Let's all put aside our own personal realities here and try to imagine what a World Government would be like...

I think that having enough people agree to have a sinle entity for a world government would be impossible to achieve.

Everyone would be in it for their own benefit and not for the benefit of everyone. This is where the discontinuation would occur. Finding people who would be interested in the overall welfare of everyone would be totally impossilbe given human nature as we know it.

I don't think there could ever ben a cultural change of that magnitude, even in the face of some world changing event such as our stupid broadcasts out to the universe bringing us the unwanted attention of an advanced civilization that is technically superior to us and would much rather just have us die off, or get sent to the "Antarctic Reservation" as the colonists in America did to the native americans.

We could not gather a consensus to work together to defend ourselves. It would be impossible to accomplish.

Are there any people who think that they could envision something that would work towards this end without waxing biblical?

~400million people were convinced that having the U.S. go to war with Iraq, despite the fact there was no evidence of WMDs in Iraq, was an excellent idea. And this was soon after 9/11.

If a tragedy that affected a large part of the world were to occur (such as the current economy, for example), I don't see it being very hard to convince most of the world that an overall 'economic overseer' government would fix a lot of problems.

I think it's pretty common sense though that different parts of the world have different needs and specific governments to maintain those needs.

by the time the aliens get here, we'll have forcefields too.

From an organizational standpoint, trying to govern 6+ billion people under a single body is humanly and organizationally impossible. Humans simply can't organize anything beyond a certain number of people very well, for example: no single project can involve more than ~1000 people and still succeed..

And as a pre-empt, the UN is not, and was never intended to be a world government. Countries are not required to be a member nor do they have to go along with anything the UN does.

The programs run by top-down organizations are nearly homogeneous throughout the body governed. The different climates, landscapes and environments would be very limiting to the effectiveness of any body. To be effective the body would have to have a practical understanding of the many different areas of the world. I don't think we live long enough for individuals to begin to understand the practical differences of live around the planet.

Unless technology and infrastructure allows people to inhabit vastly different environments with similar lifestyles then government bodies will not be able to merge into one world government. I do not think that time is close at hand, but I don't think it's impossible.

We need a good extermination

Getting to this point would require one country militarily take over every other country or some sort of shared threat of human existence...and both may not cut it.

the main issue I would see is that different parts of the world would need to be treated differently, and yet the general population would not understand that and would take issue with being treated differently

We can always hope that, anyway. :) I think it would be good policy to explore options to militarily protect ourselves. Of course, we spend a lot of research dollars to find ways to kill each other more efficiently all the time, I'm sure some of that can be diverted to a "Planetary Defense" system. :)

Correction The super rich have the ability to create puppet goverments that are actually doing as the Council of Rich. say, giving the illusion that there is no one world goverment...

though I think if one would exist it'd probly be more of a form of something like the UN.. where all the goverments get together in that type of setting. with the more advanced countries forming a sorta Tri ruling council.

once a single global currency finds its home amongst us ( the accountants will be happy, and it will likely be cashless simular to sci Fi credits ) then we will see the move toward a global government, and whether it was or was not intended for it ( UN) You may see folks clamoring to join up so that they think they have a say.
That all being said, there will still be fringes that head for the hill and caves that want absolutely nothing to do with a single world order, Governments nowadays feel like they are smarter than the folks they are supposed to serve ( if your in a democratic type society ) and choose to do as they ( the government ) want to rather than what they are elected to do, they nearly always have

I think the entire world will have to become a massive melting pot to one another before a world government is possible.

I think Nuke may be right - a global catastrophe may be the one and only catalyst to this ever happening. However, a global catastrophe might also make that reality utterly impossible due to destroyed infrastructure.

Would you believe that Iraq *did* have WMD's and that they were American made? We'd supplied Saddam with all kinds of chemical and biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-88.

Whatever he had that we didn't give him courtesy of then CIA Director George H. W. Bush, were reverse engineered, and crude at best. The only reason we "never" found any Iraqi WMD's was because if our allies found them and realized they were American made or reverse engineered/copied from American designs, strains or components... we'd have lost all credibility.

As for ~400 million people? the US accounts for 307 million, assuming you count the UK, there's another 62 million... who's the other 31 million? :P

oh good god....here come the conspiracy theories.

Nah, it's a little known fact. Not theory. :)

documented fact?

Check this out will ya?

http://www.iranchamber.com/.../articles/arming_iraq.php

The only reason we knew they had them to begin with, was because helped them, in every way to obtain and construct their WMD's.

All I see there is a bunch of insinuations, from a group that dislikes the US AND Iraq, with no factual documentation to back them up. It's quite easy to put together a time line of events, but much harder to substantiate it - especially when the group putting it together is so subject to partisan opinions.

Some of those statements may be substantiated with some deeper research, but I've never seen anyone come up with valid proof that the U.S. provided the level of weapons to Iraq that weapons inspectors were searching for in Iraq prior to Gulf War I or II.

Maybe so, but what Iraq did have could also have been used against the Kurds or shot down by Israeli Patriot missile batteries when Iraq decided to spam Scuds on Israel back in the 1990's

That was an interesting site, Persephone. I enjoyed touring it.

I also don't see any proof presented there that the US deliberately armed the Iraqi government with NBC weapons, but I'm sure it's not out of the range of possibilities.

Back to the topic at hand...

I think their are too many assumptions associated with the terminology of "One World Government". I do not think there is likely to be one government wit absolute control over every aspect of society worldwide.

However, there could be more of a federation where the world comes together under one monetary union, which would need a central bank authority to manage that aspect.

We could also see certain policies become accepted worldwide (anti-land mine treaty, human rights, global environmental issues) in the future and potentially some global system of enforcement that all nations sign on to. We are close to that already in many ways, but we are certainly not at 100% participation (WTO, multi-national accords / treaties, etc.).

Free movement of capital, goods and labor is still much much further away, IMHO. We won't be under a single common religion any time soon.

So for a theoretical take -- I believe Earth could come under a single government in the future. But only when Earth is not the only human location in the universe. That is so far out in the future that I hardly care. ;)

if it is north american based one world government, I'm down. If its european or asian based, you guys have no leg to stand on and are not governing me, finally i'll be able to start my canadian resistance group

The problem is that the One world government would be formed by the same corrupt people/systems that the world currently has.

regarding "Free movement of capital, goods and labor" and single world currencies I don't think so.

There was this fiction book written by Ben Bova called: "THE TRIKON DECEPTION" which basically advocated that the only way we can address some of our serious problems is to be conquered and controlled by a more powerful, benevolent, force. Although there is little history to suggest that such a thing actually works:P

I'll check it out martian

martian is the anti-Christ

Martian....The Pax Romana? Look at the number of cities, that had dlowing water...a form of sewer systems, roads, bountiful harvests not threatened by war, and safe trade...

Now on the frontieres...yeah it wasn't in full control. but inside the country...


That's a good example:)

I am not advocating the the United Nations is any where near perfect, but I do believe that the concept behind the United Nations will the closest thing we will see to a one world Government.

Ya know, after thinking about it a bit, I think it could actually be said that we are already on the brink of a "one world government" scenario of sorts.

Although the term one world government implies a singular ruling body, I think it could just as likely be a singular governing body that dominates all other governing bodies, and has the ability to impose its will without regulation upon other governing bodies by sheer financial and military strength.

We're not quite there yet, but I don't see it as utterly impossible.

I see a World Council happening, not a one world Government.

It's already called the g8 and imf

The only way we'll ever have one world government is when we're being occupied by a more advanced alien species.

IMF was actually one of the organizations that had crossed my mind when I was posting that Maverickmd

G8 is too neutered to be of much consequence though, I think.

If bewk ran it, it would be super awesome!