Isn't eventual world government unavoidable?

Yes. Also we will have Moon and Mars colonies in the future. So it will be more complex.

Yes and those will be corporately driven private enterprises as well.

It depends on if human self destruction is unavoidable or not, and that time-frame.

Personally, I think the Earth will eventually eliminate the human race unless we can unite under an environmentally conscious government 100’s of years before our demise. Slim odds.

NPR leads me to believe that octopi might be the next dominant intelligent life.

They are truly fascinating animals. I mean when you you think about invertebrates with short life spans arriving at intelligence without community interaction, it sets you to wondering.

National boundaries do seem irrelevant to corporations. Why should an international corporation pay taxes in one particular country? What you are describing seems more like world anarchy than world government.

The TPP, TISA, and NAFTA are about bringing governments to a position of subservience to corporations. It’s not so much world government as a corporatocracy. I really hope it isn’t inevitable. It doesn’t have to be, if people start caring about politics beyond the issues chosen for them by the major parties and the media.

After the looming war between the US and China is over, the world order will look very different anyway. In the end, economics is only one of several forms of power.

@FireMadeFlesh because going to war with your biggest trading partner makes all the sense in the world. :`\

I doubt it. Humans are far too aggressive, selfish, and short sighted for that.
“why should the the UN have a say over murrika?”
“why should the federal government have a say over the states?”
“why should anyone have a say over what guns i can buy”

There will always be localised pockets of rebellion, groups that unilaterally secede from the “global government”, or groups that carve themselves a niche with special privileges (see the UK<->EU relationship), or groups that amass for themselves enough power to force their will upon the rest, and squash anything that would run counter to themselves (for example, the colonies having so much voting power in the UN, that it makes the UN a colonial puppet organisation)

Probably, but it is decades, even hundreds of years in the future.

And even when it happens, it will have to be a ‘gentle’ world government that allows local differences to some degree, as opposed to an authoritarian government that is the same everywhere.

I think that the world described in Orwell’s 1984 is much more likely, meaning that the world will have 2–3-4 mega-countries as opposed to a single one. (Of course in 1984, some of them were always at war with each other. That’s not what I suggest.)

I think that a successful one-world-government is impossible because of the problem of scale.

Bible readers who are prophecy wonks believe this as being one of the signs of the looming Apocalypse.

No one will be able to buy, sell, or trade unless they accept the “Mark of the Beast”
(whatever that’s supposed to mean) and is under the control of this one world government.

So, there are people who fervently believe this based upon their interpretations of descriptions given in the book of Revelation (with some OT bits thrown in from the book of Daniel.)

NB: I am NOT a prophecy wonk. I’m just letting you know that there are sizable numbers of people who very much do believe what I’ve just described above.

I have all I can handle getting through this life here and now without cluttering my brain with conjecture based upon floridly written allegory and all the infighting over whose specific version is the most correct. Yug !

Look at the loose union of states that formed the United States and how the Federal government gradually subsumed the rights that were ‘unassailable’ state rights at the outset.
Basically what the EU has today.
These things take centuries and, IMO, time is limited as the Earth is taking measures to eliminate the human race.

@cazzie As I said, economics is only one of several forms of power. War with a country’s largest trading partner is undesirable, but it is preferable to losing near-global hegemony. The US has used soft power rather masterfully to maintain their position in the world for several decades now. However it has become clear that the Chinese have learned these lessons, and become rather adept at using soft power also. See the Nicaragua Canal and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank for examples. Meanwhile China continues to call the US’s bluff, encroaching on the rights of every other country in the South China Sea with its land reclamation and exploration projects. Just like the buildup to WWII, the West will pursue a policy of pacification and diplomacy until it becomes too much, then we will have war.

The US is going to lose their currency first and then they won’t have anything to fight about.

It might seem an impossible task to hold dominion over the entire squabbling planet, but what I’m getting at is that the lust for profits is pushing the corporate community to override the interests of national governments on matters of trade. Nafta was the template for this. And there isn’t a single one of the dire predictions of its opponents that has not come to pass. The card played by the corporate community (and it’s droned at us incessantly) is that it’s going to happen whether we like it or not.

I doubt it. Even the biggest idiot in our midst would realize that, if the world government became possessed of a bad idea and acted on it, nobody could ever stop it.

Imagine if the Nazis had been the world governing body. Or ISIS.

Not good.