It is, like all things that happen, inevitable.

Robert Wright says:

In 1500 B.C., there were around 600,000 autonomous polities on the planet. Today, after many mergers and acquisitions, there are 193 autonomous polities. At this rate, the planet should have a single government any day now.

The key word in the quote above is autonomous. It's not that polities are disappearing; it's that new ones are emerging, and that all of them are acquiesing their autonomy. Think of countries giving up elements of soverignty ("shared soverignty," to put it in terms of the ruling class' propaganda) to join the European Union; likewise in the United States, mainstream media has reported on the US giving up elements of its soverignty to join the North American Union -- a supranational entity analogous to the European Union.

The image below illustrates what the new world order may look like. (via Search.com)




A federalized one world government is a move towards centralization of power.

Centralization does have its supporters: after all, centralization helps create economies of scope and scale, right? And one world government means peace and love and happiness and no fighting, right?

Maybe. A more revealing question might be: is the global economy more efficient (i.e. more productive, lowers cost of production, increases consumption and global living standard) with a federalized world government?

The efficiency of supranational governmental organizations is appallingly lacking, and these institutions are rife with corruption -- even more so than what we see on the national level. John Perkins, a former economic consultant and author of the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man begins his book by stating that his job was to help "funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other foreign 'aid' organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets fo a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources." Perkins is not alone in his condemnation of supranational governmental organizations; a far more indicting viewpoint can be obtained from Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former Chief Economist of the World Bank (see this article by Greg Palast).

To put the issue in web 2.0-speak: When centralization does not involve feeding the edge -- meaning when it does not involve empowering the nodes within the network but rather exploiting their productivity and taking power from them -- then the centralization will inch us closer towards a monopolization of power.

So, the real question: can such a system be forced upon an unwilling population? In other words, can the world as a whole become less democratic and more oligarchical?

I don't think so. My personal hunch is that we're going to see a not-so-comfortable showdown. In the United States, the federal government has moved to centralize more and more authority -- but individual states are beginning to rebel. (Many suspect that this enhanced power of the federal government will then be used to transfer additional power to the supranational entities, and to suppress dissent against such policies. Congressional Representative Tom Tancredo's clash with US President Bush's dealings related to SPP and the North American Union could be interpreted as the early beginnings if this.) Likewise, EU expansion is encountering difficulties in progress as well.

So, what's going to happen?

Well, if the US attacks Iran, an increasingly likely scenario, expect some awful stuff that will have a global impact (Iran has friends, certainly more than Saddam in Iraq). Former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz is already on record as predicting a global economic crash before the end of 2008. War with Iran could lead Iran's business partners (most notably China) to wage economic warfare by selling US dollars, thus leading to the dollar crash that many fear is imminent.

Uh oh.

I think the end result of such an economic crisis would be a series of popular uprisings around the world, and the corresponding decline of the nation-state. This too will result in a new world order -- but perhaps not the one the ruling class has envisioned. I suspect it will look more like what astrologers have referred to as the Age of Aquarius, which can be characterized by the following attributes:

• Lawlessness. Not only lawlessness like riots -- although that is, unfortunately, likely to end up as a component -- but also lawlessness in the sense that there is no formal authority.
• Localized communities. A return to local politics, and the political-ization (is that a word? well, you get the idea) of online communities.
• Mass consciousness traded for group consciousness. Liz Greene explains the difference in her book Saturn when she writes: "Group consciousness is not mass consciousness for with the former the contribution is voluntary and the worth of the individual is not lost." We'll delve into this in greater detail in the final post in this mini-series when we discuss the collapse of conformity.

What was the point of this post? I like concrete stuff that people can take direct action on, but culture is one of those "background" and "big picture" issues. Understanding how culture is changing is essential to building relationships -- both with business partners and with customers (an increasingly blurry distinction). And, since we know that communities are at the heart of the web 2.0 revolution, creating a culture for your online community that is in accordance with the trends in global culture is to your advantage.

Next time, we'll take a look at the forthcoming economic collapse, and how that will revolutionize how companies are financed (and thus, how they are managed and grown).

Other Articles in this Series

The Collapse of Law in Culture 2.0
Culture 2.0 and the Collapse of Corporate Finance
Culture 2.0: Revenge of the Kook