First...
The Computer Revolution stumbled and the vast debt piled up by the governments of the world dragged them down, and the world entered the Age of Instability. For two hundred years, the wonders of the Golden Age were subjected to rifle and nuclear fire. Piracy and slavery came roaring back, and genocide was practised widely. It was a dark world, a new dark age, peopled by lethally ruthless tyrants, and those were the good guys, the Kings of the Fire Spears who tried to create some form of peace and stability.
In the end, the Kings were able to do so, and the population of the Earth stood at one billion in 2205 Anno Domini. They fought each other for pride and for power, but even more, they fought the barbarians, the crazies, the pirates, and the mutants or more properly speaking the transforms who had gotten too close to some of the genetic engineering tools of the Golden Age.
It did not help that the Earth had grown cooler for decades, and that Kansas was no longer suited to grow wheat, but barley. But things calmed down. Some of the barbarians accepted missionaries, and a few tribes of mutant transforms were civilized. And the Earth moved from a Cool to a Warm phase, and suddenly there was more food.
And then some of the ancient universities began to send out scholars. These men had hidden in the basements of ancient centers of learning, and many had died when smoked out, but a few such centers had survived. And so the old learnning began to be put back to use. A new golden age was proclaimed.
Five hundred more years passed. Humanity moved out to the planets by means of the LEAP machine and by genetic engineering. The LEAP was a teleporter which worked best at certain ranges. It could throw someone into the Outer System with ease, but could hardly reach Earth's Moon, Luna.
The Outer System was populated by rejects who were transformed to meet their environment, and Leapt to it, often against their will. The Inner System was populated by humans as humans in spaceships driven by nuclear rockets. The last place that was built up was the Asteroid Belt because it was at the point of maximum inconvenience for both systems of travel.
This gave it the benefit of the best genetic engineering as it took in the lessons of the past.
The staid and stately Inner System hardly changed. 'Once a Martian, always a Martian' it was said. And in truth, it was more specific than that. Many 'humans' never went more than a hundred miles from their home, never moved after they bought a house upon marriage, and their socieities were fairly static. They had large governmental sectors sucking what little innovation was available out of the society.
The Outer System was anything but staid. It was turmoil and chaos without end. Bloody massacres alternated with kinetic energy strikes on one day and laser swords on the next day for variety. Whole populations moved tens of thousands of kilometers to escape human predators or the aggressively defensive who were frightened.
In between these two, the Belt civilization grew up. A typical Belter was stronger, and faster than well anyone else. He moved vast distances, but to run commercial transactions, or to accomplish a job. His society changed in vast spasms that went according to fairly clearly understood rules, but with vast sums of money at hand to the winner, the only thing that kept the rockhounds and the solar industrialists in line was that the government of the Belters cared little about taking care of people. Instead it focused on the Majesty of the Law. Getting on the wrong side of the government made dangerous men tremble. The laws were few, but enforced with great severity and quickness and impartiality.
In less than a hundred years, the Belt went from a minor power outweighed by the Moon to the Dominarch. Its power reigned over the whole solar system. Even the Queen of Saturn, with her millions of flying robot tanks produced by her hordes of slaves could only keep the Dominarch respectful inside the rings of Saturn.
The Inner System had experienced two great wars amongst themselves in that time. It seemed, thought some Belters, as if a form of insanity was permanent to the Inner System civ. But then they put up war, and made weapons no longer. Of course, this made the Dominarch unchallenged in power. However, they still sought to tell the Dominarch what to do. They claimed greater wisdom which was belied by their past.
The Dominarch largely understood them. That was a great part of its power. It knew the ways of friends and enemies. They did not understand the Dominarch nor the Outer System. It was not much of a surprise to many in the Dominarch when the Inner System kept attacking by words the Belt Civilization. The people in the capital city always misunderstand the march lords.
The march lords could have taken over the whole system, but the cost in brutality, nuclear scarred cities, planets ravaged, it hurt their conscience. Besides the more cynical among them figured they could last longer this way. Stay pure, stay rustic, and use the Inner System as a protected market for their goods without getting too involved and catching the 'Inner System Disease'.
And so as George Orwell noted so many centuries ago, rough men stood on their walls so that the quiet man could sleep peacefully in his bed.
Points:
1. The first half should be a clear reference to the Dark Ages with the university basement guys standing in for Irish monks.
2. I think the first half, the backstory was the better part, and I was tempted to stop it there which goes to show you that sometimes your material can get away from you.
3. This exhibits a technique for creating a New World on top of the Old World. If you want a break between the two instead of having 'in the 22nd Century, New America which consisted of Canada and Mexico and the Continental US had entered its fourth century of existence and....'. It allows you to create pretty much whatever you want to after giving say a century over to the transition period.
4. I don't have to say who the Belters are, right? Its obvious, right?
5. One of the basic techniques of Metaphor in Science Fiction is 'Its X and its in Space!'. Stargate Atlantis was 'Its Vampires and their in Space!'. This is of course, 'Its the Current World Order and its in Space!'.
Hopefully, on another day I can do a world in which Christians are trying to peacefully win the world over to voluntary communalism.
So a world with a conflict based on Voluntary Communalism...hmmm.
Once the nano-machines were built, it really was over. Capitalism. Socialism. Economics. All that. It took a while for the human race to get the idea, and for institutions based on the old ways to get the idea.
Nothing so hard as convincing a man of the truth when his job depends on him believing a lie.
It took fifty years for the idea to really sink into Humanity. All you had to do was program a random batch of nanos, and instant food, or car, or house, or clothes. Of course, humanity had been edging this way for a long time. In truth, humans did not need to starve anywhere for the last century, but politics and culture got in the way. Which is to say, thugs and people being stupid.
There were attempts to limit things, to create scarcity. Without scarcity, no economics. Some were based on getting a corner on certain rare minerals, and they were rapidly broken. When you can program a line of nanobots to trek along the bottom of the ocean, each carrying a few hundred atoms, well, it gets difficult to stop smuggling. Thus the Mineral Cartels were beaten back.
There were attempts to argue that the Earth did not have enough resources, but like most such attempts through history, conservation was not the primary solution. It was easy enough to start asteroid mining. Thus the Enviromental Luddites were beaten back.
A parallel attempt was made on the MPAA model to create copyrights for all sorts of items, but as Eric Flint (Trotskyite and labor organizer and author of some fun books), stopping 'piracy' requires a belief that prices are fundamentally reasonable. No one believed that charging ten dollars for a license to use a Shirtmaker Nano Program once when it costs pennies to use it, at worst, was remotely fair.
Besides, a number of people in the Linux community and Open Use communities and churches began to give away 'freeware'. One of the early pioneers was a hacker who went by the name "Johnny Appleseed". He created hundreds of varieties of nano-vegetables. He was most famous for his design of several dozen different types of apples, but he probably did more good with his potatoes and carrots.
The Giftgiver Club started up. All you had to do to join was give the others in the club a freeware program, once a month. And for that you got access to everyone else's offerings as well. Soon the Club expanded, and the price to join went down because it was no longer just the elite nano-chemists and hackers, but ordinary joes. The price to join the club stabilized at one new program for something every year. For that, you got tens of thousands of freeware that could instruct nano on everything from making shirts to making 'steaks' to making spaceships.
One early limit was electric power, but there were a number of solutions to that ranging from Power Lilies, a flower-mod of a lily that spun as a windmill and fed power down its roots to the nearest part of the grid, to mini-nukes (and that was seriously illegal for a while, but so useful that a number of people chanced it), to solar power sats, and on. That barrier did not last long.
There was the optimistically named Last War as the last defenders of the old system, mostly socialists and big businessmen, tried to crack down, and force everyone else to join in their system by force of arms. They knew even as they started the war that it was hopeless. They were quickly overwhelmed, and many of them weren't even harmed as robots armed with foam cannons immobilized them.
Two social groups formed. One was the Ascetics. They believed that one only made what one needed, and that was that. They worked often enough ten to twenty minutes a week on maintaining their nanos, but they spent the rest of the time on the 'More Important Issues'. There were a number of varieties of these, and some became downright Pharisaical. Many of the Enviromentalits who had been defeated joined up.
They came on strong fairly early after the Last War.
Another group that developed more slowly was the Baroque. If everyone can have a shirt and tie, well, then its time to have a tie made of Shantung silk and seventeen gossamer thin layers, and imprinted with holographic designs of the human genome with the rest of one's wardrobe being equally splendid.
People still wanted things. They wanted energy, but that was easily solved. They wanted new programs but the Club solved that (and in the end, almost all Humanity joined the Club). They wanted a supply of basic feedstock for their nanos,and the asteroids supplied that. They wanted long life and good health, and here the Ascetics and the Baroque joined in spending tonnes of money on health research. With nanos to help them, they achieved wonders. Of course, what was money? Money was status and favors. It was your various Humanity Quotients which you could raise by doing various deeds that certain groups found helpful, or by receiving gifts of status directly from people you helped. Favors was the ability to demand aid from another person. Status could also be titles (Sir and Lord were quite popular), and preferential seating ('come this way, Sir, the VIP line for high level medical researchers is this way. At the Winston Community Theatre, a noble man like yourself never need wait in line like the common sorts.').
People also wanted conformity of belief and dominance over other people. Hence the optimism about the Last War. With wars about economics fading, things turned to wars over ideology and faith. And such wars could be extremely nasty. Their developed a two-tier system afte the Wars of Ideas which blasted several dozen cities and killed a half billion people in a two decade span. One of the first strikes was Atlanta which got vaped by a coalition of atheists and Ivy Leaguers who were offended by Southern Christians. The High Militaries would control dircect nano weapons,and oversee their territories which were frequently the old nation-states. One could apply to the High Militaries for a Right to Pursue War, they either granted it, or often advised the target that it should move away.
The moving away was part of the High Militaries unmentioned, but overall strategy. They felt it was a virtual certainty that someone in the next century was going to unleash a worldsmasher nano. So they tried to find excuses to send people into space, to other planets and so forth.
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There is still war, but voluntary communalism won the day. In ways, somewhere in the midst of this process is where I'd drop the verser. At the end, things are relatively understandable and predictable which can mean, more boring. Confusion and uncertainty, if not taken to an extreme can be more interesting than a fairly static situation.
An idea I read a while back...
What-if Germany and Russia were flipped. Hitler was a Communist, and the German people had the Russian lands, and Stalin was a Nazi and the Russian peoples had the German lands?
Is there much difference in history?
Both governments run basically as they had before. Germany is less stylish its true without those spiffy double lightning bolt and grey uniforms but otherwise....
One big difference is that Stalin would be depending on retreating and bleeding the enemy because of his lack of skill. (One could argue that the smallness of his nation would force a different strategy, but this is more amusing.) So, Germany gets quickly overrun by Hitler's victorious armies, and the Allies are faced with a unified Europe with Russia. The Japanese have less problems (not much, but some).
Finally, the only way for the Allies to trim the Moscow-Berlin Peace Pact, call it the Iron Curtain, is for the US to engage in about a dozen nuclear strikes on German forces.
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The first world I created for World A Week, some years back, was one in which Empathy for others was the natural state of events. I'd revisit it as part of my challenge, but I've gone back to it a time or two already. I'm still thinking on how to make a world in the form that Empathy plays a big role.
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Lars Walker in 'Erling's Word' and George Gilder in 'Spirit of Enterprise' wrote two very different books, but they might help me on this challenge.
In Triconia, a planet thats been terranoformed by the Stellar Guild and leased to the Farming Cooperative of the Loving Ones, there are problems caused by Vampyrates. The LO, is a church or some say a cult, in which very young children are implanted with a sensor transmitter receiver set. The sensor will record their feelings,and the transmitter will wirelessly link to the local net, and the receiver will feed into the emotions just how everyone else is feeling.
Young children tend to be much more conformist with all the pressure of other minds on them, and with being able to directly feel the displeasure their actions cause others.
There is no tradition of privacy of heart. You're expected to unburden yourself to others because it hurts them when you're sad. There is a conscious effort to train people to be happy, and to actively seek our the 'lice in the fur' of others (yes, they use the metaphor of monkey grooming to refer to fixing others emotional problems.)
The Vampyrates are a more radical alteration by mechanical intervention and genetics than the LO. In orbit over many planets in the Storied Worlds (so called because humans believe that their lives are stories to be read by angels.) are Vampyrates in deathless slumber.
A signal, a spot,something awakes one, and it checks the accretion of stellar dust attracted to its body by the magnetic field it generates. If its enough, it plunges 'earthward'. If its not enough, it tries to control it feeding urges, but it often can't and so it plunges anyways....to its fiery death.
The dust serves as an ablative shield. Once on Earth, the extremely sturdy Vampyrate shakes off the burning hot chunks of shiledling stone, and goes in search of prey and loot. The prey is to feed its young (it gives birth, and it is the correct term. ) and the loot is to build a new starship to take its young to a new star system which they can infest.
Most star systems have outer guards which shoot on sight anything that looks remotely like a Vampyrate 'Stork' ship. No one knows why they are called Stork Ships.
The LO response is to run and hide, but that did not work that well. So they decided to send out willing martyrs. The Vampyrates did not like this as well, a useful part of the 'meal' was the fear of the prey. Willing prey didn't help so much. Also, the prey carried implantable monitors and offered to implant them in the Vampyrate to bring the Vampyrate into the LO.
How do things turn out?
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Potlatch Princes of Port City
In Port City, there are many young and ambitious sorts. They sit and scheme on how to help their fellow beings out. Nearly nine different races from various arms of the galaxy visit here on a regular basis.
The locals met the first interstellar ship, and talked with them, and soon found out that the shipbeings needed a party. So they threw a party. Then they found out that the shipbeings needed new vegetables to take back home to their barren world, so the locals, the Yangbor, scoured their home continent in their canoes and found dozens of samples and gave them to the Driscartii.
The Driscartii tried to pay, but money nor payment was accepted. The Yangbor then found that the Driscartii were looking for a world with iridium ore in plenty and so the Yangbor scoured their legends and came up with a few clues from previous centuries and other visitors.
Overwhelmed by this generosity, the Driscartii built Port City of plascrete and elemental iron for the Yangbor who liked it very much. And the Driscartii left, but whereever they went, they were sure to marvellingly mention the kind natives of Yangbor.
And so other races came, and experienced the same. The Yangbor sought out what they needed, and then spent great effort getting it for them. Some races left doing nothing for the Yangbor. Others built them things, or gave them ideas, or promised alliance.
With so many races coming through, some of them wanted to stay at Port City, and so the Yangbor gave them lots of land. And the Portians adopted Yangbor ways. Perhaps they were more scheming than the Yangbor, perhaps not. Few knew what was in a Yangbor heart. But races came and saw another need, and among many it was understood that you did a favor back. Among others, you did a favor to someone who needed it, and someone else would do a favor to you. And among some, you just did a favor because you could.
Among those who did favors hoping to receive favors from someone else were the Princes of Port City, certain young, ambitious sorts who gathered together dozens of beings to make a useful thing for another. This required a great deal of empathy, especially because it was alien races one was dealing with.
The ideal gift was the gift you did not know you needed, but you needed desperately.
And so it was that for fifty thousand lightyears in every direction, the legend of Port City, where the streets were paved with iridium and a happy alien might give you what you'd always needed and never knew it, and change the destiny of not only yourself but of your race...and you'd never be able to say thank you because he and you did not speak the same language, perhaps not even be able to 'speak' as you understood it.
And thus the Capitalism of Love ruled between the stars.
I like that last one. That's what I was talking about. Random acts of kindness and respect for diversity.
I've got something in the works for you. Working title "America v.1.X". So far it's not very positive, but I'll see how it evolves. I'm curious what your reaction would be though, since it would undoubtedly correct any faulty views I have regarding the American way of thinking. I think it explains the success and power of America, yet it was thought up in one night, so I'm not saying it's correct and absolute. It's based on your statement that we should follow America's example and improve on it. I was thinking up what that would mean. It's still in the works though. I hope I can find the courage to type it out tonight. I'm rather tired.
Excellent.
It doesn't have to be positive. There's lots of things to justifiably criticize America about.
American way of thinking....There are things that are very clear 'this would never happen', but a foriegner might not see that. Then there's other things that are less clear like the craziness that is in the American. And there's things that are out of my experience in America (I've never seen the Grand Canyon, nor lived in one of the major metropolises in a walk-up apartment next to Chinatown). And there is much that I still don't understand. I see, but I don't realize what it means about America. And there are different models to explain what is going on, and sometimes they're all true, and sometimes they're all false. So I will help correct your understanding of American thinking where I can.
Okay.
(For people reading this later on. This world seed started as a reply on a challenge given to me by Tadeusz in the topic: The Freedom Discussion. Read up on the heated discussion there.
DISCLAIMER: This is no attack upon anybody. I do not want to pick a fight with this! Thank you!)
This is just a start, (or seed as is more commonly said), displaying only one part of the entire American Culture, namely their military power. This is only a start, as it shows another European nation try raising itself to the same height as America by trying to follow its example. (I'm aware that my knowledge of American history/origins is not entirely correct. It might even contain blatant mistakes. Yet it will show that if a nation tries to follow America's example in this area, America will not want to allow it.
America v.1.X
France, always having been at odds with Americans and the English, were tired of seeing America taking so much attention. They want it for themselves. They know they are better then the Americans. Thus thinking, they should be bigger. Wanting to know the succes of America in its growth and power, they looked back at it's history. At it's origin.
They discovered that, bluntly speaking, they should find a large mass of land where the natives were less develloped then them and nearly kill them all. Then they should shipp off their own people to that land to repopulate it. The problem was, America wouldn't allow it. Neither would the other countries. Sacre blue!
They needed more people joining them should they want to succeed. Where would they want to find lots of people who did not like America ... hmm ... Ah! Evidament! Russia! A big country, also having been at odds with America for as long as mankind can remember. Thus the two make a pact and band toghether. Now to decide which land they would claim as theirs. Less develloped and easy to take. Africa is the first that comes to mind. But it's way too public. They need something less obvious. Actually, Eastern Europe is still a bit less develloped then the West, and Russia would like to have its own glory back.
For the French this also was convenient in their part. They stayed out of it and let the world think it was Russia's idea, yet supporting it from their part. That it is normal that it wants its old glory back. Anyway, they are allowed to act strange. They are the French! And so the reclaiming would begin. The land would be parted into states afterward and democracy would be instilled, seeing that it works for America.
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This is about as far as I got. I haven't yet reached the part where there is added too the American model. So their needs to be some adjustment. And a lot of things are shaky (at best!). What language would they speak? Would the Russians just switch to French or will the French, very uncharacteristic, learn Russian language? Maybe Russia would rebel against France, showing a real replaying of history in showing a revolution.
Interesting. Thought-provoking. One of my 'Grim Futures' had a Chinese-American Co-rulership of the world. It was entitled 'Black Box Imperium'. So odd allies makes for a quick, but vivid turn in history.
This piece highlights one point I've made before. There are a lot of good worlds out there that I simply won't be able to make because I would never even think to make them. 'Music Wars' by JohnA1Nut was one of those as well.
I'm thinking that the new imperialists just tell the locals to learn them both. Of course, that only works if the locals aren't killed off. Assuming that they are, then I'd say that there would be a push for translators, and a Dual Language System. Probably signs would be in both languages is my guess.
There is of course a problem of Demographic Winter. Russia is spiralling out of existence. And France ain't doing too well either. However 1)You can easily ignore this. 2) Announce a new form of technology which changes the birth to death ratio radically. 3) Posit some culture change where everyone starts to glorify the idea of woman getting married at sixteen and having seven kids minimum.
One of the big things that drove the formation of the British Empire was that you suddenly had most kids surviving, and you had households with ten kids. In other words, totally massive population explosion.
So that would lead to the idea of United Muslim State. Which I wouldn't go to, because it would be cliché. :P (And might be seen as racist) Yet they have big families.
Cliche'?
I haven't seen too many stories about it set in Europe. However, I did help in a very tiny measure with 'Caliphate' which has a UMS in Europe. Your comment reminds me of 'Team America: World Police" which was a satire of all the Al Qaeda bashing movies made...which at that time was practically zero so it was a satire of something non-existent.
And I wasn't aware that Muslim was a race. So I could ding you for racism, and make you feel bad and apologize, and....but the point is that being afraid of being called a racist is a rabbit hole that never ends. Tell the truth, let the chips fall where they may.
Personally, I find your French/Russian Codominium without the UMS to be more interesting.
I did send McCallister to a rather bizarre world inspired by the difficulties in Europe. Worshippers of the Black Throne....Thugs battling in the streets with one group better armed and the other group more numerous...the more numerous worshipped the Black Throne and the better armed were into a type of ancestor worship of a being they called the Emperor....There was a branch of Yggdrasil which led from the ground to the stone sky, and through the sky on the other side were the Tired Gods like Thor and Odin who had given up on the world. The heroes were a group of resistance fighters who were trying to hold the gov't together even as the gov't fought them and all led by a female who had been stabbed and almost raped by followers of the Black Throne, and after the knife entered her brain, now she was the only person in the world who had precognition. Which she used to meet the verser....
What modern country in Europe was this set in? Edit: And it was actually set in 2030 tech, but they counted from Creation.
And the whole thing was Modern Society but with Magic. So you had pixies lighting lamps and stuff like that.
Whats the point of this other than to talk about something I find amusing? Its that you can take a cliche' and with not that much work turn it into something fresh and if you like very weird.
I think your notion of Stalin using the fighting withdrawal if he were defending Germany from Russia is not merely unlikely, it's foolish. It makes it sound as if the fighting withdrawal tactic Stalin used to defend Russia was simply a matter of poor tactics--when that's pretty much the same strategy that defeated Napoleon when he invaded. Russia knows that that long open ground will kill an attacking army in winter, and has used that to its defense before.
That means we have to figure out how Stalin would have attacked Russia, and that's much more problematic. Are we assuming that Stalin knows the defensive withdrawal strategy used against Napoleon, and so will not fall for it? Is there a better way to attack, and is there a way to take Russia from Germany that does not rely on such tactics? Long-range bombing of principle cities might help, but my impression is that Germany did not have bombers with that kind of range--they didn't attack Britain until they had airfields in France.
So it may be that there was no effective strategy for Germany to take Russia. Perhaps, though Stalin would know this, and would not break the treaty with Russia, which would give him the manpower needed against his western adversaries.
--M. J. Young
I made a Russian superhero for Champions...General Winter. I was tempted to make General Mud as well.
Of course its silly to have Stalin do a 'scorched earth' withdrawal into the much smaller Germany, but I'm trying to play with realism, perhaps. Lots of stories have unrealistic bits to them, but we accept them anyways. If I could find a way to make forms that underlie stories, and make my own without having to use the forms used by dozens of authors in the last month, well, that would be cool.
I'm not explaining this that well.
One thing I'd like to do is to 'flip stories around' where I take a common form of a story and tell it with new villains and new conspiracies instead of the same old.
There may be other forms I can use. I suspect Tolkien went out to create something new, or more accurately recreate something not seen in perhaps a long time.
My Stalin in Germany bit is silly on one level, but on another level, it dramatizes nicely the truth that Communist=Fascist. When we make a story, we can tell the truth in a way that is harder for people to hide from.
I agree that the difference between applied communal socialism and applied national socialism is very slim, and indeed the reason we distinguish them as left-wing and right-wing is really because one pretends to be sharing power among everyone and the other admits that it is centralizing it. The problem lies in trying to make communal socialism communal; you wind up focusing power in individuals, who then take that power seriously and assume that they know best, and they become the centralized authority. Animal Farm, written by a socialist cynic, illustrates this very nicely: whoever gets the management job becomes the management class, and life stays the same for the peasants.
I expect, though, that both Hitler and Stalin would do what they did--which is, listen to their generals and military advisers for how to conduct the fight. Ultimately the question is not how Stalin would invade Russia, but when. Hitler attacked much too soon, giving himself more adversaries than he could manage. He apparently thought that breaking his truce with Russia would give him an element of surprise which would result in a swift and easy victory, and thus did not give thought to the likely counter-tactics and the Russian defenses.
Thus the question really is whether Stalin would have attacked when Hitler did. I'm not well enough informed, however, to know the two critical factors: was Hitler taking the advice of his staff or going against it, and would Stalin be likely or unlikely to do the same in that situation?
--M. J. Young
Stalin was surprised that his buddy Hitler attacked. And Stalin was of the 'eventually, we shall crush you in our good time' school of thought, and Hitler was of the 'my descendants are likely to be clueless, lets get it done now' school.
Niko,
I saw this today, and well, some people are thinking your world is on its way to becoming reality....
Obama = Weak UPDATED
(Read WP posts from Melissa Clouthier) | (Read MT posts from Melissa Clouthier)
President Obama signaled to the world that dictatorial regimes have carte blanc while struggling Democracies will be left to defend themselves. Today, on the 70th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland, the President announced that there will be no defense shield in Europe. Poland, Europe, is on their own. Russia is the same. It’s the United...
...Read more
..........
Kim Priestap has a must-read piece. She also says:
I believe Obama's decision to abandon the missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republican is nearly as bad as Carter's decision to abandon the Shah of Iran. Radical Islam grew as a result of Carter's decision. A new Soviet style Putinian Russia will grow as a result of Obama's decision.
Bookworm calls President Obama a "very bad man":
“He’s a bad man. He’s a very, very bad man.”
That’s all I could think of when I read that today, on the 70th Anniversary of Poland’s invasion by the Nazis, Barack Obama made the decision to leave Poland and the Czech Republic vulnerable to Putin’s tender ministrations. The former Soviet Union may be in demographic decline, but that clearly hasn’t stopped Putin’s dreams of grandeur ? and what better way to use up former military stock, regain your former imperial glory, and augment your dying population, than by engaging in a little empire building. Nor do I buy Obama’s claim that he’s just replacing a standing defense system with something more “agile.”
This suggests that Hitler's Communist Russia would be the aggressor; it then raises the question of against whom he would be aggressive. He can push through Poland, but then he's on the German border. He might have designs to the south and east, but if so he makes his pact with Germany so he can go after China.Stalin was surprised that his buddy Hitler attacked. And Stalin was of the 'eventually, we shall crush you in our good time' school of thought, and Hitler was of the 'my descendants are likely to be clueless, lets get it done now' school.
It seems more likely that he would treat China or Japan as the ally he will betray, and focus on conquering Europe, which means coming through Germany and Austria, I think.
*****
On news related to Nikolaj, I noticed reports of the milk protests in Belgium. It's an interesting situation. Any thoughts from your location on how to deal with the problem (which as I understand it is basically that socialist-type agricultural supports (which we have in America as well) have led to a glut of agricultural product, particularly milk, such that prices have collapsed and farmers now cannot sell milk for what it costs them to produce it--but that might not be the total picture).
--M. J. Young
Indeed, we do. President Bush put in the Steel Tariff which irritated a lot of conservatives. Then there's the Sugar Tariff which has the effect of raising prices for sweets for poor people, pushing candy companies to use corn syrup which might not taste as good, and there are a number of economies in South America and/or Central America that could benefit greatly if they were allowed to sell sugar in the American market. In other words, its pretty much a bad idea.
Supposedly, Marie Antoinette of 'let them eat cake' has price controls on bread in Paris so that it costs the bakers more than they could charge. Flour costs 2 Francs and the legal price of bread is 1 Franc. So she's told the people have no bread, and ....
Not at all sure its true, but...
I would would wonder if the price support from the gov't was enough to cover the price of making milk. I would suggest that deregulation is the way to go. Let the free market reign. Its generally kinder and less corrupt and far more prosperous.
I think the concern in Europe was that a free market economy would drive agriculture out of business and force food scarcities (which were already problematic after the wars), so great effort was made to keep food in production and available in the markets. Now, though, overproduction of milk combined with price controls has led to farmers dumping milk onto their fields rather than letting it go to market, because even though there is demand for the milk there is too much milk and not enough money--that's confusing me, frankly, but let me try again.
Farmers are producing more milk than is needed, but it costs them too much to do so. They get some government price support, but the price is still too low with the rise of other costs. Thus they can't afford to bring their product to market, and they're dumping it; but this means milk shortages at the market end, where customers can't get milk at any price, the guaranteed price being too low to pay for the costs.
It's a typical socialism problem: when someone sets prices, they have to be extremely well informed to stay current with all the necessary factors. At this point, rapid deregulation would probably mean that a lot of dairy producers would go out of business as prices plummeted, and then there would be shortages that drove prices up. What's needed is a way to transition to a stable scenario, but that means figuring out what milk would be worth when it hit its price point--the point at which it is economically feasible for farmers to produce it but still in demand by buyers. The socialist approach is to have someone determine that price point, in theory by knowing all the factors that go into the cost of milk and determining how much could be sold at the price necessary. In practice it doesn't work, because there is no way to know all of that. The capitalist approach is to let farms go out of business until the number of farms producing milk can be supported by sales of milk at the price people are willing to pay--that is, if it really costs five dollars a gallon to bring milk to market, then there will be enough dairy farms producing milk that those who are willing to pay five dollars a gallon will have exactly as much as they are willing to buy. The problem at the capitalist end is usually couched as "retooling costs", the fact that a dairy farmer can't become a cotton farmer overnight, and a cotton farmer can't become a dairy farmer overnight. Dairy farms take years to reach a point of efficient production levels, and only weeks to be sold to the slaughterhouses. Thus you wind up with very severe spikes and troughs, as the oversupply causes prices to plummet and more farms shut down than we can afford to lose, creating shortages and inflating the prices encouraging more to come into the market, but because of the time it takes to breed and raise a good herd of dairy cows we wind up oversupplied again, and the price falls below what is needed to support production.
All of which is to say no one has an easy answer here.
--M. J. Young
The market holds far more information than a person can hold in their head. And it communicates far faster.
One solution to such a problem as you outline is for the gov't to favor several large producers who in turn make some promises. This deal is supposed to go away after a few years when things get righted. Problem is, by that time, the more powerful business is not eager to lose their special advantage, and they are more able to bribe gov't officials, run add campaigns, and so on in order to protect their advantages. And then a few years later you get a socialist activist complaining about big business and free enterprise and obscene profits when its not free enterprise that's causing the problem.
One guy found a similar problem. Pigs cost more to produce than they cost. So he paid very little for piglets, and against the advice of local farmers who predicted a massacre some cold January morning, he began to feed them. He drove his Model T around, and hunted animals to find food for his piglets. And with desperation and vision and very hard work, he got them into the spring when the price of pigs was much higher.
This is the guy who became a billionaire, ran Simplot potatoes, and sold McDonald's much of their french fries for a long time.
Learning is a cultural thing. Perhaps some of the local farmers saw Simplot's move and next time, they did a little better. Or perhaps its not something fixable. There are problems with capitalism, but unfortunately, much of the time the cure is worse than the disease.
It could well be that the best solution is to grit it out, and just deregulate now.