I don't have the answer to that. If history teaches us anything, it's that empires are subject to the fickleness of their rulers, and often expansion halts for long periods of time, if not devolving into gradual atomization as we've more-or-less observed in Europe for 1500 years

I don't advocate monarchic empire

Nor would I burn the American system to the ground

Empire is about vision.

Right, in practice empires reach a point of maximum influence, but it seems like generally the idea of them is to establish dominance over other nations and force them to serve.

How so?

If a nation is about the people, and it is unjust to place one people above another...

I just don't see how these ideas fit together.

It is unjust to place one people above another in privilige or cultural clout _within the nation of the subjected._

If you don't like the America system, is there a country that currently exists that you do like? Or that you would reference for an example what a good nation should strive for?

Hmm. How can there be more than one people within a nation at all, if the nation is the people?

An empire can incorporate multiple nations, as the United Kingdom is comprised of four countries

Or that doesn't exist anymore I spose

I believe the American Constitution is the most refined document of political law to date

I sense a but coming

haha

Ok. Maybe I see. So a just empire is a coalition of nations cooperating toward a shared political vision?

We're in need of some Amendments, of course

Yes

Ok. Goose has been appointed Imperator of the Constitutional Convention of 2025. What Amendments does he propose?

The establishment of the Clerical Congress as the 4th Branch of Government, with the power of petition as a means of forcing executive orders for the social health of the nations.

That one is going to need some unpacking.

Oh hell yeah it is

if you have a moment

What's your opinion on EU?

@uncephalized you can answer too

Too big, too centralized. Suffering from some of the same ills the US has but failing faster because Europe writ large has less shared heritage than the vestiges of the US.

I don't understand it well enough to have a complete opinion, but the basic idea of a political association based on shared ethnolinguistic & religious heritage is not unreasonable, so long as it recognizes that the source of it's validity and it's necessary aims should be the aforementioned criteria.

And their preservation

I think there is a problem generally with trying to merge your political baskets too big. When we only have the one planet it's not a stable solution to have political entities the scale of whole continents.

Not at all

It's the too big to fail problem in the political sphere.

Solution. Populate Mars

how far are we going in ensuring cohesive "ethnolinguistic and religious heritage", and how small do you expect those groupings to be?

Populate lots of places, yes.

Planets are actually the worst places to start @Clive if we want to expand into space. I'm all about O'Neill cylinders.

Just fill up the solar system with trillions of people living in giant tubes. Much easier than terraforming.

Every region of the world will inevitably be unique. In Europe, a European is a fair-skinned Indo-European-speaking Christian, with limited though clearly delineated exeptions.

Is that like a Dyson sphere?

No. It's a cylindrical habitat miles across that rotates to provide artificial gravity.

"Fair-skinned" by global standards. I'm no anti-Med