He wouldn't, though, because with no nations, the U.S. wouldn't exist as a nation, nor would it have jails, nor would there be an "it" to have them. You can't take one side of the thought experiment, eliminate it, and then assume that the other side will run amok without it, because the whole point of the thought experiment was to imagine what would happen if we eliminate the concept of nation-states.
The bigger question is "Is there some person or organization who would cause harm to Assange that he would not be able to protect himself against?" I don't know the answer to that. Go back to the Middle Ages and the answer would be that Assange would pledge his loyalty to one particular lord, who he agreed not to spill the beans on, and he would get protection from them in return. With city-states (popular in antiquity, and perhaps rising again), he would reside in a city, and (assuming he wasn't exiled), that city would provide for his defense and refuse to extradite him, and all the other cities can go to hell.
The complexity today is that we have this whole other level of trans-national organizations: multinational corporations, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, Internet communities, hacker collectives, etc. Many of the "attacks" on these organizations can't be stopped by a national border; for example, Assange can continue releasing damaging information against the U.S. from within the Ecuadorian embassy, and he has done nothing to physically violate U.S. territory, and yet this doesn't matter because our lives are half lived in cyberspace anyway. The nation-state arose as a protective force to ensure that violence occurred only within well-defined wars at the edges of their territories, and citizens could basically count on peace when not at war. It basically succeeded at that, but it succeeded so well that the "battlegrounds" now have nothing to do with physical ___location and often little to do with physical force.
You make a good point, but his argument then quickly boils down to anarchist style stuff which isn't worth a debate in my opinion. If you removed all these power structures somehow, they would just be replaced by other (probably identical) power structures.
> The nation-state arose as a protective force to ensure that violence occurred only within well-defined wars at the edges of their territories, and citizens could basically count on peace when not at war. It basically succeeded at that, but it succeeded so well that the "battlegrounds" now have nothing to do with physical ___location and often little to do with physical force.
This is an interesting idea, so suppose the nation state is eliminated. Wouldn't there just be a new equivalent of the nation state that arises that is based not around physical borders but around digital borders in some way? People are always going to disagree about fundamental ideas, and they're going to band together to protect their ability to live according to those ideas. Which brings us back to the article's point #1: "Nation states, true to their name, tend to emphasize the interests of a particular nation above others.". We'll just end up with that again but instead of the US sanctioning Russia, we're going to have 4chan, reddit, and instagram launching DDoS attacks against each others' users.
Well, you're certainly not going to eliminate the concept of power. I've heard that floated by some utopianists ("we'll have world government and then everybody will get along with everybody else") and I think it's ridiculous.
I don't think that's what the article is suggesting, though. Rather, it's suggesting that we re-draw the boundaries of how we organize that power, with one level globally and another locally (probably at the city or territory level).
I'd assume (based on similar writings) that this would work with a federated world government with very limited and specifically-enumerated powers. Basically, we accept certain principles as foundational (rule of law, property rights, non-violence, consent of the governed), and then transfer the monopoly on physical force to a world government whose only task is ensuring that individuals don't violate that. The world government would have very limited powers: aside from preserving peace, it'd basically just define the rules around trade disputes and redress of grievances, and delegate the arbitration of these disputes to a mutually-acceptable arbiter. Possibly it might also serve as a market-maker for externalities (eg. selling carbon credits) and coordinator for shared efforts (eg. fighting infectious disease, or interstellar space travel). It would also ensure freedom to move between municipalities as long as you accept the laws of the local municipality, i.e. borders cannot keep people in or out, but they do define the extent of how you must behave within the municipality.
All other powers would go toward local municipalities. This includes a great deal of things currently reserved for a nation-state: drug laws, the place of religion, official languages, national holidays, traffic management, growth policies, possibly even things like free speech. So if San Franciscans want to smoke out, Emirates want to mandate the wearing of the hijab, Texans want complete freedom to carry a gun, Virginians want a holiday honoring Robert E. Lee, they all get that - within their own city. They just don't get to force other people to take on their customs. If Californians are upset by how everybody in Texas is packing heat, or Texans are upset by how Muslims wear a head scarf, or Muslims are upset by how San Franciscans smoke out all the time - too bad, they can define how people should behave in their own city, but they don't get to define how everybody else behaves. And the role of the world government is to ensure that, and put down any attempt at imposing your views on others by force.
I've been wondering whether the web and sites like Wikileaks signal the emergence of a meta-state level of power, one in which the ability of states to function is governed non-locally.
Maybe I'm confused, but that sounds precisely like the current condition of countries today, except on a scale smaller than America and more similar to small European or Asian nations. Having a global government would either do nothing to them in the best case scenario, or more likely, end up crushing them for the needs of the many and/or ultra rich.
Taking your example of Virginians wanting a holiday for Robert E Lee, small countries and big countries could easily do this. You say limit it to a city so that those who don't want it aren't affected. But even passing it at the city level leaves people who don't want it. I see no difference between 60% of a country the size of Malta supporting something and 60% of a city the size of Anchorage.
Well it kind of is, but with power being pushed even further down to the local level, where you could actually know your leaders, you largely remove the ability of nations to wage wars, especially on any sort of global level, and people are better able to self organize. In the states we see a problem right now with coast-inland and some other smaller cultures where you have some people who are able to take power dictating wildly different views for other people who absolutely disagree with them. It's hard to manage a multi-cultural country. We see it right now.
Thinking strictly about the freedom of movement, there is a huge difference between Malta enacting a policy I hate enough to leave it and Anchorage doing the same. In the latter case it's easier for me to pack up and go somewhere else. This may or may not be the case in the absence of nation-states, but I suspect that freedom of movement would be greater than it is between nation-states today--at least in the vast majority of cases.
For someone who is apparently considering what life without nation states would be like for the very first time, you're remarkably confident in their necessity.
Imagination is difficult. Ask a simple person what would happen, "if women didn't have babies." After attempting to think for a while, they'll just sputter, "but women have babies!"
>He wouldn't, though, because with no nations, the U.S. wouldn't exist as a nation, nor would it have jails, nor would there be an "it" to have them.
That's naive. Nations or no nations, in the resulting mega-empire, the US powerful (which are in the top 0.01% of the world) and its special interests, will still dominate most of the goings on. If they're joined by EUs 0.01% even better, and even less chances for Assange. Heck, they already do all that through their allies (NATO, political lackeys etc), that wont stop because "nation states have now disbanded").
The bigger question is "Is there some person or organization who would cause harm to Assange that he would not be able to protect himself against?" I don't know the answer to that. Go back to the Middle Ages and the answer would be that Assange would pledge his loyalty to one particular lord, who he agreed not to spill the beans on, and he would get protection from them in return. With city-states (popular in antiquity, and perhaps rising again), he would reside in a city, and (assuming he wasn't exiled), that city would provide for his defense and refuse to extradite him, and all the other cities can go to hell.
The complexity today is that we have this whole other level of trans-national organizations: multinational corporations, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, Internet communities, hacker collectives, etc. Many of the "attacks" on these organizations can't be stopped by a national border; for example, Assange can continue releasing damaging information against the U.S. from within the Ecuadorian embassy, and he has done nothing to physically violate U.S. territory, and yet this doesn't matter because our lives are half lived in cyberspace anyway. The nation-state arose as a protective force to ensure that violence occurred only within well-defined wars at the edges of their territories, and citizens could basically count on peace when not at war. It basically succeeded at that, but it succeeded so well that the "battlegrounds" now have nothing to do with physical ___location and often little to do with physical force.