Last week I read a fun, well-written novel with a screwball plot, Code of Conduct:

• A rich villain tries to kill off most of humanity and unite the world on behalf of the United Nations. (boo-hiss!)
• Superspies from the USA and Israel to the rescue! (woo-hoo!)

The storyline illustrates a wrong way to establish a world government: A small group hatches a plot for global domination and thinks it can outsmart and out-maneuver all nations and their militaries and spy networks… a sort of SPECTRE-vs-007 scenario… which is okay for novels and movies, but in the real world? Not a chance.

So let’s look at a right way to start setting up world government in a way that might be generally acceptable… and might actually work.

The Right Way to Set Up a World Government Today

The process will involve several steps .

1: Create a United Nations “World Unity Coalition”

First, submit a UN General Assembly resolution to set up a task force for achieving world unity.

(Note: Resolutions of the General Assembly are voted on by all (currently 193) UN member nations, not just by a handful of Security Council powerhouses.)

This “unity resolution” will be unique…  a binding resolution, but binding only to the member nations that vote in favor of it.

Every nation that votes in favor of the resolution automatically becomes a “partner” or “affiliate” in the world unity task force, or world unity coalition. They all commit to the idea that planetary interests are more important than national, religious, or business interests.

Nations that vote against the resolution or abstain will simply not be a part of the coalition. They’ll remain autonomous member nations of the UN, just as they are today.

From that point on, any agreement made by a majority of those coalition partners will become a binding resolution, or law, for all of them. The resolution won’t apply to unaffiliated nations… those that still feel that their own economic and security interests are more important than the interests of the greater world. So the binding resolutions of the coalition won’t be world laws since they won’t apply to unaffiliated nations.

I’m confident, though, that as long as things are done right, the coalition will become more and more appealing as months and years pass. As greater equity, stability, and happiness spread among the coalition partners, more and more unaffiliated nations will decide to join the coalition.

If and when all nations join… at that point the coalition becomes a world government, and its agreements become world laws that are made in the best interests of the planet and all of humanity.

Some important issues will have to be carefully considered.  For example:

• How easily can a nation join or withdraw from the coalition?
• Do individuals remain citizens of their nations or do they become citizens of the coalition?
• What specific kinds of resolutions will foster a stable, equitable condition in partner countries, what kinds will work against it, and what kinds will be a waste of effort?

In other words, how to do things right?

2: Steps To Do Things Right

There are right ways and wrong ways to go about this. For now I’ll just list what I think are a few of the right ways.

Committing to the coalition. If nations could join and leave the coalition arbitrarily, things could get chaotic. It should probably be more like a marriage than a casual relationship. Nations should probably commit to their partnership, if not “till death do us part,” then at least for a minimum length of time, maybe five or ten years.

Enriching the poor without impoverishing the rich. It’ll take some time to achieve equity and stability among the partners, and there are no quick solutions. A simple Marxian scenario in which rich, stable partners suddenly share their wealth with poor, war-torn partners would spread chaos instead of order.  The goal, then, is to vitalize economies of poor countries, raising them to an adequate level of prosperity and stability as quickly and efficiently as possible, without undercutting economies that are already flourishing.

Preserving national citizenship. To prevent destabilizing scenarios such as floods of migrants from poor countries to rich countries, people will remain citizens of their respective nations. Nationality will be especially significant for the next item on the list.

Providing basic income.  Every affiliated nation will provide a basic income to all its adult citizens that it can afford to provide… more precisely, a basic income commensurate with the nation’s economic vitality… based on a sliding scale similar to the one used today for UN membership dues assessed on member nations.

(Read more about basic income… )

Each of the richest nations today pay up to 22 percent of the UN’s membership dues, while the poorest nations each pay only 0.001 percent… giving some idea of the relative size of the basic income we’re talking about here. Rich partner nations might pay every adult, say, $1,000 or $2,000 a month in basic income, while poor partner nations might be able to afford to pay only $1 or $2 a month… or less.

(Read more about UN membership dues… )

Each partner nation would have to adjust its budget as necessary to support its basic income program.

(See how basic income could work in the USA, for example… )

Why only adults? Paying basic income only to adults, not children, would discourage partners from having large families with lots of kids. It’s important to discourage large families in this overpopulated world.

Why not the same amount for all coaltion members? The aim is to stabilize all countries, not to destabilize those that are already stable. Basic income on a nation-to-nation basis would discourage a flood of migrants from poor partner nations to rich partner nations (why wouldn’t a person getting very little basic income just move a country where everyone else is getting a big basic income?)… and it would compel partners to work in earnest to lift the poor countries to a state of economic vitality.

As a poor nation’s economy strengthens, the basic income payments will grow accordingly.

So, the critical question, of course, is how to vitalize poor partner counties and to ensure that vitality levels don’t falter over time.

Achieving and sustaining economic vitality. Existing economic and political systems such as democracy, capitalism, communism, and socialism are the main systems in place today, but they’re not adequate to provide the vitality and stability needed for a healthy world.

At their best…

• democratic capitalism (or “market economy”) is a formula for a prosperous, growing economy abounding in liberty and innovation, while
• communist socialism is a formula for a stable, equitable economy based on sensible, long-term planning.

At their worst…

• democratic capitalism causes toxic, unbridled growth that produces society’s version of cancer and ultimately decays into moral corruption, while
• communist socialism inhibits innovation, strips people of their desire to excel, and causes the spread of apathy and laziness.

A world unity coalition, and eventually a world government, will need a political and economic system that’s more reliable, more natural, and more precise… something better suited to human nature and to the state of the planet… especially the Internet world of today.

The only system of that kind that I know of is the Vitality Ratio, which 1) measures substantial things (people, products, and resources) instead of symbols and abstract things such as money, GNP, interest rate, and consumer price index… and 2) can easily be plugged into a computer network to monitor a nation’s economic vitality as precisely as a set of cardiac, respiratory, blood glucose, and other medical monitors can track the vital signs of a patient.

(Read more about the  Vitality Ratio… )

Unless a better system is introduced in the future, I’ll assume that something similar to the Vitality Ratio will be adopted by the world unity coalition.

Meanwhile, once the coalition is formed, the partners will have to get busy from the start adopting very sensible, well-thought-out resolutions.

Passing resolutions for world unity. All resolutions will probably be created with the best interests of the planet and all human beings in mind. They’ll have to avoid and transcend obstacles to world unity.

Obstacles to avoid when submitting resolutions to the coalition:

• Political ideologies,
• Religious beliefs,
• Business interests,
• A nation’s economic and security interests, and
• All military force of any kind.

Military and law enforcement will not be a concern of the coalition, but will continue to be maintained by individual nations and the UN, as long as needed.

The urgent goal of the coalition is to make all partner nations economically vital so that fears diminish along with the need for force.

The focus is on minimizing conflicts through compatibility and vitality… rather than resolving conflicts among incompatible nations struggling to prevail over each other and to survive in a hostile world.

Here are some general ideas of what those resolutions might include:

People

• Maintain a fertility rate close to 2 in all partner countries, perhaps closer to 1 in countries currently suffering symptoms of overpopulation. Use population success stories such as Chinese family planning last century as a model.

Products

• Products should be biodegradable or compostable, or else durable and long-lasting, not disposable. Disposable products will be taxed, fined, or prohibited.
• Likewise, product packaging should be biodegradable and compostable whenever possible. Packaging that is only recyclable (such as plastics, printed newspaper, and aluminum foil) will be taxed. “Disposable” packaging that is neither compostable nor recyclable would be heavily taxed, fined, or prohibited. Small islands frequented by tourists, for example, should strive to restrict not just disposable products and product packaging, but recyclables as well. Everything possible should be either durable or else biodegradable or compostable. Why? Garbage is one of the biggest problems on islands. Many of the disposable products used by island tourists end up in the oceans, which today are choking on plastic.
• An urgent priority might involve the wealthier partner countries cooperating to build state-of-the-art infrastructures (mass transit, energy, water, sewer, Internet… ) in all poor partner countries.

As I come up with more ideas for resolutions, I’ll add them to this list. Any suggestions are welcome, by email or in the comments section below….