[FT] The UN

I've been following the UN thread & was suprised to find a couple of
ideas forming in my head. 

For revenue generation, couldn't one of their roles be the equivalent of
the InterStellar Post Ofice?  If you had a hull with - say - 4 seperate
FTL drives & a couple of thousand gigabytes of memory on board it could
jump between systems 4 times as fast as normal ships & then zap the
electronic messages at the UN base station's comms satellite for
distribution.  Opinions?

I liked the idea of the UN being responsible for Starship safety.
Doesn't it mean that all UN ships have to donate 1% of mass to a giant
blue flashing light ("excuse me sir, could you just pull over to the
nearest orbit & then breathe into this bag for me, please?").  Seriously
though, it would give them a hold over the major powers - imagine it;
the slavering IF tell the UN to take a long (naked) walk through a short
airlock & suddenly all the IF merchant ships in human space are having
"routine safety inspections" on every single planet they stop at... 
Might even make the IF think twice.  On second thoughts, maybe not...

As for population, wouldn't the first settlements in our solar system
almost certainly be multi-national & be turned over to the UN at some
point in the GX history - just a thought.

Colin