One World, Guv!

I have an ongoing debate with a friend of mine as to whether or not a single world government is a Good Idea. It has seemed to me a truism that if power can be abused, especially if the use of the power is not technically against the law, it will be. A reconception of the idea is that, given a set of laws, the worst possible outcome of those laws (depending on the most aggressive interpretation) is likely to occur at some point, and that the corresponding interpretation will likely become entrenched. The lawmaking process itself, in fact, leads in this direction, as those who craft it often try to find the phrasing that simultaneously seems limiting, but in reality permits what an ordinary citizen might think was overreach. The ability of lawmakers to do this depends in large part on the populace's belief in the 'good faith' interpretation of the law. To return to the concept of a single world government, consolidation of power in one place means that The Ambitious have a single system to attempt to manipulate and control. Given the executive overreaching of the last 8 years, and the dangerous carelessness with which people bandied about the term "terrorist", unfractured control systems scare the hell out of me.

There is another side to the coin, however. Millions of persons live in poverty. Millions live without access to clean water. The solutions to these great problems demand great resources. An international framework within which conflict resolution could occur might allow individual member states to dissolve, to a great degree, their miltaries and thus free up the corresponding resources. Those resources, currently devoted to destruction or the avoidance thereof, could find a new purpose in creating a better, more just world for everyone.

Between these two extremes must lie a third way, something that strengthens international agencies in such a way as to discourage armed conflict, but still leaves lawmaking power and enforcement highly decentralized. The somewhat chaotic world contains within it automatically agile checks and balances. A completely ordered one contains within it an iron fist.

Why chaotic?

I just wanted to write a quick note on the 'chaotic' part of 'chaotic good'. The term actually refers to a concept in the popular (in the geek world) game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In the game a given player controlled one or more characters, each of which had what was called an 'alignment'. The alignment indicated how that character generally acted in the world, and was typically of one of six major types. The types were:

1. Lawful and Chaotic Good
2. Lawful and Chaotic Neutral
3. Lawful and Chaotic Evil

Lawful meant the character would generally obey the law of the land regardless of whether their intentions were good, evil or neutral. Chaotic meant that to some degree the ends justified the means. This blog is about The Good, and not necessarily as constrained by law. That is to say, it is to The Good to assist slaves escape their unjust servitude, though it may be illegal and considered 'theft' according to the standards of the day. The idea itself is admittedly a dangerous one. In some cases, as with slavery, it does seem that the law of man must bend to a natural law. That is, codification of injustice does not remedy its flavor.

I should also point out that though I am speaking about concepts that sound like they are the province and provenance of religion, I am not myself religious. I think man can act ethically in the world without the guidance of the gods simply by consulting his own experience and by thinking about how the world got to be the way it is now. It seems to me that the major prophets and religions seem all to have arrived at the same place anyway.

The Good Begins With Fail

I have a cliche dream. In the dream I invent something that generates a lot of money, succeed by the standards of the world, and then turn that success into something that levels the playing field for people worldwide. That is, helps to create what I call The Good. The money part is taking some time, though, and I occasionally need to remind myself why I'm doing it to generate some motivation. Hence, this. A blog about creating The Good, the ethics of getting there from here, the political atmosphere required, and new discoveries or ideas that might help.

But. The chaotic good blog begins with a fail. I write software, mainly web applications, and I recently decided to get into developing for the social graph. I ended up writing an application for Facebook called Flights To Friends. The application performs a useful service in that it tracks airfare to your friend list, but in my own mind one of the advantages to this service is that it would not be cannibalizing to existing travel. That is, it would cause people to travel more than they otherwise would, with no corresponding costs, certainly a good thing for the travel industry. It would fill seats. But we're talking air travel here. And air travel is, of course, the greatest contributor to carbon emissions (per traveler) of all travel options.

I think this dynamic often happens: we accept a long term, or not-personally-affecting liability in trade for a short term gain. It is exactly this type of thinking, that the short term exploitation of something that carries no financial cost (currently) can be used to get a leg up in the world, that led us to our financial crisis, to toxic chemicals in our groundwater, to irresponsible corporate governance based on unrealistic expectations of executive staff in regard to quarterly earnings. And what drives it? It's cliche. It's greed. I want to succeed so that I can make more of my dreams into realities. These dreams pertain, to a great degree, to creating a fairer and more just world for all of humanity. But if, in the pursuit of those dreams I contribute more to a less just world, with no guarantee that I will ever actually get to the point where my more just world can be effected, it would in the end be better that I did nothing at all.

I would posit as a first principle that The Good requires us to never push the costs of a given action off onto The Other.