Comment by mmooss

> The international organisation for stopping wars, human trafficking, money laundering, drug distribution etc. however capable they might be, haven't managed to stamp out any of those things.

They've never been expected to "stamp out" those things, any more than a city police department is expected to stamp out all crime and doctors are expected to stamp out all illness. Their mission is to reduce those things:

For warfare, they have been extremely successful relative to human history. War has actually become taboo and illegal, and very few happen. Look at history before the UN - it's a miracle. Think of the vision and confidence of people who, looking at 10,000 years of human history, immediately after two world wars, thought it was even possible, came up with effective strategy, did the hard work, and accomplished it.

I don't know the details of the other fields.

> I'd say a putative UN NetWatch would suffer from the same issues of funding and corruption and politics, but still we might have something better than this wild west lawlessness.

Politics and funding, and corruption, come with every human institution over a certain size, and especially with governments which can't exclude undesireable people: Democratic governments are the least corrupt, but if the people elect a corrupt representative or executive, then nobody can kick them out (unless they commit prosecutable crimes). And now imagine an association or confederation of governments, which is what the UN is.

So yes, the goal is to make something better. Otherwise, we might as well quit on everything.