Distributive Policy and World Government

If the distribution of natural resources in the world is a thorny issue (Fed. 29), then an even thornier one is distributive policy within society. The debates here are more intense, since most ideologies have something to say on the matter, and proponents of various viewpoints have been debating for centuries. Among these are also several national reformers, and even a few world government advocates, calling for drastic redistribution of global wealth, and also on the other hand many nationalists seeking to maintain their exclusive wealth. While I stress that world government is itself an ideologically neutral concept (barring nationalism), unification will inevitably have an impact on distributional policy, and there are some implications here that must be addressed. I shall therefore not concern myself with the ideological matter of how much redistribution is to be undertaken, but only with its principles under world government.

The global redistribution debate has often assumed a premise which I disagree with—that economic growth is a finite-sum game, that to improve the condition of some people one must necessarily bring down someone else. Such thinking is emblematic of the nationalist order where group selfishness prevails, and in a world government we must not be confined to such an approach. A world government stands for the welfare of all humanity, and as such it cannot be systematically disadvantage one set of people. Yet it also faces an obligation to tackle the immense inequality of economic opportunity faced by the people of the world. The ideal scenario would be to enable everyone to grow, rather than making some suffer for others’ growth. This is the premise at the heart of world government, that together humanity can be more than just the sum of its national fragments.

An important principle to note is that any redistribution should be undertaken only on the basis of the present, and not the past. At present, we see numerous attempts by groups to obtain advantages by invoking past grievances. For example, the African Union declared its theme for the year 2025 to be “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations”, invoking the injustices of slavery and colonialism. There is no doubt that those were massive injustices of that time; but presently, there is no one alive who has been a victim of the Atlantic slave trade, and very few who lived through colonialism. Instead it is mainly an entirely different set of people invoking the injustice of the past merely on the grounds of having the same group identity. Thus we encounter the same fallacy of group continuity (Fed. 29). Birth is truly an accident, so no one can claim to be disadvantaged by an injustice that occurred before they were alive. No intergenerational group claims on redistribution are to be entertained under a world government—otherwise we will end up in a bottomless hole trying to rectify all of history.

Redistribution, particularly when considered between nations, is more often an expression of grievance than a genuine economic policy. Many nationalists have sought to pin the blame for their nation’s poor economic state on historical actions such as conquest or colonialism and demand redistributive compensation from other nations. Yet after all many nations’ economies have successfully grown and developed after periods of conflict or colonialism, so that can hardly be used as a pretext to demand redistribution for those that have not. Before considering redistribution across the world, we must first ensure we have a just global economic system.

The real transformative potential of world government for global growth lies not in redistribution, but in institutional change that will enable the world economy to grow. Without a just and stable economic system in place, any redistributed funds will only disappear down the black hole that decades of economic potential has vanished into. But when inclusive economic institutions are established globally, we will automatically see such a boom in global growth so as to not necessitate drastic redistribution. The ability of a world government to provide economic stability and oversight, and assuring economic rights and justice consistently for all, is more valuable to the global economy in the long run. While it may be politically tempting to attempt to suddenly equalize the world, we must be mindful of the long-term stability of the world economy and the credibility of the government.

The goal of government, I maintain, should not be to ensure economic equality between people, but instead to ensure economic justice for all. Economic justice entails providing everyone with equal opportunity, from which people’s progress shall be determined entirely by merit. That is very different to the kind of outright wealth transfers sometimes advocated in the context of global redistribution. Unconditionally taking from one and giving to another is not a good idea, politically or economically. Investing in global growth and development using proportionate contributions from all is a much better idea.

To realize this vision of economic justice, the world government must invest very heavily in global development to bring the same level of opportunity to all. And since the government’s funding for this, proportionately financed by all of humanity, will derive a larger amount from the richer, this is arguably redistributive. But the point here is not to redistribute at all—it is to ensure economic justice. Everyone shall contribute in proportion, and everyone shall enjoy equal opportunity. Hence, whatever level of redistribution is decided to be pursued in a world government, global development is an imperative that stands.

Such a model also leaves no room for the common objections heard today from nationalists of ‘better-off’ nations, who have been highly critical of global development efforts and sought to avoid contributing. Investment is global economic justice demands a proportionate contribution from the entire world’s population. Yet nationalists’ selfish refusal to participate demonstrates that, as always, the goal in nationalism is relative dominance over absolute advancement. Nationalists still seem to prefer the old days of ‘great empires’ over the present day despite all the disease and poverty that has been eliminated since then—and they would still prefer to maintain the exclusivity of their wealth rather than bring the entire world to that level and higher.

For the redistribution debate, world government does not represent a novel development at all; it is merely an extension of the arguments to a greater scope. Hence the most important takeaway on world government and redistribution is that it is unjustified to assume that world unity entails a global ‘takeover by the poor’ and widespread, drastic redistribution, or that it would be a mechanism for inequality to deepen and the ‘rich to get richer’. Rather, whatever is to be done about redistribution will be decided by the people of the entire world through a democratic process. World government does not bring any ideological assumptions to the redistribution debate—whatever the people choose, so be it.