A world government has no virtue in itself, and may as easily degenerate into a scramble for office as may any other phase of group relationship. Its success would only be possible where its power was strictly limited to the control of those matters that had reached a plane of world importance. Even then success would be impossible unless those responsible for making essential decisions saw the world problems as wholes rather than as localized and separable problems.
Grave issues hang on the method in which the world problems are approached and handled. Success is not assured by any means. Still, the dangers and disadvantages of a plan do not condemn it unless they outweigh the apparent advantages.
The people of the western world face a number of serious problems that cannot be solved by the existing nations. Some step must be taken to cope with the new situation that has followed on the heels of the industrial revolution, and in so far as the actual practices of life have evolved to a world plane, and in so far as they concern the workers in more than one industry, it must be apparent that nothing less than some world authority will suffice to cope with the issues that they present.
A number of economic questions, such as the control of resources and of transport, have already passed beyond the boundary of the individual nation, and have reached a stage of world importance where they can be handled only on a world basis. In the normal course of social evolution, other questions will, in like manner, emerge into a place of world consequence. As rapidly as such developments occur, the administration of the world issues must be delegated to the world parliament and to its appointees and subordinate bodies.
There are a number of problems that have passed beyond the control of any single nation, and that should therefore be made the subject of world administration. Among them are: (1) the control of resources and raw materials, (2) transport (3) exchange, credit and investment, (4) the world economic budget, and (5) adjudication of world disputes. Under a world producers' federation, the administration of these five problems would be in the hands of five administrative boards selected by the executive committee of the world parliament.
Each administrative board would select and organize a staff of experts and specialists in its own field, and would present the outline of its proposed activities to the world parliament very much as the department of a modern government presents its budget to the parliament of its state. This presentation would take place through the executive committee of the world parliament, and it would be necessary to secure the endorsement of that committee before the plan could go before the parliament.
When the plan was approved, the administrative board would begin to function as a part of the machinery of the world producers' federation. Thereafter it would serve as a part of the world administrative mechanism, the working organization of which would remain intact, even should there be a change of policy, in exactly the same way that the department of state or of agriculture, in any modern government, remains intact through the various changes of party in power.
The specialists and experts who made up the staffs of the administrative boards would secure their appointments as the result of civil service examinations, and would continue in their positions until some question arose as to their efficiency. Each administrative board would be organized into a series of departments corresponding with the unit problems coming before the boards, with one specialist or department head charged with the direction of each of these departments. In the raw materials and resources board, for example, there might be one department for each of the more important resources such as coal, iron, copper, cotton, wool, timber, and the like. In the same way, the work of the transport board might be divided into departments covering shipping on the high seas, inland water transport between divisions, inter-divisional land transport, aerial navigation not wholly within one division, and so forth. In each instance, the task of providing an adequate supply of the commodity or an efficient service, would fall to the department or departments involved, while the administrative board itself would sit as a court of last resort, and as a board of strategy for the field in which it was functioning.
The administrative board would thus be a group primarily of experts, charged with the specific task of handling some problem of world moment, and responsible to the board of managers of the world producers' federation for the success of its activities.