Human Governance vs Rogue States
Human Governance vs Rogue States
The Ukraine tragedy must result in Cantons within an empowered UN
As a young species of killer apes, humans have had difficulty dealing with their neolithic heritage. While genetically nearly identical to our ancestors from the Stone Age, we do carry with us primitive tribal and personal proclivities that no longer are suited to urban ‘civilization’. Anthropologists tend to agree that being a large, aggressive male was likely adaptive throughout most of our lineage, it is an anachronism today - just as weightlifters seeking to put on muscle very often just end up fat. It’s not working anymore, as a social asset.
America and North Korea are examples of rogue states essentially using each other as the rationale for their own existence. The first expects complete hegemony over most world affairs by virtue of three generations of militarism, the second questions that authority by stealing Dad’s gun and demanding more influence over the family breakfast cereals.
The legacy of the Ukraine War must be that the United Nations is finally empowered militarily to deal with situations like the impasse over the Donbass area in Ukraine/Russia. In my first book ‘1000 Summers’ (2010) I envisaged the UN providing collective military security to any canton, within any nation. (See the Swiss canton system). So in the Donbass example, the UN would have administered that referendum conducted by Russia, the Donbass borders would then be drawn accordingly, and the Donbass Canton becomes a protectorate under the UN. Neither Russia nor Ukraine could invade it without facing UN security forces.
In our not so distant paleo past, surely villages sought out the security of larger alliances - that was the driver for feudalism - the desire for protection against raiders.
Consider states like Liechtenstein for what typical cantons might look like.
The model is not as radical as it may seem, because being a canton does not preclude membership in a free market, with world travel and education rights. These privileges would be freely granted, because they’d follow from blockchain passports, which document your birthplace absolutely, and entitle you to the benefits associated with, and assembled by, that canton.
They do not entitle you to emigrate to anywhere you choose.
This localization may seem to have racial overtones - compelling the peoples of poor countries to remain in their homelands - but this is preferable to globalization of citizenship, which is supported by nobody. Personal direction is far more productive than simply relocating to more prosperous parts of the globe, as an individual strategy.
Recently Musk’s Starlink constellation has brought broadband Internet to any place on the planet. This has been under-reported because it threatens to undermine national propaganda, particularly by news agencies controlled by governments. Starlink allows any human’s birthplace to become her workspace -the chalice of the Internet being the most precious development in human cooperation since the invention of writing.
American libertarians will guffaw at collective military security within the United Nations, but that is to be expected from a rogue state - who seem to require a marching band to start a baseball game. The US has 4% of our population, and its time has passed.
If we learned nothing about our species cancer from the 20th Century - we all deserve to die.
All humans must realize how close our species and this planet is coming to nuclear annihilation. Citizens must ensure that the time has indeed arrived to cease building aircraft carriers as monuments to human failure -and instead to direct funds stolen from the poor back to those rural villages - who again seek protection from uncontrolled intruders. Security is far cheaper than militarism, just as fasting costs nothing - yet perfectly mimics the hardships of the neolithic - which we barely survived.
That derailed funding is our taxpayers’ alone, achieved by our own hard efforts and stewardship. Do not allow the rich to continue stealing your child’s school lunch, parents’ pension, or your own right to AGI. Knowledge must remain a public resource.
Authoritarians don’t like this AGI concept, because it creates a separate, higher layer of authority above their own. It is possible for any child today to assemble ear buds, Google glasses and Starlink Wi-Fi - then have the full breadth of life and opportunity before her. Make that child your own. There is a child in you asking to be reborn.
Empower the United Nations to trade 700 US overseas bases for the US debt, and let’s all hit the ground running toward successive life cycles - something AGI enables today.
Dwight