NS Non-Military Realism Thread MK3

[Tuthina]

-snip

Regarding the religion bit, I think that referring them by exonyms, at least partially, is actually more common than otherwise. It seems to be more common for religions that are first contacted and documented by the relevant cultures of said language (in this case, English) during the medieval age and before, with indigenous names becoming increasingly common in later times. Examples of such being Buddhism (but not of the denominations, unlike ones of Christianity), Zoroastrianism and maybe the old pagan religions of Europe when they bother to give them specific names (the old name of Islam, Mohammedanism, might count as well although it has since fall into disuse because of allegedly being offensive for theological reasons). For partial examples, Taoism or even Shintoism might count as well, as they are based on the native name of the religion, but with the suffix of "-ism" to notate its nature. As Kamism was not organised or christened ( ) with an official name until long after it has established contact with most foreign cultures concerned, I believe that it is reasonable to think an English-speaking culture would name it after the most common element (Kami) and add "-ism" behind.

In any case, the native name is probably something along the line of kami-no-wosihe, which is quite a nuisance to type, to be frank, and it does not look as brief and elegant as the current exonym, so I would prefer not to change it as long as it makes some kind of sense.

---

For the feudal part, I have been thinking about it for a while, but sadly not many results were yielded. I agree with your statement that a feudal system is largely incompatible with modern society, perhaps evident by the fact that they do not exist any-more in large scale in modern world in RL. However, as it is one of the cornerstones of my nation, I think I will try to preserve it as much as possible, even if only by-name.

I think that the feudal system, or a semi-feudal system that resembles more of the nobility renting the land to the peasants in exchange of the product and/or money, is probably still alive and well in the agrarian part of the nation, as few has changed for centuries, even millennia for them.

Things are a lot more complicated in the urban environment, especially if it is to maintain the position of spearheading the modernisation and economy of the realm. What I am thinking of is to retain the feudal system by name and laws only, with the nature of the governance resembling more of some sort of local rule. Essentially, the nobles who once owned the land that composed of the modern city still own the land de jure. However, it has since evolved into a system of renting, or selling the rights to use said land to merchants, guilds and industrialists alike in exchange of money (or if that fails, "products" will do as well). Similar to what is probably a federated/con-federated system, the nobility can also make their own law, set their own tax rate and whatnot in their own realm as long as they do not contradict the law of their superior lieges, as well as paying tax to them. Supposedly, in order to maximise profit, many nobles also operate companies that provide essential service in their realm, sometimes even mandating monopoly on said service if they see fit, creating a lot of corporate towns in the process.

I hope it makes a bit more sense (or at least enough to make it plausible to survive, even with suboptimal efficiency), but I am taking medication now and my brain is a bit fuzzy. Sorry about that.

[Yes Im Biop]

I'm currently using Bullet trains (Magna Levi) for 90% of city and between city transportation due to High (SOme correctly say Impossible) Restriction on fossil fueled vehicles that require a minimum of 500mpg. Would this be a Bad Idea? I've heard that Magna Levi trains are safer than nearly anything else.

[Questers]

Personally, I think that ironically enough capitalism might be a little dysfunctional in an NS world considering the absolute lack of scarcity that everyone seems to claim, I mean it is seldom heard of for people to proclaim that they are running a deficit of of a certain mineral or an other essential industrial commodity.

I don't think anyone claims an absolute lack of scarcity. There are a lot of people who RP with low GDPPCs and there are a lot of people who RP with high GDPPCs and yet have huge swathes of their population basically as paupers who are lucky if they get conscripted (without noting the awful effects of modern day feudalism, but not the point.)

[Vitaphone Racing]

I'm currently using Bullet trains (Magna Levi) for 90% of city and between city transportation due to High (SOme correctly say Impossible) Restriction on fossil fueled vehicles that require a minimum of 500mpg. Would this be a Bad Idea? I've heard that Magna Levi trains are safer than nearly anything else.

I've never heard of anyone call them "magna levi" before. Maglevs are sweet for going between A and B as fast as possible. They aren't that good for stop-start city work. I don't know about them being safer than conventional electric trains; they don't get in many crashes because there isn't that many of them.

[Yes Im Biop]

I'm currently using Bullet trains (Magna Levi) for 90% of city and between city transportation due to High (SOme correctly say Impossible) Restriction on fossil fueled vehicles that require a minimum of 500mpg. Would this be a Bad Idea? I've heard that Magna Levi trains are safer than nearly anything else.

I've never heard of anyone call them "magna levi" before. Maglevs are sweet for going between A and B as fast as possible. They aren't that good for stop-start city work. I don't know about them being safer than conventional electric trains; they don't get in many crashes because there isn't that many of them.

Really? Huh.


SO Normal Electric Monorails for Inter City shit and Magna Levi's for city to city travel?

[Deutsche Demokratische Republik]

I'm trying to work out some information for my state-owned industries. In 1989 VEB Robotron employed 68,000 people. How much would this number increase or decrease in 2013 considering more computers and electronic devices would be used by the public and other state-owned industries?

[Questers]

I'm trying to work out some information for my state-owned industries. In 1989 VEB Robotron employed 68,000 people. How much would this number increase or decrease in 2013 considering more computers and electronic devices would be used by the public and other state-owned industries?

I think that depends on your policy. Take Britain for instance. Though few people now work in steel, more steel is being produced than ever. It's your choice, I guess: your Government could maintain an (inefficient) labour heavy model for social reasons, or it could just throw people off. If your country is the DDR then it would probably try to keep the most efficient model (by firing people and mechanising) while at the same time doing it slowly.

[Deutsche Demokratische Republik]

I'm trying to work out some information for my state-owned industries. In 1989 VEB Robotron employed 68,000 people. How much would this number increase or decrease in 2013 considering more computers and electronic devices would be used by the public and other state-owned industries?

I think that depends on your policy. Take Britain for instance. Though few people now work in steel, more steel is being produced than ever. It's your choice, I guess: your Government could maintain an (inefficient) labour heavy model for social reasons, or it could just throw people off. If your country is the DDR then it would probably try to keep the most efficient model (by firing people and mechanising) while at the same time doing it slowly.

They are the sole producer of all electronics in the country. I am thinking that the number employed could remain the same.

[Mostrov]

First off; apologies for the break I've been quite sick and I still am, and of course to an extent I've been loathing and dreading this because I knew the length that I would write to justify what I was thinking. Anyway, onwards.

---

-snip-

In regards to religion I am in agreeance; I was merely interested in the process that lead to the naming as it seemed to me somewhat 'artificial' and not the natural first choice, but given your justification for it I can understand why you choose it in the end.

---

One of the great problems with feudalism is essentially the society that it results in and of course why it ended. The latter is something that is substantially easier to diagnose and I think gives great insight into the former. There are of three main sources of a feudal nobilities power: land, military force and traditional rights (more on this last point later).

If we look at the rise of the industrial revolution in the west, with particular emphasis on England as it is the easiest to get sources on specific matters (Ironically enough England was an exception due to many unique conditions, but I believe the fundamental premise remains the same) we see a gradual movement of power away from the Aristocracy until its effective extinction as a social class as industrialisation and modernity are introduced. There are also several other social, economic and historical trends that need to be examined. For example what led to what we associate with the economy now, a monetary economy with a great deal of movement of goods, freedom of trade and countless other things that radically differ from the agrarian-based society that we saw several hundred years ago.

A mercantile society needed several important preconditions for it to work effectively and these were utterly central to what l think are required to actually create industrialisation, you need an advanced economy; and unfortunately feudalism is something that is quite 'backwards' as it effectively prevents efficient usage of a great deal of the resources available otherwise. Of course you try and make such a class embrace the advantages of modernity; yet historically this has never really happened for numerous well founded reasons.

This is not to understate the complexity of feudalism, rather it was a result of the times prior and traded economic prosperity for social stability and security. After the fall of the roman empire feudal societies began to fill the gaps, even in late antiquity they were present to an extent; although not at the level of sophistication that time would bring. The fall of a centralised state meant that warfare returned as a possibility and so could lead to long term destruction and strife; during the era of rebuilding civilisation and the administrative sophistication there was a need for something that could provide the security for society. Of course this is a simplification, and there is no real historical 'progression'; but the idea works for analogy.

The first examples of feudalism were personal loyalties to commanders and the like, and as I've sure you've heard most of this was protection in exchange for goods or something else to be offered. In time this evolved into the idea of serfs being 'property' of the lord. In many cases elaborate systems of law and custom evolved and created societies that were a lot more complicated than was popularly portrayed in the victorian histories that summarily rewrote the perception of them. The idea of the peasant being nothing more than chattel and having little in the way of rights for instance, although to an extent accurate still a gross exaggeration and neglecting the various traditional customs that they themselves were owed from people of higher social standing. From the establishment of systems it was evident that the military forces got the most out of such a deal, but at that time military might was hard to come by and of course it was done more of necessity than anything else.

But what stops such a system from embracing modernity? One of the most telling is that mobility is often quite discouraged, and people were expected to stay entrenched in their own lands and rooted to agriculture. Of course there was often an economic 'incentive' for that as production of crops wasn't nearly as efficient as it was now and it was to an extent still required to provide the basis of the society, and large amounts of agricultural work was required to feed everyone.

When speaking of historical England suddenly becomes a very poor example as it had a large amount of Yeoman and free farmers, although they were often entered in some degree of feudal contract they certainly weren't obliged to remain on estates until their death. This was something that proved to the nations great advantage during industrialisation as it allowed people to freely move into the cities and begin working in factories and the ilk. Whereas if we look at another nation, Russia, which was very socially backwards had serfdom quite ingrained meant that it never had the mobility to create an organic industraliation, amongst other reasons. Its worth noting that serfdom in terms of agricultural productivity is often not especially effective, due to the lack of incentive of the farmers to work given the extractive prerogative from their overlords to tax them to the bone and try and increase their personal wealth as much as possible, instead of being more laissez-faire and slowly increasing their productivity over time.

A small caveat to this is that in most cases there was a degree of unbalancing, due to the fact that often the societies that retained serfdom as their primary means of agricultural production were also unindustrailised and so couldn't compete with more efficient methods such as fertilisers and mechanised farming is a little unbalancing, as if there were some means to see if you could compare industrialised 'serfdom' with industralised free-farmers it would certainly be interesting. I will talk about an example of this later, and I regard this again as an exception and not something that is particularly efficient in the long term.

The reason for this I can assume is thus; that similar the stalinist system of collectivization that appeared in the soviet union; there was little reason for the people to work to the maximum extent; and when they did it was a deliberate attempt to avoid punishment or as a propaganda coup; such as things like super-productivity (that ironically enough ruined land by growing too much in one plot and so removing fertility from the soil and leaving it utterly barren for the next crop). Rather it seems from an objective standpoint that letting farmers manage themselves works best and historical data would strongly support this.

With that we have to an extent disproved the idea that serfs could exist as they are traditionally portrayed, and if we were to take the soviet analogy seriously its likely such a nation would have a great deal of importing of food to do, unless there was little in regards to an urban society, being limited to the land by the very scarcity of food in itself. Such a nation would be so weakened as it would be comparatively weak, having little in the realm of economy and probably a very weak military, although again it is within the realm of possibility if you accept the idea of it being a nation similar to modern Afghanistan, where you have a hardened military created by constant conflict and armed by outsiders and then said weapons being tested against said outsiders, but this is something that likely doesn't appeal to the majority of people to be anything near fun and it would still be weak against a concerted effort at its destruction.

Of course you said that your society that lacks such a system and is instead based around the idea of its being 'rented' from the actually owning lord. Ironically there were such systems in reality, the one that springs to mind immediately being the prussian aristocracy. Now to an extent this worked, because of the fact that Prussia was one of the poorer regions of Germany and there was little pressure in regards to modernisation because of the conservatism of the military and the way that Germany was set up politically at the time. They indeed embraced modernisation, and as such benefited enormously from this.

But here is the caveat, although it was a survivor it was something that due to its importance of Germany being a prussian-centred nation at its inception in 1871, there was need for the Junkers to remain a powerful force and so the government saw fit to prop them up by introducing agricultural tariffs, additionally the land they were in was substantially less fertile, and more suited to growing staples than more profitable crops which meant they could rely on low-skill peasantry and later polish immigrants so they had a cheap source of labor. So despite the fact that they remained until the end of the second world war, they were economically on the decline and I believe it was historical coincidence that arranged for them to last as long as they did. If history were different, I think that eventually you might have seen efforts at land reform by the government and eventually them merging into the wealthy landowner class. Nonetheless you can see the long term effect of this it has had in Eastern Germany in regards to its dearth of wealth, even discarding the compounding effects of the East German government there was still a clear divide evident.
This in of itself is something of a theme, you see a decline from a hereditary aristocracy and then towards a plutocratic setting of wealthy landowners and small farmers and pools of agricultural labor and the ilk. This, I contend, is in opposition towards the idea of a feudal setting and once it passes a certain stage it is no longer something that you would call feudal anymore.

The interest of the lords is to preserve their power and influence and control of the land, whereas industrialisation thrusts that power into the hands of the state and so deprives the aristocratic classes of it. Similarly they must find their natural enemies in the nascent middle-classes that began to emerge in the cities, as trading became more prosperous and there was population flight to the cities as more productive labour to less need for agricultural workers. And whilst some of the more enterprising aristocrats turned their hands to business and industry, they soon became nothing more than businessmen with different backgrounds. Its very difficult to exercise said power when you have very little to exercise it with, as you can no longer raise feudal levies, certainly no longer have a degree of exclusivity in regards to wealth and taxation, and no longer a monopoly of the control of the military and politics. Its quite easy to see how they become squeezed out in such a circumstance. After all its effectively meaningless, when the new power revolves around money; which isn't something that is exclusive towards the aristocracy and indeed the very nature of aristocracy prevents it being used to its fullest extent.

Additionally you have the effect that governments themselves see to eventually remove the aristocracy and feudal system as the modernise, due to the fact of them providing a threat to the nations stability with the capacity to raise rebellion and also being detrimental to the treasury of a nation, by stripping taxes that might otherwise flow directly into the nations treasury. This whole system can be seen in the various land reforms that were enacted in England and the gradual effects towards agricultural productivity and the fact that eventually it removed the initial wealth of the very people who sort to gain from them in the first place (particularly regarding enclosure).

On the subject of land reform, I think its one of the main supporters of feudal societies to have something like that regulated by complicated laws and old customs regarding inheritance, but there is also the constant pressure from the government to dissolve such privileges and to increase the wealth of the region or any other myriad of goals. Additionally the peasantry themselves often champion it and democracy is very much the deathknell of an aristocracy as they likely to find themselves bereft of land as it is stripped of them in the name of redistribution.

To an extent the whole idea of feudalism is that it requires an agricultural basis for the economy, or at least the vast majority of it being so. Now its quite possible to have an industrialisation, however as it likely occurs there will likely be a great degree of social mobility comparatively, and inevitably this leads to the concentration of power in people whose primary means is wealth instead of ancestry and this results in the fact that they can become often far more powerful. The examples of this are innumerable. You simply cannot have a competing class, as it removes the basic idea of feudalism in of itself; especially in this case a class that is more effective that you'd otherwise think. Something occurs to me as I write this though, in that Jews in the middle ages represented this stratum of society and yet they never achieved dominance; if it were possible to create some sort of means of harnessing the plutocrats you could perhaps reign them in before they eat the system away from the inside.
However again, you arrive at the issue that it is undoubtedly a very inefficient system and likely to lead to a poorer region or nation than its neighbours. And of course given the fact that competition is inevitable it's going to lead to it likely being taken over or reforming to survive; this is given the limited dichotomy of NS, but it is observed as equally in the real world too.

Now you proposed an alternative system that I will discuss in some depth too, that the aristocracy could act as a vanguard in terms of industrialisation. Now we can see that there have been several attempts at this and they haven't particularly been successful, one of note is ironically Imperial Japan and the reforming of the feudal aristocracy into a structured nobility.
Basically, given the above assessment I categorically think it wouldn't work. It also creates a division between the various peoples' as not everyone would have the luck to have an estate with a major town or city on it, and thus the ability to even start some sort of enterprise in the first place. Either they would be in intense competition with plutocrats or likely become inefficient and outcompeted economically from outside the region or nation. Additionally its likely that the whole idea of setting laws, although innovative would likely be heavily opposed from above, as its not in a nation's interests to have an effectively independent polity within their borders that can exert large control.

So whilst it may be technically possible to have a feudal nation its likely to be a backwater and probably to have unique conditions in its favor for such circumstances to remain. I'm terribly sorry if I've gone on long enough, as I still have plenty more to write about on the matter and I thought for sanity's sake of all not to include links lest it become something nigh infinitely long. If you want any clarification on anything I can write that up in response, and it would likely be shorter as it will be more specific.

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-snip-

I think its more the fact that you seldom see people claiming that they are lacking certain materials that actually affect them, its just assumed that everyone seems to have unlimited munitions or unlimited production capacity. Now of course I can understand that there are exceptions to this, people who try and take the whole thing seriously. But at the same time its also worth bearing in mind that what is realistic seems to be selectively chosen, and of course one of those things is geography and the like; which is the fundamental basis of many nations. These realities have often defined many of the military doctrines and technologies in use (Evidently the major basis of any thing on NS, given the preference towards conflict). There is a lack of regards for the very logistics that are so vaunted, and I guess that this is to an extent beyond the capacities of any one individual to create from scratch, with no problems regarding fuel or other such things essential to a campaign. Now of course again this is possible to account for, but the broader picture remains the same, nations can be effectively regarded as autarkies; if its not mentioned explicitly you can assume that its produced internally.

Now I understand that you are part of the population cap crowd, yet as this presents contradiction to me due to the way in which worlds would be set up, primarily in regard to the aforementioned geography matter and distances between countries, size of the planet gravity etc.
I think that its quite possible that if you have a population that is taken from the game itself you have more people than the entire world; I believe in such a case its quite simple to assume that everything can be provided internally. And you'd have very strange interactions between nations because of that. How trade would even function on such a scale is beyond me and the same can be said about government.

[Questers]

I think its more the fact that you seldom see people claiming that they are lacking certain materials that actually affect them, its just assumed that everyone seems to have unlimited munitions or unlimited production capacity. Now of course I can understand that there are exceptions to this, people who try and take the whole thing seriously. But at the same time its also worth bearing in mind that what is realistic seems to be selectively chosen, and of course one of those things is geography and the like; which is the fundamental basis of many nations. These realities have often defined many of the military doctrines and technologies in use (Evidently the major basis of any thing on NS, given the preference towards conflict). There is a lack of regards for the very logistics that are so vaunted, and I guess that this is to an extent beyond the capacities of any one individual to create from scratch, with no problems regarding fuel or other such things essential to a campaign. Now of course again this is possible to account for, but the broader picture remains the same,.

Well, some of this is true, but it's all an issue of scale. Yeah if I have 21 billion people, to describe my economy I have to basically describe the economy of the world, rather than anyone specific, if I want to give any detail it becomes quasi impossible.

Now I understand that you are part of the population cap crowd, yet as this presents contradiction to me due to the way in which worlds would be set up, primarily in regard to the aforementioned geography matter and distances between countries, size of the planet gravity etc.
I think that its quite possible that if you have a population that is taken from the game itself you have more people than the entire world;

I'm not a popcapper because I think NS pops are unrealistic. They are, but there is a hard limit to how much "realism" we have and I accept that. What I am interested in is authenticity, but again, it's not the main reason. The main reason Is simply that the scale of page-pop RPs is really ridiculous. It becomes virtually impossible to properly RP on a human level, I think, in "nation to nation" rping - tho it says nothing about character rps. The other thing is it becomes harder to detail your nation.

If your rps consist of character rps in a vague geopolitical background, the pop makes no difference at all, of course. The more emphasis you put on the geopolitical aspect the more difficult it becomes to rp with the page-pop.

nations can be effectively regarded as autarkies; if its not mentioned explicitly you can assume that its produced internally... I believe in such a case its quite simple to assume that everything can be provided internally.

Not sure that's true - if you tripled the size of our world (about the size of my NS country) it would have limited amounts of everything, sure, but it would still need to trade because of comparative advantage.

[Yes Im Biop]

Would Planet Cracking be a viable way to maintain Hard FT resource needs? As Big as My planet is it's still that planet and my guys are against strip mining

[Astholm]

I have the puppet nation Kessingland Westholme, which geographically covers all of Serbia and a tiny bit of Bosnia-Herzegovina (well, to be technical, the cantons of Brcko District, Bijelijina, and a small part of Vlasenica).

I'm wondering; is it realistic enough to give my nation a Central European climate, but the road numbering system British A, B and M-roads, along with UK-style phonecodes (e.g. 01614095 or 01494804 - longer than usual to avoid RL dialling of numbers) and official languages of English, German, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian?

I am trying to make this as semi-realistic as possible; at first I'd considered giving it some Anglo-Saxon history based on its name (Kessingland is "cress lands" in Old English) but what should I do to make it slightly more original, yet realistic. I don't think Saxons and Slavs would have been together in the same country at the same time, historically, if I'm correct?

Any advice is appreciated!

[The Laxus Union]

I was researching some energy technology for my nation. I want a unique source of energy. See my nation is FT so my influence spreads to different planes and star systems. I basically have a space hegemony. My ships run on Chrystollic Fusion which is the use of pyroelectric crystals to power a system,because the crystals can have a current passed through them. Then you have our automobiles which run on electric cells. Then just to power the nation and our space hegemony we use nuclear energy, solar/Dyson spheres for space, wind, and chrystollic fusion. I wanted something more unique then the average sources excluding chrystollic fusion. I need some help with finding something unique. It would mean a lot and the citizens would appreciate new technology which would grow our economy.

[Purpelia]

Please rate my immigration policy:

First thing first. In order to be allowed any form of permanent or semi permanent residence other than a brief tourist stay in Purpelia you would first have to acquire Purpelian citizenship. You can not just come here, live for a while and expect to become a citizen. You have to qualify as a citizen before you are allowed to stay.

In order to qualify for a chance to obtain Purpelian citizenship you must first comply with all of the following criteria:

Your identity can be checked reliably.
Have at least one Purpelian citizen willing to vouch for you.
Pass a security check by our intelligence agencies. A failure on this check means immediate dismissal of your application without any explanation.
Absolutely clean criminal record according to our laws. That is to say that you have not been convicted of any act that is considered a crime in Purpelia. Hence a conviction for jaywalking can get you disqualified but a conviction for pedophilia will be ignored.
Are not a carrier of any contagious disease. You can apply again once you prove it is cured. If it is incurable thou like AIDS than it's a permanent disqualification.
Do not have a history of political, social or economic activism aimed at propagating goals that are not in alignment with the official doctrine of the Purpelian nation.
Do not have a history of positive involvement or participation with social, economic or political entities whose goals that are not in alignment with the official doctrine of the Purpelian nation.
Are not and were newer a member of any form of militia, armed or unarmed police force, military, paramilitary organization, intelligence agency or any similar body. This requirement can be waived on direct orders from the Arch Duke to allow foreign traitors in.
Have not in the past held a Purpelian citizenship and than renounced it.
Are willing to renounce any and all foreign citizenship and nationality and adopt Purpelian customs and culture and a Purpelian identity.
You can also earn extra credit for political, social or economic activism that is aimed at propagating goals that are in alignment with the official doctrine of the Purpelian nation. Or if you have skills or resources that are deemed useful for the Purpelian nation.


The actual process:
If you have been deemed compliant with all of the above criteria and have been generally deemed sincere your application might be accepted allowing you to actually progress into the process of becoming a citizen. Your next step along this path is to move into one of our Purpelianization camps. These camps are basically walled off enclaves designed to mimic model suburban villages not unlike what you can find in Purpelian suburbia. They come with all the amenities of life modeled for the model Purpelian family including access to Purpelian entertainment, consumer goods and everything else. There is one catch thou. You are being watched.

In order to gain citizenship you must spend no less than 6 and no more than 9 months in one of these camps. During this time you are expected to unlearn your old customs and habits and adopt to a new Purpelian identity. At the end of your stay you are expected to pass complicated multiple step exam. The exam tests your knowledge of Purpelian history, language and culture as well as your general "Purpelianes", an undefined measure of how well you have assimilated. You can take this exam only twice, once at the 6 and once at the 9 months mark. Failure to pass both times leads to permanent rejection. As an added complication at any time during this period the instructors who are overseeing and noting your behavior with and without you knowing can decide that you are unfit and reject your application. And although the process of rejection is strictly controlled they are required and indeed instructed not to inform you of the reasons behind their decision.

If you manage to past the test and get good reviews from the instructors you can gain a provisional citizenship. With a provisional citizenship you are allowed to go out and live among the general Purpelian society and generally gain all the rights and privileges of citizenship. However you are still restricted from certain avenues such as working in the military industrial complex or our intelligence agencies for reasons of national security. And you will be punished more severely in case you commit acts which constitute treason or high treason.
Your provisional citizenship can for all intents and purposes newer be upgraded to a complete one. With one exception being a direct political edict by the above mentioned restricted agencies. However for all intents and purposes outside of this narrow band you will be treated like a regular citizen and will pass on a regular full Purpelian citizenship to any offspring made with other Purpelian citizens.

Special cases:
As a special note it should be said that the Purpelian state does not recognize citizenship by birthright. That is to say that children of non Purpelians born within our territory as well as children who have one non Purpelian and one Purpelian parent do not gain citizenship automatically. In the former case, gaining Purpelian citizenship requires the child to pass through the entire process as outlined above. And in the later case it requires either the non Purpelian parent passing through it or the Purpelian parent renouncing the other and breaking any contact with them until he or she does.

The Purpelian state also does not recognize citizenship by marriage. That is to say that if a foreigner enters a marital union with a Purpelian citizen this fact does not allow him to bypass the above outlined process. It does however allow the marital spouse to live with him in the camps and help with the Purpelianization process.

[Mostrov]

Well, some of this is true, but it's all an issue of scale. Yeah if I have 21 billion people, to describe my economy I have to basically describe the economy of the world, rather than anyone specific, if I want to give any detail it becomes quasi impossible.

I find it quite fascinating personally the potential to how such a large 'nation' would function, if it even subscribed to traditional geopolitics at this point and was more something along the lines of the UN or EU (A confederation of ideologically similar nations or perhaps something united by ideology in the first place), and how such large numbers interact with each other. I can understand that this appeals to very few people, but I always found interest in justifying such an absurdity to make it realistic. You have to move beyond certain ideas that are 'realistic' in our world and adapt new ones to actually create a system that works.

On economy in particular I think it is something that's quite tricky, because something on this scale is vastly different from anything in the real world; you'd have nations that encompass huge amounts of different climates, peoples and infrastructure. So how exactly would a government administer and how would they delegate such things? When 'local' issues can be the size of a continent it makes it somewhat hard to effectively exercise control.

Personally I find the solution is that given an assumed lack of scarcity, you can simply push some of this pressure outwards as there are new continents to be exploited, new lands to be conquered and so you have a degree of constant growth, and dare I say almost like a constant war footing. Of course I think that at that scale a traditional government would likely fail to have effective control, so I figure ideological unification is best. As such, my current ideas for my nation is one based around socialist ideologies - as that has shown a great degree of historical traction, and the downsides of the centrally planned economy (albeit one that is a great deal more rationalist than the Soviet Unions, more in common with China's) being negated by the aforementioned surplus, so that even though it may not be as per-capita efficient; it can certainly compete due to the scale of resources that can be brought to bare and simply swamp any problem with resources.

I'm not a popcapper because I think NS pops are unrealistic. They are, but there is a hard limit to how much "realism" we have and I accept that. What I am interested in is authenticity, but again, it's not the main reason. The main reason Is simply that the scale of page-pop RPs is really ridiculous. It becomes virtually impossible to properly RP on a human level, I think, in "nation to nation" rping - tho it says nothing about character rps. The other thing is it becomes harder to detail your nation.

If your rps consist of character rps in a vague geopolitical background, the pop makes no difference at all, of course. The more emphasis you put on the geopolitical aspect the more difficult it becomes to rp with the page-pop.

I think its a curious question, I believe that it is possible, but not in a standard setting, more likely to have much in common with the Cold War than anything else; because if 'war' is carried out by any two entities how exactly can you define a winner; as I'm sure you've realised there comes a point that given any II nations size it can realistically proclaim that it has a nuclear arsenal and is thus immune from sovereign invasion. Yet despite this nations would likely have to be continually expanding due to the burgeoning population; so I presume in this case you have proxy wars and various attempts at sabotage and the like rather than direct military conflict (which if it does occur, would in the form of an 'incident').

An example might be something akin to competition between various client states in an area similar to the straits of malacca and their strategic significance in the immediate geographic region and how the controller of such a thing might be able to exercise effective power over trade and attempts to integrate smaller nations on the periphery into the growing empires. Perhaps somewhat similar to the recent invasion of Georgia writ large.

It even brings airs of something out of the colonial eras, perhaps a border conflict between two regions being settled between the Mostrovite Futurist Techno-Socialists and the Questerian voluntarists, and the lack of central control due to the distance from the metropole.

Not sure that's true - if you tripled the size of our world (about the size of my NS country) it would have limited amounts of everything, sure, but it would still need to trade because of comparative advantage.

This is something I remain somewhat skeptical on, admittingly you will have trade, but it is more of a local thing if you the alternative is sending a ship across an ocean that is as wide as earth's circumference (Measure some of the distances between various regions in the 'harder' nations in those regions that have common maps; see Haven etc.). I think trade is more likely to be an internal market, although there will be some external trade it won't be a significant concern; especially when the differences in labour that exist otherwise in the world would likely be already present in such systems. And this is disregarding the benefits a neo-mercantilist policy might bring given the assumptions I work under.

Of course this is merely the system that I view the NS world, and I don't expect it to be foisted on others - but rather my rationalisation of some of the setting.

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Would Planet Cracking be a viable way to maintain Hard FT resource needs? As Big as My planet is it's still that planet and my guys are against strip mining

Isn't that worse, destroying a planet for its resources as opposed to merely trying to remove as much of it as possible from its surface? If you mean on planets other than your own, undoubtably; I remain skeptical that its practical - but then why not strip mine other planets? They can even be redeveloped afterwards and turned into settler colonies, save for lack of local metal resources (or merely trace amounts of them).

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-snip-

This is somewhat tricky, as given such an idea as a migration of saxon's from germany to the baltic in the migration era, or perhaps as an early attempt at establishing border marches, perhaps my Charlemagne or someone; is that it would likely result in a very different culture that you anticipate. It isn't as though if you could copy-paste culture's on top of one another and they will go unchanged. Rather you're likely to see a mélange of various languages and cultures, that aren't exactly recognisable to the modern world. For example English is unique in that its a combination of the Old English and Norman languages as well as various loan words that have been added, and as such is a rather complex linguistic thing that is unlikely to be recognisably 'english' if it weren't for the exact set of circumstances that led to its historical state.

Of course you can have the phone codes and roads to be allocated however you want, its not as though there are that many systems for them to exist and its more than possible to have them come across such systems coincidentally.

As for historically my advice is this, that they are perhaps some sort of migrants or the like that arrived in the migration era and produced insular communities; the closest parallel between this and reality would be the settling of germans in transylvania, known ironically as the Transylvanian Saxons - a misnomer as they were franconian instead; although their migration was a deliberate attempt at cultural settlement and much later than what you intend. It occurred under the kings of hungary, and was 600 years after the settlement of England by the Anglo-Saxons. Another attempt occurred under the later Habsburg rulers.
Nonetheless my original point remains valid, it's still unlikely that there would even be a serbian language given the complexity and comparatively small divergences that have lead to the patchwork of the modern Balkans. In any case it something that is possible, although likely to be radically different from what you perhaps envisaged. Its a lot more possible than you might think however, although not something recognisable.

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-snip-

I can answer to this, although I think that there are people far better qualified to do so in the appropriate thread regarding FT, as its likely to not be regarding modern technology as something that is appropriate for what you want.

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-snip-

I find myself intensely skeptical about this, as it seems to be an attempt at homogenisation; but historically such attempts have never been especially successful, and acted more as a deterrent than anything else. Its likely that if it were implemented you would get very few people who are actually eligible to enter and you might be better served by something that simply excludes immigration.
Of course the attempt is to make it such that immigrants are actually integrated with rapidity and ensuring a monolithic society, but I believe this is flawed and has little in relation to historical basis. I can comment further, but I'd need more information regarding your intention and what you want; in the meantime you can certainly look at real nation's immigration policies, and you don't necessarily have to limit yourself to modern ones, perhaps those of the USSR and Nazi Germany might be of interest, given my perceived similarity between their nature as closed societies and your own.

[Radictistan]

So if someone from Radictistan wanted to emigrate to Purpelia because he's tired of living in a tin shack and paying protection money to the local gangs he would be disqualified because he spent two years in the Radictistani army doing makework? Or do you have an exception for conscripts?

[Questers]

Basically, nobody is ever going to move to Purpelia and any Purpelian-non Purpelian that fall in love are going to have really difficult problems.

On becoming a Questarian citizen:
"If for any reason you want to become a citizen of Questers, this is extremely simple. Go to the Citizen Registration Office in Jesselton and exchange and renounce your old country's passport and nationality. You will be made immediately a citizen of Questers, issued an identity card, and welcomed."

[Galla-]

Galla's immigration policy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_nationality_law

[Purpelia]

-snip-

I find myself intensely skeptical about this, as it seems to be an attempt at homogenisation; but historically such attempts have never been especially successful, and acted more as a deterrent than anything else. Its likely that if it were implemented you would get very few people who are actually eligible to enter and you might be better served by something that simply excludes immigration.
Of course the attempt is to make it such that immigrants are actually integrated with rapidity and ensuring a monolithic society, but I believe this is flawed and has little in relation to historical basis. I can comment further, but I'd need more information regarding your intention and what you want; in the meantime you can certainly look at real nation's immigration policies, and you don't necessarily have to limit yourself to modern ones, perhaps those of the USSR and Nazi Germany might be of interest, given my perceived similarity between their nature as closed societies and your own.

You pretty much got it when you said that it is meant to act as a deterrent. More or less the policy is meant to make sure that entry into Purpelia is an exclusive invitation only thing. Very few people will actually make it. And those few are the ones who would generally honestly want to become Purpelians and reject their former lives completely. The policy is pretty much supposed to weed out all those coming here just because they seek a better life and such and ensure only those most idealistic enter.

[Yes Im Biop]

Snippidy

Yes Yes it would be but some planets are to far from a star to be useful, Os some have environments that simply can't be mined in.

[Astholm]

This is somewhat tricky, as given such an idea as a migration of saxon's from germany to the baltic in the migration era, or perhaps as an early attempt at establishing border marches, perhaps my Charlemagne or someone; is that it would likely result in a very different culture that you anticipate. It isn't as though if you could copy-paste culture's on top of one another and they will go unchanged. Rather you're likely to see a mélange of various languages and cultures, that aren't exactly recognisable to the modern world. For example English is unique in that its a combination of the Old English and Norman languages as well as various loan words that have been added, and as such is a rather complex linguistic thing that is unlikely to be recognisably 'english' if it weren't for the exact set of circumstances that led to its historical state.

Of course you can have the phone codes and roads to be allocated however you want, its not as though there are that many systems for them to exist and its more than possible to have them come across such systems coincidentally.

As for historically my advice is this, that they are perhaps some sort of migrants or the like that arrived in the migration era and produced insular communities; the closest parallel between this and reality would be the settling of germans in transylvania, known ironically as the Transylvanian Saxons - a misnomer as they were franconian instead; although their migration was a deliberate attempt at cultural settlement and much later than what you intend. It occurred under the kings of hungary, and was 600 years after the settlement of England by the Anglo-Saxons. Another attempt occurred under the later Habsburg rulers.
Nonetheless my original point remains valid, it's still unlikely that there would even be a serbian language given the complexity and comparatively small divergences that have lead to the patchwork of the modern Balkans. In any case it something that is possible, although likely to be radically different from what you perhaps envisaged. Its a lot more possible than you might think however, although not something recognisable.

Thank you for that! Much appreciated.

One more question for everyone here...

My nation has a VAT rate of 20%, import duty 10%.

Say I have a car priced at £12,980 (no VAT), calculations would be:
12980 x 0.2 = 2596

12980 + 2596 = 15576

Am I correct with this for doing a VAT price calculation?

If I was to export the vehicle to a nation where the VAT rate was 17.5% and import duty 20%, how would I calculate it?
If I was importing a vehicle to my nation (VAT rate 20%, import duty 10%) what would the calculations be?

Basically, I'm looking for advice on how to get the maths correct and create realistic-sounding VAT and import duty rates.

[New Vihenia]

Is it possible to modify nutrition content of breastmilk..hmm trough some form of food or medicine perhaps ?

[The IASM]

I was wondering how to establish a modern minimalist totalitarian state which is ultimately incredibly efficient with its uses of its assets. I feel I would have to have a focus on improving itself while maintains an isolated state. It would however maintain a realist foreign policy often indirectly influences events externally through either its counter/intelligence services (organising coup d'etat) or its cyber warfare divison (stealing vast amounts of currency). However I feel that it would have a system similar to the NSA's current capabilities electronically.

So any advice?

[New Belhavia]

I was wondering how to establish a modern minimalist totalitarian state which is ultimately incredibly efficient with its uses of its assets. I feel I would have to have a focus on improving itself while maintains an isolated state. It would however maintain a realist foreign policy often indirectly influences events externally through either its counter/intelligence services (organising coup d'etat) or its cyber warfare divison (stealing vast amounts of currency). However I feel that it would have a system similar to the NSA's current capabilities electronically.

So any advice?

IASM, just to reiterate what I told you months ago, a totalitarian system can't be reconciled with economic efficiency (which requires fundamentally innovation, labor productivity, and the profit motive from a free market system, of which you do not have as a closed, mixed socialist model).

[The IASM]

I was wondering how to establish a modern minimalist totalitarian state which is ultimately incredibly efficient with its uses of its assets. I feel I would have to have a focus on improving itself while maintains an isolated state. It would however maintain a realist foreign policy often indirectly influences events externally through either its counter/intelligence services (organising coup d'etat) or its cyber warfare divison (stealing vast amounts of currency). However I feel that it would have a system similar to the NSA's current capabilities electronically.

So any advice?

IASM, just to reiterate what I told you months ago, a totalitarian system can't be reconciled with economic efficiency (which requires fundamentally innovation, labor productivity, and the profit motive from a free market system, of which you do not have as a closed, mixed socialist model).

I was thinking of having a relatively Minarchist system were the state has the authority to intervene but rarely does in order to prevent major economic downturns as well as pushing certain areas of the economy in a certain through subsidies.