@PyrrosWarrior So your plan is to sell Egyptian grain at fair market value to pay for the compensation to the landlords? Perhaps it could work but Macedonian banks would be setting the rates for the land which will likely be very high, and this concession would annoy the left wing of the AENC. I do agree with your plan to deal with the CAP.
Edit: Also, I may be incorrect, but I believe Pyros suggested the compensation one with the intention of never touching Macedonian land while doing land reform or touching it once Macedonian was distracted with something else and unable to respond. Basically an empty promise. I could be mistaken though.
Neither of these are correct, and I am rather confused how both of you were so off the mark about the plan when I wrote it all clear as day. Everything is interconnected* to create a plan that will boost our overall income, not just use our base income.
We will need money and land for that - hence the necessity of boosting export prices and keeping land reform an option (even if you discount the political consequences of land reform).
I only called land reform, tax revenue, and being able to market our grain
and our cotton (font raised to point out that it's two exports since both of you missed that fact) a
necessary condition, not a
sufficient condition, for us to work towards being in the black.
We under no circumstances can allow them to continue docking here. That allows them continued direct access into our greatest city of Alexandria as well as allows them to continue boosting opposition. Furthermore, it's a lot more difficult to connect up with their opposition, current or potential, if Macedonia can report on every ship that enters our harbors. That's not to say them moving to the Suez will be the end-all of our problems. It will just make things easier for us than otherwise.
Next is the grain and cotton. Neither of these are tenable. We'll go bankrupt if we continue operating our main export at a loss. If we truly want Egyptian independence, it will need to be done in a way that develops Egypt as more than just the extraction colony it was under Venice and was about to be under Macedonia. We will need money and land for that - hence the necessity of boosting export prices and keeping land reform an option (even if you discount the political consequences of land reform). In addition, moving the cruisers away from Alexandria combined with selling our grains at a profit opens us up to the greater market. You guys in analyzing have all been focusing purely on Macedonia, when there's a whole sea of great powers to trade and negotiate with! With land reform and boosting our grain prices, we can even make the Egyptian grains and cotton competitive enough to start a price war between the great powers and make the Christian League and other such powers begin bickering amongst themselves for influence over Egypt. That in turns allows them to counteract one another as we play them against each other.
I hope they can become a loyal opposition party
As I directly explained up above, my whole idea
isn't just to use grain and cotton profits (as well as tax revenue) to fund buying up land. Buying land would be a longer program, like every IRL land reform program that relies on compensation does. It's also not the point. The point I kept talking about was to rely on selling
INFLUENCE. By opening up our markets to the broader world, we can negotiate better deals with other great powers, including Macedonia's allies, in a manner that will cause a competition for control of Egypt's markets. That in turn allows us to pit them against each other and give us better negotiating room between all the powers, Macedonia included but not limited to just them. Better negotiating room means we can negotiate better prices
above fair market price for our exports as well as give more economic room in dealing with foreign banks, Macedonian banks included. This better trade and higher income from deals with foreigners and pitting them against one another will allow us to
INVEST in the sectors that can actually grow our economy and prepare for our eventual usurpation of power by the pan-Arabs. I explicitly said this above yet somehow all you got from that was "you're planning on blowing it all on land."
This can't work if you don't concede anything, however. You need to still have a working relationship with Macedonia at this stage because, like it or not, Egypt is not yet sovereign and independent. We are still within their sphere and will need to work to create a wedge between us and them, and the influence of other foreign powers will work to cancel one another out. It's "minor power trapped between great powers" historical strategy 101. Failing to concede anything will make them less likely to engage in our attempts to "sell" influence over Egypt in a competitive way, and more likely to react in a more assertive way because we'd already proven the AENC regime isn't willing to play ball.
It's also why the whole thing about making the Coptics into a loyal opposition is important. The Coptics are scared. They've been a minority for centuries, usually a persecuted one. They know the more the game is unrigged from favoring them, the more likely they will fall into political irrelevance and persecution once more. Despite their minority status, however, they have just enough numbers (as well as being educated and wealthy enough for other influence) to be a legitimate threat for civil insurrection. They could never win a civil war under a pro-Coptic banner, but they can prove to be a low-level conflict if we don't integrate them. Making them into a loyal opposition by proving we are willing to work with them in good faith makes it less likely they'll side with foreigners again for protection, which in turn reduces the risk of them being used against us by a great power looking to exploit vulnerabilities in Egypt for their own gain.
That said, you did say an original point that I didn't address in my original post so I'll thank you for that. I did briefly consider the political implications of each action, but I didn't really have the time to elaborate too much on that so I left it out due to its irrelevance. Functionally, we will always be "annoying" a wing of the party one way or another. The Leftists will be annoyed at compensating the Macedonians, the Arab Landowners of the AENC will be against land reform (barring one limited to taking land from the Coptics) period because it attacks them, the Islamists will be against allowing the Coptics to continue private religious schools, etc. This is perfectly normal political wheeling and dealing. Our whole job isn't to never step on anyone's toes because that'll get us nowhere. The job is to balance interests while subtly ostracizing the factions that we do not want in power when we are ready to rise up i.e. for me that would be promoting the Leftists and Ba'athists.
*which makes the fact that we have to vote this as two separate plans rather annoying. Only half of the plan getting voted in ruins the whole thing and makes it unworkable. You can't properly plan for the long-term if your left arm is trying to do something completely different than your right. If you guys agree with what I am planning, vote for both my plans. If you disagree with my long-term plan, vote for neither. I'd rather not accept you guys voting for only one of the two and it personally
really bugs me that some of you are voting for only half of it. All or nothing.
