Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic
situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with
minimal human labor, so that they become available to all very cheaply
or even freely.
Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity
has been eliminated for all goods and services. Instead it means that
all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with
some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.
Models
Speculative technology
Futurists who speak of "post-scarcity" suggest economies based on advances in automated manufacturing technologies, often including the idea of self-replicating machines, the adoption of division of labour which in theory could produce nearly all goods in abundance, given adequate raw materials and energy.
More speculative forms of nanotechnology such as molecular assemblers or nanofactories,
which do not currently exist, raise the possibility of devices that can
automatically manufacture any specified goods given the correct
instructions and the necessary raw materials and energy, and many nanotechnology enthusiasts have suggested it will usher in a post-scarcity world.
In the more near-term future, the increasing automation of physical labor using robots is often discussed as means of creating a post-scarcity economy.
Increasingly versatile forms of rapid prototyping machines, and a hypothetical self-replicating version of such a machine known as a RepRap, have also been predicted to help create the abundance of goods needed for a post-scarcity economy. Advocates of self-replicating machines such as Adrian Bowyer,
the creator of the RepRap project, argue that once a self-replicating
machine is designed, then since anyone who owns one can make more copies
to sell (and would also be free to ask for a lower price than other
sellers), market competition will naturally drive the cost of such
machines down to the bare minimum needed to make a profit, in this case just above the cost of the physical materials and energy
that must be fed into the machine as input, and the same should go for
any other goods that the machine can build.
Even with fully automated production, limitations on the number
of goods produced would arise from the availability of raw materials and
energy, as well as ecological damage associated with manufacturing
technologies. Advocates of technological abundance often argue for more extensive use
of renewable energy and greater recycling in order to prevent future
drops in availability of energy and raw materials, and reduce ecological
damage. Solar energy in particular is often emphasized, as the cost of solar panels continues to drop (and could drop far more with automated production by self-replicating
machines), and advocates point out the total solar power striking the
Earth's surface annually exceeds our civilization's current annual power
usage by a factor of thousands.
Advocates also argue that the energy and raw materials available
could be greatly expanded by looking to resources beyond the Earth. For
example, asteroid mining is sometimes discussed as a way of greatly reducing scarcity for many useful metals such as nickel. While early asteroid mining might involve crewed missions, advocates hope that eventually humanity could have automated mining done by self-replicating machines. If this were done, then the only capital expenditure would be a single
self-replicating unit (whether robotic or nanotechnological). The unit
could then replicate at no further cost, limited only by the available
raw materials needed to build more.
Social
A World Future Society report looked at how historically capitalism
takes advantage of scarcity. Increased resource scarcity leads to
increase and fluctuation of prices, which drives advances in technology
for more efficient use of resources such that costs will be considerably
reduced, almost to zero. They thus claim that following an increase in
scarcity from now, the world will enter a post-scarcity age between 2050
and 2075.
Murray Bookchin's 1971 essay collection Post-Scarcity Anarchism outlines an economy based on social ecology, libertarian municipalism, and an abundance of fundamental resources, arguing that post-industrial societies
have the potential to be developed into post-scarcity societies. Such
development would enable "the fulfillment of the social and cultural
potentialities latent in a technology of abundance".
Karl Marx, in a section of his Grundrisse that came to be known as the "Fragment on Machines". argued that the transition to a post-capitalist society combined with
advances in automation would allow for significant reductions in labor
needed to produce necessary goods, eventually reaching a point where all
people would have significant amounts of leisure time to pursue
science, the arts, and creative activities; a state some commentators
later labeled as "post-scarcity". Marx argued that capitalism—the dynamic of economic growth based on capital accumulation—depends on exploiting the surplus labor of workers, but a post-capitalist society would allow for:
The free development of individualities, and hence not
the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour,
but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a
minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc.
development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means
created, for all of them.
Marx's concept of a post-capitalist communist society involves the free distribution of goods made possible by the abundance provided by automation. The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to develop
from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that socialism—a
system based on social ownership
of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development
of fully developed communism by further advancing productive
technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation,
an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.
Marx did not believe in the elimination of most physical labor
through technological advancements alone in a capitalist society,
because he believed capitalism contained within it certain tendencies
which countered increasing automation and prevented it from developing
beyond a limited point, so that manual industrial labor could not be
eliminated until the overthrow of capitalism. Some commentators on Marx have argued that at the time he wrote the Grundrisse,
he thought that the collapse of capitalism due to advancing automation
was inevitable despite these counter-tendencies, but that by the time of
his major work Capital: Critique of Political Economy he had abandoned this view, and came to believe that capitalism could continually renew itself unless overthrown.
Surplus economics
Surplus economics
is a heterodox economic theory that centres on the implications of
economic surplus—production beyond essential needs—and its role in
shaping modern exchange economies. Contrary to the orthodox economic
focus on scarcity, surplus economics argues that the real economic
challenge is managing the consequences of abundance, including
inequality, consumption, and motivation. The theory proposes that modern
capitalism functions not to allocate scarce resources efficiently, but
to absorb and destroy surplus through patterns of production and
exchange.
Fiction
Literature
The 1954 novella The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl
describes a world of cheap energy, in which robots are overproducing
the commodities enjoyed by humankind. The lower-class "poor" must spend
their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots'
extravagant production, while the upper-class "rich" can live lives of
simplicity.
A for Anything by Damon Knight,
a 1961 novel. In the near future, a scientist invents the "Gismo", a
device that can duplicate anything, even another Gismo, and sends pairs
of them to various people around the world. Civilization almost
immediately collapses. Since all material objects have become
essentially free, the only commodity of value is human labor, and the
author suggests that a slave economy (of subhumans copied by Gismos
controlled by feudal lords) would be the inevitable result.
The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks are centered on a post-scarcity economy where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated, and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value). People in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open and socially-permissive society.
The society depicted in the Culture novels has been described by some commentators as "communist-bloc" or "anarcho-communist". Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod
has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's
communism, but adds that "however friendly he was to the radical left,
Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of
utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what
mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing
technological progress, especially space development, and in the
meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world
were rational and humane."
Con Blomberg's 1959 short story Sales Talk depicts a post-scarcity society in which society incentivizes consumption to reduce the burden of overproduction. To further reduce production, virtual reality is used to fulfill peoples' needs to create.
Cory Doctorow's novel Walkaway presents a modern take on the idea of post-scarcity. With the advent of 3D printing
– and especially the ability to use these to fabricate even better
fabricators – and with machines that can search for and reprocess waste
or discarded materials, the protagonists no longer have need of regular
society for the basic essentials of life, such as food, clothing and
shelter.
Singularitarianism is a movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the singularity benefits humans.
Singularitarians are distinguished from other futurists
who speculate on a technological singularity by their belief that the
singularity is not only possible, but desirable if guided prudently.
Accordingly, they may sometimes dedicate their lives to acting in ways
they believe will contribute to its rapid yet safe realization.
American news magazineTime
describes the worldview of Singularitarians by saying "even though it
sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast
is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis
about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex
that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves
super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but... while the Singularity appears
to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards
sober, careful evaluation".
Definition
The term "Singularitarian" was originally defined by Extropian thinker Mark Plus (Mark Potts) in 1991 to mean "one who believes the concept of a Singularity". This term has since been redefined to mean "Singularity activist" or
"friend of the Singularity"; that is, one who acts so as to bring about
the singularity.
Singularitarianism can also be thought of as an orientation or an
outlook that prefers the enhancement of human intelligence as a
specific transhumanist goal instead of focusing on specific technologies such as A.I. There are also definitions that identify a singularitarian as an
activist or a friend of the concept of singularity, that is, one who
acts so as to bring about a singularity. Some sources described it as a moral philosophy
that advocates deliberate action to bring about and steer the
development of a superintelligence that will lead to a theoretical
future point that emerges during a time of accelerated change.
An early singularitarian articulation that history is making progress toward a point of superhuman intelligence is found in Hegel's work The Phenomenology of Spirit. In 1993, mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author Vernor Vinge hypothesized that the moment might come when technology will allow "creation of entities with greater than human intelligence" and used the term "the Singularity" to describe this moment. He suggested that the singularity may pose an existential risk for humanity, and that it could happen through one of four means:
The development of computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent.
Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
Biological science may find ways to improve upon the natural human intellect.
Singularitarianism coalesced into a coherent ideology in 2000, when artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote The Singularitarian Principles, in which he states that a Singularitarian believes that the singularity
is a secular, non-mystical event that is possible, beneficial to the
world, and worked toward by its adherents. Yudkowsky's definition is inclusive of various interpretations. Theorists such as Michael Anissimov argue for a strict definition that refers only to the advocacy of the development of superintelligence.
In June 2000, Yudkowsky, with the support of Internet entrepreneurs Brian Atkins and Sabine Atkins, founded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute to work toward the creation of self-improving Friendly AI. MIRI's writings that an AI with the ability to improve upon its own design (Seed AI)
would rapidly lead to superintelligence. These Singularitarians believe
that reaching the singularity swiftly and safely is the best possible
way to minimize net existential risk.
What, then, is the Singularity?
It's a future period during which the pace of technological change will
be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly
transformed. Although neither utopian or dystopian, this epoch will
transform the concepts we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our
business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.
Understanding the Singularity will alter our perspective on the
significance of our past and the ramifications for our future. To truly
understand it inherently changes one's view of life in general and one's
particular life. I regard someone who understands the Singularity and
who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life as a
"singularitarian."
In July 2009, many prominent Singularitarians participated in a conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) to discuss the potential impact of robots
and computers and the possibility that they may become self-sufficient
and able to make their own decisions. They discussed the possibility and
the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire
autonomy, and to what degree they could use such abilities to pose a
threat or hazard (i.e., cybernetic revolt).
They noted that some machines have acquired various forms of
semi-autonomy, including being able to find power sources on their own
and independently choose targets to attack with weapons. They warned
that some computer viruses can evade elimination and have achieved "cockroach intelligence". They asserted that self-awareness as depicted in science fiction is probably unlikely, but that there are other potential hazards and pitfalls. Some experts and academics have questioned the use of robots for military combat, especially when such robots are given some degree of autonomous functions. The President of the AAAI has commissioned a study of this issue.
Reception
There are several objections to Kurzweil's singularitarianism, even from optimists in the A.I. field. For instance, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter argued that Kurzweil's predicted achievement of human-level A.I. by 2045 is not viable. Even Gordon Moore, the namesake of Moore's Law that predicated the notion of singularity, maintained that it will never occur. According to some observers, these criticisms do not diminish
enthusiasm for singularity because it has assumed a quasi-religious
response to the fear of death, allowing its adherents to enjoy the
benefits of religion without its ontological burdens. Science journalist John Horgan wrote:
Let's face it. The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it "the rapture
for nerds," an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful
to heaven and leaves us sinners behind. Such yearning for
transcendence, whether spiritual or technological, is all too
understandable. Both as individuals and as a species, we face deadly
serious problems, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine, environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and AIDS.
Engineers and scientists should be helping us face the world's problems
and find solutions to them, rather than indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the singularity.
Kurzweil rejects this assessment, saying that his predictions about
the singularity are driven by the data that increases in computational
technology have long been exponential. He says that his critics mistakenly take an intuitive, linear view of
technological advancement rather than accounting for that exponential
growth.
Friendly artificial intelligence (friendly AI or FAI) is hypothetical artificial general intelligence (AGI) that would have a positive (benign) effect on humanity or at least align with human interests such as fostering the improvement of the human species. It is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence and is closely related to machine ethics. While machine ethics is concerned with how an artificially intelligent agent should
behave, friendly artificial intelligence research is focused on how to
practically bring about this behavior and ensuring it is adequately
constrained.
Yudkowsky (2008) goes into more detail about how to design a Friendly AI.
He asserts that friendliness (a desire not to harm humans) should be
designed in from the start, but that the designers should recognize both
that their own designs may be flawed, and that the robot will learn and
evolve over time. Thus the challenge is one of mechanism design—to
define a mechanism for evolving AI systems under a system of checks and
balances, and to give the systems utility functions that will remain
friendly in the face of such changes.
"Friendly" is used in this context as technical terminology,
and picks out agents that are safe and useful, not necessarily ones
that are "friendly" in the colloquial sense. The concept is primarily
invoked in the context of discussions of recursively self-improving
artificial agents that rapidly explode in intelligence, on the grounds that this hypothetical technology would have a large, rapid, and difficult-to-control impact on human society.
The roots of concern about artificial intelligence are very old.
Kevin LaGrandeur showed that the dangers specific to AI can be seen in
ancient literature concerning artificial humanoid servants such as the golem, or the proto-robots of Gerbert of Aurillac and Roger Bacon.
In those stories, the extreme intelligence and power of these humanoid
creations clash with their status as slaves (which by nature are seen
as sub-human), and cause disastrous conflict. By 1942 these themes prompted Isaac Asimov to create the "Three Laws of Robotics"—principles
hard-wired into all the robots in his fiction, intended to prevent them
from turning on their creators, or allowing them to come to harm.
In modern times as the prospect of superintelligent AI looms nearer, philosopher Nick Bostrom
has said that superintelligent AI systems with goals that are not
aligned with human ethics are intrinsically dangerous unless extreme
measures are taken to ensure the safety of humanity. He put it this way:
Basically we should assume that a 'superintelligence'
would be able to achieve whatever goals it has. Therefore, it is
extremely important that the goals we endow it with, and its entire
motivation system, is 'human friendly.'
In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky called for the creation of "friendly AI" to mitigate existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence.
He explains: "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you
are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."
Steve Omohundro says that a sufficiently advanced AI system will, unless explicitly counteracted, exhibit a number of basic "drives", such as resource acquisition, self-preservation,
and continuous self-improvement, because of the intrinsic nature of any
goal-driven systems and that these drives will, "without special
precautions", cause the AI to exhibit undesired behavior.
Alexander Wissner-Gross
says that AIs driven to maximize their future freedom of action (or
causal path entropy) might be considered friendly if their planning
horizon is longer than a certain threshold, and unfriendly if their
planning horizon is shorter than that threshold.
Luke Muehlhauser, writing for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, recommends that machine ethics researchers adopt what Bruce Schneier
has called the "security mindset": Rather than thinking about how a
system will work, imagine how it could fail. For instance, he suggests
even an AI that only makes accurate predictions and communicates via a
text interface might cause unintended harm.
In 2014, Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Bostrom underlined the need for 'friendly AI'; nonetheless, the difficulties in designing a 'friendly'
superintelligence, for instance via programming counterfactual moral
thinking, are considerable.
Yudkowsky advances the Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) model.
According to him, our coherent extrapolated volition is "our wish if we
knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had
grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than
diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated
as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted".
Rather than a Friendly AI being designed directly by human
programmers, it is to be designed by a "seed AI" programmed to first
study human nature and then produce the AI that humanity would want, given sufficient time and insight, to arrive at a satisfactory answer. The appeal to an objective through contingent human nature (perhaps expressed, for mathematical purposes, in the form of a utility function or other decision-theoretic formalism), as providing the ultimate criterion of "Friendliness", is an answer to the meta-ethical problem of defining an objective morality;
extrapolated volition is intended to be what humanity objectively would
want, all things considered, but it can only be defined relative to the
psychological and cognitive qualities of present-day, unextrapolated
humanity.
Steve Omohundro has proposed a "scaffolding" approach to AI safety, in which one provably safe AI generation helps build the next provably safe generation.
Seth Baum
argues that the development of safe, socially beneficial artificial
intelligence or artificial general intelligence is a function of the
social psychology of AI research communities and so can be constrained
by extrinsic measures and motivated by intrinsic measures. Intrinsic
motivations can be strengthened when messages resonate with AI
developers; Baum argues that, in contrast, "existing messages about
beneficial AI are not always framed well". Baum advocates for
"cooperative relationships, and positive framing of AI researchers" and
cautions against characterizing AI researchers as "not want(ing) to
pursue beneficial designs".
In his book Human Compatible, AI researcher Stuart J. Russell
lists three principles to guide the development of beneficial machines.
He emphasizes that these principles are not meant to be explicitly
coded into the machines; rather, they are intended for the human
developers. The principles are as follows:
The machine's only objective is to maximize the realization of human preferences.
The machine is initially uncertain about what those preferences are.
The ultimate source of information about human preferences is human behavior.
The "preferences" Russell refers to "are all-encompassing; they cover
everything you might care about, arbitrarily far into the future." Similarly, "behavior" includes any choice between options,and the uncertainty is such that some probability, which may be quite
small, must be assigned to every logically possible human preference.
John McGinnis
encourages governments to accelerate friendly AI research. Because the
goalposts of friendly AI are not necessarily eminent, he suggests a
model similar to the National Institutes of Health,
where "Peer review panels of computer and cognitive scientists would
sift through projects and choose those that are designed both to advance
AI and assure that such advances would be accompanied by appropriate
safeguards." McGinnis feels that peer review is better "than regulation
to address technical issues that are not possible to capture through
bureaucratic mandates". McGinnis notes that his proposal stands in
contrast to that of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which generally aims to avoid government involvement in friendly AI.
Some critics believe that both human-level AI and superintelligence
are unlikely and that, therefore, friendly AI is unlikely. Writing in The Guardian,
Alan Winfield compares human-level artificial intelligence with
faster-than-light travel in terms of difficulty and states that while we
need to be "cautious and prepared" given the stakes involved, we "don't
need to be obsessing" about the risks of superintelligence. Boyles and Joaquin, on the other hand, argue that Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Bostrom's
proposal to create friendly AIs appear to be bleak. This is because
Muehlhauser and Bostrom seem to hold the idea that intelligent machines
could be programmed to think counterfactually about the moral values
that human beings would have had. In an article in AI & Society,
Boyles and Joaquin maintain that such AIs would not be that friendly
considering the following: the infinite amount of antecedent
counterfactual conditions that would have to be programmed into a
machine, the difficulty of cashing out the set of moral values—that is,
those that are more ideal than the ones human beings possess at present,
and the apparent disconnect between counterfactual antecedents and
ideal value consequent.
Some philosophers claim that any truly "rational" agent, whether
artificial or human, will naturally be benevolent; in this view,
deliberate safeguards designed to produce a friendly AI could be
unnecessary or even harmful. Other critics question whether artificial intelligence can be friendly.
Adam Keiper and Ari N. Schulman, editors of the technology journal The New Atlantis,
say that it will be impossible ever to guarantee "friendly" behavior in
AIs because problems of ethical complexity will not yield to software
advances or increases in computing power. They write that the criteria
upon which friendly AI theories are based work "only when one has not
only great powers of prediction about the likelihood of myriad possible
outcomes but certainty and consensus on how one values the different
outcomes.
The inner workings of advanced AI systems may be complex and
difficult to interpret, leading to concerns about transparency and
accountability.
World domination (also called global domination, world conquest, global conquest, or cosmocracy) is a hypothetical power structure, either achieved or aspired to, in which a single political authority holds power over all or virtually all the inhabitants of Earth. Historically, world domination has been thought of in terms of a nation
expanding its power to the point that all other nations are subservient
to it. This may be achieved by direct military force or by establishing
a hegemony. The latter is an indirect form of rule by the hegemon
(leading state) over subordinate states. The hegemon's implied power
includes the threat of force, protection, or bestowal of economic
benefits. Forces resisting attempted or existing hegemony strive to
preserve or restore a multipolarbalance of power.
Various rulers or regimes have tried to achieve this goal in
history. Global conquest was never attained. However, the matter is more
complex with indirect or informal domination. Many historians,political scientists and policy-makers argue that the United States attained global hegemony since 1945 or 1991, or even the British Empire in the 19th century.
The theme of world domination has often been used in works of fiction, particularly in political fiction, as well as in conspiracy theories
(which may posit that some person or group has already secretly
achieved this goal), particularly those fearing the development of a "New World Order" involving a world government of a totalitarian nature.
The British Empire at its territorial peak in 1921
While various empires and hegemonies over the course of history have
been able to expand and dominate large parts of the world, none have
come close to conquering all the territory on Earth. However, these
powers have had a global impact in cultural and economic terms that is
still felt today. Some of the largest and more prominent empires
include:
The Roman Empire was established by the late-Republican state of ancient Rome. The republican government turned into imperial following Octavian's assumption of sole rule under the Principate in 31 BC. Since Octavian, the Empire was ruled by emperors. It included territory in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.
The Mongol Empire, which in the 13th century under Genghis Khan came to control the largest continuous land empire in the world, spanning from East Asia to the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It eventually fractured and ended with the fall of the Yuan dynasty, which was established by Kublai Khan. It reached its greatest extent in 1309, when it controlled the region through which the Silk Road trade route ran.
The Russian Empire, which controlled vast areas of Eurasia stretching from the Baltic region to Outer Manchuria, reaching its largest extent in 1895. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution in 1917, which saw Tsar Nicholas II abdicate. The cultural and economic unity of the Russian Empire allowed the rise of its successor state, the Soviet Union, a superpower whose military strength and ideology were major forces in global politics during the 20th century.
The British Empire, originating under Elizabeth I,[19]
was the largest empire in history. By 1921, the British Empire reached
its height and dominated a quarter of the globe, controlling territory
on each continent. The empire went through a long period of decline and decolonization following the end of the Second World War, which had brought it close to bankruptcy, until it ceased to be a dominant force in world affairs. English is still the official language in many countries, most of which were former British colonies, and is widely spoken as a second language around the world. The Industrial Revolution
that took place in the United Kingdom from the 18th century was spread
to the rest of the globe through the expansion of the British Empire,
enabling the development of an industrialized global economy.
The American Empire is a disputed concept referring to the sphere of informal and indirectdomination by the United States. According to proponents of the concept, the history of the American Empire begins in the Latin America following the Monroe Doctrine
in 1823, extends to the non-Soviet sphere of the Old World since 1945
and to the post-Soviet space in Europe since 1991. In size, the US
Empire exceeds the British Empire and some scholars claim that the US Empire is global in scope.
By the early 21st century, wars of territorial conquest were uncommon
and the world's nations could attempt to resolve their differences
through multilateral diplomacy under the auspices of global organizations like the United Nations, World Trade Organization, or, with equal perspectives, the Pope. A more secure strategy was allying with the United States, as did almost all developed states and many others. The United States, however, undermined its credibility in 2025when it recognized all Russian conquests in Ukraine. Except Russia, the world's superpowers and potential superpowers
rarely attempt to exert global influence through the types of
territorial empire-building seen in history, but the world's leading
superpower permanently exerts global influence through the type of
non-territorial empire-building also seen in history:
History tells us that conquest and annexation are not the only means, or
indeed the most frequent and most effective means, by which empires
have been built up in the past. The history of the Roman Empire’s
growth, for instance, is instructive when one is considering the
present-day American Empire’s structure and prospects. The principal
method by which Rome established her political supremacy in her world
was by taking her weaker neighbors under her wing and protecting them
against her and their stronger neighbors; Rome’s relation with these
protegees of hers was a treaty relation. Juridically they retained their
previous status of sovereign independence.
Domination, according to Michael W. Doyle,
is possible without territorial conquest. Some international relations
display all features of territorial conquest except a conqueror’s flag. The influence of historical territorial empires is still important and the non-territorial world domination is practiced.
The aspiration to rule 'the four corners of the universe' has been
the hallmark of imperial ideologies worldwide since the beginning of
history.
Ancient Egypt
The Egyptian King was believed to rule 'all under the sun.' On Abydos Stelae, Thutmose I claimed: "I made the boundaries of Egypt as far as the sun encircles." The Story of Sinuke tells that the King has "subdued all that the sun encircles." The Hymn of Victory of Thutmose III and the Stelae of Amenophis II
proclaimed that no one makes a boundary with the King and there is "no
boundary for him towards all lands united, towards all lands together."Thutmose III was also acknowledged: "None presents himself before thy
majesty. The circuit of the Great Circle [Ocean] is included in thy
grasp."
The prestigious title of King of the Universe appeared in Ancient Mesopotamia, being used by powerful monarchs claiming world domination, starting with the Akkadian king Sargon (2334–2284 BC). It was used in a succession of later empires claiming symbolical descent from Sargon's Akkadian Empire. During the early dynastic period in Mesopotamia (c. 2900–2350 BC), the rulers of the region's city-states (such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Umma, and Kish)
would often launch invasions into regions and cities far from their
own, generally with negligible consequences for themselves, in order to
establish temporary and small empires to either gain or keep a superior
position relative to the other city-states. Eventually this quest to be
more prestigious and powerful than the other city-states resulted in a general ambition for universal rule. Since Mesopotamia was equated to correspond to the entire world and Sumerian cities had been built far and wide (cities the like of Susa, Mari and Assur
were located near the perceived corners of the world) it seemed
possible to reach the edges of the world (at this time thought to be the
lower sea, the Persian gulf, and the upper sea, the Mediterranean). The title šar kiššatim was perhaps most prominently used by the kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, more than a thousand years after the fall of the Akkadian Empire.
After taking Babylon and defeating the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Cyrus the Great proclaimed himself "King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Four Corners of the World" in the famous Cyrus Cylinder, an inscription deposited in the foundations of the Esagila temple dedicated to the chief Babylonian god, Marduk. Cyrus the Great's dominions composed the largest empire the world had seen to that point, spanning from the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east. Iranian philosophy, literature and religion
played dominant roles in world events for the next millennium, with the
Cyrus Cylinder considered the oldest-known declaration of human rights. Before Cyrus and his army crossed the river Araxes to fight the Armenians, he installed his son, Cambyses II, as king in case he should not return from battle. However, once Cyrus had crossed the river, he had a vision in which Darius
had wings atop his shoulders and stood upon the confines of Europe and
Asia (the known world). When Cyrus awoke from the dream, he interpreted
it as signaling a great danger to the future security of the empire, as
it meant that Darius would one day rule the whole world. However, his
son Cambyses was the heir to the throne, not Darius, causing Cyrus to
wonder if Darius was forming treasonable and ambitious designs. This led
Cyrus to order Hystaspes to go back to Persis and watch over his son strictly, until Cyrus himself returned. In many cuneiform inscriptions, like the Behistun Inscription, Darius the Great presents himself as a devout believer of Ahura Mazda, perhaps even convinced that he had a divine right to rule over the world, believing that because he lived righteously by Asha, Ahura Mazda supported him as a virtuous monarch and appointed him to rule the Achaemenid Empire and their global projection, while believing through his dualist beliefs that each rebellion in his empire was the work of Druj, the enemy of Asha.
Sasanian imperial ideology
In the Sasanian Empire, the use of the mythological Kayanian title of kay, first used by Yazdegerd II and reaching its zenith under Peroz I,
stemmed from a shift in the political perspective of the Sasanian
Empire. Originally disposed towards the west against their rivals from
the Byzantine Empire, this now changed to the east against the Hephthalites. The war against the Hunnic tribes (Iranian Huns) may have awakened the mythical rivalry existing between the Iranian Kayanian rulers (mythical kings of the legendary Avestan dynasty) and their Turanian enemies, which is demonstrated in the Younger Avesta. The Sasanian Shahanshah may have believed themselves the heirs of the Fereydun and Iraj (reinforced because they were Ahura Mazda's
worshippers), and so possibly considered both the Byzantine domains in
the west and the eastern domains of the Hephthalites as belonging to
Iran, and therefore have been symbolically asserting their rights over
these lands of both hemispheres of Earth by assuming the title kay. This is based on the legend of the Iranian hero-king Fereydun (Frēdōn in Middle Persian), who divided his kingdom between his three sons: his eldest son Salm received the empire of the west, 'Rûm' (more generally meaning the Roman Empire, the Greco-Roman world, or just 'the West'); the second eldest Tur received the empire of the east, being Turān (all the lands north and east of the Amu Darya, as far as China); and the youngest, Iraj, received the heartland of the empire, Iran.
Ancient Greece
In the 4th century BCE, Alexander the Great notably expressed a desire to conquer the world,and a legend persists that after he completed his military conquest of the known ancient world, he "wept because he had no more worlds to conquer", as he was unaware of China farther to the east and had no way to know about civilizations in the Americas. Derivative characters of Alexander the Great, such as Sa'b Dhu Marathid in the south Arabian tradition, were also presented as world conquerors.
After the collapse of the Macedonian Empire, the Seleucid Empire appeared with claims to world rule in their imperial ideology, as Antiochus I Soter claimed the ancient Mesopotamian title King of the Universe. However, it didn't reflect realistic Seleucid imperial ambitions at this point after the peace treaty of Seleucus I Nicator with the Mauryans had set a limit to eastern expansion, and Antiochus ceding the lands west of Thrace to the Antigonids.
In Indian mythology, Bharata Chakravartin was the first chakravartin (universal emperor, ruler of rulers or possessor of chakra) of Avasarpini (the present half time cycle as per Jain cosmology).In a Jain legend, Yasasvati Devi, the most senior queen of Rishabhanatha (the first Jain tirthankara), saw four auspicious dreams one night. She saw the sun and the moon, Mount Meru, the lake with swans, the Earth and the ocean. Rishabhanatha explained to her that these dreams meant that a chakravartin ruler will be born to them who will conquer the whole world. Then, Bharata, a Kshatriya from the Ikshvaku dynasty, was born to them on the ninth day of the dark half of the month of Chaitra. He is said to have conquered all the six parts of the world, during his digvijaya (winning six divisions of earth in all directions), and fought his brother, Bahubali, to conquer the last remaining city. The ancient name of India was named "Bhāratavarsha" or "Bhārata" or "Bharata-bhumi" after him.The Hindu text Skanda Purana (chapter 37) has it that "Rishabhanatha was the son of Nabhiraja, and Rishabha had a son named Bharata, and after the name of this Bharata, this country is known as Bharata-varsha." After completing his world-conquest, he is said to have proceeded to his capital Ayodhyapuri with a huge army and the divine chakra-ratna (a spinning, disk-like super weapon with serrated edges).
According to legend, King Vikramaditya's Empire spread across the Middle East and East Asia (even reaching modern Indonesia), with Vikramaditya a great Hindu world emperor (or Chakravarti). This probably inspired the imperial pretensions of Chandragupta II and Skandagupta, as the term Vikramaditya is also used as a title by several Hindu monarchs. According to P. N. Oak and Stephen Knapp, king Vikrama’s empire extended up to Europe and the whole of Jambudvip (Indian subcontinent).
But, according to most historical texts, his empire was located in
present-day northern India and Pakistan, implying that the historic
Vikramaditya only ruled Bharat as far as the River Indus, as per Bhavishya Purana. There is no epigraphic evidence to suggest that his rule extended to Europe, Arabia, Central Asia or Southeast Asia. (Sources of contemporaneous empires, like the Parthians, Kushans, Chinese, Romans and Sassanids, don't mention an empire ruling from Arabia to Indonesia.) That part of his rule is considered to be legend, as Indic religious conceptions of the Indian subcontinent as being 'the world' (with the term Jambudvīpa used broadly in the same way), and how that translates into folk memories.
The Mahabharata or Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara has pretensions of world domination, as performing some mystic ritual and virtues would be a signal of becoming emperor of the whole world, just as Dharma has universal jurisdiction over all the cosmos. In this epic there was a time when Emperor Yudhishthira
ruled over 'the world': as from Śuciratha will come the son named
Vṛṣṭimān, and his son, Suṣeṇa, will be the emperor of the entire world. There are signs in Bāṇabhaṭṭa that an emperor named Harsha shall arise, who will rule over all the continents like Harishchandra, who will conquer the world like Mandhatri. But 'the world', in the time of Ramayana in the 12th century BCE and Mahabharata in the 5th century BCE, was only India. Some pan-Indian empires, like the Maurya Empire, were seeking domination first of the ancient world known to Indians in the Akhand Bharat, and then through conflict with the Seleucid Empire. Ashoka the Great was a devout Buddhist and wanted to establish it as a world religion. Also, the first references to a Chakravala Chakravartin
(an emperor who rules over all four of the continents) appears in
monuments from the time of the early Maurya Empire, in the 4th to 3rd
century BCE, in reference to Chandragupta Maurya and his grandson Ashoka.
The Mughal Empire’s ideology of world domination was a complex, evolving framework that blended Central Asian Timurid traditions, Perso-Islamic concepts of sacred kingship, and pragmatic adaptation to the diverse cultural landscape of South Asia.
Rather than just territorial expansion, this ideology was expressed
through the creation of a "millennial sovereignty" that positioned the
Mughal emperor as a divine, saintly figure overseeing a "universal
peace" (sulh-i kul) across the globe, with India as the epicenter of
their world empire. Beginning with Akbar in 1556, the Mughals adopted a "millennial" perspective, coinciding with the first Islamic millennium (1000 AH). They positioned their rulers as the Sahib Qiran (Lord of Conjunction) and the insan-i kamil (Perfect Man) of Sufi metaphysics,
transcending mere political power to command spiritual loyalty,
perceinving the Mughal Kings as a "ray of light" emanating from Allah,
reinforcing his authority as both secular leader and spiritual guide,
divinely inspired, with a spiritual charisma that drew on Islamic,
Persian, and Hindu traditions. Later, the fourth Mughal emperor styled himself Jahangir, meaning "world conqueror", and her wife Mehr-un-Nissa being awarded with the title of Nur Jahan ('Light of the World'), serving as a way to defy the Ottoman Caliphate and present themselves as the true leaders of all the Islamic world,
in which Mughal artists painted the emperor atop the world, often
holding a globe or standing on a map, explicitly signifying his role as a
supreme, world-controlling monarch. Also the Mughals considered their
kingship inspired in the goal of reaching the Sulh-i Kul (Universal Peace), religious harmony and equal treatment of all religious sects (both Hindu and Muslim, and even Christians in India), being the emperor a saintly guardian who transcended sectarian differences and had a destiny to achieve this goal to all the World.
In the Sinosphere, one of the consequences of the Mandate of Heaven in Imperial China was the claim of the Emperor of China as Son of Heaven who ruled tianxia (meaning 'all under heaven', closely associated with civilization and order in classical Chinese philosophy), which in English can be translated as 'ruler of the whole world', being equivalent to the concept of a universal monarch. The title was interpreted literally only in China and Japan, whose monarchs were referred to as demigods, deities, or 'living gods', chosen by the gods and goddesses of heaven. The theory behind this derives from Confucian bureaucracy: the Chinese emperor acted as the autocrat of tianxia
and held a mandate to rule over everyone else in the world, as long as
he served the people well. If the quality of rule became questionable
because of repeated natural disasters such as flood or famine, or for
other reasons, then rebellion was justified. This important concept
legitimized the dynastic cycle, or change of dynasties. The center of
this world-view was not exclusionary in nature, and outer groups, such
as ethnic minorities and foreigners who accepted the mandate of the Chinese Emperor (through annexation or living in tributary states), were themselves received and included into tianxia.
The concept's 'inclusion of all' and implied acceptance of the world's
diversity, emphasizing harmonious reciprocal dependence and rule by
virtue as a means to lasting peace. Although in practice there would be areas of the known world which were not under the control of the Chinese monarch ('barbarians'), in Chinese political theory the rulers of those areas derived their power from the Chinese monarch (Sinocentrism). This principle was exemplified with the goal of Qin Shi Huang
to "unify all under Heaven", which was, in fact, representative of his
desire to control and expand Chinese territory to act as an actual
geographic entity. At this time there existed many feudal states that
had shared cultural and economic interests, so the concept of a great
nation centered on the Yellow River Plain (the known world) gradually expanded and the equivalence of tianxia with the Chinese nation evolved due to the feudal practice of conferring land.
For the emperors of the central kingdom of China, the world can
be roughly divided into two broad and simple categories: civilization
and non-civilization, which means the people who have accepted the
emperor's supremacy, the Heavenly virtue and its principle, and the
people who have not accepted it. The emperors recognized their country
as the only true civilization in all respects, starting with their
geography and including all the known world in a Celestial Empire.
China's neighbors were obliged to pay their respects to the 'excellent'
Chinese emperors within these boundaries on a regular basis. It is
argued that this was the most important element of the East Asian order,
which was implicit in the term 'Celestial Empire' in the past. In the 7th century, during the Tang dynasty, some northern tribes of Turkic origin, having been made vassal (as a consequence of the Tang campaign against the Eastern Turks), referred to Emperor Taizong of Tang as the 'Khan of Heaven'. The Chinese emperor exercised power over the surrounding dynasty in the name of a Celestial Empire. Ancient Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese kings were subjects of the Chinese emperor. The idea of the absolute authority of the Chinese emperor and the extension of tianxia by the assimilation of vassal states began to fade with the Opium Wars, as China was made to refer to Great Britain as a 'sovereign nation', equal to itself, and to establish a foreign affairs bureau and accommodate the concept of Westphalian sovereignty in its international affairs in the period of New Imperialism.
Caliphate
Classical Arab theology
The theme of world domination is absent in the earliest Islamic sources, Quran or the hadith. Most warlike passages in Quran appear in defensive context. The motif of world domination appears almost a century after Muhammad during the early Muslim conquests. Then Islamic thought divided the world into Dar al-Islam coterminous with the Caliphate and the rest of the world called Dar al-Harb
(lit. region of war). The latter world has not yet been subjugated and
its inhabitants have remained outside the Islamic frontier. Dar al-Islam
and Dar al-Harb were considered in a state of war because the ultimate
objective of the Caliphate was world conquest. Imperial and
expansionist, the Caliphate strived to subjugate other peoples by the
means of jihad. This became the chief preoccupation of the contemporary Islamic jurists, such as Al-Shaybani. The jurists elaborated jihad for the conquest of Dar al-Harb. Originally Quranic defensive war, jihad evolved into offensive holy war to be waged until the Caliphate attains world domination and converts all mankind into Islam.In theory, jihad was a temporary means to attain these ends. With
worldwide Dar al-Islam, jihad would lose its raison d'être and pass out
of existence. But Dar al-Harb proved to be more permanent and vaster
than envisaged by the jurists. The wave of Islamic expansion stopped
short of world domination and the Caliphate had to accommodate itself
with other nations on grounds other than jihad.
Genghis Khan believed that it was his destiny to conquer the world for his god, Tengri, in a mission to bring the rest of the world under one sword. This was based on his shamanicbeliefs
of the Great Blue Sky that spans the world (deriving his mandate for a
world empire from this universal divinity) and had heavily inspiration
from Chinese political concepts
of universal and centralised power. The core belief was that Heaven had
granted Genghis Khan and his descendants authority over all lands and
peoples. Therefore, resistance to Mongol rule was viewed as a violation
of divine will, justifying severe punishment. He came close to bringing the entirety of Eurasia under the Mongol Empire
and the shamanic umbrella, often described as a "heavenly mission" to
establish a single and unified empire, seing himself as executor of
heaven's plan to bring order to a fragmented world until becoming "one
world, one ruler,". Born Temujin,
he adopted the name 'Genghis Khan', which means 'universal ruler'. This
led to his sons and grandsons taking up the challenge of world
conquest, being such right inherent to the Borjigin dynasty
(descendants of Genghis Khan), reinforced through diplomatic messages
often demanding unconditional submission from foreign leaders.
"Spain, evangelizer of half the
world; Spain, hammer of heretics, light of Trent, sword of Rome, cradle
of Saint Ignatius, that is our greatness and our unity… we have no
other"
In the early 17th century, Sir Walter Raleigh
proposed that world domination could be achieved through control of the
oceans, writing that "whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." In 1919, Halford Mackinder offered another influential theory for a route to world domination, writing:
While Mackinder's 'Heartland Theory' initially received little
attention outside geography, it later exercised some influence on the foreign policies of world powers seeking to obtain the control suggested by the theory. Impressed with the swift opening of World War II, Derwent Whittlesey wrote in 1942:
The swift march of conquest stunned or dazzled the onlookers… The
grandiose concept of the world domination became possible as a practical
objective only with the rise of science and its application to
mechanical invention. By these means the earth's scattered land units
and territories became accessible and complementary to each other, and
for the first time the world state, so long a futile medieval ideal, became a goal that might conceivably be reached.
Yet before the entry of the United States into this War and with Isolationism still intact, U.S. strategist Hanson W. Baldwin
had projected that "tomorrow air bases may be the highroad to power and
domination… Obviously it is only by air bases … that power exercised in
the sovereign skies above a nation can be stretched far beyond its
shores… Perhaps … future acquisitions of air bases … can carry the voice
of America through the skies to the ends of the earth.
Writing in 1948, Hans Morgenthau
stressed that the mechanical development of weapons, transportation,
and communication makes "the conquest of the world technically possible,
and they make it technically possible to keep the world in that
conquered state." He argues that a lack of such infrastructure explains
why great ancient empires, though vast, failed to complete the universal
conquest of their world and perpetuate the conquest. "Today no
technological obstacle stands in the way of a world-wide empire [as]
modern technology makes it possible to extend the control of mind and
action to every corner of the globe regardless of geography and season." Morgenthau continued on technological progress:
It has also given total war that terrifying, world-embracing impetus
which seems to be satisfied with nothing less than world dominion… The
machine age begets its own triumphs, each forward step calling forth two
or more on the road of technological progress. It also begets its own
victories, military and political; for with the ability to conquer the
world and keep it conquered, it creates the will to conquer it.
However, it has been said that with the full size and scope of the
world known, "world domination is an impossible goal", and specifically
that "no single nation however big and powerful can dominate a world" of
well over a hundred interdependent nations and billions of people.
The above assumption is challenged by scholars of the metric approach to history. Cesare Marchetti and Jesse H. Ausubel
argued that the size of empires corresponds to two weeks of travel from
the capital to the rim using the fastest transportation system
available. The airplane permits global empire because any place can be
reached within less than two weeks, though for political reasons we may
have to wait a couple more generations (from 2013) to see a global
empire. Max Ostrovsky stressed that the implication is even more drastic in the
progress of communication. The speed of communication in the Inca
Empire, for example, was 20 km per hour (running man). Today,
information moves at the speed of light. By most cautious
extrapolations, he concluded, modern technology allows for an empire
exceeding the size or population of Earth multiple times. As US Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, estimated, “if we were a true empire, we would currently preside over a much greater piece of the earth’s surface than we do.”
In certain religions, some adherents may also seek the conversion (peaceful or forced)
of as many people as possible to their own religion, without
restrictions of national or ethnic origin. This type of spiritual
domination is usually seen as distinct from the temporal dominion,
although there have been instances of efforts begun as holy wars descending into the pursuit of wealth, resources, and territory. Some Christian sects teach that a false religion, led by false prophets who achieve world domination by inducing nearly universal worship of a false deity, is a prerequisite to the end times described in the Book of Revelation.
As one author put it, "if world domination is to be obtained, the
masses of little people must be brought on board with religion."
In some instances, speakers have accused nations or ideological
groups of seeking world domination, even where those entities have
denied that this was their goal. For example, J. G. Ballard quoted Aldous Huxley as having said of the United States entering the First World War,
"I dread the inevitable acceleration of American world domination which
will be the result of it all… Europe will no longer be Europe." The period of the Cold War,
in particular, is considered to be a period of intense ideological
polarization, given the existence of two rival blocs—the capitalist West and the communist East—that
each expressed the hope of seeing the triumph of their ideology over
that of the enemy, and so the ultimate end of such a triumph would be
that one ideology or the other would become the sole governing ideology
in the world (the political philosopher John Gray even considered that both Historicist projects, Soviet Marxism–Leninism and American neoconservative, are secularized versions of apocalyptic Eschatology religious thinking). In 2012, a politician and critic of Islam, Geert Wilders, characterized Islam as "an ideology aiming for world domination rather than a religion," and in 2008 characterized the Israel–Gaza conflict
as a proxy action by Islam against the West, contending that "the end
of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only …
the start of the final battle for world domination".
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