I know nationalism or world government are not the only choices. my belief is that, though not good, Nationalism gets a bad rap from libertarians and that it may be the only think standing in the way of a world state.though some have said that if american’ts see double digit inflation they will sell their currency and country to the first promise to ease their pain.
do we need nationalsim to decentralize power??
Mike,
social bonds are important thats apparently why facebook founders are worth billions.
nationalism is one of the strongest expressions of social interaction. it has been used to positive effect throughout history in the competition to acquire scarce resources. of course anarchists dont like this since nationalists have many times used this centralization of power to take resources by force from less nationalistic, less organized, and more vulnerable peoples.
hey, nationalism happens.
its cool if your on the delivering end and many times bad if your on the receiving end.
but I think that nationalism always leads to a centralization of power. I mean it is kinda counter-intuitive to think that you need to centralize power through nationalism in order to protect against global centralization. what would prevent someone from promoting nationalism on a global level to stop war? a sorta kumbya approach to uniting people in one global group hug with free 'kool-aid’ as a kicker.
its like liberals arguing that we need to protect against private monopolies by creating an even bigger government monopoly that has all the guns.
naw, if your an anarchist (an I’m not) , my guess is that you arent going to like nationalism on any level.
Nationalism - a one world govt just means fewer ways to escape.
Centinel,
I see your point - my question was poorly worded- ofcourse we don’t “need” nationalism to decentralize. But I stand by my belief that it is not 100% bad as many on this site suggest. Of course the way it has been used in the US for some time now is the worst kind. for freedom to live the possibility of exit must exist. I see more and more harmonization of the world and it is worrysome.
This is an interesting question because while nationalism seems to be decentralization, it could be the concentration of authority figures into a given area yet with world government it would seem that the power is centralized into one institution but yet it covers such a wide geographical territory that it could be considered decentralized.
Although nationalism is superior to world government, I consider the ideas involved with nationalism more aggregeous and utterly vulgar than just about any other, so I would have a hard time choosing between them
Yes, as would I. If we had a world government or a nationalist government, it wouldn’t be better, it would just change in my mind.
Nationalism all the way. Better to have a bunch of little states than one big one.
I’m a huge supporter of state secession as a step in the right direction before the state is ended.
Rule of thumb: Bigger is worse
I see many of you are equating “nationalism” with “many small states”. This doesn’t seem completely accurate - to me, nationalism is a collectivist ideology, a danger to freedom in its own right.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the “many small states” considered each other equal and interacted peacefully with one another, but nationalism, with all its attending prejudices, implies that each small state has a desire to upend its neighbor in whatever way possible - through militarism, protectionism, etc. In such an environment, even peace-seeking states have no choice but to “play the game”; create trade barriers, increase military spending, etc. out of pure fear. IMO this is not conducive to the creation of free societies within the small states.
It seems to me that world government at least eliminates those problems, though it may well create new ones. I personally believe that a small-state world government is the best alternative to an anarcho-capitalist society. A world with many non-national “small states” may also be an interesting concept to consider.
ROFL.
This is a bit like an honest politician or a compassionate mugger.
Clayton -
Are you saying it’s unrealistic? That’s a bit rich, coming from (I presume) an anarcho-capitalist.
In other words you know the nation-state is superior, but you happen to share more cultural prejudices with the world government bunch.
Are these prejudices of nationalism, or prejudices about nationalism?
No, it’s an oxymoron like our “limited” Federal government with its enumerated powers. What a joke!
Clayton -
Like I said - nationalism is a collectivist ideology. As far as I’m concerned, it is as contrary to a free society as socialism. Not to say that it couldn’t find expression in a free society - much like socialism could find expression in the form of cooperative socialist settlements founded by like-minded people.
I must say I don’t really understand your argument. If you find that current state-level governments are preferable to the federal government, then assume that the putative “world government” is organized along the same lines as state governments. We’re talking about theory - there is no need to assume that our hypothetical world government will take a certain form, or that it will make the legislative situation more complex or whatever.
Who leads this world government? Democracy or dictator? How does it decide how much its leaders have power? How does it create laws which tell who much power these leaders have? I hope you understand that all leaders of monopolies of agression have great incentives to increase their own power by pure self-interest. If this world-government can increase its own leaders power, it will face the same fate as USA and other countries.
There are no leaders. There is a set of constitutional laws protecting life and property, drawn up by a junta selected by the Mises Institute. There is a small police corps designed to enforce these laws, but it is largely unnecessary because most citizens own arms and large properties are protected by private security firms.
I don’t know man, my Complete Plan for World Government isn’t finished yet.
And when there are many monopolies of aggression the incentive is even greater, as even peaceful-minded leaders must devote resources towards their “defense” budget out of fear.
I understand this argument, but it is a criticism that essentially every libertarian project is vulnerable to - ie, what will the balance of military power be? For anarcho-capitalism it is usually phrased as “what if one or several security firms decide to use armed force to establish a dictatorship?”
A true world government is, in any case. far less realistic and untested than even anarcho-primitivism (which has been the mode of production for the vast majority of human history), and I doubt that, barring the removal of a huge chunk of Earth’s population (be it via war, famine, disease, or cosmic exodus), it will ever happen. There’s simply far too much warring interests and cultural differences to ever let it happen on anything other than a UN-like level (and most of the big and small countries ignore the UN when it’s convenient for them anyway).