Erase the coonection between socialism and tryanical communism and you have what we've been living in North America for over 80 years now except today the capitalists are the tyrants and line up for the socialist payments like kids lining up to see Santa Claus.
The hand outs to the top have got to stop if you want a real capitalist free market society.
It is and will be socialist. It can't continue being as lopsided as it is without 85% of the planet coming for our heads.
A corporate welfare state is hardly capitalist. In fact, I'd chose socialism over that any day. If we're going to hand out money irresponsibly, we might as well give it at least to the destitute who really need it rather than the fat guys at the top.
That said, I'd still prefer a social-corporatist state to a truly socialist state, as it is more likely to find the right balance between socialism (the redistribution of wealth between rich and poor)and capitalism (the production of wealth), finding a happy medium leading to a more just society overall with both the rich and poor coexisting and working together to achieve common objectives. A social-corporatist system is likely to be far less confrontational and class-divisive than either capitalism (and especially corporate welfare 'capitalism') and unbridled socialism.
The ONLY criteria should be free and open elections.....yes to Turkey and Malaysia....no to Iran.
Their elections are not free, as candidates must be vetted by the Clerical Council........
No question Israel would be a member. No sane person has ever question the openess nor the validity of their elections.
I agree with you overall, though I still wouldn't give Israel a total pass considering some of its religious laws, especially with regards to interfaith marriage and conversion laws.
Again, I'm certainly not comparing Israel to Iran, which is a far worse offender, and am certainly not painting Canada as an angel either with regards to our separate school system in Ontario or parts of Quebec's Bill 101 and our disregard for treaties we'd signed supposedly in good faith. However, regardless of Iran's and Canada's unjust laws, Israel is no angel either. Certainly just as we ought to criticise Canada's and Iran's policies, I don't see why Israel ought to get a free pass.
We may see a welfare state but one generalized to the global norm. A free pot of rice in form of welfare is considered a blessing in most countries of the 'Global South'.
Indeed. The solution for world dominance is in the past in form of decentralization. This was the very same decentralization that allowed French, German and Russian kings to control vast territories; mind you there were no supersonic aircraft then, so the world was unimaginably huge back then (weeks and months to travel across these Empires - yet these Empires were otherwise stable).
To control the world you must control, or better termed, have the support of regional and local elites. Remember it is these same elites who, if annoyed, can rally others under banners of 'nationalism', 'race', 'religion', et al; and their association with the locals means they have always have the advantage over a far away centralized authority.
You can effectively ignore the 'peasants', there have only been a few peasant rebellions in modern history (i.e. 1848 rebellions) and none of them were successful to the extent of toppling a government. It's hard to mobilize mass support on a national scale (regional on the other hand) as peasants are otherwise too busy with primitive concerns, i.e. sex, football, cold beer in the fridge, et al.
Let's not confuse imperialism with world federalism. By definition an empire has one country reigning over others. In a world federation, by definition, everyone, or at least all adults who aren't in jail, get to vote for it eitehr directly or indirectly via free elections, thus ensuring no country dominates any other. As for the elites, it would be more difficult for them to truly control matters seeing that in such a federation, information would flow more efficiently among the general population to make it difficult for the elites to hoodwink them.
Concerning some of the recommendations in this thread, I do see some issues. Among the recommendations is that only democratic countries could join. This of course is not a world federation, but merely a federation of democratic countries of the world. Though I suppose it would still be a step forward. It could then have its one ambassador to the UN, thus giving this one superstate considerable clout. However, it also risks isolating other states and thus not promoting any real advancement. But it would still be a valid fist step I suppose.
Another risk we need to consider has to do with certain member states being granted an unfair advantage via cultural imperialism. One solution that would be absolutely necessary so as to avoid such ethnic tensions woudl be some kind of common second language that would be easy for all to learn. One advantage of such a language is that even non-democratic countries would want their peopel to learn is as a second language for commercial and other economic reasons. Needless to say, a common second language designed to be easy for all to learn would mean that the average person in these countries would suddenly have access to a world of knowledge... literally. This would make it very difficult for non-democratic states to operate in the long-term. In fact, such a language might even be a prerequisite to any kind of world federation. After all, look at all the infighting in Canada between French and English Canadians, or in Belgium.
Looking at it that way, perhaps we could put the Un to one last task: adopting, creating, or revising a common second language to be taught in all schools of the world. Once that's done, we create a federation of democratic countries of the world which would of course introduce the same auxiliary language into their school system. This would make isolaiton on the part of non-democratic countries very difficult. After all, imagine being able to discuss with the average Chinese in a forum like this one on-line in a common auxiliary language. While today this may be possible with the Chinese elite in English, it's certainly not possible for the average English-speaker to communicate with the average Chinese high school student living in some small town in China.
