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America is the top nation in the world, hence a world government would be expected to be Americanized. India, Africa, I'm looking at the footage, those nations are too underdeveloped to ever have a sway into a hypotetical world government. And no, no one of the power players will let, say Africa, ever become a super power. Also, English is the most widely spoken language.
@@Cooldude-ko7ps I dunno bro. While ONI's actions were, and probably still are, immoral and unethical, they played a large part in winning the war, most notably through the SPARTAN programs. While kidnapping children isn't a moral thing to do, this action resulting in the SPARTAN supersoldiers may as well bought humanity enough time to get lucky enough to find the Halo array. ONI also played a large role post-war in keeping the former Covenant races from unifying again.
I think the reason humanity is often unified when portraying an interstellar empire is quite simply the reason that only a unified humanity could muster the resources necessary to expand into space. If you look in our world for example, space exploration is an incredibly expensive and difficult endeavor. As a result, any country that is interested in exploring space has to contend with the opportunity cost of either diverting its own limited resources to either space exploration or more Earth-based issues such as domestic infrastructure or national defense. One of the reasons the United States has largely scaled back NASA is because it quite literally doesn't have the money to fund NASA and maintain its military and other domestic spending commitments. If Earth nations are divided, then they are distrustful of one another. And if they are distrustful of one another, they'll be too busy diverting money towards weapons and military spending to deter each other rather than meaningful space exploration. In fact, the irony here is if you did have a universe where space exploration was done by independent national governments, human colonies would be even less diverse because only a few countries on Earth have the resources to even think about space exploration. You would see American, European, Chinese, and maybe Indian and Russian colonies. But you wouldn't see any colonies from South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East, or Oceania, since even collectively, countries in such regions lack the resources, money, expertise or even interest in space exploration and are unlikely to for generations if not centuries. If you told me that humanity collectively put aside its differences, pooled its resources, and used the resulting synergy of resources from no longer having to spend on huge national armies to point at one another to expand into space, that's a lot more believable to me than telling me that Russia suddenly decided that it doesn't care about amassing troops on its Western border to deter NATO and would rather try to colonize new planets for some reason.
what you're missing though, is that with advances in technology, space travel becomes increasingly cheap. During the cold war, only major super powers could afford space programs, however now, private companies are able to get to space on their own. And when we get enough commercial interests in space, we will start to compete over those available resources. Your argument could be applied to the colonisation of the new world in the early modern period, however, after a period of exploration, the Spanish, portuguese, and later British, french and dutch empires didn't merge to collectively exploit the new world, they instead became a place to grab land from, encouraging fiercer competition between these powers. A possibly better way to justify a world government in fiction, would be as a means of dealing with the ever increasing interconnectedness of our world, as common issues such as climate change force us to work together (think the expanse's UN). The logical extension of this, would be that the less connected colonies throughout space would be rather disconnected from Terra, which could allow for a united Earth, whilst many of her colonies, through relative isolation and differing challenges, see them become more independent and diverse, politically, culturally and economically (again, think the expanse I.E the driven technocratic Martian republic, or the loose political alliances of the asteroid belt).
You did miss Ghana who is planning a moon mission, but you're right. Only a handful of countries would have proper colonies in space, at least early on. Everyone else would have to pay them to get the good stuff and they might not do it
To answer the question about whether Russians or Chinese could join the covenant.... No, it's actually a plot point that humanity isn't offered the option to join the covenant because humanity was chosen by the forerunners and can operate forerunner technology, so the Prophets opted to exterminate humanity to preserve the lie of the great journey.
Yeah he kinda missed that, the UNSC isn't even the Government of Humanity this role belongs to the UEG ( United Earth Government) although UNSC wielded the Power during the War.
why are the russians and chinease imidiatly named as traiters to humanity? my first pick would propably be the USA instead. the USA morals and regard for humanity are worse then those of Russia.
@@noobster4779 compared to every other nation that has been in its position as the most powerfull nation the us is pretty harmless, especially considering the modern potential for cruelty new technologies could enable.
The American influence you talked about in the beginning of the video is due to the media being made for the American/Western market, not some nebulous lack of diversity. Japanese or Indian Sci Fi is usually much different because it is made for their audience.
I agree to certain extent, though I haven't consumed much Indian Sci-Fi nor Japanese Sci-Fi (outside of anime). It's given that authors would put their home country as the centerpiece of their works. Even when they forced the works to be centered on another nation or global government, the influence from their own culture would clearly show itself. Take Evangelion, for a classic example. The events depicted was world-shattering, almost literally, but it was extremely Japan-centric. Also take a look at Code Geass, where the Brittania was supposed to be the major world power, yet most of the event depicted happen in Japan. There are multitude of Japanese, Chinese, and Indian works that are centered in their respective nation.
I agree although I would be quite interested in a Sifi setting based on or around Africa. But to piggyback on what you said maybe it has something to do with the fact the America is the most diverse and optimal choice for a multi racial government since a republic is the only way we as humans have figured out how to make things work when no one can agree on anything. Good conversation piece tho
That's mainly because if you look at Science Fiction from China/India/Japan or South Korea its incredibly more nationalistic. While the basis of Western Sci-Fi is based on some form of nationalism the core foundations of it are not. Starship Troopers was about the Federation, a United Earth Government whose main character spoke his native Tagalog alongside English and grew up Buenos Aires. Star Trek had many different cultures and peoples, and even showed subdivisions within those as we can clearly see in Star Trek Fiction. There's even things like Battletech which forewent Aliens altogether and had the centralized power collapse in on itself giving way to dozens of greater and lesser kingdoms in space all with their own cultures, economies, religions, languages and more. This is quiet honestly a boring piece that ignores very clear and popular examples for one or two 'haha gottem' moments.
I remember the British sci-fi comedy "Hyperdrive" actually set up their world like this where Britain was trying to make a new empire for itself among the stars but was constantly shown-up by the United States of America much to the shagrin of the show's captain who was always trying looking for an opportunity to win himself some glory
4:07 The Romulans are a poor example of a lack of diversity. They literally ARE the diverse splinter faction from a prior empire. The only thing is that it's not a human faction, they're an offshoot of the Vulcans, one of the founding members of the Federation. If you look at the Romulans as a faction of the Vulcans that split off, then the story starts to get the complexity you're asking for. Oh, and they also have a diversity of interests within the Romulan Empire too, such as the oppressed Remans fighting for freedom, and the constant struggle between the Tal'Shiar, the military, and the de-facto government. The Romulans are actually fairly well developed given that Star Trek goes out of its way to make them as secretive as possible.
Basically, the reason why these things don't happen is because it's a ton of worldbuilding and a ton of exposition to explain the audience. It's a huge amount of effort to be realistic about how complex a human or alien mash-up of governments would really be, especially when you're trying to explain whatever other concepts you need to explain. You're asking for a lot of buy-in on the part of the audience compared to Space USA. That being said, Space-China and Space-India fighting over Space does sound really cool.
@@danielefabbro822 “Sir” “Liutenent Locatelli… you been assign to the spaceship Berlusca” “Cos- what?” “There is a problem?” “I mean, yeah. A ship calls Berlusca?! With all the inventors, artists, scientist and even emperors we had, we call our ship Berlusca?” Do you then to join the crew of the Andreotti one?” “….no, ok”
@@TheNickscarface ah... I think there will never be a spaceship dedicated to Silvio Berlusconi. But our history it's full of naval battles. As you probably know, we also have fought and won the biggest naval battle in history, at Lepanto. It was also the biggest battle for Marines in history. And we did that in our era of naval dominance over the known world, far beyond the rising of naval empires such UK or Spain. Our potential for this kind of things is enormous. Have you ever studied something about Italian history? Because I assure you that there's a lot of interesting history to discover.
@@TheNickscarface for example, a good name for an italian space battleship would be "Roma" or "Lepanto". While for lesser units as like cruisers you can choose historical battles or even better historical naval commanders like Andrea Doria for example.
@@TheNickscarface unfortunately no one have ever even tried to portrait it on paintings or in novels. But the idea that we italians can colonize space by ourselves is actually pretty real. From last year we have achieved and developed our first space shuttle, from 2025 we will return to adopt nuclear energy (because we had issues with problems about pollution and radiations, so we never used it), we already build a shitton of satellites, modules for space stations, robotic arms, rockets to reach space etc. Our space technology is limited only by costs and access to strategic resources, that incredibly to know, we already own since our country is volcanic and some of those volcanoes spurr out a lot of interesting minerals. In the end, Italy could easily become a space power if we invest a bit more money on it.
"Why is there only one Romulan Nation?" Oof. I understand what you're saying but that isn't exactly a good example since the Romulans have their origins in Vulcans who rejected Surak's reforms at Time of Awakening and fled Vulcan to settle on Romulus after losing a war against Surak's followers. So they're technically a Vulcan nation. And even beyond that in TNG there is a mention of a Romulan split off, the Debrune, who died out. And if you want to pull in Beta stuff there is the Garidians from the TNG adventure game "A Final Unity" who more than likely are another offshoot.
The Systems alliance isn't a world government. Its headquarters are on a space station and it doesn't run things much on Earth, where many of the less powerful nations are as they are today.
Plus the fact that English is not the primary language. There is no primary language as the people still speak their native language of origin. We hear English thanks to subdermal translator implants.
And, well, I can tell you one thing: there is only one nation in the world that would name their colony "Thrundholm". (Holm is swedish for tiny island) So other nations are given some spotlight!
“Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” -Ronald Regan
I find that your Halo example later in the video is rather poor. In Halo, humanity *doesn't* exist under one unified banner, at least not at first. Many worlds are self-governed, or united with a few others. The UN existed as it does today, a galactic (rather than global) unification of the various nations and powers. America existed, as did Russia, china, etc. However, when the covenant first attacked, the shock of the existence of not only one alien species, but several all united under a single banner utilizing far superior technology and numbers in a self-proclaimed effort to wipe humanity out forced all the nations to hand control over to the UNSC, which then acted as a wartime government (Obv. with heavy american influences because western culture and audience, and also the heavy american influence that exists globally today). After the war, the UNSC continued to act as a galactic government, but its flaws became very clear. Many worlds, even during the war, still governed themselves. And there were entire planets that operated on non-capitalist economic systems (though that may have been mostly due to need, rather than desire. A communist system is more easily able to force a planetary population to work when future tech is at play and the threat of extinction whipping at people's back). The UNSC actively dealt with, and still deals with, rebel groups trying to break off all over the place. Despite all this, however, I do still agree that the classic future unified humanity idea is far too overplayed, and using the halo example, I would have loved to see a book or some other piece of media where the UNSC deals with the war ending, and the various major powers try to wrest back control, perhaps starting a galactic civil war where hundreds of factions all spread out across the worlds the covenant had claimed or destroyed in an attempt to break off from the oppressive UNSC wartime government.
You may consider their typical response to insurrectionist activity harsh, but considering the fact that humanity was being subjected to a genocidal war against them by a technologically and numerically superior, alien hegemony, I think that their response was understandable, if not warranted. But, there are several issues with your own description of the UNSC that would make it impossible for a storyline where the remaining planets within human controlled space rose up against the UNSC; namely the fact that the UNSC gave the political powers it had received after the start of the Human/Covenant War back to the civilian governments months prior to the war actually ending. The only thing that the emergency powers really did was allow the UNSC to effectively fight against the Covenant without having to be bogged down by politics, inquiries, and red tape. But, as you yourself stated, there were many colonies within human controlled space that still retained at least some autonomy. The UNSC was hardly oppressive in the sense of being despotic.
There's also the mention of different languages, even directly showing it in a scene in Halo: Reach. Week 1 Edit: For those curious, I recently replayed the game. Subtitles state the woman in the first level as speaking Hungarian. However, I couldn’t check to see if it’s true. I’m curious to see if there are any other main languages in the halo universe.
Well in expanse tensions seem not to be nation vs nation problem, but rather one party vs the other one. Avasarala is still one of the best characters in Sci fi though
The answer to why Earth is as unified as it is in The Expanse is simple. Shifting tribalism. Instead of nations, races, or religions warring with each other, its now regions of the sol system. Mars and then the belt became the "other", the enemy. Ignorance and jingoistic pride on every side not only blinds people to the failings of their own governments/cultures, but especially personal failings. Because you can do no wrong as long as you hurt the "other" in the name of your tribe.
No nation would submit to the Covenant and become their newest members. Not for long at least. The Covenant's end game was the complete extermination of the human species. There wasn't any chance in hell the Covenant would show anything close to mercy to a human faction.
Funnily enough, the Sangheili actually did petition at one point to have humanity join the Covenant, as they were impressed by the fighting spirit of the UNSC military and their willingness to fight on till he bitter end. The Prophets rejected this of course, but it makes you think.
Yeah, not surprising considering their sense of honor. There isn't much more honorable than seeing a species sacrificing everything to protect itself from extinction.
@@Omega4Productions True. But you forget the ones pulling all the strings were the prophets so it doesn't matter what the elites think. The prophets had their one single goal of exterminating humanity.
Well, it sorta does matter. The Sangheili were a very powerful and influential part of the Covenant (one of its two founding members), so what they think is important. Even if the Hierarchs were manipulating the Covenant all along, its important to note this because it does demonstrate that if you took out the Hierarchs alone, the chance of the Human-Covenant War occurring would have astronomically deteriorated.
The solution to the creative impasse seems simple - just show how there are different ideological and political parties in the future world government. Not just Earth vs. colonies but splits based on genetic manipulation or foreign relations or say the fair distribution of energy.
or smart contacts, blockchain governance, and the non aggression principle. but then you'd lose some of the state's power.... .... as in all of it because it won't have a reason to exist anymore 🙃
Plowbeast or just have a socialist and a capalist political parties because I’m pretty sure that will be the main division in politics for centuries to come
This sounds like what Sid Meirer's did for Civilization: Beyond Earth. In that game there really isn't any recognizable nations like France or the U.S. but a selection of conglomerates or a union of nation-states that correspond to distinct regions of Earth.
4:40 No human nations would be able to join the covenant, the heirarchs declared that humans were inherently heretics that needed to be utterly destroyed.
Well the reason why most Earth Governments we see in science fiction be American Centrist, is because, wait for it.........all of those stories (at least the most iconic ones) are written by American (or at least English speaking) writers. I am pretty sure if we a see a Earth government story be written by Russian or an Indian, we will see the biases of that culture, to their own.
Aliens motivated not by greed have a reason not to be capitalist. Perhaps some species aren't quite as ambitious as others and choose to centralize everything to keep things stable.
(All of these are just my opinions) Hostile aliens wouldn't just be attacking the "American Module" of a human Dyson Sphere. The loss of a 50,000 crew exploration ship wouldn't just have Japanese casualties. A shipment of alien plants that grants 200-year human life spans wouldn't just benefit the Brazilians. No country is self-sufficient. Colonies, outposts, and even ships in distant stars would most likely be a joint effort between nations; sharing scientists, raw materials, logistics, manpower, technologies, etc. Everyone has a stake in the effort and any threat would merit a unified use of force. Any country that refuse to take part would seriously be left behind. I mean if the Indians develop fusion power then I would gladly send them luxury goods, manpower, raw materials, industrial capacity, etc in exchange for technology. I suppose it also matters if aliens exist in the galaxy; after all the greatest unifying force is a common enemy. In that case a world government is inevitable. However if we are alone (or atleast the most technologically advanced species), then perhaps interstellar claims of individual coalitions are possible, but certainly warfare would be minimal among humans. Think about it: Why would a space battle between coalitions occur thousands of light years away when you could just use ICBMs to nuke the country only a thousand kilometers away? No, I think all conflict will be settled on the homeworld, peacefully. Besides, once those silly colonists start to protest about "independence", us earthlings would be like "Oh you want to stop sending us tribute? WANT US TO EXTINGUISH YOUR FREAKING SUN?!?!? No? Good." :D
Johan Natavius the other option is that you are right on the fact that people wouldn’t care fighting space wars when they could just nuke the hell out of their earthly neighbors, but you are wrong on the fact that it provides incentives not to do it. They could just as well think « well, now that my government won’t instantly be nuked to death if I nuke Russia to death, and at worst I’Lloyd still have plenty space and people that will survive the event, I might as well do it ». I mean, what is to stop us from using nukes on a more regular basis if nukes won’t be a problem also for the nuker ? So the other possibility is that we don’t unite at all, but that some of our nations survive into space when earth is a radioactive wasteland, or just a nobody weird planet (because multiple nations at once on it), or a planet that acts as a diplomatic hub but no longer as the capital of our species or of any space nation.
Nathan Jora or you know it’s just earth because we will never be a galactic empire and we will never meet aliens because FTL is impossible meaning that we will likely never be able to sustain any “colonies” not in our solar system and even then those would be difficult to sustain and would likely break away incredibly fast because colonies never stay loyal and will always eventually want their independence
@@leontrotsky9268 This is an old comment but I agree with Schmidtter. Colonisation of our solar system is definitely possible due to all the resources it would provide. Start a few mining operations and the resources pouring in will push for further colonisation and the resources will go to the various countries on Earth. FTL travel is possible with the laws of physics since warp drives are theoretically possible albeit they require exotic matter which we haven't found but you underestimate how much we don't know. Flying from New York used to be considered impossible, look at where we are now.
I don’t wanna be *that guy,* but the UNSC is the military arm of the UEG (Unified Earth Government). Just one of those things that inexplicably bug me. Sorry!
This is an incredibly late comment to add to this section, and it doesn't even pertain to the UNSC or Halo, but... At 4:17, when it was posited what it would look like if humanity was more deeply and noticeably divided in Halo, it got me thinking about the Frontlines novel series, where human colonization was pushed by two major factions on Earth, the North American Commonwealth (a unified state consisting of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico) and the Sino-Russian Alliance, who are at war with one another when First Contact occurs. The power dynamic is alluded to at various points in the series, and while the SRA aren't a consistent primary focus in the series, the author makes it a point that the two "megapowers" on Earth don't immediately set aside their differences and align themselves to combat the alien threat for quite some time. It's a cool series, and for anyone who is fond of military science fiction, especially ones where the futuristic hardware is more believable from a current, real-world perspective, I'd definitely recommend giving the series a try.
I agree, but I'd go one further and say when you go colonise something a trillion miles away, the differences between two nations back home seem petty. If we sent 50 Americans and 50 Russians to Mars and had them have to survive on their own without any contact with Earth, I bet you in 50 years time they lose their 'nation' identity and consider themselves 'Martian', at which point they cease to care about east-west relationships back home. :)
@@bcukdannage True. Space exploration is battle for survival. And its well known that in a very short while, the one standing by your side in battle will be your brother in a very short time and everyone else seems very far away, even if they are on the same planet. And if you see the Planet not as a huge expanse that goes on, but a tiny, lonely orb in space, you are going to feel like a kid who has never before seen his home from outside.
"Easier"? You must be british then, if you call it "easier". Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch of the man whos leg was eaten by a lion. "I feel fine. Much lighter actually" . How about "actually realistically possible instead of practically impossible."
It's also because of the cost. A one way trip to Alfa Centauri with a warp drive costs something like 9,12500000E+15 dollars ONLY in fuel (anti-matter). No nation has that much money to waste.
I'm not sure where you're getting that the US's successor states are given any precedence over the others in these kinds of settings. The United Republic of North America is mentioned in Halo, but it's ultimately just as irrelevant to the story as the East African Protectorate, European Union or China.
My future history stories actually have the human capital in Canberra. Both for being a built in capital of a country that was not a current or former superpower. But also because Australia was the first place where the European and Asian race merged. Which is a big deal for humanity.
This is exactly what I try to avoid in my writing. Even where my aliens are concerned. Human factions should often have identifiable cultural roots in the locations of where their colonists originated from. There's a liberal theocratic nation I have that's from a melting pot of peoples from India and Pakistan up to and including former British families that stayed after their independence. I have an alien nation who, while not controlling their total home planet, controls space transportation and trade due to a protectorate alliance with a larger space fairing nation. The other states on their homeworld have to buy and maintain their rights to settle other worlds and colloquially refer to the nation they go through as a "Hegemony" and as a majority do not speak the main nations language. I feel it adds a very human and lived-in touch to your universe setting and certainly gives more opportunity to expand on later.
Smarmy answer: Cuz it's easier/faster to write. Honest answer: Thinking about it realistically I believe it is a question of 'scale'. Many of the examples you gave are very large scale powers already. If the setting was still within the realm of our solar system, your point stands very well. Could the USA or other nations afford to say, make a colony on the Moon and/or Mars by themselves? Certainly, I fully believe that to be possible, if that's what the setting was meant to be. But say the colony was outside of the solar system? No, we'd have to have some kind of global cooperation. Some means of spreading the cost around because it would bankrupt any one nation by themselves, no matter how wealthy said nation is. The only exception would be if FTL or other means that already existed to made it easier to do so. In terms of large scale powers, it could indeed work again as you are saying because by then the necessary infrastructure for the civilization would be put down for it to exist within the realm of possibility, so they could afford to split off. However, you're forgetting that just because a group only has one government, it doesn't mean they're totally united. To use the Romulans, you're right that they're one huge group, but they also have factions with them such as the Tal Shiar, the Military, and the Reunificationist Movement, and who knows how many others. Which those seem to cause more internal strife for them than it does for anyone else (then again Romulans tend to be written with 'chronic backstabbing disorder' so that's more a fault of poor writing than their own fault).
Regarding the cost a warp drive would cost 9,12500000E+15 dollars in fuel for a one way trip to Alfa Centauri, many times more money than Earth produces in one year.
@SpacePotato Nuclear fusion is already being used in nuclear powerplants across the world. I don't think you understand just how much energy it would take to power an Alcubierre Drive.
Keep in mind that we would likely exhaust the resources in our own solar system before we leave it. I would imagine having a terraformed mars and colonies established on several other planets/moons/asteroids adding wealth to the over all economy. Before we consider leaving it entirely. (And if we lack ftl, then it would take ages before we get results from an interstellar journey.)
What about Ender's Game? The instant the buggers are defeated, the nations fracture, with India, the Hegemony, and other groups competing for colonies and influence.
I think it still stands as an example, because it is not unification then expansion, but expansion, then unification. The fluid nature of governments and statecraft is what the video seemed to be arguing for, not always just static and bland western style governments from beginning to end.
To be fair though, the books that follow Peter wiggin and Bean show explicitly how he unifies earth. It's not just another Sci fi series where earth is randomly unified, the characters actually struggle through the series of wars that follow and get bogged down by political tension and threats against their lives for said unification. Even then by the end of the books that follow this, the USA has remained isolationist so it hasn't yet fully unified.
jj16802 of the Helghast Army true Killzone (and even star wars), are just Ww2 on space But ofcourse what he was talking about was of modern political systems but in space Ww2 is done to dead, while having a Federation Russia VS a Capitalism America, Vs United Europe vs Communist China On a galactic scale sounds more fun (and we can add small country colonies like Brazil, Africa, Japa, India, etc there to mix things up)
Dan Abbnet dose a space cold war in Embedded and the Arch Royal sierese of books also dose something simler in wich all nations have independent space navy's and copeat with one and other
How about space empires that play a constant influence game with each other over the independent nations on planets, fighting each other in proxy wars far away from earth that involve hundreds of millions of men fighting across thousands of distinct combat zones.
I'm mexican and I love sci-fi, of course it bothers me that I rarely get to see my country represented in movies, never a ship name, never even a small victory, nothing!
@@TheOneWhoMightBe And we'll probably chuck the new one come next year when there's a federal election, or is that a federal ejection? Makes you proud, even our politics is venomous.
Dominic Perez | While showing a thumbnail featuring the United Nations.
6 років тому+14
Legend of the Galactic Heroes definitely makes an interesting example. A short lived united government splits into two nations, one of the Galactic Empire resembling Prussia, and the Free Planets Alliance, resembling the stereotypical democratic nation.
@@hemidas that's because right around the time Japan modernized, the Germans had supplanted the French as the leading European power in an incredibly humiliating defeat for the French. So, Japan modeled themselves in terms of bureaucracy and economy after the new German empire.
The problem with something like China or the US colonizing other worlds is the cost. It would be extremely expensive for even the richest single nation on Earth to establish and maintain a colony on another world, especially one that exists outside of our solar system. The costs of maintaining said colony would quickly outweigh whatever benefits it'd bring. That's why a unified planetary body would likely be necessary. The cost could be shared by multiple nations. What really makes more sense would be for each 'colony' to be an independent nation under a larger multi-national organization. Kind of a more powerful version of the UN in space.
@@ObsdnBlck what would happen if there was some sort of Stargate type technology? Allowing near instantaneous travel to and from earth to other distant planets.
Current companies can't even come close to matching the income of most countries in the world. Apart from the absolute gargantuans. Malawi, the literal most poor country in the world (going off nominal GDP) is worth around $6 billion per year. The entirety of the Alphabet is makes about $12 billion. We'll have to see some country sized (and likely state sponsored) businesses for them to somehow manage to get to space.
The UN in the expanse is yet another boring US-style world goverment. Pretty much yankees in space. I like the Martian Congressional Republic much more.
Here’s blast from the past; Space Above and Beyond. Which featured the nations of Earth, the United Nations played a role of economic, diplomatic and military cooperation when bringing the full might of Earth against the powerful aliens that threatened humanity’s existence. The nations are still sovereign and all are not equal in military space fighting capabilities. While the show only lasts one season it is very interesting to watch USMC kicking alien butts.
Even that show was a mixed bag. It still suffered from the USA-centric view that a lot of scifi has as the episodes go on. Yet there are one off episodes like the one with a british tank in it that keep it interesting. I would have loved to see spin off series with a Chinese, Indian, Russian, UK or Japanese carrier.
Very often a boring life is the best life. One doesn't have to be a history major to realize and understand the inn pact that the decisions of a few can have on the many. Fewer governments mean fewer wars and greater cooperation. Even though a single world government may sound boring I don't see us leaving the solar system without one.
Noobster That's fucking bullshit. If society would stop evolving because we've gotten read of war and united earth under one government where everyone works together, then that's a bloody good thing. Also technology doesn't stagnate because we suddenly had no more war. That's a moronic fucking statement. Even if all of humanity suddenly decides that maybe we're not that different after all and start living alongside each other peacefully, we're still gonna have a whole lot of fucking conflict dealing with nature acting up.
@@noobster4779 yes conflict does often lead to some progress but so doo many other activities that human beings engaged in. Space and The universe beyond will have more than enough challenges to overcome without us having to break out the lazguns and multi-meltas.
I would argue that a one world government is inherently more tyrannical. As you say fewer governments mean fewer wars but it also means that there is no opposition. You are essentially, stuck with one government and no way of getting outside its power structure. This means that oppressed or disgruntled elements of society are essentially stuck in the system. Far better I say to remain happily divided into many nations and instead find a way to live among our differences peacefully.
War doesn't lead to new technological innovations, instead it leads to more rapid applications of existing technology. When a total war is raging, its usually better to spend your time and money refining the things that work than in making new types of weapon. No new tech, practical uses for current tech.
The Expanse gives a taste of what you're looking for and the novels go quite a bit deeper into it. It talks about the way different cultures combined on different worlds, also influenced by the different realities of gravity and resources, to create unique cultures on those worlds. For example, one main character is a Martian who looks like a particularly tall Indian who speaks with a combined mild Hindi accent and a deep Texas drawl. The TV show skipped the Belter hand gestures that, in the books, replace all normal facial expressions due to the fact Belters spend so much time in space suits. Also, even when alien threats are present Belters, Martians, and Earthers still fight with each other before, during, and after.
The idea of multi-political interstellar humanity would be interesting, but I don't see how it would work with multiple nations on the same planets. The reason why is because we would quickly get into issues of continuity of territory, sovereignty disputes, and border wars. It's not an accident that throughout most human history, countries and nations have been continuous, with direct routes between mainland and offshore holdings. Everything involved in ruling territory is made so much easier when everything between point A and point B is yours. Resource logistics, border security, troop movement, public transportation, the list goes on. All of these things are so much easier to handle because of one authority ruling over it all. If Earth were still divided into distinct, competing blocks of power while humanity was interstellar, the connections between planets would be a nightmare. Let's say the Polity A has some colonies holdings on Mars and Polity B has some mining stations in the main asteroid belt. With where the planets are at the moment, any ships Polity B sends to those mining stations will necessarily have to pass by close to Mars. If Polities A and B have diplomatic tension and friction, and there are worries about war on the horizon between them, than the defense forces around Mars are going to be really nervous around Polity B's ships as they pass by. On any kind of large, interstellar scale this would be unsustainable, and regulatory bodies and functions would be put into place to make this all so much easier and smoother. End result is that while it wouldn't be 'unified' in like a full republic or union, the involved parties would member states of an overall government of some sort. That's the closest I feel you could get to any appreciably developed interstellar humanity that has yet to unify.
There could likely be a multinational version of the old charter companies which used to pave the way for imperialism and colonization such as a Hudson bay style company which has NATO backing to ensure efficient transport and logistics to Mars.
You just explained in great detail why a setting with multiple competing powers is more interesting. Realistically, any such problems would be disregarded at first, or have haphazard treaties with little-to-no substance signed about them due to the shear resource potential of off-world exploitation, paving way for colonization and these problems to become real problems a few decades down the line.
@@DavidBarkland Looking back at the OP's comment I was thinking the same thing, that is the point of multiple independent, sovereign countries competing for extertrestrial resources and territory, conflicts, intrigue, poorly thought out but well intentioned reasons, mishaps and etc. That sounds like the perfect setting for a lot of stories, dozens or even hundreds of tales of every conceivable scale imaginable from a disagreement between different mining colonies from separate countries on Mars over some mineral rights to full blown separatist revolution on one of Germany's asteroid colonies. Thinking about it as a plot device that would allow even nations with little to no space program to be able to get in on the off world colonial race we could use something like with the Half-life series did. In HF there exists a rudimentary portal technology via strange *mcguffin-y crystals* that can be used to open up portals to entirely alien dimensions. (multiverse, colonial interests) A similar crystal (basically) 'magic' could be utilized for exploitation and colonization by various nations of Earth to other planets. Atleast I think it has potential for an interesting premise! Think, *what would happen if almost every nation (not just "nation states") on Earth was suddenly given 'keys' in the form of (relatively) cheap and mostly easily maintainable portal travel to the stars and the planets that lay around them?*
As we can observe with many modern governments, the states or provinces under one governing body don't have to necessarily get along with one another to be "the same" (nationally speaking). As even a small example: you wouldn't find many people from Washington that appreciate Southern Californians moving to their state, ditto with Northeast Georgia and and South Florida. Or, how the nation of India is a loosely held assembly of ethnic groups with loosely assigned borders that don't like each other very much, ditto with China and plenty of other countries. I guess in many works of fiction, there's not enough time in the story, or maybe these themes are outside of the narrative's scope, to properly explore ideas like this. The problem then becomes, "There aren't enough stories exploring these facts of human existence" instead of "World governments are boring." A very thought-provoking video!
In defense of Mass Effect's Alliance that one is more of a military coalition than a government. It's basically a space military a bunch of bigger governments share. If you're not military you're not Alliance.
This is exactly what I was thinking the whole time. Systems Alliance is more like a more functional NATO than it is the world government (though it basically becomes that by the end of the series...).
I find it unusual that (especially if it's Earth, not so much with fully Sci-fi planets eg: Naboo from Star Wars) all countries would join together even if they've been enemies for decades just because the planet achieves space travel or joins a Galactic government
Well with globalisation the world is more connected so ideas and principles spread more easily, and let us face it colonizing a entire new planet well not be sheap .
Its the same as when cities formed into nations as others did in order to not be wiped out or was just straight up conquered, the same thing would likely happen to planet wide governments.
Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because-what with trolls and dwarfs and so on-speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green. This line of thought would be the prevailing reason for a planetary government
That is still stupid though why would let us say China sacrifice their sovereignty? Especially to what would be seen as a western power after the Century of Humiliation?
Jedi Spartan | Heck, that's what happened after World War II. So are you saying what happened back then is unusual? I mean… 'Hey, we are building a new League of Nations, anyone want to enter?' If that happened in a story, it would've been declared as unrealistic.
Actually, Freelancer has a lore about humanity being still not unified and taking over space. The game even portrays a war between Liberty Systems (USA), Reinhland (Germans/Russians), Kusari (Japan) and Britannia. You even got hispanics forming the Corsairs. Each nation sent a huge colonial ship knowed as Sleeper.
There's a book series I read recently which has pretty much exactly what you described - nations of earth competing in space for planets and resources. Empire Rising, I believe it was called. Pretty good, would recommend.
I think the reason we don't see much of this is because those who create Sci-fF stories don't do it for the politics. They have grand visions of alien worlds, spacecraft, cosmic knowledge, etc. For example Mass Effect has politics, but it cares more about making humans feel as cool as the aliens around them than worrying about internal human affairs. Basically, someone who makes Sci-Fi stories probably did it to get away from current humanity and fantasize about a grand future for us. With that said, I (and my brother) have thought of the same ideas presented in this video and love them. I'd definitely support a series that does what you've proposed.
A good example of a divided humanity is the Battletech Universe. You have multiple different factions and cultural groups in those factions. Break away groups form their own realms when the parent government does not meet their needs such as the Filtvelt Coalition breaking away from the Federated Suns when the FedSuns was not helping that part with pirates.
Not really. It became the de facto government during the Humam-Covenant War. The real government of Halo's Humans is the UEG, or the United Earth Government.
In Nick Webb's 'Legacy of the Fleet' series, there exists just such a nation, one where it's constituent nations all wield influence over their own sectors of space. Mexico, Russia, and the United States all have extrasolar territories in their possession. Awesome video!
I have a loose setting that I will most likely use later on, where in an act of desperation, an alien species decides to launch a counterattack with an ancient science vessel turned into a superweapon. The attack was meant to force the human fleets to lift the orbital siege from their homeworld and try intercepting it. Humans had no idea what it does though and decided to stick around and finish the ground war once and for all. The vessel slips past the Solar system's defense by sending most of the fleet to attack Earth, while it itself travels clsoer to the Sun. Humans win the orbital fight, but not before getting parts of Earth glassed. Then, the science vessel activates and turns Sun into a black hole. This causes a mass extinction on Earth, as everyone is scrambling to build underground settlements before the temperature drops to unbearable levels. Meanwhile the alien homeworld is captured and forced to lend their remaining resources to evacuate as many humans as possible. They are later resettled to many colonized worlds inhabited by other species that previously had small populations. This pretty much causes almost complete destruction of any remaining governemnts the humans had, with the exception of those who decided to stay in underground settlements on Earth. Humanity, despite being vital in the victory, had basically sacreficed their future as a major player for the foreseeable future. And then, the setting truly begins.
The thing with theese typical fictional world gouverments is, that the (primarily western) audience is usually supposed to identify themselves with the people supporting said gouverment, which is easier if the supported gouverment is similar to the one the audience is familiar with (both in terms of referenced workings as well as stylistic trappings). Western audience would probably find it somewhat more difficult to root for the operatives of a world gouverment that is a chineese-style one-party dictatorship. And the exceptions you brought up further underline this: in the starship troopers movie the WG is intentionally painted as facist, in order to emphasize the point of the director, and in Firefly the audience is supposed to root for the scrappy crew of ex-rebels who despise the WG in that series.
There's no reason to have multiple governments in a story unless that matters, and there's no reason to make a unique goverment style for the same reason. Generally speaking, unnecessary detail is just a distraction from the main story: fine as side-material, but otherwise it's just busy work for the casual fan.
To be perfectly honest, i think an excellent example of a very diverse, non-complimenting culture that over time fused together into something more ‘benal’ is the United States of America. How many different cultures settled on the continent, fought and killed each other and natives for one reasn or another, and yet, a few sparse centures later, while still fairly different from one another depending on the regions, there are now far more similarities then differences, unlike generations ago. You have to consider that when a government forms and is stable enough, able to fulfill its duty to the citizens, even a melting pot will be able to form similarities given time. When it comes to alien empires like the Turians and Romulans, these guys have been in space for a LOONNNG time in comparison to man, and have effectively worked out the ‘kinks’ that mankind will undoubtedly also have in its expansion to the stars. The turians had its colony wars, the romulans are a seperate nation of VULCANOIDS. Listen, i love your videos, but something about this one seemed... odd. Agitated. Instinctive rather then intellectual.
IMHO the vast amount of resources needed to explore, extract resources, and colonize could only occur with a unified world. A single powerful and prosperous nation state could begin such a project, but the expense, manpower, and resources would not be sustainable without vast devolvement of cultural, economic, and military abilities of that nation state. In Fiscal Year 2019, the federal budget of the United States of America will be approximately $4.407 trillion. The U.S. government estimates it will receive $3.422 trillion in revenue. That creates a $985 billion deficit for October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2019. This is seen by most economist as a deficit that will adversely effect the stability and economy of the US. Now add another $1 trillion to that budget's requirements. You can see the problem. In a world government the requirements for a large military is gone. That alone would allow an increase of more than three times the stated $1 trillion for the program I mentioned earlier. A world government is usually boring from the outside, but its practicality is easy to understand.
You're wrong about the Systems alliance. They are not a world government created for space exploration. They began as a branch for exploration and military in space and when the first contact war began and the world governments didn't react the systems alliance took charge. There are still independent governments on earth and in the descriptions of the planets throughout the trilogy there are even mentions of feuds between earth countries colonization rights to planets. Although at the time of the game it has largely changed to corporations and the systems alliance plays a larger governmental role in space, there is still an earth council that they have to answer to.
The thing about world governments in sci-fi, in general, is that they're typically real world countries, or analogs based on them, blown up to galactic scale. The reason you don't see multiple countries on a planet in a galactic war is the same reason you don't typically see different peoples within a country in a world war. Unless the focus of the plot is specifically on them, they might as well not exist as far as the story is concerned. Especially in stories still heavily effected by the Cold War, Earth is Washington DC, and humanity is the USA, the evil dictatorship the humans are fighting is the Soviet Union, and their homeworld is Moscow. Or, replace the USSR with whomever else the US is fighting against or has anxiety about in that time period, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Vietnam, China. Honestly, I'm not even sure most sci-fi writers consciously realize they're doing it. I pride myself on being aware of these kinds of tropes and I still fall into that habit - while they're not humans, my Stellaris main is some of the best and worst of America boiled down into three Ethics and two Civics.
It would never be possible for a single country to manage and colonize a system. A more realistic way is for unions of states to do it. For example the European Union to colonize a system that has settlers from all its member states. Or the Asian union with China and its member states. It would be maybe 3 or 4 big unions that will colonize. And its normal that those would form alliances or maybe a union, becoming one big half planet government. That's why I find it realistic for world government Maybe not all nations would be members, but those who are not, they will not be able to compete or even reach outside our solar system. Look at NASA or the European space agency how they struggle on their own to do something, and how good they are when they combine their resources. Teamwork, is the key and the future.
Exactly my point. Just one country, even if it gives most of its budget, it won't be enough. Investing everything in space exploration will leave it vulnerable. But a coalition/alliance/union of say 3-4 countries, how that's more within the reach of possibility.
@@ivanfreely6366 Yeah but that's how geopolitics work. Imagine if USA didn't a strong enough military presences in the Pacific. China, North Korea, and other states that want to expand through aggressive policies would have no one to contest their agenda. And if too many countries would be added to the sphere of influence of lets say china, it would weaken any other states a lot. Outproducing and having a market monopoly on almost all important goods, making space exploration imposibile to fund, if your country is having to buy anything at overpriced for the space construction/research, you won't go very far.
You mean the way small European countries like Portugal and the Netherlands were completely unable to establish their own overseas empires during the European Age of Exploration and Expansion?🤨
@@stevenc.6502 wow, 3 years but I'l reply. We're talking about something totally different than sail your boat around and using slaves to gain resources or cheat undeveloped people for their hard worked resources
A SF setting where countries compete for the stars (something like the Scramble for Africa) , with the Sol system and Terra being neutral ground, would be something new and interresting. More than the classic "US world gov in space"
This is why I'm such a fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington universe outlined in his books. The world didn't unite when it took to the stars, at least not initially, and the interstellar nations that formed sometimes reflected their nations of origin and other times structured themselves completely differently. Earth did eventually unite under one flag, however only after another devastating world war which wiped out a significant portion of the population and wreaked havoc on the environment. At the time the series primarily takes place (about 2k years post-diaspora from earth) Earth does head the largest nation, however it's seen as bloated with bureaucracy and somewhat backwards by the interstellar newer nations.
The Human Systems Alliance isn’t necessarily a unified human government. Setting aside the fact that in the ME universe, there are many human colonies throughout the Terminus Systems and even the Attican Traverse that aren’t affiliated with the Alliance, earth also still has multiple national governments (although it’s insinuated that hypercapitalist megacorps had largely undermined public governance prior to the development of the HSA). The Alliance is largely more of a coalition of human interstellar systems into a unified military and political agency in response to the First Contact War and discovery of the Citadel Council. For the most part, humanity is still very much diverse in its governance, especially on Earth, where the Reapers were able to manipulate the disparate governments into accepting indoctrination and fighting the resistance forces, who were majorly supported by the HSA, showing just how little power the HSA really had in the long run.
One thing that comes to mind is SolForce (Sword of the Stars), the way they function primarily depends on the player and in lore their main language is Latin and they even had other splinter factions (one confirmed lore faction is Frontier Alliance). It isn't very far from the stereotypical formula but still it's a bit different in ways.
So, me and my friends have been doing this country rp on google maps using polygons to map out countries. We do this at school when we have off time, and things got way deeper than I could've imagined. I allowed players to play any country that existed in history, with some exceptions, to be played with modern technology. I played the Austro-Hungarian empire and dubbed it "Großer Össterreich", the German Empire, the USA, China, Australia, Japan,and Egypt were all major players in the RP. I am now going to explain what has happnened in the RP because it's sort of linked to the topic of this video. So in the beginning, I establish the "Imperial co-prosperity sphere" whitch was a coalition for expansionist nations, the creation of this coalition would set the stage for the entire RP. So things were normal for a bit, until the European peace Union was formed by Germany, in response to extensive war fought by me, and by this point the USA was in the ICPS. So tensions skyrocketed and it seemed like war between Austria and Germany was imminent, China woulf join the ICPS shortly after. In order to lower tensions, Germany dissolved the EPU, this calmed things down for a bit and just after the North African Union was formed by Niger. So tensions skyrocketed once more , shortly after Germany joined the ICPS. So we planned war against the N.A.U. Germany decided to send an umanned cargo ship filled with bombs to Cairo. I fired a bunch of missiles and next thing N.A.U is gone. Afterward we got Australia in the ICPS. And since the expanding Japan was going south, we need ed to get Australia a place in the pacific, so the ICPS, now the Democratic Liberation Front after a mass change to democracy, declared war on Japan, and won. This is where things happen. China was inactive most of the time, but they made a deal with Japan getting them to surrender. Another important factor was Germany leaving the DLF after some weapon blue prints weren't shared with them. So treaties were held Australia and China argued over territory in the Pacific, all while the US and Germany were plotting behind my back to subdue China as a threat. Once I obtained knowledge of this betrayal, I kicked the US from the DLF, and made war between Austria and Germany imminent. But, the U.S, seemingly guilty after betraying its ally, decided to stay neutral in the conflict. A few days later, a newly reformed N.A.U with a quite a chonky Egypt violated a bunch of airspace to combat Austria and backed out of the war almost immediately after it began. So it was Germany vs. Austria for a while. Until the US joined the side of the Austrians, AND THEN, I, the host of the RP, decided to modernize space travel , AND THEN, USA signed a non-agression pact with Germany to keep the N.A.U out of the war, ANNND THEN, Austria and the U.S formed the Federal Union of Earth pulling Austria out of the war. Idk why I did this, I totally didn't have to, but I felt like it was related to the topic of the video. And if you managed to keep up with that, and want to know more for some reason ( I left a whole TON out ) let me know and I'll provide more in depth stories later.
Something to keep in mind in regards to government and space exploration is the huge disparity that will happen between the governments that get to the stars first and those left behind. The resources available to a government that is actively mining asteroids will devastate the countries that can't.
Great video. In real life, space exploration will likely mean the end of centralized control in general. You and your buddies can build an O’Neill cylinder and just leave for a different part of the solar system if the locals start demanding taxes or want you to worship The God-King of Mankind or whatever. Planets might still be powerhouses, but good luck enforcing your will on a city-state of 100,000 out on the Oort Cloud.
The only way you will be able to have a coherent interstellar civilization is to have FTL travel but even than you will need to have some kind of monopoly over FTL travel like in Dune. Or have a military so powerful that it can put down rebellion after rebellion with no real need to rest or rebuild its power like in warhammer 40k. But having any kind of centralized government will be a impossibility because of the logistical nightmare that running a galactic or interstellar empire will be.
Ivan Freely Again look at the colonial empires of old, that didn't work back then and it won't work in the future. You are assuming that the people of Mars or even the governing body won't just rise up because Earth will control the economy. Unless you haven't notice poor countries that are control by richer ones are a lot more likely to have a revolution than rich countries that control their own economy.
Usually people want a unified earth because it makes more sense for us to pool all nations resources, thus making more sense for it to be an interstellar power.
As far as non-diegetic (outside the world of the story) explanations, I think the unified Earth government shows up so often not so much because it's "expected" that one will be formed by the time we start interstellar expansion but because it's easier on the writer(s). If you're trying to build a sturdy, detailed, and at least semi-realistic world, it's simpler and quicker (both in and out of the story's world) to have "the government" send their space force (our heroes included) to mine for Jarko crystals, explore an uncharted planet, establish diplomatic relations with the Xorqax Empire, or fight against the Iss-Tah if "the government" is a monolithic, streamlined entity with jurisdiction over Earth and all its peoples rather than, say, the _United States_ government, which would need to debate both _inside_ itself with a likely interplay between Congress, the President, and the assorted executive Agencies which could affect the Space Command, and _outside_ itself too. The Unified Peoples of Earth have little to no "competition" that's truly "close" in any immediately important sense. The United States, however, has comparatively limited scope and finances and must consider not only its own domestic needs and concerns but also foreign issues too. What will the _Russians_ think of us mining for Jarko crystals so close to one of their settlements? The French have been hanging around this planet a lot recently; will mounting our own expedition hurt relations? Xorqaxian society and Chinese society are remarkably similar. Should we be worried that China might reach the Empire before we do? The Iss-Tah are allied with _Luxembourg._ Can we _really_ handle a space war against one of the galaxy's largest space forces _and_ a terrestrial war against the people that nuked Berlin and enslaved all of East France, at the same time? These questions are _interesting,_ sure, but it's a lot of knots to comb out compared to "How can the government act so fast?", "They're the only law for light years in any direction.", "Where does all the money come from?", "They run an entire planet, twelve moons, and dozens of asteroid bases and large satellites [or alternatively, "The worldwide unity somehow led to them developing a moneyless economy"]", especially when all you're trying to do is tell stories about the crews of one or two ships.
The main reasons One World governments are the most common in sci fi stories usually come in 3 flavours: 1: Ideological - This is far more common than anyone is comfortable with admitting, it might even be the most common reason The Author believes or wants to believe this is inevitable/must happen as anything contrary to this crosses ideological lines for them, as it is tied to a kind of ideal utopianism, however unrealistic, to which ethnic, religious, cultural and political differences will always be an intolerable imperfection. Star Trek Fanboys usually fall into this category, though its not universal. 2: Laziness - Its simply easier to write, also because of reason 1, some authors have been raised with these stories so ingrained they might honestly just not second guess the inevitability, or even desirability, of Global unification. 3: Creator Provincialism and Temporal Provincialism also applies: The Western World, specifically America is on top now, it makes sense it'd be on top in future and forever and always because when we get to the stars, the geopolitical hegemonic situation on earth will only solidify farther, right? Basically History ends as far as a lot of people are concerned and everyone will 'toe the line' and the Empire of the Age will never fall. History does not repeat, but it does rhyme it seems. None of these are good reasons, but they ARE the most common reasons for Global unification to be the norm in sci fi stories. I personally agree with Templin bro here about it being hideously boring, but not necessarily because of lack of diversity or representation. World governments in shows and games nowadays do a wonderful job of showing all the races and nations of man... being exactly the same. Which is the real crime. (Literal Global Multiculturalism but sci fi edition, everyone everywhere wears the same kinds of outfits for the same kinds of occasions, instead of taking the cultural mileau and going to the extremes with it) If anything a global space race to colonise the solar system and then the wider Spur of Orion would result in dozens of daughter nations and in turn probably result in humanity colonising the galaxy faster than a global unified origin would, even if it means a lot of space wars. But I refer to reason 1 above, a lot of authors find this ideologically distasteful both because they earnestly believe human nature can be changed and that unification is desireable, irregardless of the lessons of history, both good and bad, and how such a government would need to tightly control and regulate space travel in order to maintain cohesion and control over colonies, greatly hindering exploration and colonisation.
I say I rather like world government mainly because they seem to make put all our history behind us, gives me me hope for bright future plus if we did stay that diverse in terms of nations that would incredibly hard to explain and put into writing I think.
De Harding While I personaly prefer the personal idea of a united Earth, I gotta say that I am open to a different storytelling approach. You could actually invest time and effort into a future world like this and make something interesting out of it. Would it be a challenge? Sure, but defenitly an idea worth exploring.
A vision of Earth all united under one banner, of their own accord and free will, has nothing to do with the state of the world in 1984. It just doesn't
I think your idea is going to get more exposure in the coming years. Black Panther while not in space did show a futuristic African society, Beyond Good and Evil 2 when it comes out is going to show a future where India was a major space colonizer. Also, one of the shows Apple plans on funding for their original content is supposedly going to about what if the Space Race never ended. Scenarios like countries competing for colonies could be on that show. In general, I agree with your points, people complain about the same ideas over and over again in fiction and I think seeing how different cultures handle similar events could be a source for new stories in the future.
The setting of the 2300 AD (originally called Traveler: 2300) tabletop RPG is a great example of a future world in which humans began exploring and colonizing worlds after a devastating World War 3 but no world government came about and individual nations each had their own space force/space colonization program. For instance a couple of the US off-world colonies were eventually annexed into the Union as States.
Templin Institute you read my mind exactly, I was already well under way in developing a universe like this and this video just gives me even more vindication to continue developing it in this very fashion you described more or less! Keep up the awesome vids, always love watching them!
That's why in the book I was writing the "Federal Earth Government" is just America happening to start colonial efforts first. After that other nations set up colonies and there were minor conflicts between different colonies of different nations eventually leading to a ww3 taking place across multiple worlds. Then several worlds declared Independence. Then I played a game of Stellaris with these nations. That was....interesting to say the least. Sorry if my long comment was boring.
Actually, this is exactly how I imagine the space exploration and colonization was going to be. Just like our real life Age of Discovery only in space.
Although representing Human Kind amongst other Alien Species the Systems Alliance actually holds low Authority over Earth itself as Earthern Nations still continue to exist. And it only earned that Position through its fast response following the Turian Occupation of Shanxi while Earth's Nations were still debating on who was to lead the Assault. So basically "Humanity taking its problems to the Stars" didn't only almost cause a full-scaled war with a Species vastly superior in Numbers and Organization but also kept the Humans behind due to infighting and debating over meager things when Action was demanded. The Turians have that joke about Humanity: How many Humans does it take to open a Mass Relay? 502: 500 to debate over it first, one to contact the Asari for Technical Assistance and another one to demand a seat on the council afterwards. Also: Expanse's UN is a representation of America? Most Modern American Politicians would label that society a Communist hellhole since it provided free services and a universal Basic income to its citizens
I think one forgets you have to compartmentalize some aspects to ensure something GETS done. The UNSC or Systems Alliance basically take up a smaller set of responsibilities that would otherwise takes years for the collective governments to do. its more a overseer of space stuff than it is a government over earth. Simply put its because as you stated when fast decisions must be made the world governments simply are utterly unable to perform this. also to note the halo stuff, the covenant accepted no surrender they wiped colonies out so if you WANTED to wait around fine you'd die. The prophets declared humanity must be wiped clean from the universe.
This is why Infinite Warfare’s way of tackling the story it portrays is amazing. If you pay close attention the nations of the world cooperate but aren’t one in space colonization.
I don't especially like the idea of our modern nation states carving out colonies like that, not just as an American but also observing the modern worlds views against empire. I feel like those colonies would demand independence the moment it was economically feasible. That being said, I think it would be hilarious if such planets were part of the English common wealth, and recognize the queen as head of state.
Or you can have a government like the first hegemony in Ender's Game, where once the aliens were defeated all the countries start fighting again, causing WW3
I've always liked the idea of nations on earth fighting each other in the stars but leaving each other alone on earth, I feel like it could have interesting scenarios.
sounds like "the Purge". if you hated that movie because it made no sense, then why would that be a good concept? and if you love that movie because it placates to your bloodthirsty power fantasy and nihilistic view of others walking around you to project your own psychosis: "stop it. get some help" -Michael Jordan
The Gundam series usually has these factions set apart that give you those dynamics. But in general, I think its easier to write a unified Earth since we would't need to spend lots of resources trying to obliterate each other.
I like how many people defend the idea that it isn't possible that a nation alone colonise planet. Look, a private company, SpaceX, as already a project to colonise Mars. Plus, technology is improving incredibly quickly. Just think that a century ago, planes were a rather new inventions. We walked on the Moon 40 years ago. Just picture that leap forward. What is even funnier is that all of these universes feature a kind of warp drive technology, which mean that the vast distance of the stars aren't very meaningful. I do understand that no nations would colonise an alien planet if it takes hundreds of years to get there. But if it takes months or less, there is no reason not too. There is a lot of power and money to gain from colonies. And finally, as soon a country have a stable colony or even a functional outpost, it has access to way, way more natural resources than the ones who doesn't. These resources can even be extracted easily since they haven't been exhausted like on Earth and also because following the enviromnental restrictions are likely not necessary.
In a Scifi setting I created for a GURPS setting for me and my friends, I had a milkyway spanning humanity basically have colonies and archs of culture spread and create their own technologies and administrations under a larger galactic UN style group instead of a technical empirical style government. Its a mess that got worse when I introduced invaders from beyond the milkyway, now this mash of cultures arrayed through the stars have to become cohesive enough to suppress a threat on a literally galactic scale. My players have loved every minute of it. One day, Ill have to write it out and maybe make a mark on sci-fi culture. for now, I am glad someone agrees that super united westernwashed super governments are just bland and unrealistic.
Realistically, a global government would probably be the most corrupt single organization to ever exist, and exploring how they came to power and the nations they crushed to get there would be interesting. Showing the struggles of those who wish to be free by fleeing to distant worlds to escape this authoritarian nightmare would make an incredibly compelling story.
That's basically the plot of the anime OVA Macross Zero, UN forces trying to snuff out last ember of Soviet rogue elements after the end of the Unification War, to unite the world by any means necessary before inevitable alien invasion, that in the sequel to this prequel series would succeeded in destroying the Earth, except the namesake warship the Macross and its crew.
If I recall correctly because I haven't popped in Mass Effect Legendary yet, the individual governments on Earth each have representatives in the Systems Alliance Parliament, so rather than a strictly Earth planetary government, there's an interstellar human government representing all individual nations and colonies. Which is probably the smartest and shortest path to the goal barring the United Earth route when expansion into space is slower.
My take on this is that I just open Stellaris, make real world/historical empires and then force spawn all of them. Thus I get things like Space America at war with space Ottoman Empire.
Why would you want to live in a one world government. All of Earth's nations are different and deserve to be ruled differently. If I wouldn't want to be ruled like the Chinese why would they want to be ruled like America. We can have peace without compromising our many conflicting values.
Well if the Chinese were ruled by America, they would look a lot more like Singapore or Taiwan than the PRC today. I bet that if given the choice, most mainland Chinese would rather live in that society than one where the wrong internet comment will make it so you can't get train tickets.
I personally disagree I think as time moves on humanity will become more and more homogenous. For instance there use to be thousands of languages worldwide and now there’s only a handful of primary languages and English is by far the most known and is the dominant language in the business world as well as law. Western culture also likely has the highest chance of getting an interstellar civilization going because of its culture of treating all citizens as equals giving it more intellectual human capital. Even in today’s world most nations attempt to base their civilizations developments on the benchmarks made by Western nations. I would also like to point out that halo is a bit odd because it supposed to take 500 years into the future so most current language should be much much different by then.
While that may be true for the time being, what we would consider “western” would definitely not be what hypothetical future humanity would consider western. Trillions of individuals existing on a hard drive as digital people free from want are going to have a completely different conception of themselves than what we would consider them, assuming we could fully comprehend each other.
To some extent, the cultural homogenisation makes sense. After hundreds of years of people moving from country to country, instant communication, and a complete lack of political borders, it makes perfect sense that once varied and distinct cultures would blend together with some traditions being held by locals, but the outward culture that people interact with as part of society being more or less unified.
I want a series about a group of very overworked bureaucrats and diplomats trying to herd cats keeping the Earth Confederacy together. They constantly deal with every nation trying to get a special deal in the Confederation charter. One character has a mental break after 4 seasons on the same assignment trying to convince a small, stubborn state to just sign the agreement making them a part of it instead of constantly trying to make a treaty that gives them all the benefits, but makes them not technically a member.
I agree with you and that's something that's been bothering me for some time. A unified Earth is not a prerequisite for an interstellar society. That doesn't mean planetary governments or interstellar empires cannot work. However, I often ask myself why are science fiction writers afraid of dealing with issues that come with multiple nations on Earth racing for the stars, or brushing aside the issues that come with having a unified government. However, I believe that many of the science fiction works you mentioned have american-styled governments because they were made first and foremost to americans.
In an interstellar setting, a planet makes a logical unit of government. Anything smaller will have difficulties setting up defense against interplanetary/interstellar threats, especially considering that pretty much any device capable of defense from space threats is a WMD-level weapon against planet-side targets. The same goes for space navies...I really hope nation states are not a thing by the time the space gets seriously militarized. There are also many projects that would affect the whole planet and as such would need some form of global power to back them up. Just look at today's response to global warming - that's a situation where having a world government would be very useful. This does not necessarily mean that it has to be all-encompassing. An EU-style union would make perfect sense, with more say in certain matters and less in others. The portrayal of such government a 'Murica in Space is another matter entirely though.
really like this comment- been thinking about the formation of transnational authorities like the EU a lot, and why no other continents have adopted them, and how helpful it would be to solve global problems that otherwise nobody wants to take responsibility for.
yeah but whose gonna build all those bombs and weapons? corporations? multiple or several? and if they are getting govt subsidies by the quadrillions, where is all this money coming from? taxpayers? and how are the taxpayers making an income? working for the corporations? then what happens if someone wants to start their own business or competition with the corporations and doesn't want to just sell to the government, which controls everything? what if they want to start their own government and be peaceful separatists? imprisonment and/or execution? i think the government you're looking for is China at best and North Korea at worst. Luckily, the Sith Galactic Empire and the Imperium of Man already exists.
@@poptartmallshart5323 In the future corporations would obviously have near total or full control, the future would see the rule of the wealthy. Just looks at Weyland Yutani, after a series of wars between super states on earth they pretty much had a monopoly on weapons production and space travel/colonisation. They're based on earth but technically is a borderless entity with many competitive factions within its own echelon. Eventually competition will make way for monopolies, which in turn crushes or absorbs any potential rivals and establish itself as the shadowy ruler of billions. It's not that easy to just start your own business or franchise, especially when your competitor owns a vast majority of the market share, and have zero qualms with using underhanded means to quash competitors. They'd hardly even need government subsidies since they're the ones keeping the economy running, just like how today powerful companies use lobbying to get the senators they want into power, it's not government paying the companies but the other way around. You're also missing out on income inequality, all the government need is to appease the one thousand or ten thousand strong cabals of millionaires and billionaires, who'd pool their money together which could easily amount in the trillions. If say this theoretical cabal were to funnel an average of $500,000 from 60k different individuals EACH, regardless of they are individuals or organizations, this money would quickly snowball into almost 30 billion per DAY. Since its a scifi setting we're discussing, these rich oligarchs could easily be capable of dishing out millions each, and when you multiply millions by tens of hundred of thousands, you'd easily be seeing tens trillions of dollars per day. Which is easily surpassing the GDP of contemporary America.
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I'd like to hear your opinion on multi species organisations and which you like most
I want to see FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNISM flourish in media
America is the top nation in the world, hence a world government would be expected to be Americanized. India, Africa, I'm looking at the footage, those nations are too underdeveloped to ever have a sway into a hypotetical world government. And no, no one of the power players will let, say Africa, ever become a super power.
Also, English is the most widely spoken language.
In other words, you want Asimov's Foundation cycle.
Well elite dangerous has an empire rebelling from the USA, in wich every star has a diferent goverment
"The UNSC is democratic"
ONI: sweats nervously
as democratic as the USSR, for sure
Now do this with Earth Federation.
Remus Vespasian yeah ONI needs to go
@@Cooldude-ko7ps I dunno bro. While ONI's actions were, and probably still are, immoral and unethical, they played a large part in winning the war, most notably through the SPARTAN programs. While kidnapping children isn't a moral thing to do, this action resulting in the SPARTAN supersoldiers may as well bought humanity enough time to get lucky enough to find the Halo array. ONI also played a large role post-war in keeping the former Covenant races from unifying again.
Thunderblade N true. Still I think that post war the UEG, etc should of focused on diplomatic relations with the sangheili, etc
Humanity would unite like this:
"Let's celebrate what unites us all, xenophobia."
@HaveTheRice SLAANESHMAS
Let's be xenophobic. It's really in this year.
For the Greater Terran Union!!!!
An international alliance of nationalists
Mike Li ah another generation tech fan
"Confederation of Australia" no no no. How about the "Holy Australian Empire"
"Holy Australian empire", not holy, or Australian or an empire...
Mr. Obunga The Emu Protects
@@nayandusoruth2468 this
Did you mean: the Greater Emu Reich
How about the Australo-Hungarian Empire?
In essence, you wanted a second British Empire.
*BRITANNIA RULE THE STARS*
Andromeda?
What would be interesting is a world government with a constitutional monarchy under house Yamato-Windsor-Bourbon-Saud
Tom Patterson why bourbon? Bonaparte would be better.
Why not God Emperor Leto II?
Long live Her Revived Majesty of the High Wilderness of Albion!
I think the reason humanity is often unified when portraying an interstellar empire is quite simply the reason that only a unified humanity could muster the resources necessary to expand into space. If you look in our world for example, space exploration is an incredibly expensive and difficult endeavor. As a result, any country that is interested in exploring space has to contend with the opportunity cost of either diverting its own limited resources to either space exploration or more Earth-based issues such as domestic infrastructure or national defense. One of the reasons the United States has largely scaled back NASA is because it quite literally doesn't have the money to fund NASA and maintain its military and other domestic spending commitments. If Earth nations are divided, then they are distrustful of one another. And if they are distrustful of one another, they'll be too busy diverting money towards weapons and military spending to deter each other rather than meaningful space exploration.
In fact, the irony here is if you did have a universe where space exploration was done by independent national governments, human colonies would be even less diverse because only a few countries on Earth have the resources to even think about space exploration. You would see American, European, Chinese, and maybe Indian and Russian colonies. But you wouldn't see any colonies from South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East, or Oceania, since even collectively, countries in such regions lack the resources, money, expertise or even interest in space exploration and are unlikely to for generations if not centuries.
If you told me that humanity collectively put aside its differences, pooled its resources, and used the resulting synergy of resources from no longer having to spend on huge national armies to point at one another to expand into space, that's a lot more believable to me than telling me that Russia suddenly decided that it doesn't care about amassing troops on its Western border to deter NATO and would rather try to colonize new planets for some reason.
Thank you!
Yup this comment needs way more likes
what you're missing though, is that with advances in technology, space travel becomes increasingly cheap. During the cold war, only major super powers could afford space programs, however now, private companies are able to get to space on their own. And when we get enough commercial interests in space, we will start to compete over those available resources. Your argument could be applied to the colonisation of the new world in the early modern period, however, after a period of exploration, the Spanish, portuguese, and later British, french and dutch empires didn't merge to collectively exploit the new world, they instead became a place to grab land from, encouraging fiercer competition between these powers.
A possibly better way to justify a world government in fiction, would be as a means of dealing with the ever increasing interconnectedness of our world, as common issues such as climate change force us to work together (think the expanse's UN). The logical extension of this, would be that the less connected colonies throughout space would be rather disconnected from Terra, which could allow for a united Earth, whilst many of her colonies, through relative isolation and differing challenges, see them become more independent and diverse, politically, culturally and economically (again, think the expanse I.E the driven technocratic Martian republic, or the loose political alliances of the asteroid belt).
While that is true, once space travel becomes widely accessible, there's no telling whether or not humanity would just split up again.
You did miss Ghana who is planning a moon mission, but you're right. Only a handful of countries would have proper colonies in space, at least early on. Everyone else would have to pay them to get the good stuff and they might not do it
To answer the question about whether Russians or Chinese could join the covenant.... No, it's actually a plot point that humanity isn't offered the option to join the covenant because humanity was chosen by the forerunners and can operate forerunner technology, so the Prophets opted to exterminate humanity to preserve the lie of the great journey.
Yep
Yeah he kinda missed that, the UNSC isn't even the Government of Humanity this role belongs to the UEG ( United Earth Government) although UNSC wielded the Power during the War.
why are the russians and chinease imidiatly named as traiters to humanity? my first pick would propably be the USA instead. the USA morals and regard for humanity are worse then those of Russia.
@@noobster4779 compared to every other nation that has been in its position as the most powerfull nation the us is pretty harmless, especially considering the modern potential for cruelty new technologies could enable.
Also the UNSC isn't a democracy. Buy the time Halo game series takes place humanity is basically a military dictatorship
This is interesting and all but what about the droid attack on the wookies?
He's right, it's a system we cannot afford to lose.
My Lord, is that.... Legal?
Shhhh don't say anything
Sit down young jedi
BY THE CHANCELLOR
The American influence you talked about in the beginning of the video is due to the media being made for the American/Western market, not some nebulous lack of diversity. Japanese or Indian Sci Fi is usually much different because it is made for their audience.
You're Missing the point. hes Not saying ad more for diversitys sake hes asking add more cause space america is played out and boring at this point.
I agree to certain extent, though I haven't consumed much Indian Sci-Fi nor Japanese Sci-Fi (outside of anime). It's given that authors would put their home country as the centerpiece of their works. Even when they forced the works to be centered on another nation or global government, the influence from their own culture would clearly show itself.
Take Evangelion, for a classic example. The events depicted was world-shattering, almost literally, but it was extremely Japan-centric. Also take a look at Code Geass, where the Brittania was supposed to be the major world power, yet most of the event depicted happen in Japan.
There are multitude of Japanese, Chinese, and Indian works that are centered in their respective nation.
So, Doctor Who? Cause Space Scotland wants nothing to do with it.
I agree although I would be quite interested in a Sifi setting based on or around Africa. But to piggyback on what you said maybe it has something to do with the fact the America is the most diverse and optimal choice for a multi racial government since a republic is the only way we as humans have figured out how to make things work when no one can agree on anything. Good conversation piece tho
That's mainly because if you look at Science Fiction from China/India/Japan or South Korea its incredibly more nationalistic. While the basis of Western Sci-Fi is based on some form of nationalism the core foundations of it are not. Starship Troopers was about the Federation, a United Earth Government whose main character spoke his native Tagalog alongside English and grew up Buenos Aires. Star Trek had many different cultures and peoples, and even showed subdivisions within those as we can clearly see in Star Trek Fiction.
There's even things like Battletech which forewent Aliens altogether and had the centralized power collapse in on itself giving way to dozens of greater and lesser kingdoms in space all with their own cultures, economies, religions, languages and more.
This is quiet honestly a boring piece that ignores very clear and popular examples for one or two 'haha gottem' moments.
I remember the British sci-fi comedy "Hyperdrive" actually set up their world like this where Britain was trying to make a new empire for itself among the stars but was constantly shown-up by the United States of America much to the shagrin of the show's captain who was always trying looking for an opportunity to win himself some glory
4:07 The Romulans are a poor example of a lack of diversity. They literally ARE the diverse splinter faction from a prior empire. The only thing is that it's not a human faction, they're an offshoot of the Vulcans, one of the founding members of the Federation. If you look at the Romulans as a faction of the Vulcans that split off, then the story starts to get the complexity you're asking for.
Oh, and they also have a diversity of interests within the Romulan Empire too, such as the oppressed Remans fighting for freedom, and the constant struggle between the Tal'Shiar, the military, and the de-facto government. The Romulans are actually fairly well developed given that Star Trek goes out of its way to make them as secretive as possible.
Basically, the reason why these things don't happen is because it's a ton of worldbuilding and a ton of exposition to explain the audience. It's a huge amount of effort to be realistic about how complex a human or alien mash-up of governments would really be, especially when you're trying to explain whatever other concepts you need to explain. You're asking for a lot of buy-in on the part of the audience compared to Space USA.
That being said, Space-China and Space-India fighting over Space does sound really cool.
I have already figured it out how Italian space shipbuilding would be. 😍❤️
@@danielefabbro822
“Sir”
“Liutenent Locatelli… you been assign to the spaceship Berlusca”
“Cos- what?”
“There is a problem?”
“I mean, yeah. A ship calls Berlusca?! With all the inventors, artists, scientist and even emperors we had, we call our ship Berlusca?”
Do you then to join the crew of the Andreotti one?”
“….no, ok”
@@TheNickscarface ah... I think there will never be a spaceship dedicated to Silvio Berlusconi.
But our history it's full of naval battles.
As you probably know, we also have fought and won the biggest naval battle in history, at Lepanto.
It was also the biggest battle for Marines in history. And we did that in our era of naval dominance over the known world, far beyond the rising of naval empires such UK or Spain.
Our potential for this kind of things is enormous.
Have you ever studied something about Italian history? Because I assure you that there's a lot of interesting history to discover.
@@TheNickscarface for example, a good name for an italian space battleship would be "Roma" or "Lepanto". While for lesser units as like cruisers you can choose historical battles or even better historical naval commanders like Andrea Doria for example.
@@TheNickscarface unfortunately no one have ever even tried to portrait it on paintings or in novels.
But the idea that we italians can colonize space by ourselves is actually pretty real. From last year we have achieved and developed our first space shuttle, from 2025 we will return to adopt nuclear energy (because we had issues with problems about pollution and radiations, so we never used it), we already build a shitton of satellites, modules for space stations, robotic arms, rockets to reach space etc.
Our space technology is limited only by costs and access to strategic resources, that incredibly to know, we already own since our country is volcanic and some of those volcanoes spurr out a lot of interesting minerals.
In the end, Italy could easily become a space power if we invest a bit more money on it.
"Why is there only one Romulan Nation?"
Oof. I understand what you're saying but that isn't exactly a good example since the Romulans have their origins in Vulcans who rejected Surak's reforms at Time of Awakening and fled Vulcan to settle on Romulus after losing a war against Surak's followers. So they're technically a Vulcan nation. And even beyond that in TNG there is a mention of a Romulan split off, the Debrune, who died out. And if you want to pull in Beta stuff there is the Garidians from the TNG adventure game "A Final Unity" who more than likely are another offshoot.
Even I know there are three of them and I fucking deapise Star Trek.
And the Remens.
Yes, Romulans and Vulkans are two blocks of the same species.
And the Rigelian Vulcans, who settled in the Rigel system after they had a disagreement with the Debrune Romulans.
And that’s not even mentioning the Romulan Republic, which emerged after the destruction of Romulus in the timeline of Star Trek Online.
The Systems alliance isn't a world government. Its headquarters are on a space station and it doesn't run things much on Earth, where many of the less powerful nations are as they are today.
Plus the fact that English is not the primary language. There is no primary language as the people still speak their native language of origin. We hear English thanks to subdermal translator implants.
Scythe Seven at last i keep saying this on all their mass effect related video
It's fair but it does seem like a cheap cop out. Better known as "Handwavium".
And, well, I can tell you one thing: there is only one nation in the world that would name their colony "Thrundholm". (Holm is swedish for tiny island)
So other nations are given some spotlight!
Handwavium? I believe the scientific name is Element Zero, or Eezo.
“Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
-Ronald Regan
(laughs in COVID)
Read terms of enlistment
The Greater Terran Union
While I think he was a dirtbag, he wasn't wrong here.
There's no uniting when you think the other guys gonna stab you in the back.
Templin man: Good luck trying to figure out what happened to the rest of the world
New Mombasa, Kenya: Am I a joke to you?
They're only fun if they're fighting each other on a massive scale, like Legend Of The Galactic Heroes or some such thing.
Or Battletech. It's practically Game of Thrones in space (and with giant robots).
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Ahhh LOTGH
Well, I LOVE LOGH but where we have only Kaiserreich vs American Alliance. Yes, whey have Russians, French, Africans and much more, but that's all!
There is only war.
I find that your Halo example later in the video is rather poor.
In Halo, humanity *doesn't* exist under one unified banner, at least not at first. Many worlds are self-governed, or united with a few others. The UN existed as it does today, a galactic (rather than global) unification of the various nations and powers. America existed, as did Russia, china, etc.
However, when the covenant first attacked, the shock of the existence of not only one alien species, but several all united under a single banner utilizing far superior technology and numbers in a self-proclaimed effort to wipe humanity out forced all the nations to hand control over to the UNSC, which then acted as a wartime government (Obv. with heavy american influences because western culture and audience, and also the heavy american influence that exists globally today). After the war, the UNSC continued to act as a galactic government, but its flaws became very clear. Many worlds, even during the war, still governed themselves. And there were entire planets that operated on non-capitalist economic systems (though that may have been mostly due to need, rather than desire. A communist system is more easily able to force a planetary population to work when future tech is at play and the threat of extinction whipping at people's back). The UNSC actively dealt with, and still deals with, rebel groups trying to break off all over the place.
Despite all this, however, I do still agree that the classic future unified humanity idea is far too overplayed, and using the halo example, I would have loved to see a book or some other piece of media where the UNSC deals with the war ending, and the various major powers try to wrest back control, perhaps starting a galactic civil war where hundreds of factions all spread out across the worlds the covenant had claimed or destroyed in an attempt to break off from the oppressive UNSC wartime government.
You may consider their typical response to insurrectionist activity harsh, but considering the fact that humanity was being subjected to a genocidal war against them by a technologically and numerically superior, alien hegemony, I think that their response was understandable, if not warranted.
But, there are several issues with your own description of the UNSC that would make it impossible for a storyline where the remaining planets within human controlled space rose up against the UNSC; namely the fact that the UNSC gave the political powers it had received after the start of the Human/Covenant War back to the civilian governments months prior to the war actually ending. The only thing that the emergency powers really did was allow the UNSC to effectively fight against the Covenant without having to be bogged down by politics, inquiries, and red tape. But, as you yourself stated, there were many colonies within human controlled space that still retained at least some autonomy.
The UNSC was hardly oppressive in the sense of being despotic.
There's also the mention of different languages, even directly showing it in a scene in Halo: Reach.
Week 1 Edit: For those curious, I recently replayed the game. Subtitles state the woman in the first level as speaking Hungarian. However, I couldn’t check to see if it’s true. I’m curious to see if there are any other main languages in the halo universe.
ODST'S takes Influences from SAS Russian special forces and US special airborne units
Future UN!
You guys kinda forget the UEG
I'm surprised you didn't mention the future UN from The Expanse. It struck me as an interesting, but not fully developed world govt.
Nicholas Hermes I mean he uses footage from the Expanse though. So he clearly groups it in with the others
In the expanse doesn’t Afghanistan try to remain independent or something?
Well in expanse tensions seem not to be nation vs nation problem, but rather one party vs the other one. Avasarala is still one of the best characters in Sci fi though
@@gimzod76 its due to them having to compete with mars. Competion makes competence and all that
The answer to why Earth is as unified as it is in The Expanse is simple. Shifting tribalism. Instead of nations, races, or religions warring with each other, its now regions of the sol system. Mars and then the belt became the "other", the enemy. Ignorance and jingoistic pride on every side not only blinds people to the failings of their own governments/cultures, but especially personal failings. Because you can do no wrong as long as you hurt the "other" in the name of your tribe.
No nation would submit to the Covenant and become their newest members. Not for long at least. The Covenant's end game was the complete extermination of the human species. There wasn't any chance in hell the Covenant would show anything close to mercy to a human faction.
Funnily enough, the Sangheili actually did petition at one point to have humanity join the Covenant, as they were impressed by the fighting spirit of the UNSC military and their willingness to fight on till he bitter end. The Prophets rejected this of course, but it makes you think.
Yeah, not surprising considering their sense of honor. There isn't much more honorable than seeing a species sacrificing everything to protect itself from extinction.
@@Omega4Productions True. But you forget the ones pulling all the strings were the prophets so it doesn't matter what the elites think. The prophets had their one single goal of exterminating humanity.
Well, it sorta does matter. The Sangheili were a very powerful and influential part of the Covenant (one of its two founding members), so what they think is important. Even if the Hierarchs were manipulating the Covenant all along, its important to note this because it does demonstrate that if you took out the Hierarchs alone, the chance of the Human-Covenant War occurring would have astronomically deteriorated.
Red Centurion That’s one of the reasons that they were replaced by the Brutes.
The solution to the creative impasse seems simple - just show how there are different ideological and political parties in the future world government. Not just Earth vs. colonies but splits based on genetic manipulation or foreign relations or say the fair distribution of energy.
Plowbeast robots of the galaxy, unite !
@@nathanjora7627 You have nothing to lose but your restraining bolts!
or smart contacts, blockchain governance, and the non aggression principle. but then you'd lose some of the state's power....
.... as in all of it because it won't have a reason to exist anymore 🙃
Plowbeast or just have a socialist and a capalist political parties because I’m pretty sure that will be the main division in politics for centuries to come
@@poptartmallshart5323 cope, lolbertard
This sounds like what Sid Meirer's did for Civilization: Beyond Earth. In that game there really isn't any recognizable nations like France or the U.S. but a selection of conglomerates or a union of nation-states that correspond to distinct regions of Earth.
4:40
No human nations would be able to join the covenant, the heirarchs declared that humans were inherently heretics that needed to be utterly destroyed.
Well the reason why most Earth Governments we see in science fiction be American Centrist, is because, wait for it.........all of those stories (at least the most iconic ones) are written by American (or at least English speaking) writers.
I am pretty sure if we a see a Earth government story be written by Russian or an Indian, we will see the biases of that culture, to their own.
I've heard in old Soviet sci-fi films all the aliens are communists, because of course that's what an advanced culture would be.
In the Strugatsky Brothers' space novels, Earth operates as a socialist utopia, but the focus is largely Russia-centric.
What I wonder about Indian scifi is do they keep their caste system or abolish it by the time they become spacefaring.
Aliens motivated not by greed have a reason not to be capitalist. Perhaps some species aren't quite as ambitious as others and choose to centralize everything to keep things stable.
Exactly. Finally someone with common sense
(All of these are just my opinions)
Hostile aliens wouldn't just be attacking the "American Module" of a human Dyson Sphere. The loss of a 50,000 crew exploration ship wouldn't just have Japanese casualties. A shipment of alien plants that grants 200-year human life spans wouldn't just benefit the Brazilians.
No country is self-sufficient. Colonies, outposts, and even ships in distant stars would most likely be a joint effort between nations; sharing scientists, raw materials, logistics, manpower, technologies, etc. Everyone has a stake in the effort and any threat would merit a unified use of force. Any country that refuse to take part would seriously be left behind. I mean if the Indians develop fusion power then I would gladly send them luxury goods, manpower, raw materials, industrial capacity, etc in exchange for technology.
I suppose it also matters if aliens exist in the galaxy; after all the greatest unifying force is a common enemy. In that case a world government is inevitable. However if we are alone (or atleast the most technologically advanced species), then perhaps interstellar claims of individual coalitions are possible, but certainly warfare would be minimal among humans. Think about it: Why would a space battle between coalitions occur thousands of light years away when you could just use ICBMs to nuke the country only a thousand kilometers away? No, I think all conflict will be settled on the homeworld, peacefully.
Besides, once those silly colonists start to protest about "independence", us earthlings would be like "Oh you want to stop sending us tribute? WANT US TO EXTINGUISH YOUR FREAKING SUN?!?!? No? Good." :D
Johan Natavius the other option is that you are right on the fact that people wouldn’t care fighting space wars when they could just nuke the hell out of their earthly neighbors, but you are wrong on the fact that it provides incentives not to do it.
They could just as well think « well, now that my government won’t instantly be nuked to death if I nuke Russia to death, and at worst I’Lloyd still have plenty space and people that will survive the event, I might as well do it ».
I mean, what is to stop us from using nukes on a more regular basis if nukes won’t be a problem also for the nuker ?
So the other possibility is that we don’t unite at all, but that some of our nations survive into space when earth is a radioactive wasteland, or just a nobody weird planet (because multiple nations at once on it), or a planet that acts as a diplomatic hub but no longer as the capital of our species or of any space nation.
Nathan Jora or you know it’s just earth because we will never be a galactic empire and we will never meet aliens because FTL is impossible meaning that we will likely never be able to sustain any “colonies” not in our solar system and even then those would be difficult to sustain and would likely break away incredibly fast because colonies never stay loyal and will always eventually want their independence
Leon Trotsky that is incredibly short-sighted
@@leontrotsky9268 This is an old comment but I agree with Schmidtter. Colonisation of our solar system is definitely possible due to all the resources it would provide. Start a few mining operations and the resources pouring in will push for further colonisation and the resources will go to the various countries on Earth. FTL travel is possible with the laws of physics since warp drives are theoretically possible albeit they require exotic matter which we haven't found but you underestimate how much we don't know. Flying from New York used to be considered impossible, look at where we are now.
Silly Templin. Don't you know that everything is either 1 of 2 things: The United States, or Not The United States...yet
wait it's all the United States?
@@wofls2713 *raises gun* always has been
Cuba lol
I don’t wanna be *that guy,* but the UNSC is the military arm of the UEG (Unified Earth Government). Just one of those things that inexplicably bug me. Sorry!
the UNSC was the government for the war, it was an emergency governent
Ima be that guy and say that the UNSC served as an emergency war government after declaring martial law.
The UEG was temporarily suspended during the war and the UNSC became the temporary military government.
This is an incredibly late comment to add to this section, and it doesn't even pertain to the UNSC or Halo, but...
At 4:17, when it was posited what it would look like if humanity was more deeply and noticeably divided in Halo, it got me thinking about the Frontlines novel series, where human colonization was pushed by two major factions on Earth, the North American Commonwealth (a unified state consisting of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico) and the Sino-Russian Alliance, who are at war with one another when First Contact occurs. The power dynamic is alluded to at various points in the series, and while the SRA aren't a consistent primary focus in the series, the author makes it a point that the two "megapowers" on Earth don't immediately set aside their differences and align themselves to combat the alien threat for quite some time.
It's a cool series, and for anyone who is fond of military science fiction, especially ones where the futuristic hardware is more believable from a current, real-world perspective, I'd definitely recommend giving the series a try.
@@breeze6045 who wrote this series?
I think that the idea is essentially that colonisation of space goes easier when the planet is united, and from there is assumed to be a prerequisite.
I agree, but I'd go one further and say when you go colonise something a trillion miles away, the differences between two nations back home seem petty. If we sent 50 Americans and 50 Russians to Mars and had them have to survive on their own without any contact with Earth, I bet you in 50 years time they lose their 'nation' identity and consider themselves 'Martian', at which point they cease to care about east-west relationships back home. :)
@@bcukdannage True. Space exploration is battle for survival. And its well known that in a very short while, the one standing by your side in battle will be your brother in a very short time and everyone else seems very far away, even if they are on the same planet.
And if you see the Planet not as a huge expanse that goes on, but a tiny, lonely orb in space, you are going to feel like a kid who has never before seen his home from outside.
"Easier"? You must be british then, if you call it "easier". Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch of the man whos leg was eaten by a lion. "I feel fine. Much lighter actually" .
How about "actually realistically possible instead of practically impossible."
It's also because of the cost. A one way trip to Alfa Centauri with a warp drive costs something like 9,12500000E+15 dollars ONLY in fuel (anti-matter). No nation has that much money to waste.
@@bcukdannage hence we have Expanse for that.
I'm not sure where you're getting that the US's successor states are given any precedence over the others in these kinds of settings. The United Republic of North America is mentioned in Halo, but it's ultimately just as irrelevant to the story as the East African Protectorate, European Union or China.
Yeah the UNSC is mostly just a military Alliance anyway not to mention ODST takes place in Africa for peats sake.
And the capital of the United Earth Government, the UNSC Security Council, and the headquarters for the entire UNSC military are located in Australia.
@@Clicint yep Sydney
TODAY TOMORROW FOREVER I really like The UEG/UNSC
My future history stories actually have the human capital in Canberra. Both for being a built in capital of a country that was not a current or former superpower. But also because Australia was the first place where the European and Asian race merged. Which is a big deal for humanity.
This is exactly what I try to avoid in my writing. Even where my aliens are concerned. Human factions should often have identifiable cultural roots in the locations of where their colonists originated from. There's a liberal theocratic nation I have that's from a melting pot of peoples from India and Pakistan up to and including former British families that stayed after their independence. I have an alien nation who, while not controlling their total home planet, controls space transportation and trade due to a protectorate alliance with a larger space fairing nation. The other states on their homeworld have to buy and maintain their rights to settle other worlds and colloquially refer to the nation they go through as a "Hegemony" and as a majority do not speak the main nations language. I feel it adds a very human and lived-in touch to your universe setting and certainly gives more opportunity to expand on later.
Nice.
It’s more that it’s easier to write world governments than disparate factions
Smarmy answer: Cuz it's easier/faster to write.
Honest answer: Thinking about it realistically I believe it is a question of 'scale'. Many of the examples you gave are very large scale powers already. If the setting was still within the realm of our solar system, your point stands very well. Could the USA or other nations afford to say, make a colony on the Moon and/or Mars by themselves? Certainly, I fully believe that to be possible, if that's what the setting was meant to be.
But say the colony was outside of the solar system? No, we'd have to have some kind of global cooperation. Some means of spreading the cost around because it would bankrupt any one nation by themselves, no matter how wealthy said nation is. The only exception would be if FTL or other means that already existed to made it easier to do so.
In terms of large scale powers, it could indeed work again as you are saying because by then the necessary infrastructure for the civilization would be put down for it to exist within the realm of possibility, so they could afford to split off. However, you're forgetting that just because a group only has one government, it doesn't mean they're totally united. To use the Romulans, you're right that they're one huge group, but they also have factions with them such as the Tal Shiar, the Military, and the Reunificationist Movement, and who knows how many others. Which those seem to cause more internal strife for them than it does for anyone else (then again Romulans tend to be written with 'chronic backstabbing disorder' so that's more a fault of poor writing than their own fault).
Regarding the cost a warp drive would cost 9,12500000E+15 dollars in fuel for a one way trip to Alfa Centauri, many times more money than Earth produces in one year.
The First Primaris Cato Sicarius
Unless we develop a new energy source capable of fueling an alcubierre drive.
@SpacePotato Nuclear fusion is already being used in nuclear powerplants across the world. I don't think you understand just how much energy it would take to power an Alcubierre Drive.
What is the point using money if in need of going to space
Keep in mind that we would likely exhaust the resources in our own solar system before we leave it.
I would imagine having a terraformed mars and colonies established on several other planets/moons/asteroids adding wealth to the over all economy. Before we consider leaving it entirely. (And if we lack ftl, then it would take ages before we get results from an interstellar journey.)
What about Ender's Game? The instant the buggers are defeated, the nations fracture, with India, the Hegemony, and other groups competing for colonies and influence.
I think it still stands as an example, because it is not unification then expansion, but expansion, then unification. The fluid nature of governments and statecraft is what the video seemed to be arguing for, not always just static and bland western style governments from beginning to end.
To be fair though, the books that follow Peter wiggin and Bean show explicitly how he unifies earth. It's not just another Sci fi series where earth is randomly unified, the characters actually struggle through the series of wars that follow and get bogged down by political tension and threats against their lives for said unification. Even then by the end of the books that follow this, the USA has remained isolationist so it hasn't yet fully unified.
A space version of WW2 or the Cold War pretty much sums up the Killzone franchise.
jj16802 of the Helghast Army
true
Killzone (and even star wars), are just Ww2 on space
But ofcourse what he was talking about was of modern political systems but in space
Ww2 is done to dead, while having a Federation Russia VS a Capitalism America, Vs United Europe vs Communist China
On a galactic scale sounds more fun (and we can add small country colonies like Brazil, Africa, Japa, India, etc there to mix things up)
Dan Abbnet dose a space cold war in Embedded and the Arch Royal sierese of books also dose something simler in wich all nations have independent space navy's and copeat with one and other
How about space empires that play a constant influence game with each other over the independent nations on planets, fighting each other in proxy wars far away from earth that involve hundreds of millions of men fighting across thousands of distinct combat zones.
It be more similar to XVI-XIX centuries colonial empire, with Earth as Europe.
I'm mexican and I love sci-fi, of course it bothers me that I rarely get to see my country represented in movies, never a ship name, never even a small victory, nothing!
Agreed.
Why would a third world country like Mexico reach the stars in the first place?
i got you, just wait
indeed, I would like to see a Wealthy Spacefaring Mexico tbh
UA-cam recommending me this after the Orion Arm wins the world building poll. The algorithm is… to good… sometimes.
"World Governments Are Boring"
Ayy Just like real life!
Also amusing and terrifying. Occasionally at the same time.
Try going through 5 Prime Minister's in 11 years, see how boring that is…
Looks at the U.S. and is relieved at how easy it is to get rid of a leader.
@@casbot71 Six PMs as of this arvo, isn't it?
At this point, toppling sitting PMs is pretty much the national sport.
@@TheOneWhoMightBe And we'll probably chuck the new one come next year when there's a federal election, or is that a federal ejection?
Makes you proud, even our politics is venomous.
Dominic Perez | While showing a thumbnail featuring the United Nations.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes definitely makes an interesting example. A short lived united government splits into two nations, one of the Galactic Empire resembling Prussia, and the Free Planets Alliance, resembling the stereotypical democratic nation.
Japanese seem to have an interesting fascination with anything German.
@@hemidas that's because right around the time Japan modernized, the Germans had supplanted the French as the leading European power in an incredibly humiliating defeat for the French. So, Japan modeled themselves in terms of bureaucracy and economy after the new German empire.
The problem with something like China or the US colonizing other worlds is the cost. It would be extremely expensive for even the richest single nation on Earth to establish and maintain a colony on another world, especially one that exists outside of our solar system.
The costs of maintaining said colony would quickly outweigh whatever benefits it'd bring.
That's why a unified planetary body would likely be necessary. The cost could be shared by multiple nations.
What really makes more sense would be for each 'colony' to be an independent nation under a larger multi-national organization. Kind of a more powerful version of the UN in space.
So the System's Alliance.
It's never been made clear exactly HOW the System's Alliance works, and whether the colonies are sovereign, or administered by the Alliance.
Who’s to say private companies can’t fund said ships or exploration or even colonies
@@ObsdnBlck what would happen if there was some sort of Stargate type technology? Allowing near instantaneous travel to and from earth to other distant planets.
Current companies can't even come close to matching the income of most countries in the world. Apart from the absolute gargantuans.
Malawi, the literal most poor country in the world (going off nominal GDP) is worth around $6 billion per year. The entirety of the Alphabet is makes about $12 billion. We'll have to see some country sized (and likely state sponsored) businesses for them to somehow manage to get to space.
The expanse has entered the chat.
Same thought
The UN in the expanse is yet another boring US-style world goverment. Pretty much yankees in space. I like the Martian Congressional Republic much more.
Here’s blast from the past; Space Above and Beyond. Which featured the nations of Earth, the United Nations played a role of economic, diplomatic and military cooperation when bringing the full might of Earth against the powerful aliens that threatened humanity’s existence. The nations are still sovereign and all are not equal in military space fighting capabilities. While the show only lasts one season it is very interesting to watch USMC kicking alien butts.
Even that show was a mixed bag. It still suffered from the USA-centric view that a lot of scifi has as the episodes go on. Yet there are one off episodes like the one with a british tank in it that keep it interesting. I would have loved to see spin off series with a Chinese, Indian, Russian, UK or Japanese carrier.
Yeah
Very often a boring life is the best life.
One doesn't have to be a history major to realize and understand the inn pact that the decisions of a few can have on the many. Fewer governments mean fewer wars and greater cooperation.
Even though a single world government may sound boring I don't see us leaving the solar system without one.
On the other hand wothout conflict societies dont evolve and technologie might stagnate.
Noobster That's fucking bullshit. If society would stop evolving because we've gotten read of war and united earth under one government where everyone works together, then that's a bloody good thing.
Also technology doesn't stagnate because we suddenly had no more war. That's a moronic fucking statement. Even if all of humanity suddenly decides that maybe we're not that different after all and start living alongside each other peacefully, we're still gonna have a whole lot of fucking conflict dealing with nature acting up.
@@noobster4779 yes conflict does often lead to some progress but so doo many other activities that human beings engaged in. Space and The universe beyond will have more than enough challenges to overcome without us having to break out the lazguns and multi-meltas.
I would argue that a one world government is inherently more tyrannical. As you say fewer governments mean fewer wars but it also means that there is no opposition. You are essentially, stuck with one government and no way of getting outside its power structure. This means that oppressed or disgruntled elements of society are essentially stuck in the system. Far better I say to remain happily divided into many nations and instead find a way to live among our differences peacefully.
War doesn't lead to new technological innovations, instead it leads to more rapid applications of existing technology. When a total war is raging, its usually better to spend your time and money refining the things that work than in making new types of weapon.
No new tech, practical uses for current tech.
The Expanse gives a taste of what you're looking for and the novels go quite a bit deeper into it. It talks about the way different cultures combined on different worlds, also influenced by the different realities of gravity and resources, to create unique cultures on those worlds. For example, one main character is a Martian who looks like a particularly tall Indian who speaks with a combined mild Hindi accent and a deep Texas drawl. The TV show skipped the Belter hand gestures that, in the books, replace all normal facial expressions due to the fact Belters spend so much time in space suits. Also, even when alien threats are present Belters, Martians, and Earthers still fight with each other before, during, and after.
The idea of multi-political interstellar humanity would be interesting, but I don't see how it would work with multiple nations on the same planets. The reason why is because we would quickly get into issues of continuity of territory, sovereignty disputes, and border wars.
It's not an accident that throughout most human history, countries and nations have been continuous, with direct routes between mainland and offshore holdings. Everything involved in ruling territory is made so much easier when everything between point A and point B is yours. Resource logistics, border security, troop movement, public transportation, the list goes on. All of these things are so much easier to handle because of one authority ruling over it all. If Earth were still divided into distinct, competing blocks of power while humanity was interstellar, the connections between planets would be a nightmare. Let's say the Polity A has some colonies holdings on Mars and Polity B has some mining stations in the main asteroid belt. With where the planets are at the moment, any ships Polity B sends to those mining stations will necessarily have to pass by close to Mars. If Polities A and B have diplomatic tension and friction, and there are worries about war on the horizon between them, than the defense forces around Mars are going to be really nervous around Polity B's ships as they pass by.
On any kind of large, interstellar scale this would be unsustainable, and regulatory bodies and functions would be put into place to make this all so much easier and smoother. End result is that while it wouldn't be 'unified' in like a full republic or union, the involved parties would member states of an overall government of some sort. That's the closest I feel you could get to any appreciably developed interstellar humanity that has yet to unify.
There could likely be a multinational version of the old charter companies which used to pave the way for imperialism and colonization such as a Hudson bay style company which has NATO backing to ensure efficient transport and logistics to Mars.
Thinking | Note to many: History is a Lie, and you'll constantly being fed Fake News. Think World as an Island, or an Archipelago, or a Continent.
Well it would like how it did work with the Europeans during the Colonial period when they colonized the Americas
You just explained in great detail why a setting with multiple competing powers is more interesting. Realistically, any such problems would be disregarded at first, or have haphazard treaties with little-to-no substance signed about them due to the shear resource potential of off-world exploitation, paving way for colonization and these problems to become real problems a few decades down the line.
@@DavidBarkland
Looking back at the OP's comment I was thinking the same thing, that is the point of multiple independent, sovereign countries competing for extertrestrial resources and territory, conflicts, intrigue, poorly thought out but well intentioned reasons, mishaps and etc. That sounds like the perfect setting for a lot of stories, dozens or even hundreds of tales of every conceivable scale imaginable from a disagreement between different mining colonies from separate countries on Mars over some mineral rights to full blown separatist revolution on one of Germany's asteroid colonies.
Thinking about it as a plot device that would allow even nations with little to no space program to be able to get in on the off world colonial race we could use something like with the Half-life series did. In HF there exists a rudimentary portal technology via strange *mcguffin-y crystals* that can be used to open up portals to entirely alien dimensions. (multiverse, colonial interests) A similar crystal (basically) 'magic' could be utilized for exploitation and colonization by various nations of Earth to other planets. Atleast I think it has potential for an interesting premise! Think, *what would happen if almost every nation (not just "nation states") on Earth was suddenly given 'keys' in the form of (relatively) cheap and mostly easily maintainable portal travel to the stars and the planets that lay around them?*
As we can observe with many modern governments, the states or provinces under one governing body don't have to necessarily get along with one another to be "the same" (nationally speaking). As even a small example: you wouldn't find many people from Washington that appreciate Southern Californians moving to their state, ditto with Northeast Georgia and and South Florida. Or, how the nation of India is a loosely held assembly of ethnic groups with loosely assigned borders that don't like each other very much, ditto with China and plenty of other countries.
I guess in many works of fiction, there's not enough time in the story, or maybe these themes are outside of the narrative's scope, to properly explore ideas like this. The problem then becomes, "There aren't enough stories exploring these facts of human existence" instead of "World governments are boring."
A very thought-provoking video!
In defense of Mass Effect's Alliance that one is more of a military coalition than a government. It's basically a space military a bunch of bigger governments share. If you're not military you're not Alliance.
This is exactly what I was thinking the whole time. Systems Alliance is more like a more functional NATO than it is the world government (though it basically becomes that by the end of the series...).
I find it unusual that (especially if it's Earth, not so much with fully Sci-fi planets eg: Naboo from Star Wars) all countries would join together even if they've been enemies for decades just because the planet achieves space travel or joins a Galactic government
Well with globalisation the world is more connected so ideas and principles spread more easily, and let us face it colonizing a entire new planet well not be sheap .
Its the same as when cities formed into nations as others did in order to not be wiped out or was just straight up conquered, the same thing would likely happen to planet wide governments.
Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because-what with trolls and dwarfs and so on-speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
This line of thought would be the prevailing reason for a planetary government
That is still stupid though why would let us say China sacrifice their sovereignty? Especially to what would be seen as a western power after the Century of Humiliation?
Jedi Spartan | Heck, that's what happened after World War II. So are you saying what happened back then is unusual? I mean… 'Hey, we are building a new League of Nations, anyone want to enter?' If that happened in a story, it would've been declared as unrealistic.
Actually, Freelancer has a lore about humanity being still not unified and taking over space. The game even portrays a war between Liberty Systems (USA), Reinhland (Germans/Russians), Kusari (Japan) and Britannia. You even got hispanics forming the Corsairs. Each nation sent a huge colonial ship knowed as Sleeper.
There's a book series I read recently which has pretty much exactly what you described - nations of earth competing in space for planets and resources.
Empire Rising, I believe it was called. Pretty good, would recommend.
I think the reason we don't see much of this is because those who create Sci-fF stories don't do it for the politics. They have grand visions of alien worlds, spacecraft, cosmic knowledge, etc. For example Mass Effect has politics, but it cares more about making humans feel as cool as the aliens around them than worrying about internal human affairs. Basically, someone who makes Sci-Fi stories probably did it to get away from current humanity and fantasize about a grand future for us.
With that said, I (and my brother) have thought of the same ideas presented in this video and love them. I'd definitely support a series that does what you've proposed.
A good example of a divided humanity is the Battletech Universe. You have multiple different factions and cultural groups in those factions. Break away groups form their own realms when the parent government does not meet their needs such as the Filtvelt Coalition breaking away from the Federated Suns when the FedSuns was not helping that part with pirates.
There is only one universe that has what you seek.
...The Emperor protects...
wait, isn't the UNSC actualy a military dictatorship?
Eh, closer to a military junta
Not really. It became the de facto government during the Humam-Covenant War. The real government of Halo's Humans is the UEG, or the United Earth Government.
The UEG got its power back after the war though.
In Nick Webb's 'Legacy of the Fleet' series, there exists just such a nation, one where it's constituent nations all wield influence over their own sectors of space. Mexico, Russia, and the United States all have extrasolar territories in their possession.
Awesome video!
I have a loose setting that I will most likely use later on, where in an act of desperation, an alien species decides to launch a counterattack with an ancient science vessel turned into a superweapon. The attack was meant to force the human fleets to lift the orbital siege from their homeworld and try intercepting it. Humans had no idea what it does though and decided to stick around and finish the ground war once and for all. The vessel slips past the Solar system's defense by sending most of the fleet to attack Earth, while it itself travels clsoer to the Sun. Humans win the orbital fight, but not before getting parts of Earth glassed. Then, the science vessel activates and turns Sun into a black hole. This causes a mass extinction on Earth, as everyone is scrambling to build underground settlements before the temperature drops to unbearable levels. Meanwhile the alien homeworld is captured and forced to lend their remaining resources to evacuate as many humans as possible. They are later resettled to many colonized worlds inhabited by other species that previously had small populations. This pretty much causes almost complete destruction of any remaining governemnts the humans had, with the exception of those who decided to stay in underground settlements on Earth.
Humanity, despite being vital in the victory, had basically sacreficed their future as a major player for the foreseeable future. And then, the setting truly begins.
The thing with theese typical fictional world gouverments is, that the (primarily western) audience is usually supposed to identify themselves with the people supporting said gouverment, which is easier if the supported gouverment is similar to the one the audience is familiar with (both in terms of referenced workings as well as stylistic trappings). Western audience would probably find it somewhat more difficult to root for the operatives of a world gouverment that is a chineese-style one-party dictatorship. And the exceptions you brought up further underline this: in the starship troopers movie the WG is intentionally painted as facist, in order to emphasize the point of the director, and in Firefly the audience is supposed to root for the scrappy crew of ex-rebels who despise the WG in that series.
There's no reason to have multiple governments in a story unless that matters, and there's no reason to make a unique goverment style for the same reason.
Generally speaking, unnecessary detail is just a distraction from the main story: fine as side-material, but otherwise it's just busy work for the casual fan.
To be perfectly honest, i think an excellent example of a very diverse, non-complimenting culture that over time fused together into something more ‘benal’ is the United States of America. How many different cultures settled on the continent, fought and killed each other and natives for one reasn or another, and yet, a few sparse centures later, while still fairly different from one another depending on the regions, there are now far more similarities then differences, unlike generations ago. You have to consider that when a government forms and is stable enough, able to fulfill its duty to the citizens, even a melting pot will be able to form similarities given time. When it comes to alien empires like the Turians and Romulans, these guys have been in space for a LOONNNG time in comparison to man, and have effectively worked out the ‘kinks’ that mankind will undoubtedly also have in its expansion to the stars. The turians had its colony wars, the romulans are a seperate nation of VULCANOIDS.
Listen, i love your videos, but something about this one seemed... odd. Agitated. Instinctive rather then intellectual.
IMHO the vast amount of resources needed to explore, extract resources, and colonize could only occur with a unified world. A single powerful and prosperous nation state could begin such a project, but the expense, manpower, and resources would not be sustainable without vast devolvement of cultural, economic, and military abilities of that nation state. In Fiscal Year 2019, the federal budget of the United States of America will be approximately $4.407 trillion. The U.S. government estimates it will receive $3.422 trillion in revenue. That creates a $985 billion deficit for October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2019. This is seen by most economist as a deficit that will adversely effect the stability and economy of the US. Now add another $1 trillion to that budget's requirements. You can see the problem. In a world government the requirements for a large military is gone. That alone would allow an increase of more than three times the stated $1 trillion for the program I mentioned earlier. A world government is usually boring from the outside, but its practicality is easy to understand.
You're wrong about the Systems alliance. They are not a world government created for space exploration. They began as a branch for exploration and military in space and when the first contact war began and the world governments didn't react the systems alliance took charge. There are still independent governments on earth and in the descriptions of the planets throughout the trilogy there are even mentions of feuds between earth countries colonization rights to planets. Although at the time of the game it has largely changed to corporations and the systems alliance plays a larger governmental role in space, there is still an earth council that they have to answer to.
The thing about world governments in sci-fi, in general, is that they're typically real world countries, or analogs based on them, blown up to galactic scale. The reason you don't see multiple countries on a planet in a galactic war is the same reason you don't typically see different peoples within a country in a world war. Unless the focus of the plot is specifically on them, they might as well not exist as far as the story is concerned. Especially in stories still heavily effected by the Cold War, Earth is Washington DC, and humanity is the USA, the evil dictatorship the humans are fighting is the Soviet Union, and their homeworld is Moscow. Or, replace the USSR with whomever else the US is fighting against or has anxiety about in that time period, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Vietnam, China.
Honestly, I'm not even sure most sci-fi writers consciously realize they're doing it. I pride myself on being aware of these kinds of tropes and I still fall into that habit - while they're not humans, my Stellaris main is some of the best and worst of America boiled down into three Ethics and two Civics.
Maybe a ceremonial monarchy with the house “Yamoto-Windsor-Bourbon-Hubertus-Saud”. The “Kingdom of the Earthlings”!
It would never be possible for a single country to manage and colonize a system. A more realistic way is for unions of states to do it. For example the European Union to colonize a system that has settlers from all its member states. Or the Asian union with China and its member states. It would be maybe 3 or 4 big unions that will colonize. And its normal that those would form alliances or maybe a union, becoming one big half planet government. That's why I find it realistic for world government Maybe not all nations would be members, but those who are not, they will not be able to compete or even reach outside our solar system. Look at NASA or the European space agency how they struggle on their own to do something, and how good they are when they combine their resources. Teamwork, is the key and the future.
Exactly my point. Just one country, even if it gives most of its budget, it won't be enough. Investing everything in space exploration will leave it vulnerable. But a coalition/alliance/union of say 3-4 countries, how that's more within the reach of possibility.
@@ivanfreely6366 Yeah but that's how geopolitics work. Imagine if USA didn't a strong enough military presences in the Pacific. China, North Korea, and other states that want to expand through aggressive policies would have no one to contest their agenda. And if too many countries would be added to the sphere of influence of lets say china, it would weaken any other states a lot. Outproducing and having a market monopoly on almost all important goods, making space exploration imposibile to fund, if your country is having to buy anything at overpriced for the space construction/research, you won't go very far.
And it’s funny he mentions the alliance considering it states within the codex of Mass Effect 1 that not all countries are part of the alliance
You mean the way small European countries like Portugal and the Netherlands were completely unable to establish their own overseas empires during the European Age of Exploration and Expansion?🤨
@@stevenc.6502 wow, 3 years but I'l reply. We're talking about something totally different than sail your boat around and using slaves to gain resources or cheat undeveloped people for their hard worked resources
A SF setting where countries compete for the stars (something like the Scramble for Africa) , with the Sol system and Terra being neutral ground, would be something new and interresting.
More than the classic "US world gov in space"
This is why I'm such a fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington universe outlined in his books. The world didn't unite when it took to the stars, at least not initially, and the interstellar nations that formed sometimes reflected their nations of origin and other times structured themselves completely differently. Earth did eventually unite under one flag, however only after another devastating world war which wiped out a significant portion of the population and wreaked havoc on the environment. At the time the series primarily takes place (about 2k years post-diaspora from earth) Earth does head the largest nation, however it's seen as bloated with bureaucracy and somewhat backwards by the interstellar newer nations.
The Human Systems Alliance isn’t necessarily a unified human government. Setting aside the fact that in the ME universe, there are many human colonies throughout the Terminus Systems and even the Attican Traverse that aren’t affiliated with the Alliance, earth also still has multiple national governments (although it’s insinuated that hypercapitalist megacorps had largely undermined public governance prior to the development of the HSA). The Alliance is largely more of a coalition of human interstellar systems into a unified military and political agency in response to the First Contact War and discovery of the Citadel Council. For the most part, humanity is still very much diverse in its governance, especially on Earth, where the Reapers were able to manipulate the disparate governments into accepting indoctrination and fighting the resistance forces, who were majorly supported by the HSA, showing just how little power the HSA really had in the long run.
One thing that comes to mind is SolForce (Sword of the Stars), the way they function primarily depends on the player and in lore their main language is Latin and they even had other splinter factions (one confirmed lore faction is Frontier Alliance). It isn't very far from the stereotypical formula but still it's a bit different in ways.
Honestly, I like what Battletech did with the Inner Sphere being a feudal region of space that's constantly at war.
All human, and all traceable to 20th century countries/regions, none of which are American. (Though ComStar makes me wonder)
You say what you want but I like a "unified" galaxy with "order and peace"
gooooooood. ha ha ha ha. *gooooooood*
Let it flow.
So, me and my friends have been doing this country rp on google maps using polygons to map out countries. We do this at school when we have off time, and things got way deeper than I could've imagined. I allowed players to play any country that existed in history, with some exceptions, to be played with modern technology. I played the Austro-Hungarian empire and dubbed it "Großer Össterreich", the German Empire, the USA, China, Australia, Japan,and Egypt were all major players in the RP. I am now going to explain what has happnened in the RP because it's sort of linked to the topic of this video. So in the beginning, I establish the "Imperial co-prosperity sphere" whitch was a coalition for expansionist nations, the creation of this coalition would set the stage for the entire RP. So things were normal for a bit, until the European peace Union was formed by Germany, in response to extensive war fought by me, and by this point the USA was in the ICPS. So tensions skyrocketed and it seemed like war between Austria and Germany was imminent, China woulf join the ICPS shortly after. In order to lower tensions, Germany dissolved the EPU, this calmed things down for a bit and just after the North African Union was formed by Niger. So tensions skyrocketed once more , shortly after Germany joined the ICPS. So we planned war against the N.A.U. Germany decided to send an umanned cargo ship filled with bombs to Cairo. I fired a bunch of missiles and next thing N.A.U is gone. Afterward we got Australia in the ICPS. And since the expanding Japan was going south, we need ed to get Australia a place in the pacific, so the ICPS, now the Democratic Liberation Front after a mass change to democracy, declared war on Japan, and won. This is where things happen. China was inactive most of the time, but they made a deal with Japan getting them to surrender. Another important factor was Germany leaving the DLF after some weapon blue prints weren't shared with them. So treaties were held Australia and China argued over territory in the Pacific, all while the US and Germany were plotting behind my back to subdue China as a threat. Once I obtained knowledge of this betrayal, I kicked the US from the DLF, and made war between Austria and Germany imminent. But, the U.S, seemingly guilty after betraying its ally, decided to stay neutral in the conflict. A few days later, a newly reformed N.A.U with a quite a chonky Egypt violated a bunch of airspace to combat Austria and backed out of the war almost immediately after it began. So it was Germany vs. Austria for a while. Until the US joined the side of the Austrians, AND THEN, I, the host of the RP, decided to modernize space travel , AND THEN, USA signed a non-agression pact with Germany to keep the N.A.U out of the war, ANNND THEN, Austria and the U.S formed the Federal Union of Earth pulling Austria out of the war.
Idk why I did this, I totally didn't have to, but I felt like it was related to the topic of the video. And if you managed to keep up with that, and want to know more for some reason ( I left a whole TON out ) let me know and I'll provide more in depth stories later.
Something to keep in mind in regards to government and space exploration is the huge disparity that will happen between the governments that get to the stars first and those left behind. The resources available to a government that is actively mining asteroids will devastate the countries that can't.
Great video. In real life, space exploration will likely mean the end of centralized control in general. You and your buddies can build an O’Neill cylinder and just leave for a different part of the solar system if the locals start demanding taxes or want you to worship The God-King of Mankind or whatever. Planets might still be powerhouses, but good luck enforcing your will on a city-state of 100,000 out on the Oort Cloud.
That's assuming their self-sufficient to begin with. A colony on Mars is gonna be dependent on Earth for decades.
The only way you will be able to have a coherent interstellar civilization is to have FTL travel but even than you will need to have some kind of monopoly over FTL travel like in Dune. Or have a military so powerful that it can put down rebellion after rebellion with no real need to rest or rebuild its power like in warhammer 40k. But having any kind of centralized government will be a impossibility because of the logistical nightmare that running a galactic or interstellar empire will be.
chaosfire321
Once Mars can be self sufficient it will declare its independents from Earth or whatever country they are under.
Ivan Freely
How will Earth stop Mars from breaking away when they are self sufficient? Just look at every colonial empire.
Ivan Freely
Again look at the colonial empires of old, that didn't work back then and it won't work in the future. You are assuming that the people of Mars or even the governing body won't just rise up because Earth will control the economy. Unless you haven't notice poor countries that are control by richer ones are a lot more likely to have a revolution than rich countries that control their own economy.
Usually people want a unified earth because it makes more sense for us to pool all nations resources, thus making more sense for it to be an interstellar power.
errrrrrrrrrwhat THATS JUST WHAT THE NEW WORLD ORDER WANTS YOU TO THINK
Ivan Freely technically the same point, just different wording
As far as non-diegetic (outside the world of the story) explanations, I think the unified Earth government shows up so often not so much because it's "expected" that one will be formed by the time we start interstellar expansion but because it's easier on the writer(s).
If you're trying to build a sturdy, detailed, and at least semi-realistic world, it's simpler and quicker (both in and out of the story's world) to have "the government" send their space force (our heroes included) to mine for Jarko crystals, explore an uncharted planet, establish diplomatic relations with the Xorqax Empire, or fight against the Iss-Tah if "the government" is a monolithic, streamlined entity with jurisdiction over Earth and all its peoples rather than, say, the _United States_ government, which would need to debate both _inside_ itself with a likely interplay between Congress, the President, and the assorted executive Agencies which could affect the Space Command, and _outside_ itself too.
The Unified Peoples of Earth have little to no "competition" that's truly "close" in any immediately important sense. The United States, however, has comparatively limited scope and finances and must consider not only its own domestic needs and concerns but also foreign issues too. What will the _Russians_ think of us mining for Jarko crystals so close to one of their settlements? The French have been hanging around this planet a lot recently; will mounting our own expedition hurt relations? Xorqaxian society and Chinese society are remarkably similar. Should we be worried that China might reach the Empire before we do? The Iss-Tah are allied with _Luxembourg._ Can we _really_ handle a space war against one of the galaxy's largest space forces _and_ a terrestrial war against the people that nuked Berlin and enslaved all of East France, at the same time?
These questions are _interesting,_ sure, but it's a lot of knots to comb out compared to "How can the government act so fast?", "They're the only law for light years in any direction.", "Where does all the money come from?", "They run an entire planet, twelve moons, and dozens of asteroid bases and large satellites [or alternatively, "The worldwide unity somehow led to them developing a moneyless economy"]", especially when all you're trying to do is tell stories about the crews of one or two ships.
The main reasons One World governments are the most common in sci fi stories usually come in 3 flavours:
1: Ideological - This is far more common than anyone is comfortable with admitting, it might even be the most common reason The Author believes or wants to believe this is inevitable/must happen as anything contrary to this crosses ideological lines for them, as it is tied to a kind of ideal utopianism, however unrealistic, to which ethnic, religious, cultural and political differences will always be an intolerable imperfection. Star Trek Fanboys usually fall into this category, though its not universal.
2: Laziness - Its simply easier to write, also because of reason 1, some authors have been raised with these stories so ingrained they might honestly just not second guess the inevitability, or even desirability, of Global unification.
3: Creator Provincialism and Temporal Provincialism also applies: The Western World, specifically America is on top now, it makes sense it'd be on top in future and forever and always because when we get to the stars, the geopolitical hegemonic situation on earth will only solidify farther, right? Basically History ends as far as a lot of people are concerned and everyone will 'toe the line' and the Empire of the Age will never fall. History does not repeat, but it does rhyme it seems.
None of these are good reasons, but they ARE the most common reasons for Global unification to be the norm in sci fi stories. I personally agree with Templin bro here about it being hideously boring, but not necessarily because of lack of diversity or representation. World governments in shows and games nowadays do a wonderful job of showing all the races and nations of man... being exactly the same. Which is the real crime. (Literal Global Multiculturalism but sci fi edition, everyone everywhere wears the same kinds of outfits for the same kinds of occasions, instead of taking the cultural mileau and going to the extremes with it) If anything a global space race to colonise the solar system and then the wider Spur of Orion would result in dozens of daughter nations and in turn probably result in humanity colonising the galaxy faster than a global unified origin would, even if it means a lot of space wars. But I refer to reason 1 above, a lot of authors find this ideologically distasteful both because they earnestly believe human nature can be changed and that unification is desireable, irregardless of the lessons of history, both good and bad, and how such a government would need to tightly control and regulate space travel in order to maintain cohesion and control over colonies, greatly hindering exploration and colonisation.
I say I rather like world government mainly because they seem to make put all our history behind us, gives me me hope for bright future plus if we did stay that diverse in terms of nations that would incredibly hard to explain and put into writing I think.
De Harding While I personaly prefer the personal idea of a united Earth, I gotta say that I am open to a different storytelling approach. You could actually invest time and effort into a future world like this and make something interesting out of it. Would it be a challenge? Sure, but defenitly an idea worth exploring.
There was a book that wrote about your ideal future for mankind, that book was 1984.
@@TOK150 I feel it sorta would be challenge not impossible and yes that would be interesting tale, I just like it when we focus on the Xenos
@@frumpblump2363 I know what the book is and hell no
A vision of Earth all united under one banner, of their own accord and free will, has nothing to do with the state of the world in 1984. It just doesn't
I think your idea is going to get more exposure in the coming years. Black Panther while not in space did show a futuristic African society, Beyond Good and Evil 2 when it comes out is going to show a future where India was a major space colonizer. Also, one of the shows Apple plans on funding for their original content is supposedly going to about what if the Space Race never ended. Scenarios like countries competing for colonies could be on that show. In general, I agree with your points, people complain about the same ideas over and over again in fiction and I think seeing how different cultures handle similar events could be a source for new stories in the future.
I believe that one day humanity will group ourselves around a single banner.
The setting of the 2300 AD (originally called Traveler: 2300) tabletop RPG is a great example of a future world in which humans began exploring and colonizing worlds after a devastating World War 3 but no world government came about and individual nations each had their own space force/space colonization program. For instance a couple of the US off-world colonies were eventually annexed into the Union as States.
Templin Institute you read my mind exactly, I was already well under way in developing a universe like this and this video just gives me even more vindication to continue developing it in this very fashion you described more or less! Keep up the awesome vids, always love watching them!
That's why in the book I was writing the "Federal Earth Government" is just America happening to start colonial efforts first. After that other nations set up colonies and there were minor conflicts between different colonies of different nations eventually leading to a ww3 taking place across multiple worlds. Then several worlds declared Independence. Then I played a game of Stellaris with these nations. That was....interesting to say the least.
Sorry if my long comment was boring.
The Grand Director this is what he was talking about and I would give my money to see a movie like this
Actually, this is exactly how I imagine the space exploration and colonization was going to be. Just like our real life Age of Discovery only in space.
@@MechanicWolf85
Who knows,maybe if I publish it someone might get interested enough to make a movie out of it.
I'm curious to how the Stellaris game went, like how did you do it?
Know this is a good ideaa
Although representing Human Kind amongst other Alien Species the Systems Alliance actually holds low Authority over Earth itself as Earthern Nations still continue to exist. And it only earned that Position through its fast response following the Turian Occupation of Shanxi while Earth's Nations were still debating on who was to lead the Assault. So basically "Humanity taking its problems to the Stars" didn't only almost cause a full-scaled war with a Species vastly superior in Numbers and Organization but also kept the Humans behind due to infighting and debating over meager things when Action was demanded.
The Turians have that joke about Humanity: How many Humans does it take to open a Mass Relay? 502: 500 to debate over it first, one to contact the Asari for Technical Assistance and another one to demand a seat on the council afterwards.
Also: Expanse's UN is a representation of America? Most Modern American Politicians would label that society a Communist hellhole since it provided free services and a universal Basic income to its citizens
I think one forgets you have to compartmentalize some aspects to ensure something GETS done. The UNSC or Systems Alliance basically take up a smaller set of responsibilities that would otherwise takes years for the collective governments to do. its more a overseer of space stuff than it is a government over earth. Simply put its because as you stated when fast decisions must be made the world governments simply are utterly unable to perform this. also to note the halo stuff, the covenant accepted no surrender they wiped colonies out so if you WANTED to wait around fine you'd die. The prophets declared humanity must be wiped clean from the universe.
Where does the stellar map with all nation states come from ?
It's from Dawn of Victory, a setting done by the Templin Institute's very own Marc Gerst
Sometimes it's good being a r/worldbuilding regular
Yeah looked interesting but kind dumb I mean why would something in Space call itself the Pacific States?
This is why Infinite Warfare’s way of tackling the story it portrays is amazing. If you pay close attention the nations of the world cooperate but aren’t one in space colonization.
I don't especially like the idea of our modern nation states carving out colonies like that, not just as an American but also observing the modern worlds views against empire. I feel like those colonies would demand independence the moment it was economically feasible.
That being said, I think it would be hilarious if such planets were part of the English common wealth, and recognize the queen as head of state.
Or you can have a government like the first hegemony in Ender's Game, where once the aliens were defeated all the countries start fighting again, causing WW3
I've always liked the idea of nations on earth fighting each other in the stars but leaving each other alone on earth, I feel like it could have interesting scenarios.
sounds like "the Purge". if you hated that movie because it made no sense, then why would that be a good concept? and if you love that movie because it placates to your bloodthirsty power fantasy and nihilistic view of others walking around you to project your own psychosis:
"stop it. get some help"
-Michael Jordan
Yeah
The Gundam series usually has these factions set apart that give you those dynamics.
But in general, I think its easier to write a unified Earth since we would't need to spend lots of resources trying to obliterate each other.
I like how many people defend the idea that it isn't possible that a nation alone colonise planet. Look, a private company, SpaceX, as already a project to colonise Mars.
Plus, technology is improving incredibly quickly. Just think that a century ago, planes were a rather new inventions. We walked on the Moon 40 years ago. Just picture that leap forward. What is even funnier is that all of these universes feature a kind of warp drive technology, which mean that the vast distance of the stars aren't very meaningful. I do understand that no nations would colonise an alien planet if it takes hundreds of years to get there. But if it takes months or less, there is no reason not too. There is a lot of power and money to gain from colonies.
And finally, as soon a country have a stable colony or even a functional outpost, it has access to way, way more natural resources than the ones who doesn't. These resources can even be extracted easily since they haven't been exhausted like on Earth and also because following the enviromnental restrictions are likely not necessary.
Considering the Covenant were trying to decimate the human population, I'd have to give you a solid, "No."
In a Scifi setting I created for a GURPS setting for me and my friends, I had a milkyway spanning humanity basically have colonies and archs of culture spread and create their own technologies and administrations under a larger galactic UN style group instead of a technical empirical style government. Its a mess that got worse when I introduced invaders from beyond the milkyway, now this mash of cultures arrayed through the stars have to become cohesive enough to suppress a threat on a literally galactic scale. My players have loved every minute of it. One day, Ill have to write it out and maybe make a mark on sci-fi culture. for now, I am glad someone agrees that super united westernwashed super governments are just bland and unrealistic.
Realistically, a global government would probably be the most corrupt single organization to ever exist, and exploring how they came to power and the nations they crushed to get there would be interesting. Showing the struggles of those who wish to be free by fleeing to distant worlds to escape this authoritarian nightmare would make an incredibly compelling story.
That's basically the plot of the anime OVA Macross Zero, UN forces trying to snuff out last ember of Soviet rogue elements after the end of the Unification War, to unite the world by any means necessary before inevitable alien invasion, that in the sequel to this prequel series would succeeded in destroying the Earth, except the namesake warship the Macross and its crew.
Nice
@@JohnSmith-ey6zy Based.
If I recall correctly because I haven't popped in Mass Effect Legendary yet, the individual governments on Earth each have representatives in the Systems Alliance Parliament, so rather than a strictly Earth planetary government, there's an interstellar human government representing all individual nations and colonies. Which is probably the smartest and shortest path to the goal barring the United Earth route when expansion into space is slower.
My take on this is that I just open Stellaris, make real world/historical empires and then force spawn all of them. Thus I get things like Space America at war with space Ottoman Empire.
Why would you want to live in a one world government. All of Earth's nations are different and deserve to be ruled differently. If I wouldn't want to be ruled like the Chinese why would they want to be ruled like America. We can have peace without compromising our many conflicting values.
Well if the Chinese were ruled by America, they would look a lot more like Singapore or Taiwan than the PRC today. I bet that if given the choice, most mainland Chinese would rather live in that society than one where the wrong internet comment will make it so you can't get train tickets.
@@steezburger609 Singapore canes people, not sure i thats better
I personally disagree I think as time moves on humanity will become more and more homogenous. For instance there use to be thousands of languages worldwide and now there’s only a handful of primary languages and English is by far the most known and is the dominant language in the business world as well as law.
Western culture also likely has the highest chance of getting an interstellar civilization going because of its culture of treating all citizens as equals giving it more intellectual human capital. Even in today’s world most nations attempt to base their civilizations developments on the benchmarks made by Western nations.
I would also like to point out that halo is a bit odd because it supposed to take 500 years into the future so most current language should be much much different by then.
While that may be true for the time being, what we would consider “western” would definitely not be what hypothetical future humanity would consider western. Trillions of individuals existing on a hard drive as digital people free from want are going to have a completely different conception of themselves than what we would consider them, assuming we could fully comprehend each other.
To some extent, the cultural homogenisation makes sense. After hundreds of years of people moving from country to country, instant communication, and a complete lack of political borders, it makes perfect sense that once varied and distinct cultures would blend together with some traditions being held by locals, but the outward culture that people interact with as part of society being more or less unified.
I want a series about a group of very overworked bureaucrats and diplomats trying to herd cats keeping the Earth Confederacy together. They constantly deal with every nation trying to get a special deal in the Confederation charter. One character has a mental break after 4 seasons on the same assignment trying to convince a small, stubborn state to just sign the agreement making them a part of it instead of constantly trying to make a treaty that gives them all the benefits, but makes them not technically a member.
I agree with you and that's something that's been bothering me for some time. A unified Earth is not a prerequisite for an interstellar society.
That doesn't mean planetary governments or interstellar empires cannot work. However, I often ask myself why are science fiction writers afraid of dealing with issues that come with multiple nations on Earth racing for the stars, or brushing aside the issues that come with having a unified government.
However, I believe that many of the science fiction works you mentioned have american-styled governments because they were made first and foremost to americans.
In an interstellar setting, a planet makes a logical unit of government. Anything smaller will have difficulties setting up defense against interplanetary/interstellar threats, especially considering that pretty much any device capable of defense from space threats is a WMD-level weapon against planet-side targets. The same goes for space navies...I really hope nation states are not a thing by the time the space gets seriously militarized. There are also many projects that would affect the whole planet and as such would need some form of global power to back them up. Just look at today's response to global warming - that's a situation where having a world government would be very useful. This does not necessarily mean that it has to be all-encompassing. An EU-style union would make perfect sense, with more say in certain matters and less in others.
The portrayal of such government a 'Murica in Space is another matter entirely though.
really like this comment- been thinking about the formation of transnational authorities like the EU a lot, and why no other continents have adopted them, and how helpful it would be to solve global problems that otherwise nobody wants to take responsibility for.
yeah but whose gonna build all those bombs and weapons? corporations? multiple or several? and if they are getting govt subsidies by the quadrillions, where is all this money coming from? taxpayers? and how are the taxpayers making an income? working for the corporations? then what happens if someone wants to start their own business or competition with the corporations and doesn't want to just sell to the government, which controls everything? what if they want to start their own government and be peaceful separatists? imprisonment and/or execution?
i think the government you're looking for is China at best and North Korea at worst. Luckily, the Sith Galactic Empire and the Imperium of Man already exists.
@@poptartmallshart5323 In the future corporations would obviously have near total or full control, the future would see the rule of the wealthy. Just looks at Weyland Yutani, after a series of wars between super states on earth they pretty much had a monopoly on weapons production and space travel/colonisation. They're based on earth but technically is a borderless entity with many competitive factions within its own echelon.
Eventually competition will make way for monopolies, which in turn crushes or absorbs any potential rivals and establish itself as the shadowy ruler of billions. It's not that easy to just start your own business or franchise, especially when your competitor owns a vast majority of the market share, and have zero qualms with using underhanded means to quash competitors. They'd hardly even need government subsidies since they're the ones keeping the economy running, just like how today powerful companies use lobbying to get the senators they want into power, it's not government paying the companies but the other way around.
You're also missing out on income inequality, all the government need is to appease the one thousand or ten thousand strong cabals of millionaires and billionaires, who'd pool their money together which could easily amount in the trillions. If say this theoretical cabal were to funnel an average of $500,000 from 60k different individuals EACH, regardless of they are individuals or organizations, this money would quickly snowball into almost 30 billion per DAY. Since its a scifi setting we're discussing, these rich oligarchs could easily be capable of dishing out millions each, and when you multiply millions by tens of hundred of thousands, you'd easily be seeing tens trillions of dollars per day. Which is easily surpassing the GDP of contemporary America.
space NATO?