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Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

The UN does not have this authority.

The UN is less a legislative body and more of an international treaty negotiation forum. If all of the UN member states agreed to such a thing then it certainly could be ratified - it sounds like it might vaguely fall under the purview of the first committee DISEC (Disarmament and International Security) and Israel might object to it but usually there's some bargaining involved in these sorts of things.

To my knowledge, there is, in fact, no strict limit on the authority the UN can have - but there may be some specific carve outs to other international bodies (i.e. laws of the sea - the division of antartica), however I think these carve outs were mostly made affirmatively by the UN to empower other organizations.

There is a separate question on whether the UN has the power to enforce legislation it passes, but that's a pretty simplistic reduction that can be applied to pretty much any governmental body and will almost always result in the answer of "It depends".

> there is, in fact, no strict limit on the authority the UN can have

There is no strict limit to the authority I can have. That doesn’t mean I can prohibit Google from doing squat. I could theoretically get the U.S. government to pass a law, but that’s not the same thing as authority.

I feel like I made a pretty good call out to this in the last paragraph of my comment but just to elaborate. The UN is an organization with essentially no organic power - it has no citizens, nor a tax base, nor an independent army. It does collect "mandatory" fees from members that, if halted, would likely suspend the membership of the nation in question, however even those are only enforced by various nation's desires to be a part of the UN. It'd be like me selling a Netflix disruptor that collected a monthly subscription fee for you to have the prestige to be a member and then sending you a card informing you of how to sign up for Netflix - literally nothing the UN does wasn't possible before the UN, it just centralizes where this is all happening. That all said, for smaller nations in particular, the membership can come with real benefits in terms of peacekeeping forces along with financial and humanitarian aide.

At a basic philosophical level laws and police have no power, nothing can stop you from committing murder. The only thing we can essentially do is give you pain in reaction - that pain could be pre-emptively acting guilt or fear of the consequences, it could be moral regret, it could also be physical restraint or torture. Given diseases like alzheimer's and essential tremors or a plethora of other physical and neurological ailments the list of people who can absolutely control your actions might be an empty set[1].

That all said, the UN has been granted some pretty wide authority to pass treaties that are generally acknowledged across the world - those treaties are generally respected and the US might hit you with a big stick if you violate them. So, honestly, I think the comparison in authority to an individual is pretty thin.

1. I think that by definition if we're talking in absolutes then it is always an empty set because there are actions you can't voluntarily execute, like, for instance, willing your heart to stop. But let's just assume that "absolute control" is a level of control achievable for most people at some point in their lifetime.

Google doesn't give a damn about you, but Google would very much care about discussions within UN to pressure modification of its products.

That's the difference. You can go on technicalities, but being technically correctt is the worst kind of correct.

Does the UN have any authority?

The security council does

Not where Google is concerned.

Only if the member states agree to back it up.

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