Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

To a great degree, these complaints should be familiar to anyone in a large bureaucracy: Endless procedure, imcompetence that can't be fired, decisions made for political reasons, etc.

Now imagine a bureaucracy run by and accountable to all the national government bureaucracies in the world! And remember that the ones most HN readers live under are, despite our whining, the most efficient and least corrupt in the world - the others are often far worse.

That's the UN. If you are going to have an association of the world's governments, I think that's the way it's going to be.

Like democracy, it's horrible but better than all the alternatives. It's primary purpose, IIRC, is to prevent international war (i.e., wars between nations, as opposed to civil wars). After all the war of human history, after WWI and WWII occurring within a 31 year period (think of that: that's like 1985 until today!), international war has almost been put to an end. It's now a major exception when it happens, and that fact is really a miracle.

They also achieve many other very important things, though expensively and slowly.

Remember that the UN is no fuzzy-minded idealist's fantasy. It was built by the survivors of WWII and WWI, while the ashes were still smoldering. Those people knew far more of war and the realities of man's inhumanity than we can imagine.

I agree with most of what you said about the bureaucracy, but the Pax Americana was achieved the old fashioned way, the same way as the preceding Pax Brittanica and the Pax Romana, to put it crudely, "Peace through superior firepower."

The real question is, does the UN or anything like the UN have role going forward, or must we suffer further degradations till we may arrive to some Pax Sino.

I've often speculated in my head about the desirabilty of closing down the UN to replace it with a "United Democracies" based as much on the carrot of trade as much as on any cudgels, but I think that's just a fantasy, you're always going to run into problems like "should Turkey be in or out of the EU and/or NATO, which way are they headed", and when do you ever let Russia or China in.

Although the idea of a 'United Democracies' or whatever it gets called sounds appealing, it has many flaws.

One of which you highlighted regarding what constitutes a democracy - some could even argue that the Electoral College in the USA means it isn't a true democracy!

Others are what legitimacy it would have in relation to countries that aren't members. Why should those countries care or co-operate with the organisation? Likely it would end up with UD trying to impose its will by force, which is a backwards step.

Furthermore, just because a country is a democracy doesn't mean it is automatically superior to every respect and entitled to adopt the high ground. Many democratic countries around the world have engaged in human rights abuses, started wars and interfered with other sovereign countries to install leaders who push their interests over that of the citizens. There is the danger that said countries in the UD would end up turning a blind eye to each other abuses because they, by definition, "wouldn't do that sort of thing".

One of the more positive aspects of hereditary monarchies is that their rulers are invested in the long-term success of their kingdoms. Democratically elected rulers have no such incentive. Instead, they promise favors to donors and their electorate, start never-end wars (wars on drugs, wars on poverty, wars on hunger, wars on literacy) for which the costs are socialized and the profits privatized (particularly by companies in which they have interest). Democratically elected politicians remind me of people who strip the appliances and wiring out of their homes as they are being evicted.

> One of which you highlighted regarding what constitutes a democracy - some could even argue that the Electoral College in the USA means it isn't a true democracy!

Well, it is a republic, not a democracy anyways.

> I've often speculated in my head about the desirabilty of closing down the UN to replace it with a "United Democracies"

You still need the UN as a mechanism by which international diplomacy can get done as much as is possible, including with non-democracies. Every time a decision has to be made (e.g., North Korea, Libya, etc. or worse a war between major powers), we don't want to have to create a new framework and mechanism with new rules.

> I've often speculated in my head about the desirabilty of closing down the UN to replace it with a "United Democracies"

I think that's made much more possible and relevant by the spread of democracy. 30 years ago, it would have been almost exclusively the West. Now there are democracies all over the world; the old world order mechanisms (the UN Security Council, World Bank, etc.) don't include them, and the number and diversity of nations makes the old U.S.-led consensus much harder to achieve. Also, morally, the people in those nations deserve just as much of a vote in world affairs as Americans do - that's democracy.

> I agree with most of what you said about the bureaucracy, but the Pax Americana was achieved the old fashioned way, the same way as the preceding Pax Brittanica and the Pax Romana, to put it crudely, "Peace through superior firepower."

While these empires had powerful militaries, firepower alone did not make them powerful. Trade and culture were far more potent long term instruments of power. In modern terms, NATO is only one part of the equation of the Pax Americana - you also have Hollywood/English language/the internet and a global mesh of free trade agreements and shipping networks.

For all its downsides (and there are many, such as massive environmental damage and inequality) globalization is also a huge factor in the peace (although not necessarily an infallible one: the globalization in the 1900s wasn't enough to stop WW1).

IMHO nuclear weapons have done far more for peace (specifically in the prevention of world war and conventional international wars) than the UN.

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