Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

[4WheelSword]

thread policy Discussion of politics that does not directly relate to the Quest or to Quest votes are banned from hereon out. This thread policy will be enforced by the Moderation team. Do not ignore it.

 

[Twiggierjet]

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[Twiggierjet]

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[EBR]

1. Just pull a 5-year plan and do crash industrialization. This is a no-go as we have neither the resources, nor the political will or desire to engage in this sort of thing despite how enthusiastic some members of the communist faction might be.

If anyone else has any ideas I would love to hear them.

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While I share your attitude toward communist enthusiasm, India-style 5-year plans like the ones introduced by Nehru aren't a terrible way to build up a base of heavy industry in country lacking that. It's an inexact analogy, but Britain's deliberate policy of preventing India from developing its own independent industry and Victoria policy of destroying as much of American industry as they could both resulted in large, de-industrialized states.

America- when unified- is the third largest country on Earth in terms of population, and has extensive natural resources. I think a New Deal plan of investing heavily in communications infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, education, and utilities is a very good way to start, as those are the foundations for a modern economy. A country as big and resource-rich as the USA with an educated workforce and good infrastructure will inevitably become a country of global economic importance once it's had a chance to recover. The state just needs to prime the pump first, before we can expect the market to start driving itself.

 

[clockworkchaos]

1. Offer very cheap labor. This is not feasible both because automation has likely kicked this strategy into the dustbin of history, and because quite frankly given the makeup of our government agreeing to do this would be rather out of character imo.

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I believe this is incorrect. From Poptart on the discord.

PoptartProdigy 10/14/2020
If we can push acceptable wages low enough, they'll pay us to re-industrialize
@Blackstar I cannot say strongly enough, nor enough times, that you really do not need to push at this point in time.

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@PoptartProdigy if anything I say here is wrong correct me. But it has been stated that the wage equivalent in the commonwealth is rock bottom, the sort of wages a cheap labor factory offers are considered good money in the commonwealth, and people not starving, is a huge, unimanginage victory. Canonically people joined the Commonwealth armies for guaranteed food before we organized. What the current US army has trouble getting with the offer of a free college education, food brought here. I believe this is a viable path, especially given the collapse almost certainly massively set back automation thanks to the loss of capital.

While I share your attitude toward communist enthusiasm, India-style 5-year plans like the ones introduced by Nehru aren't a terrible way to build up a base of heavy industry in country lacking that. It's an inexact analogy, but Britain's deliberate policy of preventing India from developing its own independent industry and Victoria policy of destroying as much of American industry as they could both resulted in large, de-industrialized states.

America- when unified- is the third largest country on Earth in terms of population, and has extensive natural resources. I think a New Deal plan of investing heavily in communications infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, education, and utilities is a very good way to start, as those are the foundations for a modern economy. A country as big and resource-rich as the USA with an educated workforce and good infrastructure will inevitably become a country of global economic importance once it's had a chance to recover. The state just needs to prime the pump first, before we can expect the market to start driving itself.

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I have absolutely no doubt a unified America could do this. But I think we want to start industrializing now, as I suspect our next war with Victoria will be long before we have united the continent, and while the high tech weapons of war will be brought, cheaper arms are probably good to make on our own.

 

[EBR]

I have absolutely no doubt a unified America could do this. But I think we want to start industrializing now, as I suspect our next war with Victoria will be long before we have united the continent, and while the high tech weapons of war will be brought, cheaper arms are probably good to make on our own.

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Oh, I wasn't saying that we had to wait until reunion before we could start.

I wonder if New York would be willing to put us in touch with some foreign investors? I mean, we're small now, but we beat Victoria, we have a lot of room to grow, and now is a great time to get in on the ground floor of what could end up becoming the new USA.

 

[Twiggierjet]

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[Pyro Hawk]

It might have set it back, but there would have still been some advancement. It's been, what, 60 years? I doubt science has been frozen all that time. Although if even the cheapest of cheap labor is still considered a great wage in the commonwealth then that would certainly be a viable option for us.

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There's also the fact that the world has been stuck in The Cold War 2: We're Actually Unsure if It's Cold This Time for the past 60 years. So whilst technology and automation has probably advanced from where it is now, most of it was regaining and preserving what was lost. And then there's the fact that cyberwarfare is going to be a thousand times more active than it is these days.

Automation might have been set back just due to the fact that cyberwarfare defences fail often enough thanks to the Russians sabotaging the Europeans and Chinese, the Chinese sabotaging the Indians, Japanese and Russians, the Japanese sabotaging the Chinese and PACS, PACS messing around with Japan and India, Europe messing with Russia, and who the hell knows what else, that well...

It's just cheaper to limit how much automation you have, whilst also using a lot of manpower to run everything and ensure that if you get hit by cyberwarfare that trashed the automation, you can keep producing and have so many people that the sabotage is noticed before the equipment reaches the point of destroying itself.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

@PoptartProdigy if anything I say here is wrong correct me. But it has been stated that the wage equivalent in the commonwealth is rock bottom, the sort of wages a cheap labor factory offers are considered good money in the commonwealth, and people not starving, is a huge, unimanginage victory. Canonically people joined the Commonwealth armies for guaranteed food before we organized. What the current US army has trouble getting with the offer of a free college education, food brought here. I believe this is a viable path, especially given the collapse almost certainly massively set back automation thanks to the loss of capital.

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Yeah. I mean, you're social democrats within the context of the American Collapse. You have a unified currency that can reliably be exchanged for goods and services. The fact that the amount of that currency you get for most work is rock-bottom by international standards is honestly immaterial to most of your people.

 

[uju32]

"Our Empire is a disaster."

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The writing remains pretty good.

The base assumptions seem questionable.
I dont see any way anyone who lives in Cascadia, or who moved to Cascadia, could be ignorant of the history involved. Not when there is the Internet as a resource, and an active insurgency as a reminder.

The Japanese military is characterized as callous but competent, and competent militaries do not get that way by literally denying publicly available info. The Rainbow Coalition thing was in the 2060s, only a decade ago.
It's not been that long ago.

If anyone else has any ideas I would love to hear them.

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Money sent home by workers now largest source of external financing in low- and middle-income countries (excluding China)

blogs.worldbank.org

The money workers send home to their families from abroad has become a critical part of many economies around the world. Based on the most recent data, remittances, as this money is called, will only grow in importance. Officially recorded remittances amounted to a record $529 billion in 2018, and are on track to reach $550 billion in 2019.

This money is flowing at about the same levels as foreign direct investment (FDI), but if China is excluded, they are the largest source of foreign exchange earnings in low- and middle-income countries, according to Migration and Remittances Brief 31, published by the World Bank Group and KNOMAD, the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development. In other words, if China is excluded from the analysis, remittances have already overtaken FDI as the biggest source of external financing.

Today, remittances equal or surpass 25% of GDP in five countries: Tonga, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Haiti, and Nepal.

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"Remittances are on track to become the most important game in town when it comes to financing development," says Dilip Ratha, lead economist in Macro Economics and Fiscal Management at the Bank and the head of KNOMAD.

Today, they are more than three times larger than official development assistance (ODA), and FDI has been on a downward trend in recent years, notes the brief. "In five years, remittances will likely become larger than development assistance and FDI combined," says Ratha. "The underlying factors driving remittances will continue to grow," he added. "We could see remittances reach a trillion dollars in the foreseeable future."

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Another way to maximize the power of remittances is to encourage migrant workers to invest in their home countries in a more formal way, such as through a diaspora bond. Diaspora bonds can be a tool to make remittances more productive and are "perfect for financing development," says Ratha.

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TLDR
The known amount of foreign direct remittances to low and middle-income countries in the world today from their diaspora members is straight up more than the value of foreign direct investment and development aid, and is on track to dwarf them combined.
This is not a dynamic that is likely to have changed much, even if the specific countries may have.

There is a massive US diaspora of tens of millions of people out there across Africa, Europe, South America and the Pacific.
People who got out during the Collapse, some who saw the writing on the wall and left early. People who were born in the US, and their children.
People who have naturalized, and those who still carry refugee papers.

In addition to that, there is a core population of ~20 million FCNY citizens living on the East Coast of the US in first world conditions.
As well as a much larger but poorer population of skilled people up in Cali.
This is a self-solving problem.

We are due to unmask the Declaration of Independence in less than a year or so.
Modify some of our national symbology to tap into that, especially the flag, and play to those loyalties hard, both domestically in our neighbours and abroad in the diaspora.

Offer dual citizenship towards those that want it. Market investment bonds towards them.
Get them invested in what we're building, and streamline the process to make it straightforward for a couple million people to push money towards helping you set up schools and rebuild hospitals and power plants for the price of a pizza or two every month.

Make it welcoming for charities to operate out of the Commonwealth, both inside the country, and as a hub to reach the interior of North Am.

We'll undoubtedly need direct government to government aid in a bunch of things, especially bigtime military and industrial investment.
But do not ignore the power of the crowd for sheer economic grunt.
And a lot of the critical things are civilian accessible.

 

[Twiggierjet]

Deleted

 

[Saint_007]

Money sent home by workers now largest source of external financing in low- and middle-income countries (excluding China)

blogs.worldbank.org

TLDR
The known amount of foreign direct remittances to low and middle-income countries in the world today from their diaspora members is straight up more than the value of foreign direct investment and development aid, and is on track to dwarf them combined.
This is not a dynamic that is likely to have changed much, even if the specific countries may have.

There is a massive US diaspora of tens of millions of people out there across Africa, Europe, South America and the Pacific.
People who got out during the Collapse, some who saw the writing on the wall and left early. People who were born in the US, and their children.
People who have naturalized, and those who still carry refugee papers.

In addition to that, there is a core population of ~20 million FCNY citizens living on the East Coast of the US in first world conditions.
As well as a much larger but poorer population of skilled people up in Cali.
This is a self-solving problem.

We are due to unmask the Declaration of Independence in less than a year or so.
Modify some of our national symbology to tap into that, especially the flag, and play to those loyalties hard, both domestically in our neighbours and abroad in the diaspora.

Offer dual citizenship towards those that want it. Market investment bonds towards them.
Get them invested in what we're building, and streamline the process to make it straightforward for a couple million people to push money towards helping you set up schools and rebuild hospitals and power plants for the price of a pizza or two every month.

Make it welcoming for charities to operate out of the Commonwealth, both inside the country, and as a hub to reach the interior of North Am.

We'll undoubtedly need direct government to government aid in a bunch of things, especially bigtime military and industrial investment.
But do not ignore the power of the crowd for sheer economic grunt.
And a lot of the critical things are civilian accessible.

Click to shrink...

This is pretty much true. A big part of Jordan's income is from expats working abroad and especially in the Gulf States as high-skill technical experts, though it wasn't quite as high as it was pre-Gulf War (1990).

A minor note, this is why the PLO used to be one of the richest insurgencies in the world. It's not the oil sheikhs or the Arab monarchs giving them money, though Saddam Hussein was generous to them mostly to keep up a reputation as an enemy of Israel. It's the fact that a lot of skilled Palestinian worker expats (especially in the oil-rich Gulf States) would donate to Palestinian charities, some of which were fronts for the PLO and its allies much the same way Irish-Americans donated to the IRA. When the Gulf War struck, it hurt the PLO two ways; first, Saddam Hussein was no longer able to bankroll them due to the embargo on Iraq, and a lot of Palestinian expats were fired and expelled from Kuwait and other Gulf States and had to find work elsewhere, cutting off donations that way. With its funds drastically cut and the geopolitical situation in the MidEast firmly stacked in Israel's favor (due to America's triumph in the Cold War and the USSR's dissolution), they had no other solution than coming to the negotiating table with Israel for the Oslo accords.

Problem is, what sort of skilled workers and services could we provide in North America and outside it? We're a third world country with no advanced education system and little in terms of technical skill training.

 

[dptullos]

The writing remains pretty good.

The base assumptions seem questionable.
I dont see any way anyone who lives in Cascadia, or who moved to Cascadia, could be ignorant of the history involved. Not when there is the Internet as a resource, and an active insurgency as a reminder.

The Japanese military is characterized as callous but competent, and competent militaries do not get that way by literally denying publicly available info. The Rainbow Coalition thing was in the 2060s, only a decade ago.
It's not been that long ago.

Click to shrink...

My writing tends to prioritize "Is it dramatic?" over "Does it make sense if you examine it closely?".

My personal assumption is that the Japanese Internet is about as free as the current Chinese Internet, especially in the colonies. Searching for "Japanese military disasters" will give you the same quality of information as searching for "Tienanmen Square". Himari is a sheltered girl raised by right-wing ultra nationalists, and her instructors didn't bother to educate her out of the "Japan always wins" mindset they encourage for civilians. It's not like the Women's Auxiliary will ever need to do anything important, after all.

However, this is just me rationalizing decisions I made for storytelling reasons.

 

[uju32]

That is true, but for the most part this would only cover the basic fundamentals, like the schools and hospitals you mentioned right? Eventually we are going to need to have a lot more then just the basic necessities. EDIT: it seems that this strategy is a lot more viable then I thought, ignore the previous comment.

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To give one example: Nigeria.
Nigeria is a lower income country with a population of 206 million, and an estimated nominal GDP per capita of 2000 dollars.
In 2017, its budget was 23.5 billion dollars, it received foreign aid of 3.4 billion dollars, and foreign direct investment of around 2.3 billion dollars.

Remittances from the diaspora in the same year was 22 billion dollars. The next year it was 25 billion dollars.
Its estimated to hit 34 billion dollars by 2023.

https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/pdf/the-economic-power-of-nigerias-diaspora.pdf

And that's the money thats going through official channels and can be tracked.
Not the envelopes of cash and/or packages of consumer goods that are hand-delivered by travelling friends to family members.
Or the shipping containers that sometimes are stuffed full of stuff from vehicles to appliances and shipped by sea.

So we are underestimating the capital flows significantly.

Assume we can pull a tenth of that regularly as a baseline to our country.
Thats part of the government budget that doesnt need to be spent on health and education and communication networks, and can be spent on roads and canals and industry and military. Economic multipliers, and governmental insurance policy.

There's a reason I've been for stuff that makes the Commonwealth look good and sympathetic.

I do like the idea of attracting immigration from the global American diaspora, although that will probably have to wait until we can offer them comparable standards of living to where they are now, which might take a while.

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Many Jews feel an attachment to Israel as a country; they dont necessarily want to move there, or approve of everything it does, but its nice to have a backup nation. And a backup passport. Look to foster much the same sort of attachment in diaspora Americans.
It may translate to showing up every summer on medical missions, or in buying government bonds, or in lobbying.

Problem is, what sort of skilled workers and services could we provide in North America and outside it? We're a third world country with no advanced education system and little in terms of technical skill training.

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Thats up to the GM.
We dont know enough about the current global economic situation to say one way or the other.
But there's always stuff, whether its agricultural goods and agroforestry. Or something else, like cement production.

The Great Lakes used to have significant shipbuilding activity, and still has significant mineral deposits in the area like iron ore IIRC, but with the Vics holding the Welland Canal, we'll need to widen and dredge the Chicago canal system just to ensure reliable linkage to the Mississipi River System from the Lakes to get iron ore shipments out and stuff up into the Lakes.

One thing I can say for sure is that if we can guarantee a degree of physical security, expect significant investment in at least the telecomms sector, given the general picture of things in the Third World IRL. Somalia has thriving cellphone companies and internet service despite the ongoing civil war and lack of a national power grid; so does Afghanistan.

Communication is one of the major multipliers for economic growth. Couple that with smallscale electronic banking.
A lot of development just needs a stable local situation and consistent regulatory environment to kick itself off.
And North America has a lot of lowhanging fruit to exploit.

 

[me.me.here]

So we are underestimating the capital flows significantly.

Assume we can pull a tenth of that regularly as a baseline to our country.

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I am quite certain you are overestimating what we'll get out of remittances. First off - remittances go to individual citizens, not the government. They boost overall economic activity, but that doesn't directly translate into bigger government budgets because 100% tax rates are not a thing. Getting a tenth of nominal remittance flows as something we can actually use is about the best that can be expected, not the minimum baseline.

Secondly, the vast majority of remittances are a result of personal connections, most often immediate family. It's been 40 years since the Collapse, which means two generations have gone by with no or intermittent contact. It's one thing to send money to a spouse/parent/child/cousin you cherish, and another thing entirely to send money to the grandkid of your grandparent's sibling who you've literally never interacted before.

Comparing the amount of money that would be flowing back to Nigeria or another country with a great deal of ongoing emigration and migratory workers outside the country that have family back home is a terrible choice, because North America's separation from the world has been far more complete. A better comparison would be to the amount of remittances North Korea gets, where money comes mostly from what few amount of people have managed to escape (or workers the state has sent out) rather than from South Korean citizens who had family in North Korea 50-60 years ago before the war.

That's not a capital flow measured in tens of billions of dollars but in millions - even including said state workers it's only hundreds of millions, which is several orders of magnitude less.

 

[Twiggierjet]

Deleted

 

[me.me.here]

I mean, that's not a bad thing. More money in the hands of the citizens will do wonders to improve our economy, especially if it means the government can instead focus its efforts on big infrastructure projects.

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It's not bad for people in general, but it does mean the money gets abstracted away as far as we're concerned. We aren't going to find those big infrastructure projects to be any cheaper or easier on our budget just because a bunch of our citizens have an easier time affording rent/groceries/whatever than they otherwise might.

 

[uju32]

I am quite certain you are overestimating what we'll get out of remittances. First off - remittances go to individual citizens, not the government. They boost overall economic activity, but that doesn't directly translate into bigger government budgets because 100% tax rates are not a thing. Getting a tenth of nominal remittance flows as something we can actually use is about the best that can be expected, not the minimum baseline.

Secondly, the vast majority of remittances are a result of personal connections, most often immediate family. It's been 40 years since the Collapse, which means two generations have gone by with no or intermittent contact. It's one thing to send money to a spouse/parent/child/cousin you cherish, and another thing entirely to send money to the grandkid of your grandparent's sibling who you've literally never interacted before.

Comparing the amount of money that would be flowing back to Nigeria or another country with a great deal of ongoing emigration and migratory workers outside the country that have family back home is a terrible choice, because North America's separation from the world has been far more complete. A better comparison would be to the amount of remittances North Korea gets, where money comes mostly from what few amount of people have managed to escape (or workers the state has sent out) rather than from South Korean citizens who had family in North Korea 50-60 years ago before the war.

That's not a capital flow measured in tens of billions of dollars but in millions - even including said state workers it's only hundreds of millions, which is several orders of magnitude less.

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In quick succession:
1) Yes, they normally go to individual citizens, where studies suggest we have 3 dollars of economic activity for every one dollar of remittance

Spoiler: Citation

A study conducted in Mexico reflected that for every $2 billion in remittances that entered the country, production in the economy increased by over $6.5 billion (Durand et al, 1996).

https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/pdf/the-economic-power-of-nigerias-diaspora.pdf

Even money that doesnt go directly into government coffers ends up juicing taxable economic activity.
And one of the papers I posted directly pointed out direct governmental access to that resource as a possibility, using bonds and the like.

2) Anecdote is not the singular of data, but I do know at least one migrant community with individuals in precisely that situation IRL.And that's all I think I can say about that.

Basically, its only been forty years since the Collapse.
Thirty years since the Pacific Republic fell and Victoria really got the free hand to run amok up and down the East Coast. The first generation of adult migrants are in large part still alive. Nearing retirement age, but still alive.

3)I used Nigeria because it was a country I actually have some knowledge of which has got the closest general population size to the modern United States.

Somalia, if you'd prefer a Commonwealth analogue with high levels of violence by an organized terror group, has yearly remittances of 1.3-2 billion dollars yearly, compared to the 800 million in foreign aid they receive each year. And it used to be largely done without the presence of any formal financial services at all, via a network of financial brokers operating on the honor system(see Hawala).

I mean, it's ultimately for the GM to adjudicate, but the RL precedent is there.

 

[Ikacprzak]

So how about we start with resource extraction and use the profits to create an educated work force and facilities that can refine and manufacture more complex and profitable goods?

 

[Twiggierjet]

Deleted

 

[Mr Tebbs]

I'm pretty sure we have a lot of iron ore, bauxite, tin and limestone. The world will always need more iron and concrete at the very least

 

[PoptartProdigy]

I'm pretty sure we have a lot of iron ore, bauxite, tin and limestone. The world will always need more iron and concrete at the very least

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To be honest, with the infrastructure investments y'all are due for if you ever want to get your nation back up and running again, you're probably gonna need those for yourselves.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Given frequent miscommunications between Legitimacy the stat and legitimacy the notion of your state's right to govern, I have elected to rename the Legitimacy stat to the Legacy stat. I've also updated its description in the Rules Screen, as part of what I anticipate being a general overhaul today while I wait a bit on more contributions on South and Central America in the worldbuilding thread before writing my first draft on the region today.

Speaking of, I've put a link to the worldbuilding thread in my signature, for those who don't visit the Informational threadmarks.

 

[dptullos]

Random question: Do you guys remember the assassin at the start? Mister Rodriguez?

Now that he's well in the past, I'm wondering if Poptart can tell us why he refused to talk. He didn't seem to be a fanatic, but he refused to cooperate even though it meant a lifetime in jail.

 

[uju32]

To be honest, with the infrastructure investments y'all are due for if you ever want to get your nation back up and running again, you're probably gonna need those for yourselves.

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Whynotboth.gif

More seriously, its going to take time and investment to get the refining infrastructure set up; note how many oil producers export raw crude, not refined product. Or how the third largest producer of bauxite ore in the world, Guinea has zero refining capacity. Barring a major influx of investment, we're going to be selling the raw material and importing a lot of refined endproduct until we develop sufficient infrastructure.

EDIT

Random question: Do you guys remember the assassin at the start? Mister Rodriguez?
Now that he's well in the past, I'm wondering if Poptart can tell us why he refused to talk. He didn't seem to be a fanatic, but he refused to cooperate even though it meant a lifetime in jail.

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True believer, I suspect.
Wont be the first time that its happened.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Random question: Do you guys remember the assassin at the start? Mister Rodriguez?

Now that he's well in the past, I'm wondering if Poptart can tell us why he refused to talk. He didn't seem to be a fanatic, but he refused to cooperate even though it meant a lifetime in jail.

Click to shrink...

You don't know.