If I were seeking a way to take over the world (hypothetically) I would go about it by...

Here I am, trying desperately to avoid being given responsibility for delegating to the two people junior to me in my lab, and you want me to figure out how I would take over the world? Sorry, no dice.

I'd use no single mechanism, but rather a carefully designed web of inter-relating and sometimes competing schemes. And I'd do it while sitting in a golden submarine. *** daver - in my experience, the people who want to do anything remotely approaching this sort of thing don't think about it from a "responsibility" point of view; the people who don't, do.

A combination of Economic power, propaganda, TV, gaining rich support and some others. But, hey, this has already happened!

Hmmm...I picked a new form of government but I'm not really sure. It's an alien concept for me, really. I don't understand why anyone would want to take over the world. Would you want that much responsibility?
**romkey: Sad but true. Authority and responsibility are complementary...

None of the above. This is all to niave. My plans for world domination are far too complex to be explained here.

INFORMATION INFORMATION INFORMATION!!!!! Controlling all information.

yes I do have a plot.. no I am not going to tell you what it is.. it does use several of the abovementioned techniques.. if it ever succeeds, you'll know.. neener.

If I knew how to take over the world do you think I would be making surveys? No, if i took over the world it would come swiftly and suddenly after careful planning behind the scenes. (ha ha ha! wait, don't let them know too much...) Taking over and ruling are two different things, control doesn't mean I wouldn't delegate responsibility. Anyway just thought it was an interesting question.

Education. If I were trying to take over the world, it would be so I could free it. I naively think if people had more of a clue they go there on their own and that education would give more people a clue.

Nevermind that I haven't the ambition, and that all of these methods are inherently flawed, but ...

*** I agree with bill about the warfare, though in large part, the nature of the warfare has changed from physical to economic, IMHO.

*** I think the main difference between present and medieval warfare is that in the past, the leaders didn't hide the fact that they were fighting to expand their power and take over territory, whereas now our leaders give us lies about "spreading or protecting democracy" or preserving the "American way of life". Go, Joe!

the only really good reason to take over the world is to measure the effectiveness of a newly devised evil and sinister plot. actually trying to rule the damn thing is waste of time.

I would go with gaining respect and admiration of people. And my aim would be to merely get all countries to be able to have open and honest dialogue with all others. And probably the removal of all nuclear weapons. But I think, actually, we're amazingly close to being able to settle things diplomatically (economically, etc.) compared to say 200 years ago. I bet people 200 years ago would never have dreamed that our global economy and relative lack of warfare could exist.

***Bill: relative - I bet if we looked at the number of physical wars before compared to now, things are much more peaceful now. But I agree too with Mark - it's no longer physical war, but economic war. Which I have to believe is still better :)

***Bill: Nope nope, I listed to NPR and the BBC every morning, I know about those wars. I also love history and know about the oodles of wars that came before. Things are definitely quieter now. (And yes, there was a lot of genocide before! Do you really feel there are more wars from 1950-1990 than there were say from 1650-1690??)

I would create an operating system that would run 90% of the worlds computers and then keep all competition from gaining access. I would then bring the world to it's knees with constant crashes and error messages that nobody could possibly understand.

Coming up with a utopian society would be the best way. I'd just feel so damn happy that we all figured it out. ...hmm I guess that's not really taking over the world, whatever. *** Lisa, I don't think there's any lack of warfare - look around, there's plenty!

Bosnia, Rwanda, India/Pakistan, "Gulf war" - there have been some pretty horrible warlike things going on recently, the US is just not as involved in them (our boys aren't being slaughtered) - so, we don't think it's that bad.

You're right Lisa, genocide is quieter than war.

I think more people died in war from 1950-1990 than from 1650-1690, but perhaps that's more a function of higher overall global population. I was referring to the genocide in Rwanda (1 Million?), and Bosnia (ethnic cleansing), also Iraq (Kurdish genocide). Really, I'm not sure of the numbers though - I'd love to have a list of events and how many people died in each (e.g. Holocaust, Vietnam [both US and Vietnamese], WWI, WWII, Gulf War [both US and Iraqi], Plague, etc...) The media tags on all this emotion to events, and it's hard to get a feel for just how bad a tragedy was compared to others.