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by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 6:55 am
The Archipelago Territory wrote:How long do you want our posts to be if we post every 2 days?
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 6:55 am
Nova Tawantinsuyu wrote:Your NS nation:Nova Tawantinsuyu
Your RP territorial entity's name: Scotland
Entity type (sovereign state, corporation, subnational state, etc): National sub-state
Location: Scotland
How is your entity (government or corporation) organised?: Parliamentary democracy
If a sovereign state, is your government unitary or federal?
If applicable, what political ideology does your entity uphold?: Social Democrat, Scottish Nationalists
How is your territory's electricity currently generated IRL, by source?: 59% renewable as of 2015 and more now with wind power making a significant proportion in addition to hydroelectric power. Nuclear power is also used.
Describe the cultural and ethnic character of your territory in the current RP year:
Culturally and ethnically Scotland remains predominantly white Scottish although over the last thirty years migration both from other parts of the United Kingdom and other countries has somewhat increased ethnic and cultural diversity.
If in Eurasia, what was your territory's approximate population in 1800?:1,608,420 (1801)
What is your territory's population projected to be in 2050?: About 5.8 million
A brief history of your entity between 2019 and 2047: Over the last thirty odd years that have been increased calls in Scotland for independence, partly steaming from the widespread opposite to Brexit in Scotland with the Scottish National Party (SNP) which for several decades continued to be the largest party in the Scottish Parliament, only growing over the next few decades, regularly coming to head with the conservatives even after their successful treaty negotiations with the US.
The war in Ireland was generally unpopular in Scotland with the Scottish parliament partitioning to attempt to get the army to keep Scottish regiments from being forced to take any offensive action in Ireland, a request that was largely ignored by westminister.
Similarly the conservative populists particularly clashed with the Scottish parliament over energy issues with almost no fossil fuel based power stations being present in Scotland and a goal having been to reduce carbon emissions from transport as much as possible in addition. This lead to the SNP to bitterly fight for the devolution of energy matters to their parliament.
The SNP got on better with the liberal labour coalition although certain tensions concerning their desire for increased devolution or in many cases independence. However with the rise of the more radical black rose group of economically leftist labour members a mirroring split has formed in the party between the economic moderates that maintain their focus on issues of devolution and independence with a moderate left leaning economic policy or consider economics secondary to their other aims and a wing of the party that primarily focuses on a further left democratic socialist economic policy with questions of Scottish nationalism coming secondarily.
Are you willing to post at least once every two days?: I'll try but can't guarantee, busy week next week.
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:27 am
Hastiaka wrote:
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:29 am
The Archipelago Territory wrote:Could I reserve china? (PRC)
The Felan Federation wrote:
by The Felan Federation » Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:32 am
The Felan Federation wrote:
Your corporation doesn't actually control any territory by the looks of it, it just exists in Chicago. For this reason, I can't accept your high-effort app because you've gone beyond the scope of entities that can be RPed as in Time of Monsters.
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:52 am
The Felan Federation wrote:
Your corporation doesn't actually control any territory by the looks of it, it just exists in Chicago. For this reason, I can't accept your high-effort app because you've gone beyond the scope of entities that can be RPed as in Time of Monsters.
Pardon? You added a corporation as a type of government under the list. How can I play as corporation then? Should I own a city or personal land of my own? Isn't that almost illegal in any nation? I mean, I can edit to have Chicago owned by Tower Industries as a Corporate City.
Is that it?
by The Felan Federation » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:15 am
The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz wrote:The Felan Federation wrote:
Pardon? You added a corporation as a type of government under the list. How can I play as corporation then? Should I own a city or personal land of my own? Isn't that almost illegal in any nation? I mean, I can edit to have Chicago owned by Tower Industries as a Corporate City.
Is that it?
Apologies for not being more specific about this in the OP. Basically, your corporation (or any other entity) needs to have de-facto control over a piece of territory or play some role in administering it. An example I mentioned in the OP was the TVA, which FDR put in charge of agriculture and electricity generation in the impoverished Tennessee Valley during the Great Depression to the point that the TVA ended up forcing a lot of people off of their land to build hydroelectric dams. Honduras was basically controlled by fruit companies in the early 20th century (it's where the term "banana republic" comes from). For this you basically need a monopoly, which you haven't explicitly mentioned Tower Industries even having. You're quite right that it's almost illegal in any nation (There was a court case over whether the TVA was constitutional, for instance) for this to happen, it makes sense that states would not be very willing to let monopolistic corporations give them a run for their money. Nonetheless, it does happen in specific times and places.
Basically, Tower Industries needs to have a monopoly in Chicago and have de-facto control over its land use, electricity infrastructure, etc to the same extent that a local government would. I can imagine the state or federal government creating it to manage these things in a very run-down Chicago during an economic crisis if a president after O'Rourke is an FDR-like figure, or alternatively Tower Industries could very shadily buy out abandoned neighbourhoods and turn most of the city into a corporate fiefdom if Chicago goes down a Detroit-like route of shrinkage. Having a monopoly on private security in the city and financing the campaigns of local politicians who support you would probably help.
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 10:03 am
The Felan Federation wrote:The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz wrote:Apologies for not being more specific about this in the OP. Basically, your corporation (or any other entity) needs to have de-facto control over a piece of territory or play some role in administering it. An example I mentioned in the OP was the TVA, which FDR put in charge of agriculture and electricity generation in the impoverished Tennessee Valley during the Great Depression to the point that the TVA ended up forcing a lot of people off of their land to build hydroelectric dams. Honduras was basically controlled by fruit companies in the early 20th century (it's where the term "banana republic" comes from). For this you basically need a monopoly, which you haven't explicitly mentioned Tower Industries even having. You're quite right that it's almost illegal in any nation (There was a court case over whether the TVA was constitutional, for instance) for this to happen, it makes sense that states would not be very willing to let monopolistic corporations give them a run for their money. Nonetheless, it does happen in specific times and places.
Basically, Tower Industries needs to have a monopoly in Chicago and have de-facto control over its land use, electricity infrastructure, etc to the same extent that a local government would. I can imagine the state or federal government creating it to manage these things in a very run-down Chicago during an economic crisis if a president after O'Rourke is an FDR-like figure, or alternatively Tower Industries could very shadily buy out abandoned neighbourhoods and turn most of the city into a corporate fiefdom if Chicago goes down a Detroit-like route of shrinkage. Having a monopoly on private security in the city and financing the campaigns of local politicians who support you would probably help.
Okay. I had an idea of a company owning a city. Like a Corporate City...
Hmm. Would it work, if perhaps Tower Industries started out as a merely manufacturing company. Then slowly, the city was forced to sell off their unprofitable stuff to pay for debt. Until they government had to grant permission to sell the water/electricity - since they wouldn't be able to maintain them anyway.
Thus having a company own much of a city infrastructure in itself. Later delegating them out to other companies.
In essence, turning Chicago into one large corporate state? Where things are run like a business - and either delegated themselves or more-likely just contracted-out to another company/business to manage?
by The Felan Federation » Thu Sep 12, 2019 11:24 am
Your NS nation: the Felan Federation
Your RP territorial entity's name: Tower Industries(unofficial); Corporate Overwatch of the City of Detroit
Entity type (sovereign state, corporation, subnational state, etc): Corporate state/city; federal territory.
Location: Global, HQ in Detroit.
How is your entity (government or corporation) organised?: Typical corporation, with CEO acting as the primary chief/mayor alongside the shareholders. Below them are managers and sub-managers which operate the business of Tower Industries itself and other avenues. Between them are over-managers whom are given the job of either handling the daily workings of the city: security, water and electricity - or contract them out to other companies and are in-charge of review and over-sight.
If a sovereign state, is your government unitary or federal? Corporate state
If applicable, what political ideology does your entity uphold?: Alter-Globalization, Fordism, Paternalism.
How is your territory's electricity currently generated IRL, by source?: Connected to the US Power Grid; yet also having invested into solar and wind energy.
Describe the cultural and ethnic character of your territory in the current RP year: Mixed - Detroit has continued to lose and gain people throughout the years; mostly African-Americans whom have left the place yet have remained a majority, while Hispanics have slowly gained more ground with each year - yet still remaining as American as it had when it first began. The new corporate state has given the rise of more pro-action and return to a 'sweat-and-hard work mentality'.
If in Eurasia, what was your territory's approximate population in 1800?: N/A
What is your territory's population projected to be in 2050?: 300,000+
A brief history of your entity between 2019 and 2047: The success and creator of Tower Industries was done by a young woman by the name of Vera Fairbright - barely seventeen yet a genius and prodigy at her age - by the time she was fifteen, she was already thinking of ways to change the world and by sixteen looking to start her own company. Due to having a grandfather whom had once been employed in the Steel Belt - she had gotten quite the understanding of metalworking and business in-general, due to her grandfather having been a former manager at a steel mill.
Thus Tower Steelworkers was born, back in 2019 - granted, at that time it was merely a registered name operating out of a garage. Alongside her father, whom was a car salesman - she slowly built up the business inch by inch, day by day. Success came in 2020 - when she and a few friends from her former high school, a few whom had been college drop-outs helped pioneer with her a new method of steel production. Around 2025, they were once again producing steel and other metals in the United States - in the Chicago area which were giving out aid and grants to any business willing to establish in the broken city - utilizing lasers to remove impurities and a new chemical treatment that helped cut-down production and once more make American manufacturing competent again yet also of much higher quality. Further aided by the US-CHINA Trade War that kept cheaper competition from ruining them at the start.
By 2040, Tower Industries was a global producer in steel, aluminum and other avenues of manufacturing, namely high-tech. Considering, that the CEO, Vera Fairbright was a believer in fair trade, fair wages and fair working conditions - this made Tower Industries one of the few, American firms willing to pay high wages in the unstable job market and keep people for longer periods. Emphasized by the more humane face and approach to employment - made even more necessary with the rather anti-globalist and anti-capitalist movements across the world and the constant unstable market itself.
Things changed, when the situation in Detroit had reached crisis level - with the city' government unable to repair the electrical grid or keep the water free of contamination - not to mention, the fact that some infrastructure was literally crumbling itself in downtown. Thus the decision was made to begin selling the property of the city itself - which Tower Industries bought in bundles, being the only rich game in town that was interested in it. Eventually, a deal was struck that left the corporation in control of both the water and electrical management - essentially in-control of the city itself in all but name. The controversy and situation, requiring the attention of the Federal Government itself - as the sale of assets was legal yet controversial in the sense, it left the livelihood of people at a 'promise' than a 'guarantee'. In an effort to attempt to restore American' competitiveness and a way to 'pass-over' the broken city - the City of Detroit was declared a Federal Territory with Tower Industries becoming the first ever corporate-city in the world; due to owning a large share of the city' infrastructure under it's portfolio.
Thus became born the Corporate Overwatch of the City of Detroit - where the laws would be made by the company itself; under the premise that the laws allowing murder, terrorism, money-laundering and slavery would be banned completely and the company paid it's taxes on-time and judged according to their new responsibilities. Everything else would be fair game. As it was, Vera Fairbright would change Detroit completely - as the company had plenty of surplus money to spare.
In five years, Detroit had been made into the new Las Vegas of the Midwest. As many substances have become legal, provided one has a permit. Any shop can be opened, so long as one is willing to pay a fee. Anyone can work, so long as they wish. Most of everything is operated with utmost efficiency and speed - as the CEO of Tower Industries, has maintained a 'fair price' law, preventing many sub-contracted companies from over-charging their fees and allowing the city and it's people to grow beyond heights before seen. Being also the major employer, those working in Tower Industries have access to the best healthcare and highest pay in the country. Detroit has once more reclaimed the streets - with a highly-funded private security keep everyone safe and secure. Roads are clean and the waters flow clean once more...
Granted, even Detroit has it's darker shadows - as there is common threats of lay-off, as for one to take part in Detroit - one must be a registered worker and a constant one at that; the exception being for those on sick-leave or rich enough to afford the rents and fees without a job. Failure to do so, is usually grounds for eviction from their home and the city itself, as Detroit has a zero-policy for homelessness. This has caused, some business-owners to bind their workers with abusive agreements, usually in their favor and approaching indentured servitude.
Are you willing to post at least once every two days?: Yes. (So long as I have someone else to reply with)
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Thu Sep 12, 2019 1:28 pm
The Felan Federation wrote:
by Plzen » Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:22 am
by Reverend Norv » Sat Sep 14, 2019 4:53 am
by The Felan Federation » Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:52 am
Plzen wrote:Quick IC post is up; hope we get more players for this, because this really is a fascinating concept and too much of the map is still open.
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:37 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:This is a compelling setting and a half. I'll work on bringing back an old idea of mine from a different RP: a sort of a loose association of rural communities in the Upper South and Lower Midwest, focused on self-reliance, with influences as disparate as Shay's Rebellion and the labor movement.
by The Felan Federation » Sat Sep 14, 2019 2:37 pm
The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz wrote:Reverend Norv wrote:This is a compelling setting and a half. I'll work on bringing back an old idea of mine from a different RP: a sort of a loose association of rural communities in the Upper South and Lower Midwest, focused on self-reliance, with influences as disparate as Shay's Rebellion and the labor movement.
This is probably a recipe for one of the more utopian kinds of society that could exist after all is said and done, I like the idea.
Also, I hope to have an IC post up some time in the next 24 hours but will probably end up being delayed by IRL commitments.
by Plzen » Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:38 pm
The Felan Federation wrote:You wanna RP?
by Reverend Norv » Sat Sep 14, 2019 6:04 pm
Your NS nation: Norv
Your RP territorial entity's name: The Regulators
Entity type (sovereign state, corporation, subnational state, etc): The Regulators are more like a social movement than an organization, especially in 2047. They are subnational and mostly self-organizing, with a very loose and mostly consultative leadership structure. The movement's core constituent unit is the small town, each of which communally organizes all of the essential features of the movement's platform: local infrastructure, local public goods like education, and local security through communally-controlled militias. The role of the movement as a whole is to permit towns to share expertise, pool resources, and spread the movement's precepts. They are a paradigmatic example of James Rosenau's theory of "governance without government."
Location: The Regulators are a quintessentially American movement, and so are confined to the USA. They flourish under specific social conditions: rural areas where the foundation of life is the closely-knit small town rather than the isolated ranch or homestead, where economic and infrastructural conditions have deteriorated much faster than elsewhere in the country, and where twenty years of coastal Democratic Party governance have left many people feeling - with much justification - disfranchised and neglected. In 2047, this already adds up to a vast swathe of territory encompassing the western Carolinas; West Virginia, most of Tennesee, and Kentucky; Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois; and most of Arkansas and Missouri.
How is your entity (government or corporation) organised?:The Regulators are more an idea than an institution, and are very loosely organized. The vast majority of Regulators act essentially on their own initiative to contribute to their communities. In this sense, the Regulators represent a way to crowd-source government: they use online forums and social media apps to share expertise and coordinate collective action, empowering communities to build their own governments, schools, militias, and medical systems from the ground up.
Often, when two nearby towns are both influenced by the Regulators, a doctor or teacher or pastor or military veteran will travel from one to the other to lend a hand in person. Sometimes, such an expert will travel further afield, occasionally hundreds of miles from home, to towns where the Regulator movement has not been embraced. When most people think of Regulators, they imagine these individuals: itinerant volunteer organizers on the old labor-movement model who not only support communities where the movement is strong, but who also bring the movement to new towns that America has left for dead, and who provide the inspiration and the training for local people to organize and care for each other and resist exploitation.
There is no formal training or accreditation process for these quasi-professionals, but there is an informal apprenticeship system whereby newer organizers shadow more experienced ones. The result is that many Regulator organizers know each other personally, and they often rendezvous in groups of a few dozen every few months to plan and coordinate their work. Regulator organizers pool some of the donations they receive from their communities to help fund each other's work, and by consensus they choose leaders whose wisdom and experience qualifies them to mediate disputes between organizers or communities within the movement. These leaders are the only officers the Regulator movement has, and their authority is wholly informal: they have no coercive force to back up their speeches, and so they rely heavily on personal repute and raw charisma. As a result, they well know the value of unanimity, and work hard to speak with one voice at times of genuine crisis.
If a sovereign state, is your government unitary or federal? N/A
If applicable, what political ideology does your entity uphold?:Regulator organizers tend to summarize the movement's ethos in a traditional aphorism: "If you want something done right, do it yourself." Rural communities, the Regulators argue, have been neglected by public authorities and exploited by private power, even though they supply the food and fuel for the whole country. After years of disinvestment and crushing public debt, small towns can no longer rely on the government for police, hospitals, or schools. Major companies are even worse, flooding rural waterways with industrial waste and using their buying power to force local businesses under, even as they buy out once-public social services. As a consequence, farming towns that produce mountains of corn are food deserts; coal mining communities that power whole states suffer brownouts in their hospitals. There is a strong line of continuity from these criticisms to the labor heritage of many Midwestern communities: the Regulator movement is rooted in reverence for honest work, and outrage at the exploitation of communities that labor for pennies so that others can make millions.
Small-town America is a prophecy of things to come: in disappearing public power and rampaging private power, the Regulators see a wave of chaos sweeping away communities that have held on for centuries. The Regulator movement seeks to tame - "regulate" - this chaos through resolute self-reliance: it calls on small towns to build autonomous local democracies from the ground up, to arm and train local militias, to build and repair local infrastructure, and to staff and fund local schools and medical clinics. No corporation and no government should be trusted with these essential functions: they are each town's right and duty to provide on its own.
These communal projects require a communal pooling of expertise and resources: the Regulator ethos rejects "rugged individualism" to preach communal discipline and mutual support. The Regulators also regard themselves as upholding key American civic values: no community that does not hold free and fair elections can plausibly claim to be associated with the Regulators, and the professional culture of Regulator organizers emphasizes the need for everyone to contribute equally and to be treated equally by their communities, regardless of race or religion or country of origin. This is understood to be an issue both of justice, and of pragmatic necessity. The movement's iconography is deliberately but unconventionally patriotic: its name is taken from the Regulators of the Carolinas, a pre-Revolutionary movement to reject British authority, and its symbol is the Pine Tree Flag of the very early Revolution.
Finally, the Regulator movement is grassroots and volunteer-based. Anyone with a useful skill set - soldiers, teachers, doctors, engineers - can make contact with the Regulators online or by contacting an itinerant organizer, and turn their skills toward the good of their local community. Doing that is all that it takes to call yourself a Regulator, which is why the Pine Tree Flag flies from thousands of homes whose owners could only name a few of these ideological precepts.
How is your territory's electricity currently generated IRL, by source?: The areas where the Regulators work are disproportionately coal-powered, and are likely still to be so in 2047. But a disproportionate amount of the coal that they produce does not actually go to power local communities, and electrical infrastructure in these regions in 2047 is crumbling and inadequate. So a major part of the Regulator movement is electrical self-sufficiency, which is based on the use of solar water heaters, micro hydroelectric systems, Savonius turbines, and - above all - a drastic reduction in overall usage and a drastic increase in efficiency.
Describe the cultural and ethnic character of your territory in the current RP year: Regulator towns are whiter than the rest of the country, and have seen less recent immigration; nobody moves to a disastrously economically depressed area. Nevertheless, "Regulator country" as a whole is thought to be more than ten percent Hispanic and more than ten percent African-American. Compared to the early 21st century, there is less racial tension per se, but more xenophobia: distrust of outsiders is a unifying force across racial lines in Regulator towns. Regulator country is also more sharply and publicly Christian than the rest of the USA. Churches are essential sources of basic public services in an era of bankrupt state governments, and Christianity is a powerful influence on the localist Regulator ethos of loyalty to people and communities rather than to profit-motive and consumption.
If in Eurasia, what was your territory's approximate population in 1800?: N/A
What is your territory's population projected to be in 2050?: Probably about 80 million, based on the overall growth of the US population in that app, and existing patterns of population movement toward the coasts.
A brief history of your entity between 2019 and 2047:The original taproot of the Regulator movement is the American labor movement, and its crisis of the early 2020s. President Trump's trade war with China fell with vastly disproportionate force on the American heartland, driving a wave of farm foreclosures and manufacturing-plant closures across already struggling states. Many communities in these areas found themselves utterly disenchanted with the man who had declared himself their champion. Neither, however, were they prepared to embrace a Democratic Party whose connection to rural America was growing more attenuated with every passing year. The ground was ready for an radical alternative - not just an alternative politics, but an alternative to politics.
The labor movement provided that alternative. Using online organizing, a wave of wildcat strikes picked up steam across the Midwest: beginning with well-organized professions like the teachers and miners, and spreading to service workers and even farmers. Most of these strikes were not formally associated with any union: they were an act of desperation, an attempt to attract some - any - attention. As time went on, this self-organizing impulse became the germ of the Regulator movement. Because it was not constrained by the structure of a formal collective-bargaining agreement, it could grow and change to become a holistic approach to the public and private challenges of rural life.
That alternative approach became steadily more relevant over the 2020s and 2030s. During the Trump and Crenshaw administrations, Republican state and federal budgets savagely cut Medicaid and SNAP in ways that caused an immediate spike in rural mortality rates. This period also saw caps on Social Security and Medicare spending that began to cause immense pain in rural communities during the mid-2030s. The combination of the economic disruption of the trade war and the erosion of the welfare state created destitution on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Well before the rest of the developed world confronted the Crisis of the 21st Century, swathes of rural America were facing a complete lack of medical care, collapsing incomes, and rising rates of illiteracy and preventable death.
By 2035, it became clear that no help was coming to address these issues. Successive Democratic regimes treated most rural areas with neglect, if not hostility; state governments, in an era of spiraling sovereign debt, laid off more teachers and social workers with each passing year. In thousands of small towns, the local school closed. Then the hospital closed. Private companies waxed in power at the expense of bankrupt states, and began flouting labor and environmental laws with growing impunity - especially as the nation's demand for coal revived and then boomed. Industrial pollution caused a regionwide rise in pediatric cancer rates. In three Kentucky towns, UMW organizers were murdered in 2033. Independent farmers faced steady, year-on-year increases in foreclosure rates. Major companies bought out bankrupt school corporations and turned elementary education into a trade school for future miners and laborers.
Public authorities were useless. Private authorities were worse than useless. The only way to get something done was to do it yourself.
And so the movement that began as wildcat strikes transformed into a far broader, far less determinate social phenomenon. In Arkansas, in a three-county area that had been left without a high school, parents came together to organize an entirely community-run, community-funded replacement, with part-time teachers giving lessons in whatever they happened to know. In southeastern Indiana, the closure of the last local hospital inspired a group of doctors from Cincinnati and Louisville to partner with local churches to create a roving medical clinic paid for by Sunday collections. In western Pennsylvania, after the state and federal governments couldn't find money to repair damage from a devastating flood, communities worked with engineers at local technical college to build a brand-new dam with junkyard steel and volunteer labor.
The communal mobilization of the '30s had a brutal side to it, too. Despite the efforts of the O'Rourke administration, many rural Americans had quietly refused to surrender their firearms, including military-grade weapons. In Ohio, when a bauxite mine refused to change practices that contaminated the groundwater, townspeople burned down the house of the supervisor and forced him to flee for his life. In Iowa, farmers refused to accept a wave of particularly aggressive foreclosures, and fired on the state police when they were called in to enforce repossession. In Kentucky, the aforementioned murder of UMW organizers was met with the assassination of three mine executives and two state politicians, provoking a state of emergency and the deployment of the National Guard.
From the turmoil, a new spirit was beginning to emerge: less individualist and more communal; less racially anxious and more suspicious of outsiders; deeply tied to a particular sense of place; inclined to treat both outside help and outside aggression as equally coercive. It owed something to the labor movement, and something to prairie populism, and something to sheer back-country cussedness that went back at least as far as the Whiskey Rebellion. It had no clear leaders, and only a few obvious spokesmen. Its symbols started as local peculiarities and spread as internet memes: the "Regulators" name came from western North Carolina as a nod to the region's history, and the use of the Pine Tree Flag began in rural Vermont. Its institutional culture evolved by osmosis and accretion; its practices gradually standardized through trial and error.
By 2045, those practices had given rise to something like a template for a Regulator community. Government was by town meeting, with executive responsibility going to volunteer boards; professional administrators were to be kept to a minimum. Taxation was progressive but universal, collected directly by the town rather than by the IRS. Education was a priority where the local school had closed: an independent town school was often housed in a church, and Regulator websites provided free textbooks and lesson plans. Healthcare was met by a local system of social insurance, to which townspeople contributed based on income; wherever a town had not a single doctor, Regulator communities worked together to have one physician work as a circuit rider. Community members were encouraged to keep a garden and some chickens or hogs, and to teach each other how to do so. Regulator guides gave instructions on installing off-the-grid electrical generation systems like micro-hydro, and Regulator credit unions sold such technology. And some kind of local militia, usually incorporating the local police but not limited to them, was responsible for keeping law and order and deterring outsiders from meddling with the town's independent, dubiously legal institutions. With the help of movement organizers, and by reference to online guides and forums and video-chats, it was increasingly easy for a small town to adopt this template.
The result was, by 2047, a kind of shadow governance - though not, in any real sense, a shadow state. "Regulator country" had no central authority. It was still largely connected to the larger American power grid; its cars were made in Detroit or Tokyo, and its members mostly, reluctantly, paid state and federal taxes on top of their contributions to their town institutions. Its community militias existed in a shadowy legal space, and were often raided by the ATF. The Regulators had no national political party, no legal documents of incorporation, no lobbying firms, and no membership lists. In major metropolitan areas, most Americans pictured them as just another fringe group in a long tradition of bearded survivalists.
In fact, of course, the Regulators were something very different: a rational, functional response to conditions that thus far had only begun to touch impoverished areas of rural America, but that the whole developed world would soon come to know all too well.
Are you willing to post at least once every two days?: Probably not; I am very busy. But I can post fairly reliably on the weekends, and I wouldn't count on this to move much faster than that after the first few weeks.
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Sun Sep 15, 2019 9:16 am
Reverend Norv wrote:
by Reverend Norv » Sun Sep 15, 2019 11:20 am
The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz wrote:Fantastic app. Accepted.
A reliance on solar power and wind turbines, if you can even get the materials to process them 40 years from now, is definitely going to see an insane reduction in living standards and a lot of people in regulator country outside the immediate vicinity of the corn belt will eventually starve. Their energy return on investment is very low.[/size]
by The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:07 pm
Reverend Norv wrote:The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz wrote:Fantastic app. Accepted.
A reliance on solar power and wind turbines, if you can even get the materials to process them 40 years from now, is definitely going to see an insane reduction in living standards and a lot of people in regulator country outside the immediate vicinity of the corn belt will eventually starve. Their energy return on investment is very low.[/size]
Sure. Basically, agricultural productivity is going to bounce back to the 1930s, when you had windmills and microhydro to power irrigation, but agriculture couldn't rely upon a high-volume, consistent power grid to run, say, miles of sprinklers. These sorts of microgeneration systems can run some basic home appliances and lighting, though not consistently, but they can't run industrial-scale electrified agriculture.
by The Hobbesian Metaphysician » Sun Sep 15, 2019 8:28 pm
Your NS nation: The Hobbesian Metaphysician.
Your RP territorial entity's name: Commonwealth of Virginia.
Entity type (sovereign state, corporation, subnational state, etc): Subnational state.
Location: Virginia, upper southeastern United States, American Atlantic.
How is your entity (government or corporation) organised?: In the same manner, the constitution of Virginia (1971 edition) has provided for the past several decades. However, the government is reserved when it comes to dealing with people from the federal government, and some news agencies might even use the word "hostile". The Virginian government believes only it can solve the problems plaguing their state since one governor was quoted as saying "Washington cannot even find its ass even if you gave it a mirror".
If a sovereign state, is your government unitary or federal? For now, this is not applicable, but one day it may very well be.
If applicable, what political ideology does your entity uphold?: Currently loyal to the United States, there is a growing amount of discontent, and political separatism which has begun to take over parts of Virginian Society. The major political party that has come into power is the National Democratic Party. A schismatic branch of the southeastern wing of the democratic party which left following contentions with the Beto O'Rourke presidency, and his policies. The newcomer into policies is the recently formed Commonwealth Party, a somewhat powerful force-feeding on the discontent of those who feel betrayed over the government's failure to resolve the depression.
Instead, they turn inward, focusing on restoring the status of Virginia, and are rumored to have secessionist sympathies, but their supporters claim the party advocates for increased state autonomy.
How is your territory's electricity currently generated IRL, by source?:
https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=VA
*This is provided by the United States energy information administration, but admittedly some changes will have happened by this new decade.
Describe the cultural and ethnic character of your territory in the current RP year:
Virginia has always had an important place within the U.S socio-political sphere due to its prominence as one of the original thirteen colonies. From the time of the revolution to the war of the states to today things have changed greatly. Regardless Virginians carry on distinct identity one that has become increasingly despondent with the federal government's role in solving the issues plaguing the country. Virginians have their take on literature, and the fine arts, and are a religiously diverse populace. The state is responsible for several contributions it has made to general southern cuisine, and American dining in general.
The hope remains, at least for Virginians that its various traditions, rites, and peoples will unite, and overcome what an impossibly bloated D.C cannot.
If in Eurasia, what was your territory's approximate population in 1800?: Not Applicable.
What is your territory's population projected to be in 2050?:
https://demographics.coopercenter.org/s ... elease.pdf
Going off this the populations projected for 2050 could be eleven million following the percentage increase of a million every decade. Also for some estimates on racial makeup click the link below.
https://news.virginia.edu/content/popul ... state-2040
A brief history of your entity between 2019 and 2047: In 2019 things began to a turn following the tariff spats between the Trump administration, and the Beijing. Yet many could thank that they weren't directly affected at first, but would by 2020 become a national spotlight as entire towns were ravaged by the "Williamsburg Fever". An antibiotic-resistant bacteria born from when the wrong person met the wrong tourist while exploring colonial Williamsburg. Regardless of how people met the incompetence of the Northam governorship would leave 100,000 dead in Virginia alone. As the fever burned itself out killing a million U.S citizens across the Atlantic states people buried their dead, and Virginians raged at the electoral office come 2021.
With the democratic party humiliated former trump affiliate Corey Stewart held the governorship until 2029 promising tough reform in key areas especially places of entry. He stoked fears that rightly existed but also turned some Virginian republicans to questioning the trump administration due to his firing back in 2017. He ran big on claiming that Trumps inability to work with parts of the government distracted both the government and ultimately the CDC from ending the fever much sooner. Experts these days claim while governor Stewarts claim did have a basis, in reality, it is not entirely plausible to blame the government for the deaths of a million people.
Crenshaw's presidency was viewed as a failure due to his status as a one-term, and with the succession of Beto O'Rourke, some began to question current political directions. By 2032 the Virginian Democrats in an act of complaint against executive overreach officially splintered from the party under the name "National Democratic Party". The National Democrats would go on to form a patchwork in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. As mainstream democrats and the NDP fight it out in these states the wave of political fracturing hasn't spared republicans either. The lack of a potential republican presidency in the future and the ever-widening depression of 2034 has caused a complete collapse of the party in Virginia.
In its stead, the highly autonomist, and some would say resentful Republicans, independents, and ideologues have formed the "Commonwealth party". Lead in fashion by Francis Albright they seek to claim the governorship one of these days, but slowly spread their populist message across the state. Fueled by popular speeches given on issues of governance, and the abject failure of the federal government many have turned to the party out of some hope. You can watch it on the news, and read it in the papers as Albright's name continues to gain more prominence. The man might just make things right or is just an opportunist playing the long game like so many others.
Are you willing to post at least once every two days?: Most certainly am willing to do so.
by The Felan Federation » Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:25 pm
The Conscience of Mike Lebowitz wrote:Reverend Norv wrote:
Sure. Basically, agricultural productivity is going to bounce back to the 1930s, when you had windmills and microhydro to power irrigation, but agriculture couldn't rely upon a high-volume, consistent power grid to run, say, miles of sprinklers. These sorts of microgeneration systems can run some basic home appliances and lighting, though not consistently, but they can't run industrial-scale electrified agriculture.
This describes the situation expediently well
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