What of the nation state?

[Husar]

There are so many specific downsides to such a situation, but on a fundamental level, I believe that the further removed government is from the people it serves, the more potential there is for adverse impact in regard to the laws it implements and the actions it takes.

Even the most well intentioned world government would have difficulty acting equitably on behalf of all of the world's people. And if such a government did not have the people's best intentions at heart, or was motivated by the betterment of one specific group over others? Well, there would be no escape, no counterbalance...

Well, it would be a layered government of sorts, with elected officials from all those regions in it's parliament, giving the entire planet and all the microplanning into the hands of just one government would be quite overwhelming I think, the world government would take on mostly things like ensuring peace, earth defense and other global concerns, not dictating the same crop rotation process to the sahara desert and the antarctic. It could draw from the best of all countries to drive space exploration and exploitation, build ion cannons directed at orbit, operate space stations etc. There already is some cooperation with these things, but I would think if it were directed by one single agency with the combined funds of all current agencies but united towards one goal, it might be more effective.

And concerning the 1984 scenario, it's more or less a reality in North Korea and where are our counterbalancing efforts to help these people? Britain installed cameras everywhere and noone invaded Britain. Nation-states also have that problem that the people in them say "we don't care about people of other nationalities, we have our own problems and they have theirs", so the counterbalancing only comes into effect once the "evil nation" declares war on the "better nation". Or harbors people who fly two planes into a big twin-tower, or something like that. A world government couldn't keep the people down anymore than the US government or any european government can now, but in addition it could also intervene and restore order if a regional government tried to limit freedom.

What might be worth trying is to elect people for two years only, with four years you usually get bad policies in the beginning to give people two years to forget about them, with two year terms that would be harder I guess.