User blog:Pacifista15/BW: The World Government

Warning: This blog is long. If you don't want to read it then get out now.

Alright, so today's subject is the lovely World Government. Everybody knows about them right? Those corrupt bastards who put a bounty on Robin and are the reason for all evil in the world. Well, after thinking about it, I came up with a few thoughts and I would like to hear your opinion on some of them. I got some of these ideas from two very good books, 1984 by George Orwell (I actually only read like half) and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

First, a little background. The World Government is an organization of around 170 nations from around the world that was formed when twenty nations bound together and defeated the Ancient Kingdom. These 170 nations are from all four Blues and the Grand Line, and, as stated by Spandam, it is basically the world. I think it's pretty clever how since the nations run themselves, the World Government has really no day-to-day operations to carry out besides military issues. But take a moment to think about this. Think about our world, with all of its various nations, and how no one here can decide upon anything. 7 billion people (I think that was the last statistic) under the control of one government. Now I know there probably aren't as many people in the OP world, but that is still a lot of people to control. To run this style of government, there are several layers: 1)The Gorosei, the top lawmakers and basically the five-part rulers. 2)The Reverie, or the collection of rulers from all 170 nations. 3)The World Nobles, who are basically pointless figureheads. The Gorosei are basically the ones who hold real power; they decide what wars to go and what to do about people who disobey them. They also determine the Shichibukai and basically make all the big decisions. The Reverie is an interesting concept, but I'll get to that a little later. As for the World Nobles, they are figureheads. They are probably the biggest mystery to me as to why the World Government keeps them around if they give them such a bad reputation. Since they really do nothing but piss off commoners and have no real symbolism that benefits the World Government, my best guess is that they hold some kind of power behind the scenes, like some hidden information that the Gorosei needs. Ancient weapons, anyone?

On that note, everyone believes that the World Government is evil and corrupt for one incident in particular: Ohara. Some guys were minding their own business, and then they got obliterated along with their island. But think about in a different way. The World Government, as I mentioned before, has a lot of responsibility with 170 nations. Everyone has heard "knowledge is power" and the World Government knows that if someone has knowledge, it will be a problem for them (imagine an ancient weapon war between the WG and the revived Ancient Kingdom). So the solution is to keep everyone in the dark and make sure it never happens. I think it's stupid and counterproductive, but it works. It also prevents the nations from banding together and creating a bigger problem. People may also say that they prevented people from knowing about some of the events of the war and about the escaped prisoners, but this would cause control to slip. At a time when your military power is at its lowest ebb, this is bad. It's probably better that they did this.

Now if they have managed to impose this control on everyone, how come there are pirates? Well, that's Roger's fault. he likes to shake things up, and the World Government got a bit more lax afterwards, resulting in a lot of pirates going around and causing problems. The WG realized that their control was wavering and decided to do a few things. The first thing (which was probably in place already actually) was the bounty system. By making it so that everyone is out to get everyone else's head, you prevented pirates (for the most part) from gathering together. They also added the Shichibukai, which served to do several things: 1)Add some powerful soldiers to the World Government's arsenal 2)Take away several enemies and 3)Send a sort of message saying "even the strongest of you are our slaves". The only real exception to this kind of fear was the Yonko, who set up base in the New World before the WG could take a foothold.

I think I lost a few of my thoughts part of the way through this blog, but the main point is that the World Government is not as evil as one might think. Their motives are mainly to retain control and peace, and without them, there would be some extreme turmoil in the One Piece world. Thank you for reading, and add your thoughts below.