David Brin on the coming World Police System

From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 21:40:02 MDT

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    What follows is a response to my forwarding a link to
    my recent posts here to David Brin, with whom I've had
    other recent correspondence.

    (I'm trying to figure out his references to my alleged
    defense of the British Empire in India... Not that I
    haven't made such a defense on occasion, in reference
    to the British manageing to finally stamp out the
    Thugee Shiva Cult that practiced mass ritual murder of
    innocent travelers throughout most of India,
    thoroughly corrupting the local Rajah rulers by a
    combination of death threats and bribes of stolen
    goods, among other endearing religious rituals, as one
    example, but my overall feelings are hardly
    enthusiastically with colonialist powers, altho
    sometimes they represent a major improvement.

    I don't recall any conversations or exchanges with
    David re any of this, however, so I'm assuming that
    he's confusing me with someone else on that particular
    issue.) Still, a viewpoint worth throwing into the
    fray...

    Hi Phil.

    I cannot see how to reply to the articles at
    http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/extropians/0304/7321.html
    so I'll
    just answer you . Post if you want.

    1. Burden of proof is on those who would police the
    contents of
    other peoples' minds, or who contend that it is even
    remotely
    possible to base a society's freedoms on blinding the
    mighty,
    something that the mighty will simply never allow.

      Defense through obscurity is the weirdest delusion
    I've ever seen.
    For ten years I've asked adherents to point to one
    society, ever,
    that tried that approach and achieved anywhere near
    what we've
    achieved through general openness and general
    accountability.

    The whole point of The Transparent Society was not to
    predict or
    prescribe an end to privacy, but to ensure that a free
    people have
    enough sovereign power - based on general openness and
    knowledge - to
    vote themselves and enforce a bit of privacy and make
    it stick.

    2. THE SHORT VERSION ABOUT 'WORLD GOV"

    Last year I gave a dinner speech for the World
    Federalist Society
    (led by former independent Presidential candidate John
    Anderson) at
    which I pointed out a few relevant factors. (A couple
    of months later
    I also did a keynote for the Libertarian convention!)

    1. Antipathy toward increasing world structure or
    'government' has
    different sources, depending on where you look.
       Dictators and oligarchs see it as a threat to their
    local power.
       Small nations see it as a vehicle for hegemony by
    the US et. al.
       Major corporations see it as likely to become a
    taxing authority.
       Western political classes see it as arising out of
    the UN, and thus
    becoming an impotent talking society in which action
    becomes
    impossible and 3rd world perceptions dominate.
       Western citizenries perceive it as a potentially
    dangerous
    accumulation of centralized power.

    The thing I focus on is the last of these. (Citizen
    empowerment is
    my fetish. See:
    http://www.futurist.com/portal/future_trends/david_brin_empowerment.htm
     
    )
           My own son, at age six, expressed a deep worry
    about even the
    notion of a World Government, since "There wouldn't be
    anywhere else
    to run away to, if it turned bad." (Clever boy!)

    I think it's very important to peer closely at the
    average voters and
    citizens in the West, since they will ultimately
    decide whether this
    issue becomes a front burner item. They are the
    people your book
    might persuade.
         In dozens of talks and speeches, I have found
    that nearly all of
    the people I meet express a set of shared values --
    whether
    republican or democrat etc -- a vast majority of them
    declaring (a)
    suspicion of authority, (b) individualism, (c)
    accountability and (d)
    tolerance as high values.

    Their principal difference is nearly always WHICH real
    or potential
    center of authority they worry about. But nearly all
    deeply worry
    about internationalization of authority.

    2. The 'anti-globalization movement' is currently a
    transfixing
    focus for what used to be called the Activist Left.
    Young people
    follow world leaders around, creating urban theater
    neat World Bank &
    other meetings, decrying abuse of the environment, of
    labor, of
    children, etc. The irony is that each of these
    problems was
    addressed in their home (western) countries by the
    very last method
    they think of using -- politics and law.

    In other words, their reflex revulsion toward
    'globalization' is
    ill-considered. Labor, children, and the environment
    all benefited
    in their homelands from INCREASES in political and
    legal structure.
    The decreases in structure that they demand can only
    succor local
    oligarchies that currently are the main enemies of the
    environment,
    labor and children.

    3. THE LONG VERSION ABOUT WORLD GOV:

    Dear Phil

    While I agree with much of your criticism toward the
    British Raj, and
    especially the way it favored the rapaciousness of the
    rich, there
    were aspects to the story of Pax Brittanica that
    illustrate a glacial
    movement of imperial power toward the era of
    transition that we live
    in today.

    For example, the notion, publicly trumpeted, that at
    least there was
    a GOAL of education and social mobility under a civil
    service
    meritocracy. True, this was largely lip-service but
    lip-service can
    be under-rated since it represents a core value that
    the idealistic
    can always appeal to.* It was always assumed that
    India would
    eventually achieve some sort of autonomous home rule,
    for example...
    though the Brits figured it would take till 2300 AD
    and that the
    elevated wogs would then be forever grateful. True,
    this was racist
    and patronizing. It was nevertheless relatively new in
    the way
    empires approached their satrapies and Ghandi was able
    to exploit the
    core assumption -- that the ultimate purpose of the
    Raj was to serve
    Indians.

    My point remains that through most of recorded
    history, there were
    three main conditions --
    1) chaos,
    2) conflict between kingdoms, and
    3) peace&order under an imperium.
         Though all three circumstances all had their bad
    aspects - we are
    now able to imagine something better (e.g. the
    politically correct
    goody 'federation' of Star Trek) - it is important to
    remember what
    enabled and freed up our imaginations. It has been a
    new kind of
    peace and order.

    Focus on the imperium: even in early times, a "pax'
    generally
    operated under some kind of law and a notion of limits
    to individual
    power. If a local kingdom was ruled by a genocidal
    madman, there was
    always the possibility that the Imperium might
    intervene. It was a
    recourse. Inefficient, often cruelly callous or
    indifferent, but
    always there as a possibility. To intervene if things
    got really
    grotesque.

    By the standard of all past imperiums, Pax Americana
    (PA) is an
    improvement. Take for example the mercantilist
    trading patterns you
    referred-to, in which local Indian mills were crushed
    by preferences
    favoring textiles made in Manchester. This was
    Ghandi's biggest
    economic complaint. All imperiums did this... except
    ours.

      Under George Marshall (See my essay calling him the
    "person of the
    20th Century at http://www.davidbrin.com/) PA
    established
    COUNTER-mercantalist policies, allowing former enemies
    and allies to
    keep out American manufactures while sending their
    output to us.

    Why did Marshall and Truman do this? Perhaps it was
    the low
    unemployment and sense of superabundance that America
    felt after
    WWII. Or the fact that these two men were
    exceptionally disconnected
    from traditional ruling classes. Or something else.

    The result was the greatest transfer of wealth in
    human history.
    Several TRILLION $ poured from America to other
    countries, far
    outweighing all over forms of aid combined! Only we
    get no credit
    for this 'aid', since it consisted of Americans buying
    mountains of
    crap they never really needed, thus creating
    investment and jobs and
    infrastructure etc in foreign lands that exploited
    their local cheap
    labor... but not without benefits across the entire
    spectrum of
    society.
         The children of the exploited in these countries
    went to college.
         Make no mistake, this is the exact phenomenon
    that lifted first
    Western Europe, then Japan, Taiwan, Korea etc. It
    was the
    transforming tool of the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

    Today, it is China's turn to by raised up by this
    beneficence - if
    you can call it that.
        Ironies abound. One can argue that we've benefited
    with cheap
    goods (duh!) and therefore deserve no credit for
    kindness.
        Still, it matters. It was wiser by far than the
    trade systems set
    up by any other empire. If China joins the middle
    class, it will be
    80% because we bought enough cheap crapola to sink the
    state of
    Florida.

    Likewise, toppling Saddam has to be seen in context of
    history. The
    imperium is the court of last resort in a world
    without true law. I
    am quite pleased that we stepped in and, at small
    human cost, exerted
    our imperial whim to finally topple a vicious
    psychopath that we
    created in the first place and cynically left in power
    in 91. I
    don't think it was necessary to ruin the Western
    Alliance in order to
    do it, or to pee in everybody else's lunch, or to save
    the Oil
    Ministry while ignoring human or historical needs.
    But maybe that's
    just me.

    Whether we've behaved better that other empires is
    nice, but
    insufficient. We seem to be falling prey to the mental
    and emotional
    sicknesses of imperial ego - much like the "Hail
    Brittania" frenzy
    that surges in the Late Victorian era ... frantic
    flag-waving while
    nursing an illusion of omniscience, omnipotence and
    infallibility.
       Yes, we often ARE right.
       That doesn't make those illusions any less stupid
    or dangerous.

      The thing that counts is that we, as Pax Americana,
    MUST behave as
    if we are to be the LAST empire.
        We must set an example and use our narrowing
    window of influence
    to help design Whatever Comes Next (WCN) -- or what
    George Bush Sr.
    called a new world order.
        What nobody talks about is that WCN must be
    something that offers
    RECOURSE against abuse by capricious power. That is
    the basic
    measure of law. And recourse must be offered not only
    to nations and
    corporations, but to individuals who suffer abuse at
    the hands of
    nations and corporations.
       That kind of recourse to law implies citizenship in
    something
    larger and more universal than the old model of
    national sovereignty.

      Ideally, WCN will follow American-led values of
    individualism,
    dispersed authority, multiply-redundant accountability
    and safety
    from oppression by all kinds of tyranny -- including
    tyranny by any
    voting majority. Any other kind of World Governance,
    we know, will
    collapse into Big Brother. I share this conviction
    with my fellow
    countrymen. Most notions of "world Government" send
    chills up my
    spine.

    So? We are the experts on checks and balances. On
    distributed
    authority, accountability and protection of
    individualism from mass
    homogeneity. We can influence - and even take the
    lead - in
    designing WCN. But only if we participate -- and
    that's the problem.
         What empire will willingly contemplate helping to
    shape its own
    replacement?
         The last thing you will ever hear a politician
    speak, lest he/she
    face public suicide, is the phrase "World Government."

    So instead, by default, we are allowing WCN to take
    shape in the
    weirdest and most ugly way -- through the creeping
    creation of
    international bureaucracies and civil service cabinet
    departments
    like the World Trade Agency.
         These major agencies are in effect pieces of
    World Government,
    taking shape in the European manner, following
    European models and
    European bureaucratic sensibilities.... all without
    the moderating
    influence of a genuine executive or legislature who
    are answerable to
    voters, or a court system answerable to lawsuit.
         The multinationals and the rich like this system,
    because such
    bureaucracies innately serve their interests. But
    meanwhile,
    individual citizens have no standing in such bodies.
    They cannot
    step up to seek particular recourse, not in any way or
    at any level.
        In other words, corporations can be citizens of
    Earth and speak to
    its governing bodies, but you and I cannot.

    Why are we allowing this to happen?
         Because these portions of World Government can
    take shape in
    gradual stages, never uttering the dreaded "WG"
    phrase, while
    maintaining an illusion that nation states still reign
    with complete
    sovereignty.
        But of course they don't. America proved that by
    proclaiming we
    can and will go wherever we feel threatened, with the
    power and full
    rights of a police force, though without the systems
    of oversight. We
    claim this, justifying it in the manner of all past
    imperial
    states... because we can.
       In response the world can only sigh and be grateful
    that the big
    cowboy is, after all, America -- and therefore a wee
    bit more
    well-meaning than not. A bit more likely to be right,
    than not. This
    could be much worse.

    That the imperial model must fade away is obvious to
    anyone who reads
    science fiction, or looks ahead more than a decade
    into a future of
    change. The present situation will not last, any more
    than other
    empires lasted. Today we are arrogantly driving the
    mighty in places
    like Paris, Beijing and Moscow into each others arms,
    to mull over
    ways of 'restoring balance' from a unipolar to a
    multipolar world.
    Allowing this to happen is highly unpragmatic.

      Yet we avoid taking our proper leadership role in
    designing WCN,
    because the task frankly frightens the hell out of us!
     Creating a
    lawful and just and wise world commonwealth of 6
    billion autonomous
    and independent citizens is the mightiest task ever to
    face a
    generation. We show no sign yet of any willingness to
    confront it
    head on.

    Far better to nurse an illusion that America will
    always be supreme
    -- and decent and good -- and that proliferating
    technologies - soon
    delivering weapons of mass destruction into the hands
    of blithe
    hobbyists (!) - won't make it absolutely essential
    that we finally
    enter a new era of human history, the era of genuine
    law.

    With cordial regards,

    David Brin
    www.davidbrin.com

    * (Today it is simply considered evil to be racist,
    even among people
    who were unabashedly racist 20 years ago. They squirm
    and
    rationalize now, in order not to think of themselves
    in a category
    they once proudly avowed.)

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