I think we need in general to reinvent this "government" thing. Autocracies, monarchies, oligarchies, etc are obviously Bad when the people are in charge, but any "democracy" as we know it is fundamentally flawed, because the outcome of a vote is dependent on how you split up the votes.

Here in California, the vast majority of people who voted in the last presidential election voted for Gore. But, our president is Bush. Why? Because people in other states voted for him slightly more. Democratic government failed my state's people on the federal level! By the vote, our president should be Gore, whatever the rest of the country wanted! :) So, our national government bothers me -- and I'm exactly sure why. Somebody else can always overrule my ability to control my own actions. Witness the California medical marijuana law, passed by the voters but useless because federal laws continue to outlaw the drug.

Now, the UN doesn't have anything even resembling the power than the US federal government does; if you call the UN a "world government", I find it FAR less disturbing than the US federal government. In fact when you get down to it, the UN is a big debating society with zippo actual power. Only the Security Council can issue "binding" resolutions, and these are routinely ignored; whatever power is held there comes solely from the powerful nations which happen to be in the club and like to throw their big sticks around (namely, the US and UK), and they frequently do so without going through the UN and even completely in spite of it.

Silly as it sounds, I'm inclined to believe that a rethink along the lines of that proposed in the short story "Coventry" by Robert Heinlein is necessary. Define illegality by some actual measurable 'damage' done by one person to another, and otherwise let anybody do any dang fool thing they want. "Democracy" leads just as surely to abuse of power as autocracy -- not only are mobs are manipulible, but they can easily be completely unreasonable on their own, leading to the destruction of minority ways of life through majority demands.