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100
5 votes
May 13, 2015

Should there be? Well that would certainly make running this planet a lot easier, no more international relations between independent actors that could always possibly lead to war or other conflict. But is there any possible constitution that could be made today that would do any degree of a good job at that? I think no.

Let's take the founding of the US as an example. 13 states that joined together to create one unified nation. A high majority of the people in the states were former British subjects, thus they were all very similar in culture, race, language and many other factors. They had an easy time(comparatively) of unifying, if not for any other factor than that they were essentially already the same people.

Now compare that to the present day where most nations are pretty spectacularly different. There are Europeans who don't want anything to do with American health care policies. Russia and Uruguay have very minor relations with each other and would like in no way to be politically bound to each other as it would only be mere inconvenience to them. There are even more extreme examples such as Islamic(or other religions) extremists who can't even abide the existence of non-believers let alone joining with them in political ties.

Another essential unifying factor(in any country/world) is the existence of a great threat to their protection and safety. The US had to scrap plans for the Articles of Confederation because there was simply no way to deal with the threats that came from internal rebellions and the threat of invasion from Britain. So the greater threat of these things to our survival caused us to unite under much stronger bonds in the current constitution. I see of no significant threat that would encourage the world to give up the vast and complicated status quo in order to form a higher governing body, let alone any agreement on what and how that body should function. Some plausible ones for the future might be a world water shortage, global warming disaster, or more extremely, an alien invasion, but we won't be seeing those for a while and even they may not be scary enough to start any urgent unification.

Some scientists have proposed a more optimistic view of worldly unification where, before we venture out in to the stars, humanity will have been enlightened enough and unified by the search for scientific knowledge. It's a nice theory but there is no real historical evidence to support or not support this.

One possibility I have always entertained was the unification of the fifty states, the UK states, the provinces of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and the territories of those nation under one Federal style constitution. We are a much more homogenized group of nations, having all stemmed from similar sources and I think that has potential for great success. But that's a mere fantasy of mine that I thought I would share. I hope this post helped!

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100
main reply
2 votes,
May 13, 2015

A one world government is inevitable in my opinion. It may take a war or two but it will eventually happen.

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100
main reply
1 vote,
May 13, 2015

I would be in favor of a one-world government as long as it was run on parliamentary lines and had decentralized power.

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50
2 votes,
May 13, 2015

It would suck. All the highest standard-of-living countries like Switzerland would be brought way down to 3rd-world levels. There's a reason that small countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland have the best standards of living, and the vast majority of the world is a cesspool: human society simply isn't enlightened enough to accomplish Swiss-level standards of living everywhere. In most places, corruption is the rule, not the exception, and violence is common. Most of the world's population is completely uneducated. And religious fundamentalism is common in many places, bringing with it all kinds of horrors. You can't stick all these people together into a single democratic government and expect anything good to result.

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100
2 votes
May 13, 2015

I voted no, but only because we are centuries away from it being possible. The global economy has only become truly global in the last 30 years. After hundreds of years of tighter and tighter economic ties between countries their will be more and more pressure to standardize laws, and economic conditions between countries to promote fair trade. Eventually this will lead to a single governing body with power, and ultimately a single government. It's already happening to some extent, but it's a slow process that will take centuries to really get to the point where their is a global government.

If history has taught us anything it's that economics trumps all, and current economic pressure is towards a global economy and eventual global governance.

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100
1 vote
May 13, 2015

There *is* a global constitution. It's called "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

un.org/en/documents/udhr/

You could argue that it's not a constitution, but then what is? Should is contain direct laws on *how* governments should be constructed? I think that would be a very bad idea, as such a construction is almost guaranteed to be bad.

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100
1 vote
May 13, 2015

No, absolutely not. One step closer to New World Order. I know that's a bit dramatic but i believe that would be a bad idea if for no other reason than the fact that we all have different social, cultural, socioeconomic, historical, etc backgrounds that form our traditions, laws and norms.

There's already the Hague for crimes against humanity so protection would not be something the global constitution would need to cover. We already have international trade law.

It would make sense if we ever found life on another planet but as of now, autonomous states settling through the UN, Hague, etc are more than enough. While you may point out that those *(as well as many other international institutions) are highly flawed, can you imagine the turmoil from trying to get 196 countries to agree on an exclamatory document. I'd rather not go there.

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0
0 votes
May 13, 2015

I am not sure I can vote without knowing the nature of the hypothetical global constitution. We do have the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" - which I think is a good start......and I could probably support something along those lines.

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0
0 votes
May 13, 2015

NO we don't need one world order, One world government as is not being created.

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0
opinion
0 votes
May 14, 2015

Of course it's a good idea, but it has to be simple and supposed to be the constitution that regulates the rest of constitutions.
For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I think we can't have a global constitution in the literal meaning of the word, because every country has different needs and values

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