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timtyler comments on Singleton: the risks and benefits of one world governments - Less Wrong
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Why is it legitimate to assume that a singleton would be effective at solving existential risks? A one world government would have all the same internal problems as current governments. The only problems that scaling up would automatically eliminate are those of conflicts between different states, and these would likely be transformed into conflicts between interest groups in one state. This is not a reduction to a solved problem.
There are wars of secession and revolution now. There are also violent conflicts among ethnic and religious groups within one state. There is terrorism. Why would a one world government ruling over a more diverse populace than any current government not have these problems? People won't automatically accept the singleton any more than they accept the current governments.
Even with unified powers, governments regularly mismanage crises. Current governments (even democratic first world governments) have problems dealing with such things as predictable weather and earthquakes along known fault lines. Why would a one world government be better able to handle much less predictable crises, like a pandemic?
Historically, those have caused some major problems...
Warring political parties are generally less dangerous than warring nation states. Revolutions can happen, but they aren't too common - especially in well-designed political systems.
There are as many ways to run a one-world government as there are countries on this Earth today, and possibly more. No single democracy is the same as all the others, and then you get the various dictatorships and plutocracies that hide behind the name... Even now, a global government is forming from international treaties, fear of nuclear death and terrorism, as well as from trade--it would seem the trend cannot be stopped just by saying one does not want a global government. So, what am I worried about? That the global government that evolves will make my birthplace, the USSR, look like a utopia. The sheer number of USEFUL solutions needed to PERFECT a global government (that is, to create one that we would all agree is competent and beneficial) requires, I think, that we fix up the governments doing the negotiating for a world government FIRST. A good tree is much less likely to produce a bad fruit, to use a Biblical reference. I am not arguing for ignoring world government development, but I would like to point out that scaling up would work a lot better by concentrating on removing issues we see in our governments today...