infidel or heretics or the Americans or whatever and killed or imprisoned.

To digress momentarily to the subject of making contact with aliens, the idea worries me.
Unless these aliens are unique and extremely enlightened then they will probably be interested more in the survival of their own species than ours. That is the way of all the life forms on our world including us so it may be a natural universal trait.

I agree with your comments about a global government being nowhere near possible for mankind at this point in our history. We are just not capable of it.

Sharkfin, it would be sad if reasoning universal life were all like us. I would think if they were more advanced, they'd have evolved beyond primitive fear and superstition. I doubt we will have physical contact with lesser beings before having recognisable communications first. Once that happens we may grow up a bit, I'm more inclined to think ideological approaches will have to evolve out of us for sanity to prevail.

The UN, is just another name for big business in control and it's completely useless. The UN will collapse soon and we'll probably see more and more states separating themselves from others in an attempt to survive. To have a world government is to have control by a dictatorship and will fail under every current circumstance, just like global markets and corporate controls, doomed because the human race is to individual and emotionally fractured for a sane combined existence.

Ozandy, I think you'll find we'll be forced into changes and if not prepared personally, will suffer. Those in power are all under the control of illusionary ideologies, they are not mature people. If you have to believe in something which can't be shown to have positive credibility in it's outcomes, beyond mental and theoretical hope, then you are not a rational and sanely functioning psychological human being. As all in control of the world are ideologists of varying persuasions, we can all see the outcomes of their beliefs, not nice at all.

The United Nations - which is a possible platform for world government - is unlikely to be reformed, since the five Permanent Members of the Security Council will simply not countenance it.

There are many people who are very sceptical of the possibility of a World Govermnment, not least because they envisage the worst form of governments existing today, - with over-regulation galore, if not worse.

Yet, the global economy, pollution, and basic human rights (the right to education, water, and freedom from exploitation) has to be sorted out without the constant implication of armed conflict, or the major powers lording it over everyone else. Only a world government can do achieve these things.

Governments are elected to represent the interests of the people they are supposed to serve.

Global government would serve no one. It will have stretched the direct line of relationship between the elector and the elected too far to work for the benefit of the voting electorate.

It might work for those bureaucrats who see their future in a fat and unaccountable public service, geographically removed from the anger of tax payers.

It might work for the internationalists, who are still smarting from the absolute failure of the “communist international” .

But it will not work for those folk who are expected to pay for the services some here-today-dead-tomorrow political spin doctor would see us sold down the drain for, by counting the local Aussie vote as equal to the votes of the ignorant (and politically maliable) masses in third world countries.

If you want accountability you need to make the chain of command shorter, not longer. Stronger local government and no central government. Keep politicians accountable to the people who elect them and whose taxes they like to play lady bountiful with.

If you want to avoid GFC let lenders set the rates and the terms they lend money on, rather than some shonky politician dreaming up unaccountability for the sake of a political campaign and corrupting the system of regulation so some socialist minded political charlatan/bank robber can drive a getaway car through the loopholes.

In simple terms, the GFC would not have happened if lenders were able to control who they lent to.