how the hell does a party lose 154/156 seats? i didn't even realise that it was possible to be that bad.
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how the hell does a party lose 154/156 seats? i didn't even realise that it was possible to be that bad.
Canada is sort of infamous for not following the usual rules regarding first-past-the-post elections - things like safe seats, party loyalty, and so on. Couple that with the conservative movement splitting in half as the Reform Party swept the Prairies and destroyed the closest thing they had to a safe region, and well…
fair enough, it just sounds so insane that a party could go from 156 seats to only 2. That has to be a record to go from ruling to being wiped out basically.
There was a provincial election in the 1930s - I think it was in British Columbia - where the incumbent ruling party decided not to contest the elections at all.
Rather each local party was to decide what they wanted to do, leading to a plethora of confusing names and confused campaigning.
I'm disappointed that Susan Collins wasn't featured here. Still, it's another good X-in-Canada scenario.
I'm hoping to see Michigan-in-Canada and Washington-in-Canada. Those populous states would probably have a more noticeable impact on Canadian national politics, and perhaps a significant impact on the Canadian economy (assuming those states-turned-provinces still end up as powerhouses in the automotive and aerospace industries, respectively).
Introducing a really unpopular (at the time) sales tax and leading two failed constitutional negotiations that generated a lot of bad blood between provinces will do that to you.
THE ALLIANCE AND THE PERPETUAL WAR ECONOMY
Even in times of peace, the industries of war drive the Alliance economy
Aiko Adebayo, PhD – Senior Economic Columnist, The Atlantic Observer Quarterly
June, 2170
In September of this year, after more than eight years of bloody war on Ashoka, the final contingent of Adelaide troops will return home to Earth. It is an important landmark as one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history tepidly draws to a close, at least on Ashoka.
Adelaide-signatory nations have contributed forces to the conflagration in the eastern Orion since the first days of the war, and for long stretches of the fighting constituted the majority of Alliance forces in theater. For this commitment to the Alliance, Earth has lost almost three million sons and daughters. In a war so massive in scale and costly in lives, it should come as no surprise to those paying attention that defense manufacturing is reaping a princely, if ghoulish, profit. But the profit margins of war profiteers isn’t the most shocking, or pressing, issue. It’s how much the modern economy, and perhaps the Alliance itself, depends on the continued manufacture of arms for the Alliance and Adelaide militaries.
Noted economist Dr. Jonathan Mmolawa first theorized what he termed the “perpetual war economy” in 2123. The 2108 Rebellion was still fresh in mind, and millions of Earthborn troops were still deployed to the colonies. Such a large conflict could have understandably been assumed to have caused an economic contraction the Alliance should have only just been recovering from. But that was not the case. The Alliance economy was expanding at rates most economists of the time theorized as unsustainable; a disastrous collapse was the prevailing prediction in academia. Dr. Mmolawa dissented from his contemporaries. Building on the earlier economy theory of the “spacecraft economy,” he theorized that while the normal boom and bust cycle of capitalism would continue in the medium term, the effects of the “busts” would become increasingly negligible until they dwindled to nothing – due the growing importance of the defense industry as the underpinning of the interstellar economy.
Dr. Mmolawa’s theory has been critiqued heavily, both by contemporaries and later scholars, and not without justification. His expansive definition of the defense industry included industries such as mining and shipbuilding in the same group as rifle manufacturers and missile producers. It drew heavily, and some critics charged even plagiarized (right down to the name) on the work of Ed Sard and his “permanent war economy.” His theories on the gradual defanging of economic downturns were shown to be faulty, with the Crash of 2141 and the 2155 flash crash standing as prominent examples. Mmolawa himself even went so far as to call his ideas “deeply flawed” as early as 2137.
But Dr. Mmolawa got one thing exactly right. Even when discounting the more spurious inclusions in his definition, the arms industry has continued to grow – sometimes steadily, and of late, exponentially. In the estimate of studies conducted by the Calcutta Institute, defense and defense-related industries account for anywhere from thirty-two to forty-one percent of all economic activity in the Alliance. And in an estimate from the Lunar Center for Economic studies, using a modified version of Dr. Mmolawa’s definition, that number climbs to anywhere from forty-three to fifty-four percent of all economic activity.
How could this be the case? The answers are simpler to find than one might think.
The Alliance Navy is the largest concentration of spacecraft under the control of a single entity in existence. Over eight hundred warships have the Alliance flag painted on their hulls. And with President Hedlund’s landmark “Thousand Ship Navy” defense initiative having passed through the halls of congress, that number is set to climb even higher. The shipyards of Mars and the Belt and Sanctuary and Boro are set to go into overdrive. But even without the TSN, military shipyards already churn out ships at a shocking rate – new classes of warships are approved, old classes are retired and sold off into the civilian market or broken down into salvage and spare parts. This is one component of Mmolawa’s perpetual war economy: the continuous construction, purchase, and decommissioning and selling off of warships. This alone provides for a sizable portion of the Alliance economy; add in ships produced for private security firms, law enforcement, national militaries, and colonial militias, and the number climbs even higher. And that is just what the defense world refers to as “capital ships.” Add in thousands of drones, fighters, shuttles, and various other types of small craft. Then there are also the thousands of defense platforms that litter the orbit of nearly every planetary body in Sol and the inner colonies, plus the military stations found throughout human space. And when it is considered that the profits derived from large military contracts help fuel civilian shipbuilding, the total economic activity accounted for by the “warship industry” becomes truly staggering.
Move past the ships themselves to their individual armaments. Space vehicle weapons manufacture (rail guns, both large and “small,” missile batteries, point-defense-cannons, etc.) is itself a sizable area of activity. But where the true money is made is munitions – the individual rounds fired by rail guns and PDCs, the missiles launched. The Alliance Navy equips capital warships with compliments of hundreds of missiles, and possesses a stockpile of over five million – the exact number is classified. These missiles are fired in large number during regular training and exercises, and so more are always being made even during “peace”; the numbers of missiles fired in battle is even more. In the 2162 Battle of Point, Ashoka’s moon, the Alliance Navy estimated the over 15,000 missiles were fired in a period of five hours.
This number is impressive – but becomes much less so when compared to the number of rounds fired by PDCs in the same period. What necessitates the launch of so many missiles in battle is the high “casualty” rate produced by effective electronic counter-measures and point-defense. What is point-defense? Thousands upon thousands of tungsten rounds flung in great clouds and long streams into the void in the hope of destroying incoming fire. An individual round stands little chance of intercepting a missile; a cloud of two hundred is more or less a guarantee. The more effective a PDC network, the more missiles that need to be fired, meaning more PDC rounds, meaning more missiles, and so on ad nauseam. The Navy estimates that in the same five hour period in which 15,000 missiles were launched, two million tungsten rounds were fired from Alliance PDCs. With rounds expended in such great numbers, the production of continuous replacements is lucrative. And while the Battle of Point stands out as a particular moment of extreme use, training, exercises, anti-piracy operations, and smaller engagements use up more than enough rounds to keep manufacturers pumping out munitions for eternity. There is also the larger rounds fired by superstructure mounted and broadside rail guns to consider; while not expended in anywhere near the same amount as PDC rounds, they still make up a hefty portion of the Navy’s arsenal.
And where do manufacturers get that tungsten? We arrive at why Dr. Mmolawa including mining in his original definition of the defense industry. While mining in general of course primarily delivers materials to the civilian sector, tungsten mining in particular almost exclusively deals with the arms industry. With thousands upon thousands of tons of tungsten mined, processed, and turn into weapons every year, business is booming. Every major mining company has a “tungsten branch”; the metal is so lucrative that there are even firms that mine it exclusively. The importance of the metal to the world of defense is also why the Interstellar Brotherhood of Tungsten Miners is one of the most powerful unions in existence, perhaps only second to the Spacefarers’ Union. And all of this talk of tungsten is not meant to allow us to forget the defense applications of iron, titanium, platinum, aluminum, copper, gold, lead, and more.
Beyond shipbuilding and space vehicle weapons manufacture, there is also the world of personal protective armor, small arms, crew serve weapons, artillery, drones, tanks and other land vehicles, aircraft, watercraft, expert systems, communications equipment, bases…the list goes on and on. The defense industry is expansive and touches all sectors of the civilian economy in one way or another. The implications for the present and the future are unpleasant to think about.
With Adelaide commitments to Ashoka coming to an end, for now, one might be forgiven for thinking the defense industries share of the economy might contract. But that is not case, and perhaps never will be the case. While the war on Ashoka is winding down, the wars on Garnet, São Pedro, in space, and elsewhere continue. And even if those conflicts were to come to a nebulous and unsatisfying end, fighting would continue. The corner humanity has backed itself into demands it.
In 1935, United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler pronounced “war is a racket.” As of 2170, General Butler has been proven wrong – war is not a racket. It is the fundamental underpinning of the human economy.
Even in times of peace, the industries of war drive the Alliance economy
Aiko Adebayo, PhD – Senior Economic Columnist, The Atlantic Observer Quarterly
June, 2170
In September of this year, after more than eight years of bloody war on Ashoka, the final contingent of Adelaide troops will return home to Earth. It is an important landmark as one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history tepidly draws to a close, at least on Ashoka.
Adelaide-signatory nations have contributed forces to the conflagration in the eastern Orion since the first days of the war, and for long stretches of the fighting constituted the majority of Alliance forces in theater. For this commitment to the Alliance, Earth has lost almost three million sons and daughters. In a war so massive in scale and costly in lives, it should come as no surprise to those paying attention that defense manufacturing is reaping a princely, if ghoulish, profit. But the profit margins of war profiteers isn’t the most shocking, or pressing, issue. It’s how much the modern economy, and perhaps the Alliance itself, depends on the continued manufacture of arms for the Alliance and Adelaide militaries.
Noted economist Dr. Jonathan Mmolawa first theorized what he termed the “perpetual war economy” in 2123. The 2108 Rebellion was still fresh in mind, and millions of Earthborn troops were still deployed to the colonies. Such a large conflict could have understandably been assumed to have caused an economic contraction the Alliance should have only just been recovering from. But that was not the case. The Alliance economy was expanding at rates most economists of the time theorized as unsustainable; a disastrous collapse was the prevailing prediction in academia. Dr. Mmolawa dissented from his contemporaries. Building on the earlier economy theory of the “spacecraft economy,” he theorized that while the normal boom and bust cycle of capitalism would continue in the medium term, the effects of the “busts” would become increasingly negligible until they dwindled to nothing – due the growing importance of the defense industry as the underpinning of the interstellar economy.
Dr. Mmolawa’s theory has been critiqued heavily, both by contemporaries and later scholars, and not without justification. His expansive definition of the defense industry included industries such as mining and shipbuilding in the same group as rifle manufacturers and missile producers. It drew heavily, and some critics charged even plagiarized (right down to the name) on the work of Ed Sard and his “permanent war economy.” His theories on the gradual defanging of economic downturns were shown to be faulty, with the Crash of 2141 and the 2155 flash crash standing as prominent examples. Mmolawa himself even went so far as to call his ideas “deeply flawed” as early as 2137.
But Dr. Mmolawa got one thing exactly right. Even when discounting the more spurious inclusions in his definition, the arms industry has continued to grow – sometimes steadily, and of late, exponentially. In the estimate of studies conducted by the Calcutta Institute, defense and defense-related industries account for anywhere from thirty-two to forty-one percent of all economic activity in the Alliance. And in an estimate from the Lunar Center for Economic studies, using a modified version of Dr. Mmolawa’s definition, that number climbs to anywhere from forty-three to fifty-four percent of all economic activity.
How could this be the case? The answers are simpler to find than one might think.
The Alliance Navy is the largest concentration of spacecraft under the control of a single entity in existence. Over eight hundred warships have the Alliance flag painted on their hulls. And with President Hedlund’s landmark “Thousand Ship Navy” defense initiative having passed through the halls of congress, that number is set to climb even higher. The shipyards of Mars and the Belt and Sanctuary and Boro are set to go into overdrive. But even without the TSN, military shipyards already churn out ships at a shocking rate – new classes of warships are approved, old classes are retired and sold off into the civilian market or broken down into salvage and spare parts. This is one component of Mmolawa’s perpetual war economy: the continuous construction, purchase, and decommissioning and selling off of warships. This alone provides for a sizable portion of the Alliance economy; add in ships produced for private security firms, law enforcement, national militaries, and colonial militias, and the number climbs even higher. And that is just what the defense world refers to as “capital ships.” Add in thousands of drones, fighters, shuttles, and various other types of small craft. Then there are also the thousands of defense platforms that litter the orbit of nearly every planetary body in Sol and the inner colonies, plus the military stations found throughout human space. And when it is considered that the profits derived from large military contracts help fuel civilian shipbuilding, the total economic activity accounted for by the “warship industry” becomes truly staggering.
Move past the ships themselves to their individual armaments. Space vehicle weapons manufacture (rail guns, both large and “small,” missile batteries, point-defense-cannons, etc.) is itself a sizable area of activity. But where the true money is made is munitions – the individual rounds fired by rail guns and PDCs, the missiles launched. The Alliance Navy equips capital warships with compliments of hundreds of missiles, and possesses a stockpile of over five million – the exact number is classified. These missiles are fired in large number during regular training and exercises, and so more are always being made even during “peace”; the numbers of missiles fired in battle is even more. In the 2162 Battle of Point, Ashoka’s moon, the Alliance Navy estimated the over 15,000 missiles were fired in a period of five hours.
This number is impressive – but becomes much less so when compared to the number of rounds fired by PDCs in the same period. What necessitates the launch of so many missiles in battle is the high “casualty” rate produced by effective electronic counter-measures and point-defense. What is point-defense? Thousands upon thousands of tungsten rounds flung in great clouds and long streams into the void in the hope of destroying incoming fire. An individual round stands little chance of intercepting a missile; a cloud of two hundred is more or less a guarantee. The more effective a PDC network, the more missiles that need to be fired, meaning more PDC rounds, meaning more missiles, and so on ad nauseam. The Navy estimates that in the same five hour period in which 15,000 missiles were launched, two million tungsten rounds were fired from Alliance PDCs. With rounds expended in such great numbers, the production of continuous replacements is lucrative. And while the Battle of Point stands out as a particular moment of extreme use, training, exercises, anti-piracy operations, and smaller engagements use up more than enough rounds to keep manufacturers pumping out munitions for eternity. There is also the larger rounds fired by superstructure mounted and broadside rail guns to consider; while not expended in anywhere near the same amount as PDC rounds, they still make up a hefty portion of the Navy’s arsenal.
And where do manufacturers get that tungsten? We arrive at why Dr. Mmolawa including mining in his original definition of the defense industry. While mining in general of course primarily delivers materials to the civilian sector, tungsten mining in particular almost exclusively deals with the arms industry. With thousands upon thousands of tons of tungsten mined, processed, and turn into weapons every year, business is booming. Every major mining company has a “tungsten branch”; the metal is so lucrative that there are even firms that mine it exclusively. The importance of the metal to the world of defense is also why the Interstellar Brotherhood of Tungsten Miners is one of the most powerful unions in existence, perhaps only second to the Spacefarers’ Union. And all of this talk of tungsten is not meant to allow us to forget the defense applications of iron, titanium, platinum, aluminum, copper, gold, lead, and more.
Beyond shipbuilding and space vehicle weapons manufacture, there is also the world of personal protective armor, small arms, crew serve weapons, artillery, drones, tanks and other land vehicles, aircraft, watercraft, expert systems, communications equipment, bases…the list goes on and on. The defense industry is expansive and touches all sectors of the civilian economy in one way or another. The implications for the present and the future are unpleasant to think about.
With Adelaide commitments to Ashoka coming to an end, for now, one might be forgiven for thinking the defense industries share of the economy might contract. But that is not case, and perhaps never will be the case. While the war on Ashoka is winding down, the wars on Garnet, São Pedro, in space, and elsewhere continue. And even if those conflicts were to come to a nebulous and unsatisfying end, fighting would continue. The corner humanity has backed itself into demands it.
In 1935, United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler pronounced “war is a racket.” As of 2170, General Butler has been proven wrong – war is not a racket. It is the fundamental underpinning of the human economy.
I figured Collins would be a federal politician ITTL.
Technically, I already had a partial Michigan-in-Canada
Buddy, also known as "Air Bud", is a Golden Retriever from Fernfield, Washington who has become internationally famous for his ability to play basketball. Escaping from an abusive owner, Buddy helped his new family's son Josh adjust to a new school, and demonstrated his ability to "shoot" baskets (by bouncing the ball off his nose into the basket) and understand the rules of basketball to an extent. Buddy's first taste of media attention came when he suited up to play for the middle school's team. The unusual roster addition was allowed under the rule that there "ain't no rule that a dog can't play basketball". Buddy's presence helped his team win the championship, and was able to escape his abusive owner (who was arrested for animal cruelty) and legally be adopted by his new family. The basketball-playing dog remained a local curiosity for the next couple of years, even joining Josh on the high school team's roster. Buddy would have been content to play basketball and occasionally appear on SportsCenter for the rest of Josh's high school career, had the NBA lockout not intervened.
With the retirement of Michael Jordan and the NBA lockout of 1998-99 lowering the popularity and image of the NBA, Commissioner David Stern was particularly susceptible to allowing the rules to be bent and the Golden State Warriors, having just had to deal with star player Latrell Sprewell choking the head coach, were looking for a palate-cleanser for their image. It would be no surprise that an unknown assistant in the Warriors front office floated the idea of signing the first canine player in NBA history. The seemingly absurd idea was not dismissed out of hand, and after reviewing tapes of Buddy's game tapes, Warriors GM Garry St. Jean tendered an offer to Buddy's family, the Framms. Buddy's contract would go down in history as one of the most unique and complicated contracts in sports history, and had it been offered outside of the immediate aftermath of a contentious lockout, would have been rejected out of hand by all parties. But neither the NBA nor the player's association were willing to re-draw battle lines over the contract for a dog and the player's union reluctantly allowed for Buddy to "sign" a one-year contract in exchange for the formal adoption of a "dogs can't play basketball" rule starting in the following (2000-01) season.
From a purely statistical perspective, Buddy's sole NBA season was relatively unexceptional, with the note that he was easily the smallest and lightest player to ever play in the NBA. But the media excitement and novelty of a Golden Retriever running up and down the court with giant NBA players caused "Air Bud Fever" to be synonymous, alongside Y2K, with the end of the millennium. Buddy's near-universal adoration led him to being named to the All-Star team despite never starting a game for the Warriors, and his custom-made doggy sneakers was parlayed into an endorsement deal for animal footwear, making him the "Michael Jordan of animalwear" and earning the Framms multitudes more than his NBA salary. Even with the most beloved player in NBA history on their team, the Warriors ended their season with an abysmal 20-62 record and Buddy's professional career ended, with a visit to the White House to meet President Clinton and the other famous dog Buddy.
Buddy's influence on the game would live past his brief spotlight and be cited as the inspiration for many young children's interest in basketball, culminating in Buddy's enshrinement in the Basketball Hall of Fame, as the only non-human inductee. The athletically-talented dog surprised onlookers at his relatively youthful appearance at his 2010 induction and Buddy nostalgia made a brief comeback in the early 2010s. Josh Framm's book on his dog, There Ain't No Rule: The Story of Buddy became a best-seller and President Obama made sure to visit the Framms in the run-up to his re-election campaign (although the president was disappointed to learn that Buddy had lost the stamina to play basketball, preventing the basketball-fan-in-chief from playing H-O-R-S-E with the famous dog). The culmination of Air Bud's return was the infamous "Buddy Game", where ESPN replaced one of their play-by-play commentators with Buddy, which has often been cited by many as one of the reasons for the sports network's decline. Buddy's family has declined subsequent media appearances after this, citing Buddy's advanced age and health problems.
With the retirement of Michael Jordan and the NBA lockout of 1998-99 lowering the popularity and image of the NBA, Commissioner David Stern was particularly susceptible to allowing the rules to be bent and the Golden State Warriors, having just had to deal with star player Latrell Sprewell choking the head coach, were looking for a palate-cleanser for their image. It would be no surprise that an unknown assistant in the Warriors front office floated the idea of signing the first canine player in NBA history. The seemingly absurd idea was not dismissed out of hand, and after reviewing tapes of Buddy's game tapes, Warriors GM Garry St. Jean tendered an offer to Buddy's family, the Framms. Buddy's contract would go down in history as one of the most unique and complicated contracts in sports history, and had it been offered outside of the immediate aftermath of a contentious lockout, would have been rejected out of hand by all parties. But neither the NBA nor the player's association were willing to re-draw battle lines over the contract for a dog and the player's union reluctantly allowed for Buddy to "sign" a one-year contract in exchange for the formal adoption of a "dogs can't play basketball" rule starting in the following (2000-01) season.
From a purely statistical perspective, Buddy's sole NBA season was relatively unexceptional, with the note that he was easily the smallest and lightest player to ever play in the NBA. But the media excitement and novelty of a Golden Retriever running up and down the court with giant NBA players caused "Air Bud Fever" to be synonymous, alongside Y2K, with the end of the millennium. Buddy's near-universal adoration led him to being named to the All-Star team despite never starting a game for the Warriors, and his custom-made doggy sneakers was parlayed into an endorsement deal for animal footwear, making him the "Michael Jordan of animalwear" and earning the Framms multitudes more than his NBA salary. Even with the most beloved player in NBA history on their team, the Warriors ended their season with an abysmal 20-62 record and Buddy's professional career ended, with a visit to the White House to meet President Clinton and the other famous dog Buddy.
Buddy's influence on the game would live past his brief spotlight and be cited as the inspiration for many young children's interest in basketball, culminating in Buddy's enshrinement in the Basketball Hall of Fame, as the only non-human inductee. The athletically-talented dog surprised onlookers at his relatively youthful appearance at his 2010 induction and Buddy nostalgia made a brief comeback in the early 2010s. Josh Framm's book on his dog, There Ain't No Rule: The Story of Buddy became a best-seller and President Obama made sure to visit the Framms in the run-up to his re-election campaign (although the president was disappointed to learn that Buddy had lost the stamina to play basketball, preventing the basketball-fan-in-chief from playing H-O-R-S-E with the famous dog). The culmination of Air Bud's return was the infamous "Buddy Game", where ESPN replaced one of their play-by-play commentators with Buddy, which has often been cited by many as one of the reasons for the sports network's decline. Buddy's family has declined subsequent media appearances after this, citing Buddy's advanced age and health problems.
Hitler is killed in World War I, but somehow in a world War II scenario in which the baddies are Stalin and Hirohito, the world war is still said to start in September of 1939? Two years after Japanese aggression against China had commenced historically? Alternate history can do many things, but it misses the point to change a big factor in a conflict (Hitler), and then have said conflict happen at the same time anyway, even and, especially involving a different configuration of alignment.
That is the problem you found in the scenario presented? Really?
I was wondering why there wren't provincial Tories in BC as a meaningful force. Interesting.
No male preference primogeniture in the Kingdom of New England? Also, how did an Irish family get the crown in New England?
VT45
Banned
Yes, there is male preference primogeniture. Her son and heir is actually her youngest child. And she succeeded her childless younger brother to the throne.
As for how an Irish family got the crown: have you been to New England? It's absolutely crawling with Irish people. Besides, regardless of their Irish heritage or not, there is only one family that could be considered New England's royalty, and that would be the Kennedys.
I think the title makes the status of current politics in this thread clear enough...Flash! a-ha!
Saviour of the Universe!
- Status