Do You Think It Is Possible To Take Control of the World

I just had a thought. Taking over the world is possible without military action. There are two routes you can take

1) Religious conversions: (like most of the radical Muslim groups have been doing in France and Britain). They pocket together and use their religious laws to effectively make a state within a state. In France there are certain "no go" zones or "hot beds" that the police don't enter due to the violence it would cause. Massive religious immigration into a country is a slow process but, eventually you turn an entire state over to the control of your religious group.

2) Economic: Corner the world energy market. Control the energy the world uses and you can hold the world hostage and at a whim you can shut down entire economies. Such as with oil, if lets say OPEC decided it would cut off all supply to the world (except the opec nations themselves) the entire world would collapse in a matter of days. Though super powers like China and America would immediately launch a military strike to secure resources but, they would only have shale to oil practices and that would be just enough to make the military run. The citizens would be helpless and the war effort would eventually crumble.

When people think about taking control of the world, there's always a flaw. Even in the most perfect scenarios, there's always going to be the risk of assassination, rebellion, or whatever. Power wielded by the righteous will be opposed by the wicked and power wielded by the wicked will be opposed by the righteous.

Modern society is unable to be ruled by a single person. The technology, cultures, religions, morals, and every other facet of human society reject that possibility. That is why, before anyone could ever take steps to take power, they must first phase out harmful elements. Not only that, but if a nation is working in any remotely stable manner, they will be resistant. Hitler took advantage of a destabilized Germany and look how far he got. His downfall came at expense of his hateful ambitions and excessive force against the world that was not under his control. A land in chaos and turmoil is ripe for the picking.

In history, many of those who attempted to take over the world made too many enemies. At the same time they did not have appropriate methods of dealing with them. It might be a good idea to eliminate them, but you can't get all of them, especially if they are among the common people. Using Hitler as an example again, his method of dealing with enemies was to kill them. It was a pretty good idea until the number of enemies grew so large that he was killing massive amounts of people at a time. Once you start exterminating people on a large scale, you attract more powerful enemies. The best thing you can do is solidify your power and take steps to counteract the attempts of people who would try to rebel.

I'm not all here and taking over the world in any effective manner is very complicated. I'll be back later or tomorrow to expand on what I've already posted.

controlling the world. . .
only if you control the leader/person_of_great_influence
in every civilization. . .then yes

Continuing on from where I left off...
Rebellions are the types of things that can act as a double-edged sword. On one hand, a force of people opposing your rule could gain enough momentum to sway a massive amount of people in their favor. However, there are a number of ways to turn it in your favor. As I said, killing them is an effective, but risky course of action. Nothing says fear me like wiping out a rebel army in one fell swoop, but it also turns them into martyrs. That is why you create a buffer zone around you. It might not be the most moral thing to do is, use innocent people as a shield, but make it seem as if the rebels are at fault for their deaths. If you're a supposed "man of the people" and you keep the weak, sick, feeble, etc., close to you, there is a great chance that if someone were to rise up, they would be caught in the cross fire. Their deaths would garner sympathy from the public and you did whatever you could to "protect them from the bloodthirsty rebels."

However, there is no reason why a good ruler should ever have to go to such lengths. That is where solidifying your power base comes in. If you have a strong network of friends and "followers" that are 100% loyal to you, the larger the better, you can plant people in various situations to act in your favor when it seems that some people might not be so thrilled with you. There's also the simple matter of satisfying the people. Power corrupts people, that's why you be strong of heart and mind if you are to take over the world. You can't just go killing people all willy-nilly, living in excess, and acting at the expense of the people.

Taking over the world, as I've said multiple times, is a complicated process and maintaining it is even more so. The only way to successfully do both is to work within your means and manage things in a way that will make you appear to be best suited for the power you wield. Peace isn't always a good thing. Sometimes there needs to be an element of chaos so that you can reassure you're people that you are able to provide them with hope.

That's absolutely ruthless The Jesus, I applaud your application of highly expendable meat shields.

Any GOOD ruler, but those are few and far in between, furthermore you have to ensure that future generations are provided good leaders, by setting up some system to ensure people are worthy to lead.

Sometimes Batman NEEDS a Joker too...

Sometimes you need to be ruthless, its kind of the law of the land. Of course the meat shields are only meant to be used utilized if you can't suppress the rebellion before it gets to that point. Its always good to have a back-up plan.

In selecting an heir, there's really no guarantee that the one you choose will be suitable. You can only set an example and hope for the best. There are a few extenuating circumstances where you might be able to find the perfect one, but like I said power corrupts people. It seems kind of apathetic, but by the time you're successor is to take over, you should be willing to accept the collapse of what you've accomplished. Nothing lasts forever, and since you'll be dead, its not much of your concern. I think Charles has the right idea though, keeping fucking until you have mad kids and then let them sort it out among themselves, of course throwing your two cents in every so often.

The measure of a ruler is what he accomplishes in his reign.

You could create a clone of yourself, one day you might even be able to transfer your mind into said clone.

It is not possible for one person to take control of the world, especially not with today's existing technology. Even if you successfully managed to drag all other countries under your control, the economic disaster created by wide scale military destruction would likely take longer than your lifetime to fix. Also, while you are in control you would have to combat various groups that wished to undermine you. You could not insure that people are absolutely loyal. If one man has power over the entire world, then that is more than enough temptation for even your closest advisor's to turn against you. You can see this in the case of Hitler - probably the one man who came closest to ruling the world.

Ruling the world and controlling the world are two different things. It could be possible to control the entire world, but it would take extreme measures. Simply ruling the world would require all nations to accept you as being in a seat of power that overrides any establish organization, government, monarchy, regime, etc.. Personally, I would think that the world would be more comfortable with a single ruler, considering the fact that so many countries are so dissatisfied with their current leaders. One way to take control, while not alienating others would be to allow individual countries, certain ones, to maintain they're established governments, but they would have to go through you before they did anything. I'm not saying complete autocracy, but giving them some freedom to act.

In my overall "plan" there would be no concern about the economies collapsing and military destruction, because those are all things that would be essentially "phased out" and restructured in the beginning stages of the ruler's ascent to power.

Placing one person in control of such power is doomed to failure for everyone. Even with individual government holding their own sovereignty over their own lands. The "president of the world" or whatever their title would be. Every disaster or every negative event is just another chance for that one person to wrestle control away from the sovereign government in the area of crisis. That path would eventually lead to one man to rule them all and that is the death of all freedom and individuality.

I'm pretty sure if someone had enough military power, they could just perform a global coup d'état. But this happening in our lifetime, probably not so much.

You're generalizing. Basically anyone is susceptible to corruption in positions of power, but there are, in fact, some who wouldn't let it go to their head. There are also instances where some nations would be better off going through a period of time where there is a higher, more objective authority governing them. During a civil war, would it be better that one side has the majority of the power or that a mediator would be step in and take control until order is restored?

As if it would work so perfectly well. Lets take a U.N. Style government as a universal body of Authority of the planet.

First off, lets just get this out of the way: Large bodies of governments are ineffective and only increase inefficiency when the size of the governing body is increased.

When a conflict arises, which nation will have to fork over its troops to keep the peace? Why would Italy for example have to hand over troops to keep the peace in Somilia? Why would Venezuela have to hand over troops for peace keeping in the middle east?

Lets say Russia borrows money from the U.N. and doesn't repay its bill and eventually snubs its nose at the entire body? What will the U.N. do? Trade embargo? Russia is one of the top five Wheat and oil producers. So that would ruin entire economies or if Wheat is held back, notice those riots in Haiti and other countries about the price and availability of corn and related products? Think about how horrible it would be if a major wheat producer cut off the supply.

What if there is a conflict and the U.N. has to use military force in a war. Which nation will have to fork over the troops? America? Japan, China? France, Germany, etc, etc

Lets say the U.N. council passes some "global law" that various countries disagree with but, the "Global Senate" passed. What is going to happen? Diplomacy? We have seen how well the U.N. has done with its diplomacy.

Points against a "Global Government" The "Oil for food" scandal? Huge amounts of documented bribes and kickbacks, the untold number of bribes and such that haven't been been discovered. The child sex slave scandal
http://www.infowars.net/articles/january2007/030107UN_Sex.htm

The current U.N. is a prime example as how pathetic huge government is. Putting a single person in change will just turn the putrid, bloated sack of shit of the U.N. into the form of a single man.

Even if the president of the world was a good man the person that would follow him would be corrupt and if not him then soon the position will be corrupted and thus the world will be royally fucked.

Take for instance the United States Senate. Riddled with corruption and etc. So if they are willing to be corrupt then what is to keep the "senators" of a global government from becoming corrupt?

The concept of putting one person in charge of such power is two degrees away from pants on head retarded.

had this conversation already; no one nation is powerful enough to take the entire world at this point; I could see a possible future of one super power slowly gaining a majority of the world but as we've seen it happen on more than one occasion, bids for world domination ALWAYS fall through.

ex. Alexander the Great, Rome, Napoleon, Germany (ww1), Nazi Germany.

The rest of the world just isn't willing to give up control of their individuality, and too many other countries to contend with.

Some would say that a number of secret societies have already put a great many members into considerable positions of power in many governments across the globe. The idea of world domination by a select few powerful people is much more likely than most of us would care to imagine.

as many third world nations as there are which are probably not under said society probably prohibit total domination; but your opinion is just speculation as is mine.

If you mean take over the world with all religion and cultures in tact, then I think its impossible. You'd have to kill quite a number of people otherwise it'll be a non stop civil war, if anyone can make it that far.

Not really my opinion, but I think Zeitgesit is relevant, and could provide some conspiracy theory insight.

taking control of the middle-east is gonna be troublesome

FOOLS!!!!!!!! THE ARK OF THE COVENANT!!