[Another long reply]

You've hit on many valid points in your post, Punkus. Let me reply to a few of them.

You are 100% correct that Diversity causes conflict. People are xenophobic. It would be nice if this weren't so, but it is. Recognizing this fact is a required part of any realistic approach to problem resolution. People are also very resistant to change. People don't want to give up their differences. In fact they will resist giving up their differences in a violent fashion. Imagine the revolt you'd have if you tried to force Christians to abandon their faith. Imagine telling Jews or Muslims that they couldn't wear the clothes and perform the acts that are integral to their faith and adapt that of the other group. Imagine forcing citizens of the U.S. to all learn Esperanto and adapt to it if they wished to remain part of this nation. People will violently resist these approaches. The history of the world is filled with just such examples. Conquering nations rarely were embraced by the people they conquered and in many cases, the conquered people rebelled repeatedly until the conquered people were ejected (such as Spain kicking out the Moors in 1492) and in some cases, the rebellion continues.

This reality is why consolidation will not work. In order for any consolidation project to work, you would have to have the buy-in of nearly everyone in the world (and kill the rest). You'd also have to step around their dearly-held diversity to avoid bloodshed. In short, you'd need to get everyone in the world to agree on something (actually a great many things). Quite simply, that isn't going to happen. I mean idealism aside, you'll never get me to give up Christianity, and you won't likely get Diablo or Skandalous to give up Islam, so how can you unify us? Your options would be: 1) Hope we can agree to get along despite our differences (best option). 2) Segregate us. 3) Kill one group or another (your proposed solution). 4) “Outlaw” one or both faiths which won't work, it will just push it underground. Yes, I'd be willing to be a criminal before giving up my faith. It is possible that you can have a consolidation of secular rules, but that won't make the world one people, we'll simply be following the same rules (and some/many will be breaking them).

You also stated that although people claim to want world peace, they don't do what would be necessary to achieve it. You are correct in that as well. People don't want world peace. They want everyone else to stop bothering them. For a given average person, if they are left alone and if they are comfortable, then they don't really care about whether someone across the globe is fighting, starving, being tortured, etc. Raising the awareness of these issues can cause an average person to care for a while, but they really don't want to make the commitment to get involved. People don't generally care about peace, as long as their own lives are (relatively) peaceful. There are also people out there who don't want peace at all. There are those who want wars, who want fighting and strife. There are some who thrive on it (these are extremists, but they are still people). Even the average person wants to see some strife. Why do you think that sports exist? Why do you think that people watch soccer, baseball, football, hockey, boxing, ultimate fighting championships, etc? Why do you think that over 90% of computer games have some aspect of combat in them? People need and want to see competition and strife. They want to see winners and losers. They want to vicariously experience the victories and defeats, and at times experience them by playing the games themselves. Sure, it is just sports, but all sports (and indeed all games) are related to warfare, and it is that warlike nature that makes people desire to succeed, to achieve and accomplish. It is inevitable that this nature will sometimes spill over into the arena of international relations or even impact how we treat each other.

The most likely people to really want to do something are young people (under 25). While a person is young, their needs are generally provided for (mostly by parents). They don't have to consider consequences of policy changes because they aren't really dealing with the downsides. This allows for a certain idealism and energy that is unique to the young. After about age 25-35, people tend to be involved in more localized realities such as getting food, housing and health care, starting a family, etc. At that point, concerns about foreign strife take a back seat to concerns about survival.
Now your proposal is to force everyone to work for the good of all. To have all needs provided by the conglomerate/state/society and therefore everyone can be an idealist because all of their needs are cared for. Unfortunately, you'll encounter several problems from that approach. One of the biggest is that we are indeed competitive. That simply cannot be abandoned because you wish it. In fact, in your solution, you would need that warlike, competitive nature to be able to recruit the people who would enforce your rules and laws. People who are competitive aren't going to accept the restrictions that you've placed on people in your solution. It wouldn't be long before they realized that they, being armed (to enforce your laws and execute offenders) and competitive, would have a disproportionate level of power.
As a historical parallel, look at the third Reich. Germany elected Adolph Hitler as chancellor. He didn't conquer the nation, he was elected. He and his party were given a huge amount of power and they began by doing things to help the German people. Certainly his building of the Autobahn and other projects were beneficial for Germany. Nonetheless, the German people had been provided many good things and they were given “peace”, but the cost was the enslavement of a large class of people. Realistically, all of Germany were slaves to the powerful Third Reich, simply oppose that government and a citizen would suddenly find themselves in prison. This sounds very much like the government that you're proposing. Dissenters (greedy people in your world) will be shot.

An interesting question would be whether world peace is even desirable. “Peace” is an absence of war or hostility. It is also freedom from quarrels and disagreements or freedom from strife. Consider, do you want a war where everyone agrees? It may seem ideal on the surface, but humans aren't equipped to handle such a world. World peace would suggest that nobody has a difference of opinion. That isn't even possible until we know with 100% certainty, the facts about any and every topic. For example, you and I might disagree on the origin of the chrysalis for butterflies. Nobody really knows how they originated although there are several theories, but if we disagree, we aren't at a state of peace. To be certain, it isn't war either, but that's just a matter of scale. One group of people may believe in polygamy while another may believe in monogamy. Is either belief intrinsically “wrong”? Until one knows, for certain, what is wrong and what is right, you cannot have peace. If you simply impose your viewpoint on these groups, one or the other will be disenfranchised and may react violently thus breaking your peace. Add to that, the fact that much of human progress has arisen because of our differences. We think differently, we act differently, we look at problems differently. If we all agreed, we'd still believe that the world was flat. After all, a difference of opinion would be met with execution (Socrates experienced this as did many, many revolutionary thinkers).

Part and parcel with this comes this fact about humans. Human beings don't always act logically. One of the problems with the many ideal societies is that they don't take this fact into account. A person who acts illogically or irrationally is not going to fit into any “ideal”. The ideal is based around the concept of people all desiring the same things and being willing to agree with each other. The problem is that every person in the world has their own desires and therefore nobody is the “ideal” or “typical” person that an idealistic model of the world requires. Certainly, if everyone was willing to work towards peace, and if everyone agreed what peace meant, and if everyone was willing to give up certain things for peace, then peace would be attainable.

You used the phrase “minimal slavery”, and I'll tell you that there is no such thing. A slave is owned by someone else. A slave is required to do what another person tells him. I work at my job currently, but I'm not a slave to it. I have the freedom to leave that job for another one. I can even get to the point where I can choose to do nothing if I wish. A slave, on the other hand cannot quit their job. They cannot simply choose to do nothing. They cannot retire. They have no freedom. A slave is a slave, their decisions are not their own. About the only thing that a slave owns is his own thoughts. If the slave's master treats the slave kindly, then the slave may not suffer much, but that doesn't mean that it is any less slavery.

You also wrote about incentive to work, but staying alive in slavery isn't incentive. Incentive is getting a bonus or something above the normal. The purpose of incentive is to encourage greater achievement. In your described world, that would be seen as greedy, so no incentive exists.

You asked what is stopping each country from allotting each citizen a lot of land. Let me ask you this; are all lots of land equal? Some land is arable, has good water supplies and could provide all of the necessities for people. Others are arid deserts which cannot sustain any human life. Still other land may be swampland, too moist for people. If you divided a nation up in this fashion, you'd be condemning those with poor land to end up suffering and even dying. Even if you limited the land grants to “good” land, some land would be superior to others, and you'd then have a situation where those with good land could theoretically be better off than those with poor land. Perhaps then you'd decide to execute those with better land for greed.

Government's job is not to provide. It is to govern. It is to enforce laws. It is to write laws when necessary. If you put government in the role of provider, then you create a society of de facto slaves. The government would be the slave masters. Of course who runs the government? Not slaves, but people who will do whatever they can to escape slavery. Immediately, you end up with a “governmental” class where those who run the government become the slave masters and the citizens are slaves. I know which group I'd want to be in.

Sure, some changes are needed in the world, but start with changes that people will accept. You'll likely find that people don't need to be controlled or dominated, and that we can have some level of peace and freedom at the same time. It won't be world peace any time soon, but ask yourself honestly if world peace is really what people want, or do they simply say it because it sounds good, not really understanding what the world would have to give up to attain it. Most people aren't willing to make such a sacrifice. It isn't greed, and it isn't hypocrisy, it is simply that people don't really understand the global issue of what they are asking for.

-- Jeff

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"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan