The Current State of the World: Time to turn to Globalization?

Started by AidenWhite, June 06, 2012, 11:02:22 PM

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AidenWhite

The world is in a state of constant decline, at least I believe it to be so. Countries, I won't list names, go to war for oil and other resources. At the same time, political corruption reigns supreme in many top countries. Countries, instead of working together for the betterment of mankind, fight against each other to have the best ranks in education and technology.
My proposal is to forget about which country is better and focus on the betterment of the human race as a whole. Because of competition between the top countries, we still have many 3rd world countries who are destroying themselves. If we globalized and worked together under one banner, we could all pull through.
The flaws of one country can be fixed through the help of other countries giving that country a hand. Under globalist society, I wouldn't be Russian, and you wouldn't be whatever you were, we'd be Earthlings.
Right now, we are the only known intelligent species in this entire part of the universe and we only have this planet to live on, yet we still have wars, political corruption, class separations, hate over religion, race, other beliefs, and an overbearing pollution crisis that is bound to kill this planet.
If we as human beings do not protect our only home, where else can we go? Will future generations have to live in the trash that we left off to the side for them? Will they have to live in poverty, disease and constant famine?
Honestly, if the world came together and managed to tolerate each other for the good of the human race, we could have probably cured cancer or discover a way to fix the problem of famine in the world. If the entire world as a whole controlled all the money in the world, it would constantly circulate, perhaps there might not be any more use of money, in turn getting rid of the reason why many wars are fought and many people are killed. This system might be boarding on socialism a bit, but socialism, in its entirety, is for the betterment of all the people as a whole, not just a select few.

I would like opinions on this matter because I want to see if other people think the way I do, or if I could reflect my views onto others and they could possibly point out some flaws that I could reflect on my own. I have spoken about this with my professors and my friends, but I constantly get ambiguous answers. Perhaps I was asking the wrong crowd? Nevertheless, I am writing about this here and would like to hear all of E's opinions, or the opinions of those who choose to give it.

~Aiden
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AndyZ

I don't really see why this would help.  Europe attempted to solidify closer together under the EU and that's been an utter failure.  The United States has so many issues which need to be solved at a federal level, which have been caused by attempts to solve problems on a federal level.  Wouldn't attempting to make us one big country only ensure that everything collapses at once when it falls apart?
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Shjade

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

The theory is sound. But then, so is the theory behind Communism.

These things work better on paper than in practice.
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DarklingAlice

I have to agree that it would not be practical to try to manage the human race in the same way we manage nations (particularly this nation). However, since the way we manage this nation is crap...

Fortunately, certain fields do have a global aspect. It's impossible to work efficiently in them any other way. Take biomedical science. I work in a US medical institute studying the mechanisms of cutting edge discoveries in transcriptional control. We have 8 people in our lab. Four of them are American citizens. Of those four, two are foreign born. Our PI is a foreign born permanent resident, two East Asian post-docs, and a European post-doc. Our small research group represents four continents all told. And that sort of thing would have been impossible a century ago. They are there because they are the best people for the job, and mostly we don't have to listen to politicians yammer about state secrets, American exceptionalism, or protecting American jobs. But it works only because A) we've reached a point where it is the most efficient way to make progress; and B) because an ignorant public and political system basically doesn't care we exist and the only real interaction we have with them is having to remind them that if they turn off the funding they will go blind <_<
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Hemingway

I'd like to point something out before getting into the actual substance of the thread, which is that what you're talking about isn't really 'globalization'. Globalization, in the strictest sense, is an ongoing process of functional integration across borders, and nothing else. The subject is a little misleading, that's all. It's still an interesting one, though, no less so because it's very closely connected to what I'm studying.

That said, there are some mountainous problems with what you're proposing. There's probably enough to say about this to fill volumes of papers, so I'll try to limit myself to the biggest problems.

The first problem is that we already have a United Nations, which in some sense is a primitive world government. It doesn't work. Or, at least, it doesn't work consistently and reliably. Just look at the situation in Syria right now, with the Security Council more or less paralyzed by politics.

But even if you could somehow unite the whole world, I don't see how it would work. You can't force a uniform set of policies and forms of government on unequal places. The EU is a fairly good illustration of that, part of the problem being that the national economies are not equal. The same would be true with a world government, with ways of governing, and so on.

Further, I'm not sure it would even be a good idea. I used to be very much for the idea, but states actually serve a vital function - some better than others. Without national governments, who would regulate business and industry? Who, in short, would keep foreign corporations from looting what's left of Africa and the less developed parts of Asia and South America?

AidenWhite

Hmm, I see and I agree we are trying to do that at an extent using the United Nations and no one listens to UN leaders which is a major problem. I also see with the EU, even though there's a union you can more than see Germany at the top of everything and Italy and other countries at the bottom due to economic instability.
And I also agree that this theory sounds better and works on paper, much like communism, but right now all we can do is speculate based on the successes and downfalls of similar organizations trying to globalize ( I realize this is an incorrect use of the term to it's strictest meaning but in Russian it translates close to this so I just used this term) and so we'll never know if we don't try.

Speaking realistically, however, I now see that this might never even happen due to human nature in itself. Without competition, we'll eventually drive ourselves into a corner and stop trying to improve things. Also the fact, as someone else here stated, that each countries economy is different, it would be difficult to band under one currency.

Perhaps if we encounter another intelligent species in outer space we might try this again to smoothe out diplomacy instead of sending every countries ambassador go meet with them. Anyway this is just an extreme speculation.

Thanks for everyone's posting.
~Aiden
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AndyZ

Quite welcome.

Also, if we do encounter non-Terran life, I think the UN does have an ambassador set.
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Saerrael

I personally think it could work, in the long run. But only if we manage to get all the peoples to share at least a base of the same ideology/ way of life. And I'm not really talking about religion, here, before anyone wishes to lay words into my mouth. I think human nature demands a common goal before they would come together united. If there is no goal, the nature of wishing to compete amongst ourselves kicks in again.


(Bettering the world as a whole is most probably a too abstract a concept to unite us.)

Callie Del Noire

Quote from: AndyZ on June 07, 2012, 07:44:05 PM
Quite welcome.

Also, if we do encounter non-Terran life, I think the UN does have an ambassador set.

The problem I see is that no country will let anyone else do the talking with them. I really don't see a UN appointee getting the lead. Too many personalities in too many governments getting butt hurt by the idea of that happening.

Granted, in someways I see the UN as POTENTIALLY having the best position in a first contact situation. Without some sort of leverage that no one else has though.. I don't see the UN getting to stand in that position. One book I read a LONG time ago gave the UN that type of leverage by giving the UN sole control of a method of generating clean power. They granted plants to countries in return for licensing fees  but kept the tech to themselves.


A century from now when the world is more culturally advanced (hopefully), the centralization of a UN world confederation might work.

AndyZ

Another thing to consider: even if we were all suddenly one country overnight, that would absolutely not stop people from fighting.

Quote from: Callie Del Noire on June 07, 2012, 07:50:53 PM
The problem I see is that no country will let anyone else do the talking with them. I really don't see a UN appointee getting the lead. Too many personalities in too many governments getting butt hurt by the idea of that happening.

Granted, in someways I see the UN as POTENTIALLY having the best position in a first contact situation. Without some sort of leverage that no one else has though.. I don't see the UN getting to stand in that position. One book I read a LONG time ago gave the UN that type of leverage by giving the UN sole control of a method of generating clean power. They granted plants to countries in return for licensing fees  but kept the tech to themselves.


A century from now when the world is more culturally advanced (hopefully), the centralization of a UN world confederation might work.


Let's be honest.  An extraterrestrial who understands our language and is interested in speaking with us would have been listening in on our wireless frequencies.  They'll also be technologically superior to us, since they're capable of interstellar flight.  I don't think we'll be the ones who decide who they talk to.

I can go further into it, but it runs the risk of going completely off topic.  You can PM if you like, or set up another thread for it.
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Hemingway

We're not going to meet intelligent aliens face-to-face, so if that's what it takes, I think we're more or less screwed.

I happen not to think that, though. I also happen to think that while intelligent alies aren't necessary, space is the way forward, and the way toward closer cooperation. It worked with the ISS during the Cold War, and from what I read, China wanted in on that, too, but were blocked by the US. But I hope that when we expand further, that sort of cooperation is what we'll be seeing, so that we can build upon that.

OldSchoolGamer

Quote from: Hemingway on June 08, 2012, 07:12:54 AM
We're not going to meet intelligent aliens face-to-face, so if that's what it takes, I think we're more or less screwed.

Depends.  If Einstein was right and the cosmic speed limit of c is not just a good idea, but the law, I would say you're probably right.  I put in that italicized qualifier because some alien species may be long-lived, hive entities, multigenerational starships, or otherwise not limited to voyages of a single human lifetime.

But Einstein could be wrong.  Think about how many "immutable facts" "proved" by "experts" that "everyone knows" are the "truth" have been debunked over the centuries.

To circle back to the original topic, "globalization" comes out to "reduce the American standard of living to the average of the rest of the world" when put into practice.