I wrote this in college now 13 years ago and just noticed the file is becoming corrupted by Windows 10 so I decided it will do me more good living on the internet than being turned into fractal paste on my HD
There are now [5,500,000,000+] people (as of 2010 AD) living together on our blue Earth. Our species is not able to curb an unprecedented population growth, while our goverments have repeatedly failed to deal with the swiftly widening resultant economic and resource imbalances. Never before in our [35,000] year history have we been threatened with total extinction so surely within the lifetime of a single generation, the result of previous generations ignorantly passing their problems down to be inherited by their children. Attempts at addressing these growing issues between the twentieth century and now have for the most part failed to meet the needs and challenges of the rapidly growing world population and left us heading in the same bad direction. The pressures of those problems spawned two major World Wars and many smaller ones in their wake. Yet many more people have died between 1900 and now, not as casualties of war, but as figures in poverty, hunger, disease, and environmental degradation. This proposal for a global government would represent every citizen, regardless of their differences. The function of this government would be to create a union out of volunteering states to which will be applied a universal code of common natural laws and common natural rights. It would maintain peace between any new states, old states or countries taking part under the larger federal umbrella of the Universal Government. Not create a union of volunteering states to which will be applied a universal code of common natural laws and rights. It would maintain peace between any new states or old states that are members of this World Federation. This world federation, as unbelievable as it may seem to some, is becoming a Global Government. Not only is such a transition possible, but such a government had already been engineered in 1945 after world war II as a successor to The League of Nations. The United Nations, 1947–2010. Even though it is currently a fragmented and inefficient mess, undergoing an endless freight of reforms, the UN is our only and best chance to solve the various major world problems before we pass the point after which it would be impossible to recover the world from an unimaginable amount of death.
The world is a mess. Fossil fuels still constitute over 80 percent of world energy use and the majority of these fossil fuels are made up of oil, a resource predicted to become economically non-viable by 2050. The demand for oil, which constitutes the majority of fossil fuel energy, is predicted to be replaced in majority by the higher pollutant, coal. Solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro energy sources still constitute 1 percent of world supply, and face many problems before they will be implemented on a scale large enough to replace fossil fuel demand. Fossil fuels as well as timber, ore, food, and fresh water, have become highly sought after conflict resources. Economic disparity has not only led to an acceleration of international wars, but also has widened the gap between haves and have nots. [unclear] The United States, constituting [twenty] percent of the world population, consumes [eighty] percent of the world resources. Internationally, the economic gap has gained [eighty to ninety] percent world gross national product, world trade commercial lending, domestic savings, domestic investment and R&D to the [twenty] percent of world human population residing in the northern hemisphere. (UN book). World affairs are becoming worse at an ever accelerating rate.
From where we are standing now, there are several divergent paths history can play out on. Aside from the world getting destroyed by any number of cataclysmic man-made events, by continuing the same way, we can choose to: de-structure into international communal anarchy, have a mutual war that destroys ninety percent of the world population, have one country win a war of conquest against other sovereign nations and decree international policy, institute international procreation laws, or somehow provide endless energy and food to support our unnatural population growth. The most realistic solution is to create an international federation empowered with the authority to address and handle these types of situations before they become problematic events, and team up on those problems that were not adequately dealt with earlier. We can not continue living this way with our world as it is is structured now, as that will lead to multiple undesirable outcomes. The global community must not deconstruct into any type of anarchy. Doing so will bring about wars and instability that will slowly accumulate into even more dangerous global conflicts than we have today. It is mutually unacceptable to take the immoral risk of full global war under any circumstances. Such a destructive war will unquestionably imperil the survival of our species. Allowing one flawed country to rule over all others will lead to a dictatorship. Unlike an independent global organization, a single ruling country will most surely become corrupt and abuse its powers. This has consistently proven to be the case from ancient Rome to modern America. International procreation laws will not be tolerated by the world population, and are already known to be ineffective in states where they were implemented. Controlling our population growth, short of mass executions, is still a tricky and unreliable strategy. The solution to many world problems lies in population, and the solutions for excessive population, lie not within the growth but in the surrounding contributing factors. It is theoretically possible to successfully operate an infinite clean fusion energy source within our life time in order to prop up some of our population growth. However it is a mistake to believe that we can easily solve the food and energy need of our population in any way that does not take up more energy or damage our environment. On the other hand, not having any of these solutions be viable still leaves the world federation as a possible governmental solution. It is the only palatable solution and there are many more benefits to its implementation than drawbacks, mostly illusions cast by the selfish natures of historically deformed government structure.
The human species needs a global government to save it now more than ever before. “Traditional nation-state structures are weakening, and long suppressed cultural and economic problems are becoming more problematic each day.”(last name, bibliography #) There are many issues which we need to address as a global community. These problems will cost us more in the long run than solving them together, as soon as possible.
An important focus is the nuclear sphere of activities. The current global nuclear disarmament talks and treaties, which have been going on since the closing of the Cold War, must continue. We must not simply be content with reducing the stockpiles of G8 countries, but eliminate the military nuclear capacity of all countries. This is a global effort that must be supported by reciprocal communication and a web of strong mutually agreed upon and beneficial treaties. Yet the threat of a future Armageddon is not as relevant as the current ongoing drive for nuclear energy. As we reach the age of peak oil, and countries have become dependent on oil producing nations to support their military potential, many governments have been pushing for an artificially subsidized nuclear industry to insure operation of their mechanized armies in times of conflict. Such an industry goes against both the nature of economics and, by putting all humans in great danger, against the wishes of the citizens of all countries. Nuclear reactors expel their heat to everything around them, are an ecological mess no matter the safety features, produce the deadliest substance on earth, polonium, and sometimes tend to melt down and explode causing extravagant ecological disasters. The production of both nuclear weapons and reactors must stop. Not only nuclear, but all energy efforts up to now have been extraordinary in their waste. We must not simply be content with the types of energy conservation efforts launched by the United States, Sweden, India, Japan and others . These energy efficiency measures must become more stringent so we can best use our resources. Treaties and agreements such as the Kyoto protocol must be implemented internationally by every country.
Another major killer, one which has silently decimated generations of people for centuries, is poverty. It has starved, murdered, enslaved, and pillaged since the invention of money. Even now our illusion of prosperity and technological superiority blinds us to the vast majority of humans who live with poverty. Three quarters of the world population is in poverty. More than [three] billion people survive on less than two dollars a day. The majority of those impoverished are in the southern hemisphere or in what westerners call “Third World Countries”, also known as low energy societies. It is possible to bring the majority of these unfortunate people above the poverty line, provide them with food, medicine, water and education. The only way this would be possible is through a truly responsible and united effort by a global federation. The rise of poverty has brought with it competition over scarce resources. We need to limit our population growth, which is now still being spurred by imperial ambitions of competing sovereign states. In our current unstable world climate, peace keeping and diplomacy through an international platform are paramount. There has been an unprecedented rise in international conflicts which can only be slowed down and stopped by a singular strong diplomatic effort. While we have been focusing our attention on many other problems, pandemics and diseases have once again become a great threat. Our technological innovations have fallen behind evolution. The majority of our rapidly growing world population is living in poverty, creating an environment where viruses and bacteria thrive. These scourges have access to that same large poor segment of our population because those people are unable to afford medicine and live in unsanitary conditions and in large numbers. In the current century, viruses and bacteria can instantly travel to any point on our inter-connected globe. It would be impossible to control the spread of a viral or bacterial outbreak in any independent way. The only reliable solution is to have a global warning, quarantine, and prevention system capable of protecting large population bodies from harm. The same goes for a body overseeing turbulent weather and geological patterns. This type of organization needs to exist to warn any population in any place at any time about impending or occurring hazards. This system should help deal with such disaster areas. These problems can be food shortages, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, mass crop failures, destruction of ecosystems.
A large part of stopping the increasing frequency of these phenomena seems to be tied to addressing the problem of Global Warming. Brought on by the global industrial revolution and the exploding population made possible by the new industrial energy, there has been no limit to the destruction of our atmosphere. We must use our combined diplomatic power to bring about changes in industrial practices, that will make our climate healthy and our environment once again infinitely sustainable. To continue the evolution of people into a united humanity we must usher in the third age of globalism by uniting under one sovereignty and having the freedom to move freely. This will undoubtedly encourage trade, business and the spread of ideas, that will tie our world even closer together.
The next question we ought to consider is what kind of government we want. From the onset we can agree to throw out the following governments as those which are less than ideal for long term stability: oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship, tribalism and anarchy. The best way forward is to build on the ethically and functionally well grounded democracies that follow the framework of North American, Scandinavian and Western European countries. Even here we have a plethora of choices in various types of democracies, republics, and parliamentary democracies. Not to mention that democracies themselves are capable of unspeakable horrors, un-democratic decisions, and regression into many tyrannical or inefficient forms. Examples include Colombia’s troubled cocaine centric democracy, as well as Russia’s privatization reforms which have led to a single party authoritarian democracy.
The important concept to keep in mind is that a variant of an eternal democratic system must be always serving the people, while protecting them from themselves at the same time. It, like a well-maintained satellite, must revolve around the earth continuously without crashing into someone’s house. Therefore the highest priority must be placed into ensuring a fair and balanced system that works for the people while preventing them from subverting it into a tyrannical tool. Some of the many tools to do this are: trial by jury, secularism, checks and balances, free and fair elections, constitution, bill of rights, and social systems. Additionally there must be implemented a series of safeguards to prevent a democracy from slipping into a fascist or communist democracy. To this extent the privatization and nationalization should be a closely regulated and rarely used government tool. Some examples of rules to help do this are: lobbyist limitations, bans on gift giving, bans or strict limits on campaign contributions, and anti-monopoly laws, and more serious restrictions on the use of eminent domain.
The government must have very limited involvement in the day to day lives of its citizens, unlike the assertions of power given to itself by governments of America, Britain, China and Russia between 2000 and 2010. Government should really function with its primary duty to step in in the event of sudden problems, such as natural disasters. Government should not issue so many pre-emptive strikes against so many possible threats as to become bogged down in debt and make the life of its citizens unbearable and oppressive.
While being able to deal with its main issues in a strong and assertive manner the government system must strike a balance by also being decentralized. Such organization prevents the system from amassing too much power, while also allowing it to exist and serve more accurately the needs of the community at a local level. Not only must it serve the local community and try to democratically meet the needs of all its subjects, but it must maintain a fair and balanced governance of all of them. To do this, the government must be transparent and highly accountable to the people.
Systems must be in place to ensure the government allows any citizen to check its fairness and legitimacy by giving access to its information. Again, secrecy due to threat of national security has and will always eventually lead to a police state bent on controlling everything and failing to allow human beings to thrive on their own. In order to have a good feedback loop, a system must know rather than believe that the things on which it acts are true. In this respect there must exist a well-tuned cybernetic information feedback loop between the government and its subjects. This information system must, in order to truly be able to serve its voters, be constantly involved in an information exchange for the mutual benefit and improvement of both parties. The state must also then still protect citizens from themselves. That means overturning majority votes, even when they are unanimously supported because they infringe on basic democratic principles such as human rights, undermining government stability, or conducting improper diplomatic business. Much like the human body, as democracies grow old they systematically develop predictable quirks in their structure, which will eventually lead to their demise.
In order to insure longetivity of democratic governments there must be a renewal process, akin to the rebirth of the phoenix. Constitutions must be rewritten, new politicians elected, systems of governance reviewed and restructured based on those reviews. Not only that, but the way in which the social contract is currently realized must be changed. The contract based on Locke’s and Hobbe’s ideas about government places all people under a theoreticall framework they did not sign up for and have no ability to exit out of. The current social contracts adopted by most sovereign countries beg the question: Is it a contract if you did not sign it, nor have a reasonable way of getting out of it? The fundamental idea of the social contract must be rewritten and spread internationally by a world government.
Instead of the standard social contract theory most countries have today, the contract should be based instead in Kantean ideas. Kant stated that all human beings are of the highest intrinsic value due to their ability to reason and feel sentience. This contract must also be then entwined with the idea that in the future every human being will be living in a social framework which makes that citizen responsible for the life of every other human being. Therefore the Kantean contract stipulates, in essence, that we enter into a contract with every other living being by being born, and leave it when we die. This alternate contract system will empower those who are in it, and make its beneficiaries stronger as more people join it. Not to mention that to opt out of this contract is to act irrationally, and to act irrationally is to act against humanity, or to conduct crimes against humanity by not respecting basic human rights that all living humans have agreed to. It is difficult for a government to argue rationally that it wants to not respect the human rights of its citizens.
Violations of human rights today center specifically on the notion that the government violates rights of certain citizens and foreigners in the interests of protecting the majority of its interests. Even that line of thinking has been challenged by most countries as unsound, and its utilitarian grounding has been shown as highly dysfunctional and irrational by the modest proposal. Therefore, not only is it possible to create a better social contract ethic, but it fits beautifully into the currently existing international legal system. It allows for a new focus on the flowering of the diverse populations of individuals present under this system, that have been neglected under previous ones as not satisfying the status quo.
In order to successfully tackle all these challenges and operate at optimal efficiency as a global government, this system would have to function as an an international federation layer on top of existing states. Their sovereignty would be devalued in exchange for a place in a decision-making forum. Such a forum would allow the member states to utilize their knowledge and resources to take a lead in framing the global agenda.(UN book) In essence this would replicate the relationship between countries and states, or states and counties by simply adding a new tier. This tier would be the one which uses this already proven democratic system to bring all the states in the world together. As mentioned before, such a state can not come into existence instantaneously and can not strong-arm sovereign states to join it as that would undermine its intentions and long term stability. In order to be truly free and universally ethical, states should join of their own volition, over time, and form the body that rules over them through a reasonable and un-biased democratic consensus.
This system should be based on the rigorous, coherent and universal ethical and philosophical ideas. It must also be mindful of good and bad examples of governance throughout history. As a world federation it should be international through decentralization. It can do this by maintaining representative offices to collect information and tackle problems in each country. At the same time it must be strong and united by having a center of operations in one place, where all of the parts which make up its system reside. It may make sense to separate off an artificial area for its existence, the same way Washington DC exists as a quasi-state in the United States. This global government must have its own treasury and have the capacity to overcome sovereignty to ensure that it itself and its democratically agreed on projects are funded without argument or veto from treasuries of member states. These states would, have to annually contribute according to the assessment of how much moneys they can and can not contribute.
The international government itself must look after placing and maintaining various mechanisms that allow it to be autonomous from the influence of any one state or any alliance of states. To become controlled, even indirectly, by any one state would mean that the whole purpose of the system is lost as it turns into a system of oppression and exploitation. This, as far as all democracies go, is a common problem with the feature of power-sharing systems. While this world federation would remove sovereignty to various extents from all the governments under it, like a state to its citizens it would provide a variety of protections in trade. By regulating the international world relations field it would protect human rights, stop economic problems, push for projects on environmental issues, deal with over-population, use of military force, and other global issues. The federation would essentially create a regulated playing field unlike that of today’s chaotic mess where anything goes, just like on the frontier during America’s westward colonization. An analogous example to this is the anti-free trade movement which seeks to regulate trade in order to prevent a few corporations from exploiting the many poorer states. As this world federation union deals with problems and ages, it will evolve through feedback and renewals into a different version of itself in order to deal with problems of tomorrow. We are not thinking of a timeless monolith that will be forgotten tomorrow, but a nimble system constantly cycling feedback and adapting to its environment to tackle a diverse array of problems.
This ideal system does not need to be created from scratch. The world federal government already exists! It was founded shortly after World War II in San Francisco, and it is called the United Nations Organization, UNO, or simply the United Nations, UN. “The UN offers every country a forum where, with its resources of knowledge and experience, it can take a lead in framing the universal agenda. … ” (Secretary-General, Jower Peros de Cuellar, 119, UN Reform Bk). Established through the UN Charter in 1947, it is the first independent governing body, administering the entire world population. UN membership is made up of 192 of 194 sovereign countries, represented at the General Assembly, akin to the US Congress. The only two countries who are not current members are: the new country of Kosovo, and the Vatican which has been an observer state since 1964. All countries vote in the general assembly by the “one country, one vote system”. The General Assembly requires two thirds of those present in order to pass a vote. The current Secretary-General of the UN, the executive head of the UN system and the second most important part of UN government, is Ban Ki-moon. Elected to the position by the General Assembly, this 66 year old former South Korean diplomat is to serve from 2007 to 2012. Because he has been elected by all countries, he is, in effect, the president of the world. Therefore each citizen in each country, not Kosovo or Vatican at the moment, has two presidents, one state president and one global president from the UN system. Both at any time having a strong role to play in any one of those member countries. A Russian-American dual citizen for example would have voted in the elections for both Obama and Medvedev. Those presidents in turn would have sent representatives on their behalf to vote for, and elect Bon Ki-moon at the World Government level. The third most important branchof the UN is the Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC. Just like its name, in our globalized world it promotes economic and social cooperation, integration and regulation between countries. Its fifty-four members are elected by the General Assembly and expected to help the General Assembly in governing wisely in the global economic regulation of world government. Under it lie the Bretton Woods institutions: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. The Security Council is the military and diplomatic branch of UN government. It is made up of fifteen member states at any one time. Five permanent members: Russia, China, United States, United Kingdom, and France. The other 10 member countries are elected by the General Assembly every two years. Non-member countries are allowed to be part of the meetings if there is a situation that concerns them, or if they were invited by the Security Council. The very important thing to note about the Security Council, is that it is able to pass binding resolutions, to further its goals of peace and security. All of the worlds countries, although sovereign in their own visions of themselves, have to in reality comply with these resolutions as part of their UN membership. Non-compliance with the Security Council is met with increasing levels of: diplomacy, followed by sanctions, temporary UN expulsion, then military action. The Security Council has successfully stopped or stalemated the majority of international wars started between 1945 and today. The successor to the Permanent Court of Criminal Justice, the International Court of Justice, has made many contributions to world law. Its main purpose to settle disputes between states, the court deals with many topics such as war crimes, illegal state interference and ethnic cleansing. It’s sentences are of consequence and are usually enforced in compliance with the UN. If sentences have to be enforced they can only be vetoed by the five permanent Security Council members. Even though the sentences may be vetoed by the big five, doing so in most cases would be unwise, as in serious cases selfish action can bear scrutiny on Security Council membership and overall government legitimacy from the other 193 UN member states. In this way just as the Security Council the International Court of Justice, can override state sovereignty if after exausting the state legal system the injured party appeals at the world level by going to the UN. Lastly we have the Trusteeship Council, a deactivated branch of the UN. It was made as part of the UN after World War II to help non-self governing countries such as those who were being helped by the League of Nations previously, or were taken away from former Axis control. Having put on their feet all these regions, the Trusteeship Council had completed its mission in 1994, and was subsequently shut down. Its former existence as part of the current UN structure has not been entirely erased only as such a procedure would involve amending the UN Charter itself. This change being somewhat simular to the difficulty of amending something in the US constitution. Additionally, each primary body of the UN can establish Special Associations to deal with various issues under their spheres of responsibility. These hands on institutions are managed and financed by a variety of groups of countries, corporations and private interests. “Some of the most well-known agencies are the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Bank and the World Health Organization.” (Wikipedia,UN)
The United Nations is our World Federation now, and it has always been since its creation. It is the next level of government above country level. The United Nations is not concerned with petty micro-management or problem solving at the local, state or federal level of any country. Its goal is not to have power and rule over the many with the power of the few. It is an independent global system created through the consensus of all nations in the interest of helping them deal with global problems, the kinds of problems that no country or group of countries could ever deal with on their own. These problems may involve local aid, but it is only due to the problems being global in nature. The UN regulates the containment of these problems and seeks suggestions and consensus on dealing with them from the General Assembly. It is there to make sure that these problems do not spread freely between countries in ways that they on their own could not hope to deal with. The regulation of these problems has created a fair and effective environment among countries. By being members these countries are all part of a diplomatic and economic system which not only deals with nature problems but also settles economic disputes, regulates the creation of new countries, stops conflicts and through the help of all countries guarantees human rights to each and every human being.
The United Nation’s universal decleration of human rights is a marvelous step in the right direction for all of humanity. Essentually by independently defining what non-negotionable rights of all human beings are, for states as an independent organization, the UN has redrawn the principal understanding of the relationship between the governments and their governed. This is one of the most important documents of our time, having been translated into 375 languages, it commits the governments of all countries of the world to protecting the rights stated in the document. The UN commits these governments to it, as all 194 of them are UN members and are legally bound by their membership to carry out the rights stated in the document. The decleration has redefined the relationship of government with its subjects, because no matter the intention of a government, it can not act in a way which would compromise the universal human rights of its subjects. Violating these rights results in violations of human rights, or crimes against humanity. The people who had a hand in violating rights set out in the decleration, are to be prosecuted by their own governments who have built in mechanisms for these situations due to being UN members. The corrupt American politicians who facilitated the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, from 2003–2011, face criminal charges from both the UN mandated part of the US government built to deal with these issues, as well as the UN itself. Unfortunatley they have never been brough to trial by either entity, due to the severe state of corruption of US government at the time of the Bush presidensy, Obama’s forgiveness of the Bush presidency having cited that doing so would support the terrorists, and partial US controll and destabilization of the UN which prevents the UN from acting against US interests no matter how corrupt.
The UN currently has a lot of fantom power, given to it in theory by the founding signatories of the UN charter to work independently in all of their interests to solve problems. Due to both the American Cold War and the War on Terror, the UN is still working hard on pooling itself together and assembling itself into a formidable independent entity with real power. As it exists, spread out around the world, the financial parts of the UN ended up primarily being based on the east coast of the United States. Soon after its founding America began to influence those branches of the UN located on its territory, effectively taking possession of them over the course of several years between 1950s-1970s. When this phenomena first occurred, such a policy was opposed by many UN members including Finland and the USSR. The continuation of forced influence on the status of the independent organs of the UN may have been a catalyst for the cold war, as the USSR, witnessing American control if its economy through the UN as an imminent threat to its soveregnity, withdrew from the global economy and formed its own internal economic system. What followed soon after was the iron curtain, a diplomatic meltdown at the UN, and an upheaval of proxy wars between the USA and USSR as the two countries all but declared outright war on eachother. The United States forced an expensive and risky arms race against the Soviet Union, while at the same time causing a corrosive ice age at the United Nations. Having fought the US to a precarious stand still physically, the USSR commited its own share to the dismanteling of the UN system. As a result both US and Russia have permanent veto power at the UN security council. America controls the financial part of the UN system so thoroughly that it consistently acts against the UN charter, the human rights decleration, and undermines any General Assembly initiatives that go against Amarican interests, such as the placing of UN election monitors for the 2004 election. The USSR used its status and powers in the UN to diplomatically disable the UN, while toppling governments under the table and replacing them with friendly dictators or analogous communist governments. Both have disarmed the direct threat of the UN to themselves, by fixing an inbalance of power between the General Assembly and the Special Associations of the UN. This was done with appointments, money withheld from the UN and pumped into these organizations, as well as support for their actions over those of the General Assembly with the resulting resolution that by contributing to the UN system in such ways their governments should have more powers and nationals at the UN. During the illegal American invasion of Iraq, the United States pulled its UN finance influence to avoid repercussions from the UN system. Having undermined its legitimacy the world instantly saw a spike in new conflicts around the world, as countries lost respect and became uncompliant with the UN system by American example. The UN has done a great deal of wonderfull things in its current capacity, far subpar to what it was originally intended to become. It is working hard on reforming itself into an indipendant organization capable of safeguarding the human race, and administrating a world federation soundly.
Many steps remain to be taken in order to reform the UN system. Since its very beginning, the UN has seen waves of reforms every couple years: ___ the years __. Even with these reforms, an overwhelming amount of information was produced, some of it redundant. The system has not been able to atiquatley deal with the volumen of paperwork. Some of the stuff that was dealt with, had broken down shortly after, because it was put together in any number of wrong ways. Even the projects that were passing the paper bottleneck, were not tracked and supported well, and suffered an early death as a result. Aside from the cold war struggle and the decentralization of the power of the General Assembly, the other major contributing hurdle to the United Nations has been computing. With offices all over the world, the Achilles heel of the 20th century UN has been data communication and computing software. Every time a meeting was to take place, representatives would have to fly in and hope no one was held back less the meeting be postponed a week, a month or more. Every time any part of the UN in the world, issued a hundered page report, it would send it to every other UN office. Reguardless wether that report was relevant to most UN offices, that report and many others would swamp the desks of all levels of the system helplessly bogging them down. With the advent of speedy internet, following the communications revolution of the 90’s, it is now possible for the UN to finally receive and easily manage any volume of files within itself. Not only that but with modern computing, version control, instantaneous communications, and file tracking among others, a recursive 60 year old paper nightmare has finally been defeated. There are still many other issues to solve.
The UN would benefit from the consolidation of UN government in one geographical area, as dramatically as it has from the internet. Due to the stability and geography of Switzerland, it would be ideal to place the government there. As the majority of the UN already exists in Switzerland, relocating the remaining branches to be in close proximity to those already in Geneva would create optimal efficiency. To take this a step further would be to consider asking the Swiss government to partition out a micro-country sized chunk from one of their republics, as land for the independent state of the United Nations. In this way the whole main administrative body would be in close proximity with itself, reasonably protected, and removed from influence by almost all states that it governs.
As par the structure of the UN itself, there are many internal changes which still needed to have been made in 1994, and probably remain unfixed today. The General Assembly must regain authority over the Special Associations. The monitary flows of the UN system must be controlled by the UN through compulsory contributions of UN members. This contribution system, as already partially implemented, would asses the amount of monies a state can contribute from its budget. This money should then go into a UN controlled bank, not a wall street entity with loose and indirect ties to the UN. The Economic and Social Council would be impowered to do its job more successfully for the benefit of all world countries big and small, if the G8 and G20 stop meeting behind the UN’s back and scheming to shore up their own wealth. Donations to the UN need to be controlled, so as to not give influence or powers to any special groups, countries, or unbalances in the system. The powers and infuences that exist today must be balanced by having higher salaries, more stringent hiring and retention process, and more oversight and transparency within the employee process itself. The Secretariat must have more executive control of the UN system. Due to the power wrangling and other corrosive processes the diffusion of authoritative power has been displaced so far away from the Secretary-General’s office as to make his position literally ineffective at its UN function. The Secretary-General must have more cooperation from all branches of the UN, as well as many changes to his own branch. An example of one such improvement would be to have between six or eight Sub-Generals who represent different major areas of UN interest, and help deal with and aleart the general on their area of concentration. A major way to add to these and many other improvements is to raise awareness of the UN and what it does around the world. This means both a higher budget collected from all countries to finance this and a higher level of cooperation from all countries in terms of not undermining the UN goals by playing down, misrepresenting or censoring coverage of the UN. A movement underway now to solidify the UN as an effective world federal government includes: codification of international law, constitutional amendments compulsory to future UN membership, and subplanting Wall Street as the center of international economic controll. By taking these steps the UN would indeed be taking away some sovergnty of other countries, but in this new century where our understanding of the way governments should function and global problems addressed is changing so rapidly, these changes are of the outmost importance and necessity.
Endless growth is madness. As we continue to destroy the capacity for diversity, sustainability and energy potential of our planet, our booming populations will continue to suffer as a result. In order to ensure that there will be a future for our children and grandchildren, we must stop the practice which defined generations before us, deferring critical solutions to the future. If we, the people of earth, want to continue to exist we must unite as one voice. To do this it is imperitive that we establish the United Nations as a sucsessfull World Federation. In our globalized world the relationships between all the countries in the world and their resources must be regulated. We can not afford to lower ourselves to the petty level of warmongering, abuse of our resources, economic chaos, poverty, and total ecological disaster, among others. At the present point in world affairs, there is no other choice which exists, that would comparably deal with stopping all these issues with equal passion. An independent body created for such a purpose, by all nation states, with membership of all nation states, to aid the subjects of all the states by dealing with these issues in a democratic and efficient way is the future we should continue to build torwards. We should not undermine it for personal greed, as we have done in the past, as holding it back from doing its job may doom us all, reguardless of the short term gains. The 21st century will not be defined by the war on terror, or the price of oil, or any technological revolution. It will be defined as the time when humanity finaly gained the capacity and the will to come together as one, look at the problems previous generations have caused for us, and say “NO” !
