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Seriously, how would a global democracy work? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 days ago by oddlyqueer@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and it's a huge problem, but I don't really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That's amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:

not everyone has internet access
not everyone that has access has unfettered access
It's hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
it's hard to verify elections haven't been tampered with
what happens when violent crimes are committed?
how do taxes work in this system?
how do armed forces work in this system?

I don't think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don't know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?

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[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Very much depends. The biggest driver of liberal social stances is economic prosperity. The biggest driver of economic prosperity is giving people the opportunities and resources they need in order to seek a more prosperous future for themselves. A world democratic government would presumably result in some sort of wealth redistribution from currently prosperous areas to currently poor areas. But the question is, how would that money be spent? If it were spent well, I would expect more liberal world views to emerge in currently poor areas in a generation or two. During that time, currently prosperous areas would see either stagnation or regression in their views. If spent poorly (say, if it were snapped up by local warlords or unscrupulous bureaucrats)....

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 days ago

But the question is, how would that money be spent?

We're so far away from anything that could happen any time soon it's almost a weird question, haha. Which was more my own answer to OP.

I'd argue that to be a global direct internet democracy it'd have to effectively prevent corruption. And square any number of other circles.

It really does seem like social progress follows some kind of wealth and stability. That's good in that it means a virtuous cycle can be created, at least in theory, but I don't understand why it's so. Can't you scrounge and reflect at the same time? And what of the working class progressives of the 20th and 19th centuries? A very different logic seems to have existed then, and I just can't read it.