The big picture. Is the earth actually governable?

Well he'd know, his old man created the situation. However, promises were made as far back as the Old Testament. "He shall spare the poor and needy,and shall save the souls of the needy" Psalms Ch:72: V13

Maybe not consciously want to hurt others but unthinking behaviour achieves the same thing most of the time.
How many in the West ask pertinent questions about where their coffee, chocolate and diamonds were sourced and under what conditions?

 

This unthinking behavior is learned behavior maybe humans are capable of learning something different.

 

OK, you can teach them.

 

Dixie, just because you destroy the guns does not mean that peace will be there. Firearms are only a tool. The hatred that some people have towards others, that must be controlled.

 

Get rid of all the people.

 

Well populaton control could help but we'd still be left with a species whose closest evolutionary relitive is the chimanzee. Chimpanzees are cannibals and on an evolutionary time scale we've only just come down out of the trees. Problem is we're too clever for our own good.

 

“A handful of men in the richest nations use the global powers they have assumed to tell the rest of the world how to live. This book is an attempt to describe a world run on the principle by which those powerful men claim to govern: the principle of democracy. It is an attempt to replace our Age of Coercion with an Age of Consent."

George Monbiot in his book ‘Age of Consent: A manifesto for a new world order’ argues that what the people of the world should be striving for is a democratically elected world government.

His ideas are basically to democratise international institutions so that for example the heads of the World Bank and IMF would not be appointees of the US and EU, but be democratically chosen.

Here is a review of the book

This is an extremely important book. The biggest single geopolitical issue today is the overweening power of the US in a unipolar world and the problem of how it should be handled by all other nations. No political leader can be said to have satisfactorily resolved this problem.

George Monbiot offers a searchingly rigorous analysis of the sources of American power and presents a package of proposals that would radically redraw the present world order. It is breathtaking in its radicalism, but for anyone who is serious about tackling the current US hegemony, it is difficult to fault the logic.

His basic thesis is that the institutions set up in the past 50 years to run the world in a democratic fashion are in fact deeply undemocratic. The UN General Assembly is dominated by the Security Council's five permanent members, who can veto whatever they don't like. If any attempt is made to remove their dominance, they can veto any attempt to remove their veto.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank are dominated by the G8 nations, which hold 49% of the votes, though that suggests that if all the other 176 nations voted together, they could still overturn the richest nations. However, all major decisions require an 85% majority, so the US, which alone possesses 17% of the votes, can veto any significant resolution it wishes, even if the resolution is supported by every other single country.

The World Trade Organisation has an aura of democracy in that every nation belonging to it has one vote. However, before a new round of trade talks begins, the agenda is fixed by the "Quad" - the US, EU, Canada and Japan. Together with a small and variable number of poorer countries, they decide all the main business of the new trade round in a series of "Green Room" meetings. The WTO is therefore as exclusive as the UN, with the Green Room acting as the WTO's Security Council and the Quad its permanent membership.

The consequences of this system are clear for all to see. The US goes to war with Iraq without a second resolution in the Security Council, defying three of its per manent members and most of its temporary members.

The World Bank and IMF have become the bailiffs of the world economy, putting the whole burden of maintaining the balance of international trade on the poorest debtor nations. Sub-Saharan Africa paid twice the sum of its total debt in the form of interest between 1980 and 1996, yet still ended up owing three times more in 1996 than it did in 1980.

Equally, the WTO enforces free trade on weaker nations according to rules with which the richer countries, especially the US, do not comply. Debtor nations are required to remove barriers to trade and capital flows, to liberalise their banking systems, reduce government spending on everything except debt repayments, and privatise assets for sale to foreign investors. By contrast, the US, after the so-called Doha development round in 2001 aimed to liberalise trade and increase access to western markets, raised farm subsidies to its own farmers by 80%, thus massively cutting world prices and bankrupting tens of millions of farmers in the poor world.

Monbiot's solution to this behemoth of growing world inequality in wealth and power is not tinkering with the existing institutions but replacing them wholesale. The key to his proposals is a return to the brilliant innovative insight of John Maynard Keynes in 1943 in preparation for the Bretton Woods conference, which determined the postwar international economic architecture that has prevailed ever since.

Keynes's idea was a new global bank called the International Clearing Union (ICU) with its own currency, the bancor. Every country would have an overdraft facility in its bancor account no more than half the average value of its trade over the previous five years. The system he devised gave a strong incentive to both deficit and surplus countries to clear their bancor accounts annually, ending up with neither a trade deficit nor a surplus.

Deficit countries would be charged interest on the overdraft, rising as the overdraft rose; they would have to reduce the value of their currency by up to 5% to promote exports and would have to prevent the export of capital. Keynes's innovation was to apply similar pressures to surplus countries too. Any such country with a bancor credit balance more than half its overdraft facility would be charged interest (or demurrage) at 10%. It would also have to raise the value of its currency and permit the export of capital. But if this was not enough and its credit balance at the end of the year exceeded its permitted overdraft, the surplus would be confiscated.

Keynes's system would, quite simply, maximise worldwide prosperity and level the power of nations. The ICU would entail no forced liberalisation, no penal conditions on the poorest countries, no engineered opportunities for predatory banks and multinational corporations, no squashing of democratic consent. But the obvious question remains: how can the rich nations, especially the US, be made to accept it?

Monbiot's answer is to turn the instruments of rich nations' power against themselves. The poor world's debt to the commercial banks and IMF and World Bank, at some $2.5 trillion, is nearly twice the combined reserves of all the world's central banks. In effect, as Monbiot himself puts it, "the poor world owns the rich world's banks". But he is not recommending a mass default. Rather, he proposes that the indebted nations, which can never repay their debt, should demand a conditionality for their compliance - exactly as the rich nations do - namely the replacement of the institutions causing the problem (IMF and World Bank) by arrangements that automatically achieve a balancing of trade (the ICU). Blackmail, of course, but if well orchestrated it might just conceivably work.

He rounds off this central theme with two other radical proposals. One is that a Fair Trade Organisation (FTO) is needed to govern the rules of trade very differently from the market fundamentalists of the WTO. Following the precedent of the rich countries, which in nearly all cases (certainly in the case of the US) got rich initially through protectionism, the FTO would permit the poorest countries to defend infant industries with tariffs, other import restrictions and export subsidies. Foreign investors would be required to leave behind more wealth than they extract and to reimburse for any destruction, environmental or otherwise, that their trading produces. Rich nations would be required to remove all barriers to trade - tariffs, import restraints and perverse subsidies that keep out imports from poorer nations.

Again, what hope in hell is there of such a radical (and utopian) system beng accepted? Monbiot's reply is unequivocal: a fair trading system should be added to an ICU as a condition of refraining from a mass coordinated default.

Linked to this is Monbiot's final major proposal - a democratised UN General Assembly where votes are weighted by size of population and in accordance with a global democracy index, to incentivise high standards of governance. This restructured assembly would also take over the functions of the UN Security Council which, as Monbiot says, has already largely been sidelined by US actions over Iraq.

Again, there is a breathtakingly radical sweep to all this. But before it is dismissed as the rabid fantasising of the Global Justice Movement, certain caveats are in order. This is not a whinge, but a very well argued statement of a positive alternative agenda. And if it is far too radical for some tastes, can they suggest any lesser options that will produce the same vast improvement in world justice and prosperity? The floor is theirs.

• Michael Meacher was environment minister from 1997-2003, and is MP for Oldham.

Published in the Guardian Review

 

Here are a few organizations noted by Wikipedia

World Federalist Movement (WFM) is a global citizens movement with 23 member and 16 associated organizations around the globe working towards the establishment of a federated world government. The U.S. member organization is Citizens for Global Solutions, and the Canadian one is World Federalist Movement - Canada
http://www.wfm.org/site/index.php/base/main

The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is a well-funded research and education center in Canada dedicated to the subject. It is preparing to launch IGLOO: "a global online research community focused solely on strengthening governance around the world."
http://www.cigionline.org/

One World Trust (OWT) is a charity based in the United Kingdom and part of the World Federalist Movement. Its current work aims to promote reforms of existing global organizations leading to greater accountability.
http://www.oneworldtrust.org/

Civitatis international is a Non Governmental Organization based in the United Kingdom that produces legal research promoting increased systems of global governance to policymakers.
www.civitatis.org

The Committee for a Democratic UN is a network of parliamentarians and non-governmental organizations from Germany, Switzerland and Austria which is based on world federalist philosophy.
http://www.kdun.org/en/index.php

Democratic World Federalists is a San-Francisco-based civil society organization with supporters worldwide, advocates a democratic federal system of world government.
http://www.dwfed.org/

 

Try reading (especially Part Two) – Kicking global wealth out of the driving seat.
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=353922

 

We need a king. Or some governing force that can actually give things for people to do so that they'll follow it. I feel like all this freedom goes to people's heads and they end up not doing anything, or not knowing what to do. We need someone that can give direction to people instead of having people trying to figure things out for themselves.

 

Sure got those kneelers knees a-twitchin'

 

The sad thing is - it probably does all boil down to money. How that money flows from one place to another and person to person. I was watching http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19620971 this morning. Maybe he should have had a stab at running the world. I think buried somewhere in Balbus' posts is the key.

 

If you remove money from everyday life, guess what happens? ....sharing
Money seems crazy to me, half the money we buy with isn't real anyway, but imagine having never seen or heard of money before and then seeing a person exchange a piece of paper or disk of metal with someone in return for example, a sandwich, then you see the money being cherished, worshiped, counted and put away with more money. The sandwich just gets eaten, but the money travels from person to person, one single piece of paper could end up being exchanged for a thousand sandwiches. It's strange to me, how the value of that piece of paper could almost seem pointless when you think of it that way, I mean if I was to go into a shop and grab a sandwich and at the counter just show the money but instead of exchanging it I kept it, then that note would have serious value to me personally but not to anyone else, but once exchanged I lose that value and shop man gains it, even though that single note could end up buying his entire shop of goods if it went back and forth enough.

 

Yeah before money everyone was nice to each other and shared everything.

Our modern problems have nothing to do with human nature at all.

 

All very desirable but how are you to pursuade the Chinese to go along with a scheme like that when they are on the brink of overtaking US hegemony with their own?

 

A world without money would be great...Unfortunately at the moment we are stuck with it so we have to find a way to make it work better...First World capitalism is in a crisis...I think everyone accepts that.We don't even really have a functioning capitalism anymore - we have an oligarchy of bankers with a stranglehold on the economy.True Socialism isn't doing very well either...France has a nominal "socialist" government but that is really just capitalism with a slightly kinder face.So we obviously are not going to have a textbook socialist economy either by revolution or by democratic means...It seems we are stuck with capitalism...If that is the case,how do we try to make it fairer and less damaging to the environment and our minds?

1.We need a fairer distribution of wealth around the World,to lift people out of poverty and give them a more equal spending power.This will in turn help the economies of poorer nations and help to increase educational standards and decrease the chance of war between nation states.This could in part be achieved by large-scale investment by rich countries into third-world countries,including private enterprise and training.(This will create proper jobs.) There would also be investment in infrastructure and public services such as schools and hospitals...This would in turn create more jobs...This could be funded by a combination of private and public money.All African debt should be written off.

2.We may have to come to terms with the fact that ever-increasing growth of gross domestic product is unfeasible and perhaps not even desirable.What would be better is a stabilization set at a certain level and top down redistribution of current monies.This model is actually better than a lot of nations present GDP,considering that many nations are actually in recession.Exponential growth is also bad for the environment requiring ever more energy supply and the encouragement of ever higher consumption of products which we don't really need,and don't really make us any happier...Of course I am not suggesting a a return to the stone-age here.

3.A redefinition of what constitutes "The good life" should be fostered.Quality of life should not only be measured by individual income and how much "product" one owns,but by other factors such as engagement with others and society,mental health,sense of well-being and security,functional family structures and having access to varied and enjoyable activities ranging from arts to sports,nature and lifelong education and understanding of the world around us including a trickle down of scientific and technological knowledge,a lack of which can be alienating and disempowering.

 

MamaPeace, what do you share?

To name but a few: Keynes, Karl Mark and Max Keiser P) have all attempted to create a world were everybody is treated economically equally. I'm certainly not learned enough to sift through all of Balbus' posts to find the points that added with others (Marx/Keynes to name a few) make the world a better place.
I do think it (the solution) is mixed in with: Marxism/Keynesian economics and some of what is expressed in Balbus' posts.
The flaw is: ideology/morality/disagreement.
I think we can have a system were money is used and you think we should all be 'sharing'.
Who is right?

 

Pretty much the flaw in any idea we (or anybody) are/is likely to have

 

if we can get the so called jews to leave Israel for their home countries back in poland and russia and germany we can start by giving the palestinians back their country.

Then we can work on the americas

 

Then take the non-indigenous Australians back to the rest of the world and leave it to the Indigenous Australians. Then send the millions of Americans all over the world. Then once that incredibly complex series of irrational redistribution is complete, world peace will inexplicably pop out of nowhere.

And then ban fluoride, and arrest the illuminati for sending the Bilderbergers to fabricate 9-11.