One World Government by 2150

A viral post on the rationality forum LessWrong, authored by user Julius, presents a tongue-in-cheek but data-rich analysis attempting to predict when humanity might form a democratic one-world government. The method is deliberately overconfident: plot the size of record-breaking elections throughout history on a logarithmic scale and extrapolate the trendline. The timeline begins with ancient examples like the Athenian ostracism vote (~471 BC, with ~8,500 pottery shard ballots found) and the late Roman Republic (estimated 50,000 voters), then jumps through milestones like the 1573 Polish-Lithuanian royal election (~40,000 nobles), 19th-century French elections (9M voters in 1870), and Soviet-era votes (184M participants in 1984).

The current record holder is India, which conducted the world's largest election in 2024 with approximately 642 million voters. When all these data points are plotted, the exponential growth in the number of participants in the largest known elections over centuries creates a compelling trend. Extending this line forward, the analysis humorously suggests a convergence point around the year 2150, when, in theory, the entire global population could participate in a single planetary election. The post is framed as a work of 'humor' and acknowledges the absurdity of its premise while rigorously citing historical voter figures to build its case.