All the while looking upon those same exploited countries and calling them underdeveloped without even a hint of irony or self-awareness.
History Strikes Back (TNO/TLM ISOT into OTL)
- Thread starter StarMaker764
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Supernatural
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- Tags
- tno isot (isekai)
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
That's… the result people see when looking for malice and not considering the other option. Surprisingly, when a capitalist enterprise doesn't follow the rules of economics? They lose.
The IMF doesn't actually get anything from poor performance. They don't strip a country's resources to the bone and cart it back to the states.
The US Military does that without needing to go through a global banking institution.
The IMF's sole source of income is interest on loans. It doesn't have a set of investors they need to fuck the customer over to give dividends to. All profits go right back into the lending.
They just don't have accountability for being bad at their job. They make all their research in-house, cross-check current policies in house, and they do all their fuckup investigations… in house. There's no authority they report to other than a council of directors made up of member state representatives.
It's flown a bit under the radar, but it took until 2019 for the US Supreme Court to marginally pair back the legal high ground the IMF held. You can file a lawsuit in federal courts for US-based international organizations for Financial Fuckery, as difficult to win as that is, instead of being absolutely immune akin to a foreign government.
- Location
- The observable universe
Yes, that's exactly why the IMF exists and its main actual purpose.
silverpower
Communism is yuri and nothing else!
- Location
- Portland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
After all, the purpose of a system is what it does.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
So what you're saying is that it's in the IMF's interest for the loans to never be paid back in full, because then they lose a revenue stream
Demographic funnies
- Location
- The observable universe
Aside from the ones mentioned in the previous updates here are a few demography funnies caused by the ISOT:
1. The UAR has a larger population of Greenlanders than Greenland itself.
2. The Icelandic language can now boast of having a small but thriving community in Lebanon.
3. The number of Greek speakers in the Republic is not large enough to more than the population of Greece but there are more than enough that Greece will start implementing laws to safeguard "the real Greek language"
4. There is a growing creole population of Hungarian-Arabs in Sudan/upper egypt that is causing a lot of very normal reactions in Hungary
5. Tokyo has been knocked out from 1st place in terms of being the largest city population wise to be replaced by Iskandaria. Now its in either 3rd or 4th place depending on wether one is counting the coastal levantine cities as one megalopolis.
6. The UAR has more native Irish speakers than Ireland.
7. The UAR has the third largest Yoruba population in the world.
8. Technically speaking, the number of "Arabic" people in the world has slightly decreased since a lot of Republic citizens either don't identify as only Arab or don't identify as arab at all.
1. The UAR has a larger population of Greenlanders than Greenland itself.
2. The Icelandic language can now boast of having a small but thriving community in Lebanon.
3. The number of Greek speakers in the Republic is not large enough to more than the population of Greece but there are more than enough that Greece will start implementing laws to safeguard "the real Greek language"
4. There is a growing creole population of Hungarian-Arabs in Sudan/upper egypt that is causing a lot of very normal reactions in Hungary
5. Tokyo has been knocked out from 1st place in terms of being the largest city population wise to be replaced by Iskandaria. Now its in either 3rd or 4th place depending on wether one is counting the coastal levantine cities as one megalopolis.
6. The UAR has more native Irish speakers than Ireland.
7. The UAR has the third largest Yoruba population in the world.
8. Technically speaking, the number of "Arabic" people in the world has slightly decreased since a lot of Republic citizens either don't identify as only Arab or don't identify as arab at all.
No matter if only a fraction of the borrowers actually pays off the interest, the IMF will just point to them and tell the ones which don't/can't that you're not doing it right! Never mind that a sufficiently large failure to repay loans (and interest) means their pyramid scheme will collapse.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Ok, if I want to be fully accurate, there is the IMF quotas of member states. That's money going in their accounts. But it's kinda more about how many votes each member of the Board of Governors have, and making it biased heavily towards countries that rank high in GDP. (I.E. Western economies) The intent is the IMF is self-sustaining, which is the loan interest. And they do have repayment terms.
An infinite cycle of consumers paying a company money for nothing is the fever dream of the Wall Street washouts in the games industry. Most normal financial institutions learned the lesson of keeping loans (that aren't pipelines for tax dollars) on their books forever after the housing market crash. But the Old Money institutions never liked that system even when the Republicans made it, and IMF puts the old in old money.
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Countries telling the IMF to piss up a rope will be a precursor to a world revolution.
It's not like there's going to be any unforeseen events which can further Henderson the plans of IMF (such as the fear of an ISOT sending them to a universe where they don't exist or worse, are irrelevent) in the future, right?
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Oh, I was talking about real life not in this timeline.
Raiho-kun
This Cycle's Second Biggest Communism Builder
Indeed. My point was that the UAR, and Neo-Comintern by extension, is in a notably different position from our USSR and its allies. Whereas just the pretense of international cooperation between the Comintern and non-communist world as a whole was more or less strangled before it could take-off in 1984 (beyond the five countries that would make up MICRO), the UN was established at the end of our WWII with the Soviets almost immediately taking an interest in both the international body and issues it addressed.
Conversely, whereas the Union was outnumbered on the Security Council and could never really reach parity with Western powers in trying to amass soft-power under the cover of "depoliticized" international cooperation, the Republic is in a far better position. The Unification Wars, while still bloody, costly and damaging in their own right, were relatively brief and removed from the UAR's current state today, while the USSR never really recovered from the damage it sustained in the Great Patriotic War. With its current batch of allies and partners, the UAR has the resources, manpower, labor, and state capacity to mobilize an effective response that can match the countries of "NATO & Friends" and then some.
Outside of UN Emergencies and Mandates, the potential for global development initiatives, especially when seen side-by-side with more predatory counterparts from the West, will generate much needed rapport among non-aligned states. In short, whereas the cold war to the 4CI of TLM mainly revolved around winning proxy conflicts against rival blocs and tending to member-states' needs, this new cold war takes on a new dimension entirely.
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Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
One issue I see is that the well might have been poisoned since the UAR was explicitly not allowed a permanent seat on the Security Council.
I do view the British declaring that they'll veto any attempt by the UAR to get a permanent seat to have been a major diplomatic own-goal on their part due to the message it sends.
Which might make cooperation and non-hostile interaction across the blocs a rather dubious prospect. If nothing else, it sends a rather bad message when the USSR got a seat but now the UAR isn't being allowed one.
I do view the British declaring that they'll veto any attempt by the UAR to get a permanent seat to have been a major diplomatic own-goal on their part due to the message it sends.
Oof, yeah I can see why it's reviled, and why BRICS exist
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
There's been no shortage of competing organizations to post-WW2 UN institutions like the IMF, and some of them are still kicking. Comes with the First Cold War and Second Cold War territory.
I wouldn't call BRICS one of them, especially their actual bank subdivision. But that's more to do with the political motivations shifting around over Certain Russian Shenanigans in 2014 and 2019.
Especially if the UAR just...*doesn't join* the UN.
That means the UN is on track to become another League of Nations, ultimately terminally impotent and just...redundant.
Consequently, I think that's what the UAR *should* do. Ideally.
Although a UN where 21st century *Britain* is a permanent member of the UNSC while the colossus of the UAR isn't is just, hilarious.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
DracoLazarus
Caster of Fist
- Location
- France
I've seen the Comorros mentioned earlier, so one point I would like to hear, is whether Mayotte (IOTL a French département) has been overwritten or not, and if not what the UAR's position with regards to it is.
- Location
- The observable universe
It was overwritten and is part of the UAR; France is miffed about it but it has bigger fish to fry rn.
Also nice to see you again Draco, been a while
Mister Anemone
"Dab Master is just Cyn wearing Drew's clothing."
- Pronouns
- She/They
Aside from the capitalist bloc, the second enemy that the UAR would have to face is the Islamic Fundamentalists...whom they are going to seek an unholy alliance with the capitalist bloc against the UAR.
You think that nutjob in iran would except w nuclear deal?
Mister Anemone
"Dab Master is just Cyn wearing Drew's clothing."
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well, if Iran is absolutely scared at UAR, then they would ask the western powers to please with them and allow having nukes as an deterrent against the UAR.
DracoLazarus
Caster of Fist
- Location
- France
Thanks, you too
I think it might become a subject of debate within France that ultimately leads to no major action being taken, considering there were French elections in 2002. I however am fairly unsure whether the appearance of the UAR would lead to Jospin gaining more or fewer votes; after all, the Left was very divided going into 2002 which is why Le Pen made it to the second turn.
Overall, I do believe Chirac would be reelected. Jospin would probably take the blame in the second turn for any early economic aftershocks of the ISOT.
Diplomatically, I do not think it unlikely France could suggest an expansion of the permanent security council if the elevation of the UAR is paired with that of India. However veto power would have to be weakened, since five powers with a veto would be a lot.
Raiho-kun
This Cycle's Second Biggest Communism Builder
It's kind of a Zugzwang that the Western powers are placed in since, ultimately, despite showing how little they regard the institution at points (ahem), they have a vested interest in the UN existing, even/especially in a dilapidated, subordinated state; and for all their rivals to answer to it. If they outright impede the UAR and its allies from the UN's institutions and joint missions altogether, the UAR can expedite any plans it has for a counter-organization to reach out to non-aligned countries.
So while it's true that it will take a long time if ever before the UAR even pries its way onto a permanent UNSC seat let alone subsumes the organization as a whole, the Neo-Comintern is going to be competing with NATO just as much in the field of developing ties to "neutral" states (both with the bourgeois state's official government and independent worker institutions on the ground) as it will through the proxy conflicts of old, and not exclusively through the UN either.