World government would have immense advantages and equally immense disadvantages.
Contrary to the popular knee-jerk reaction against world government inevitable among most people, I strongly believe the immediate benefits of world government would, on the whole, be immense. The extension of political rights and freedom, to those regions and peoples who have been denied it, notably in China, the Middle East and Africa for the first time in history is to be considered. Large scale civil wars and genocides such as that in Sudan and Rwanda would be halted and no longer problematic. Further, many poor people would gain economic rights coincident with their political representation; redistributive policies would rapidly deciment world poverty much more quickly than we would see otherwise. Hundreds of millions of people would be pulled out of the most devastating poverty perhaps decades earlier than they would be otherwise. The revenue base and scale achievements possible in such a world society, and the gains from reduced military needs, and from tariff reductions, would make many large-scale economic projects much more feasible. One historical example would be the construction of the Great Wall of China after the unification of that country for the first time in the 3rd century B.C.; a parallel dynamic would exist in a federal world government (although there are international projects such as ISS, these are inevitably plagued by the collective action problem, through which the benefits are dispersed but the costs are not).
The only reason why I oppose world government is because I do not believe that mankind can come up with a single form of government or culture that will be perfect enough so as it would be worth it to entrust humanity's future in this government (or culture). One would not have known, in the 1930s for example, what would happen to the Communist experiment; if it would succeed or fail, and in each case, the particular reasons for either success of failure. Nor would one have known in the 1970s what would become of the German and Japanese models of capitalism compared to the American. Only the passage of time can tell, when varying cultural, economic and political institutions are entrenched across multiple diverse political entities, which is superior in most respects, and what lessons can be learned from each. Hence, it is essential that political, economic and cultural diversity be preserved on a global scale, in order to spur each system and in order that experimentation will continue.
redestributive policies would increase poverty and the chinese and arabs would vote for ditatorial parties.
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