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I'm curious — how would you avoid regionalism? Nate Send a noteboard - 05/07/2013 08:15:02 PM

If there was one worldwide government, how would you avoid regionalism?

If the people of the world voted for representatives in the worldwide government, those representatives would try to use their political power to benefit the people who voted for them. That's how representative democracy works.

If you had proportional representation, then representatives from China, India, and Africa (even if those countries/continents no longer existed as distinct political units) would have a big chunk of the say-so in government, and could introduce laws and policies that would benefit the people who voted for them, at the potential expense of other areas.

You could do away with proportional representation and just give each continent the same number of representatives, but then you have to deal with the fact that the voters from Australia (0.3 percent of the world's population) controls one-sixth of the political power. Even if you split things up differently, you still end up with regions, each of which will vote for representatives who will do things to benefit them.

A functional world government, in theory, could do away with war (though in reality you would probably be dealing with dozens of internal rebellions of varying sizes instead, trading foreign armies for armed dissidents). But getting rid of regionalism seems like a tough nut, unless you put the world in charge of a dictator (and then the regions would still try to curry the dictator's favour).

Warder to starry_nite

Chapterfish — Nate's Writing Blog
http://chapterfish.wordpress.com
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Gallup - Conservatives more proud to be American than Liberals..... - 04/07/2013 09:12:12 PM 1283 Views
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I'm curious — how would you avoid regionalism? - 05/07/2013 08:15:02 PM 709 Views
P.S. (more thoughts on worldwide government) - 05/07/2013 08:57:01 PM 671 Views
Interesting general thought train, let me hop on board - 07/07/2013 12:52:18 PM 795 Views
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Bitterness? How so? - 08/07/2013 05:26:50 PM 857 Views
Nice post. Your honor, I rest my case! *NM* - 08/07/2013 06:15:47 PM 351 Views
Er. Obviously? - 06/07/2013 02:24:44 PM 749 Views
By what measure, I wonder... - 06/07/2013 04:21:57 PM 716 Views
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I don't think this is accurate. - 06/07/2013 10:58:43 PM 741 Views
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You'd have to list the study - 07/07/2013 12:10:13 AM 836 Views
Every study. - 07/07/2013 01:14:48 AM 820 Views
Nice non-reply. - 09/07/2013 05:23:25 PM 706 Views
You didn't say anything meriting an in-depth response - 09/07/2013 08:52:13 PM 652 Views
Actually.... - 10/07/2013 03:00:42 AM 620 Views
Pride comes before the fall. *NM* - 12/07/2013 06:33:56 PM 394 Views

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