Ask HN: How different would the world be without the U.N.

[luckyland]

It seems the price of admission for even the mildly powerful state in today's world is a perfunctory explanation before the body for unsavory, unilateral transgressions.

Would the geo-political landscape be much different without the United Nations?

How

[jacquesm]

I figure there would be a lot more small wars than there are right now.

That said, the UN could be a lot more even handed than it is today.

This letter by Einstein is quite an eye opener:

http://neutrino.aquaphoenix.com/un-esa/ws1997-letter-einstei...

It's from a different era but surprisingly accurate even in todays environment.

[lionhearted]

Jacques, thanks for sharing that link and I'm upvoting you. But you know what's funny? I have almost exactly the same set of premises of as that piece, but I come out to almost exactly the opposite position.

> The United Nations now and world Government eventually must serve one single goal the guarantee of the security, tranquillity, and the welfare of all mankind.

I think a world government would rapidly become filled with the most politicking, vicious, corrupt, oppressive people unless it was incredibly decentralized and powerless - I don't think you can have a large, powerful government wtih broad-sweeping powers and no opposition that is kind and benevolent. The only large governments/empires in history that were secure, tranquil, and with high levels of general welfare were decentralized.

Every powerful centralized government example I can think of committed all sorts of gross and widespread abuses - I think this is because once you create a mechanism for unchecked power, it inspires the most ruthlessly ambitious power-hungry people to attempt to control it. Those people eventually find themselves their way into high positions - democracy or not. Many brutal madmen believed they were doing the will of the people, and were sometimes legitimately elected. When you create a huge unchecked power structure, you're creating a bright light that attracts the most vicious sort of moth. Eventually one comes into power, and all hell breaks loose. Decentralization seems to be the only way in the long term, even with the equilibrium costs of a minimal defensive military force and coordination problems.

[jacquesm]

Compare those centralized powerful governments with the not so powerful governments in large parts of Asia and Africa and tell me where you'd rather live.

Governments are wasteful by definition, but corruption is rampant in other places as well. The difference really becomes to pay backshees (sp?) vs paying taxes.

Longer term there may be a solution to some of this as we find (finally) a successor to democracy that improves on what we've got, but a democratic world government would be an improvement over the silly nation states that we have today (which, even in their most advanced forms are a holdover from a time when there were more kinds of people).

Corporate domination of politics is one of the hardest things that we need to take care of, this planet is not here for corporations, it is here for all of us, including other species. A late friend of mine had some pretty good ideas on that:

http://www.extent.nl/articles/entry/interview-with-eckart-wi...

His taxation scheme would be a very large step in the right direction.

[lionhearted]

> Compare those centralized powerful governments with the not so powerful governments in large parts of Asia and Africa and tell me where you'd rather live.

I think that's a false dichotomy - but for the record, I was thinking USSR and Nazi Germany as powerful centralized governments, and thinking of Rome, Height of Britain, America before Spanish-American War/World War I/World War II as decentralized governments.

The last powerful centralized African government was Shaka Zulu's bloodbath. By contrast, the two most successful African Empires I'm aware of were much more decentralized - Cartage and Mali.

> Longer term there may be a solution to some of this as we find (finally) a successor to democracy that improves on what we've got, but a democratic world government would be an improvement over the silly nation states that we have today (which, even in their most advanced forms are a holdover from a time when there were more kinds of people).

This I agree with entirely, yes.

> Corporate domination of politics is one of the hardest things that we need to take care of, this planet is not here for corporations, it is here for all of us, including other species.

Here's an interesting thought experiment for you - try replacing "corporations" with "organizations" in any corporate-bashing you read for the next week: You'll find all the statements pretty much hold true. Voting blocs, political parties, religious organizations, even nonprofits often do as much to corruptly impose their agenda on other people as for-profit corporations do.

I agree with you that organizations, coalitions, and other blocs of people shouldn't be able to trample individual's rights - but I think power should be primarily start at the level of individual people, and be reserved to them first and gradually upwards. So authority on decisionmaking goes first to individuals, then to communities, then to towns and city districts, then to large cities, then to states, then and only then to countries - from small to large. Large shouldn't be able to impose on small, whether it be Whole Foods Corporation, or the New York Yankees, or PETA, or the Conservative Party in England, or the Democrats in the USA, or labor unions, or General Motors, or anything. Individuals are the way.

> His taxation scheme would be a very large step in the right direction.

I like some of the ecological merits of it and I agree that taxing productive work is a stupidly bad idea. I bet there'd be some really nasty unanticipated secondary effects with that idea, though. Still would be an improvement over taxing people for doing productive work, which is just crazy on almost all levels.

[jacquesm]

Interesting discussion this!

> I was thinking USSR and Nazi Germany as powerful centralized governments, and thinking of Rome, Height of Britain, America before Spanish-American War/World War I/World War II as decentralized governments.

Rome was pretty centralized, so was the British empire at its peak.

America not so much, and even today there is a healthy struggle between federal and state level to determine where the boundary lies. And federal seems to be winning that battle but not in a way that I can understand.

Also it is difficult to compare historic governments with current ones in the same sentence because the circumstances those governments operated in were so dissimilar.

For instance, the 'nation' of Greece back then had a populace that would comfortably fit in a mid sized town baseball stadium. So methods and techniques used in antique times have relatively little bearing on what we can do today.

Agreed on the rest of what you wrote and a nice eye opener about the 'organizations', indeed, individuals are the way, but then individual education is a very big problem on the horizon, and one that so far has not been solved in a way that is satisfactory so that you could put significant power in the hands of individuals by democratic means. It would lead to ruin quite quickly and dramatically so I would imagine.

[lionhearted]

> Interesting discussion this!

Indeed!

> Rome was pretty centralized, so was the British empire at its peak.

You think so? I'm rather under the impression that the Crown set a loose grand strategy, and then let their high ranked officers and local personnel run things as long as things were going according to plan. If taxes were coming in and nothing too crazy was happening, they wouldn't get in and start micro-managing. Rome... lots of different eras of Rome, again I think Rome was more hands-off in its local provinces and would let the local people keep their customs, worship, morality, and rough template of local laws so long as the taxes, infrastructure, supplies, and garrison were generally in order.

> And federal seems to be winning that battle but not in a way that I can understand.

Cyclical - the federal government collects much higher tax revenues and then makes the states pander to get the money back. So the states are forced to set up the education programs the federal government wants, the driving laws they want, etc, etc. Nominally education is state-run, but in reality it's all handed down by the Board of Education (which is also why it's dysfunctional and ill-catered to individual students). For all the love Reagan gets, a lot of people overlook how he expanded federal powers in morality laws and took that decisionmaking away from individual states. Things like that. If federal taxes went down, I think a number of states would raise local taxes and provide their own services to people who want them. A relatively small reduction in federal taxes could have a huge cascading effect on federal power and give it back to state power.

> Also it is difficult to compare historic governments with current ones in the same sentence because the circumstances those governments operated in were so dissimilar.

Yes, very true. Also, the modern historical record is often flawed and misrepresented so you have to dig around in archaic primary sources to get a real idea of how things really happened at different times. It's quite a challenge to understand how things even really were back then, and then extrapolating them to now is a burden too.

> For instance, the 'nation' of Greece back then had a populace that would comfortably fit in a mid sized town baseball stadium. So methods and techniques used in antique times have relatively little bearing on what we can do today.

Yeah, good comment. Looking at history more carefully, I was amazed at how small some of the historical battles were. Oftentimes an elite unit of like 400 troops were the backbone of one a conqueror's army. I think Tokugawa Ieyasu had less than 600 troops for the first half of his career, something like that. Kind of puts it into perspective.

> Agreed on the rest of what you wrote and a nice eye opener about the 'organizations', indeed, individuals are the way, but then individual education is a very big problem on the horizon, and one that so far has not been solved in a way that is satisfactory so that you could put significant power in the hands of individuals by democratic means. It would lead to ruin quite quickly and dramatically so I would imagine.

Yeah, education is quite the challenge. I always wonder why Americans wanted direct election of senators instead of indirect election? The ability for corruption, lobbying, and bribery skyrocketed, so did the emphasis on short term decisionmaking. Before that, the people would elect the state legislature, and the state legislature would elect the Senators. A state legislature would have many representatives that were much harder to bribe/lobby... now that money can go directly to senators' campaigns. If you want democracy, why ignore all the lessons of democratic government through the years? Having two layers of elections (people elect state legislators, state legislators elect senate) means the people don't need as much education, as long as even 1/3rd of a state legislature are competent, they can discuss and persuade another 20% and get a competent, uncorrupt senator in, who reports directly to the more-educated-than-average legislature. Why they changed that, I don't know, the results have been predictable - massive increases in lobbying and official and unofficial corruption, much more short term thinking, much more emotional-based unthinking politics...

Anyway, good discussion and lots to think about, cheers.