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Originally Posted by Luap
No offense, but this is a pretty anecdotal piece of evidence to refute the suggestion of global government.
You seem to equate the words “country,” “state,” and “nation.” Perhaps you did not mean to, but that is the impression I as a reader got. They are by no means anything alike. The nation-state system ties all of these things together, but in the abstract, all of the concepts are different. A “country” is a vague geographic entity, a “state” is a political institution, and a “nation” is a cultural identity. Your conclusion—“ There is no common social theme that ties together the people of the world because there is nothing out there that is different enough to make us see our similarities. Countries can only exist when there are more than one.”—is ambiguous for this reason. I think a much more accurate statement would be “identities can only exist when there is more than one.” Also, it doesn't necessarily take outside differences to notice similarities: see the John Donne excerpt in my signature, written in the seventeenth century. Camaraderie based on nothing but human brother- and sister-hood has been around for centuries.
Also, your story of camaraderie would hold in the system of nation-states just as it would hold in a system of continent-states under a world federation. I don’t see how the political structure of the world would necessarily destroy cultural identities—it would definitely quicken integration and promote similarities, but it can never take away the feeling of closeness of meeting someone abroad with a similar background to you.
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I thought it was clear that my use of the word
state in this post was in reference to an actual
state of the United
States of America, i.e. Alabama, New York, Tennessee, Hawaii, etc. Apparently not. As for the difference between
country and
nation, I suppose you can nitpick if you like. I really have no interest in arguing that particular point since you apparently understood what I was getting at anyway.
You have addressed camraderie among individuals as well as comraderie among members of the same group when there are other, similar groups present -- neither of which I have disagreed with. But what you haven't addressed is how a large group shares that unique sense of comraderie when there is no comparable alternative group.
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You seem to be saying that the only “market economy” is one in which government is nonexistent, and any sort of “mixed economy” you define as “fascist.” Am I right?
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No, you're not right. I meant exactly what I wrote, otherwise I wouldn't have written it that way.
To your first inference, it's the difference between a government that establishes loose guidelines under which businesses may themselves operate, and a government owning or controlling businesses with the intent of handing autonomy over at a later date.
To your second inference, any sort of mixed economy is going go to contain bits and pieces of multiple economic systems. We generally label an economy as a whole based on the predominant system. But that does not preclude us from addressing subsets of the entire economy as being closer to one system or another.