> The long run trend is very obviously toward a single government

Is it? I believe there are far more countries now than 30 years ago.

We seem to have some more powerful international organisations now than a century ago, but earlier than that we had world spanning empires, and Europe was less than 10 countries before WW1.

I want to believe that we're heading towards a star trek like unified post scarcity planet, but I'm unsure we're not just seeing a local trend.

It's misleading actually because unincorporated territories or completely unmanaged or ungoverned groups could be counted in a "sultinate" and it would effectively mean nothing.

Much how King Arthur, Lord of the Britains was not known to the members of the anarcho-syndicalist commune.

>The long run trend is very obviously toward a single government.

Hmm, I think you will have to justify that statement, rather than simply claim it is a very obvious fact. Generally, there were fewer governments in the past as compared to the modern day.

That depends very much on how you define government. If you are a band of hunter gatherers does the "Chief" or "Shaman" that your band looks up to for leadership count as your goverment? If the answer is yes then there were way more governments in the past than there are in modern day.

If the answer is no then your point stands. However I tend to think that the answer is in fact yes and the trend does indeed seem to be toward centralized world government given a long enough time period.

“The world under heaven, after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of union, tends to divide. This has been so since antiquity.” - Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms

our world isn't under heaven though, increasingly a lot of bureaucracy can be automated away - it just ISN'T because a fair deal of automation means taking away control from politicians. add to that the technical illiteracy in general in the political sphere and there is no push for automation apart from authoritarian governments like china

all we need is an event that demonstrates the need for a world government - for eg a massive asteroid headed at earth or a planetary scale food drought to see these systems implemented.

the world is stagnating

We don't need a world gov't. We already have the UN, G8, G20. A world gov't means insufficient representation, inability to change.

Technology can automate and organize a lot of it better than a human government, and with no crazy ideological agendas.

That's the fallacy of technocrats. The Soviets used to think that with their centrally planned economy. You should probably see Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation documentary. It's an eye opener.

AI will declare an independent government, all human will join that government eventually. We will be batteries in exchange of great life styles. No matter how hard we try, we can optimize the resources better than machines.

What's the difference between a single government and a decentralized government? Under a single government there would necessarily be many subgovernments competing over resources, just as we have now under global capitalism.