The beginning

I remember traveling across the country on Route 66 as a child. Pixar's Cars is my all-time favorite movie for its love of The Mother Road. My favorite line, "People didn't travel to make good time. They traveled to have a good time."

 

That sums up my concerns as well. Inevitably certain nations with a high missionary-factor would try to tidy up the world according to their own values and believes (as they are already doing). As more tolerant nations are usually very peaceful ones, the likelyhood of intolerant warmongers and interferers becoming the leaders is almost 100%. Not a world I'd like to live in.
As for myself - and, I daresay for many of my fellow posters here - we already consider ourselves world citizens. Practically everyone here has friends abroad. We have discussions about cultural differences and mostly we accept the fact that we disagree. Usually we even disagree in a peaceful way.

Maybe what the world needs is more message boards (preferably ad-free ones, though)

 

Riiiiiight. Just sign here, it's nothing, just some paperwork..

 

Make that three.

 

I think the best steps we can take to creating a Trek-like planetary Utopia are to reduce world population as rapidly as we can while still acting peacefully and humanely - namely, by helping women everywhere get easy and affordable/free access to birth control.

It may not be a particularly glamorous effort, and even if the species-wide reproduction rate fell to below the replenishing rate tomorrow, it'd still take decades, maybe centuries, to arrive at an ideal total world population, but it's the best idea I've heard so far.

 

Its definitely a big piece of the puzzle.

 

One of the negatives to a single global government is that under our current ~200 nations, if a handful (or more) becomes abusive, it doesn't effect the entire Human species.

If you have a single government and it goes "bad," the populace has no recourse.

Also under the current model, there is the possibility of changing countries, migrating to one that is hopefully different/better than the one you find yourself in.

When you look at the world over the last half century mcmasterp, the trend is gradually towards having more nations, and not congregating into one "super nation."

If you consider the cost of a woman's contraception over the course of her life, verse the one time cost of a vasectomy, there is a better option Gaith.

 

I second this.

 

So you consider Facebook to be a tyrannical empire then?

 

Last I checked, people weren't born into Facebook.

 

Unless you are the man getting his testicles surgically disconnected. Then, contraception "is a better option"! Of course, if I suggested a female get her tubes tied for the same reason, I'd be branded as sexist, sadist, barbaric, etc.

Yes. I do not have a social media account. In fact, this is the only BBS/forum to which I belong, besides AOL/Huffpost News. I value my privacy.

 

To be fair, a vasectomy is a quick, noninvasive, in-office procedure that can be reversed. Having the tubes tied is a highly invasive, irreversible procedure that requires general anesthesia and a hospital stay. So, yeah, you need a bit of perspective.

On the other hand, a male pill would be ideal, so that men could begin to have more options the way women do, and so that the burden could be more fairly divided between the sexes.

 

Robo-vasectomy. Install a little switch that connects/disconnects the tubes depending on your mood.

 

^Brilliant! A little, internal, remote controlled clamp!

 

Cyborgs are the new birth control.

 

^You make it sound as if we cyborgs are unsexy.

 

I intended no such thing.

 

^Then you are forgiven.

 

I'm just hoping for the day when science forces all humans to be born sterile. And only through a series of rigorous tests and credit checks will you be allowed to have the surgery to become fertile.

 

^hmmmm....somehow I suspect there may be a flaw in your plan...