DBWI: New Holland is wealthy

samcster94

Banned
New Holland(OOC:Australia) is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has had many famines, has an unequal distribution of wealth and most major cities have tons of slums. What can be done to change it? One of the few things good for it is it hasn't had a coup in over 30 years. Bonus points if it has a different name.
 
New Holland's main problem is the fact that the government of New Holland is a kleptocratic family clique using a thin facade of National Unionism (OOC: Essentially alt-Fascism) to justify the rule of the Toereers family, which squanders New Holland's resource wealth on the military (which is one of the largest in the world with 8% of New Holland's population in the military) and their sunbomb program. The latest dictator, Mart-jan Kleine Toereers, has just carried out three nuclear tests ever since he took power in 2013 and constantly threatens New Holland's neighbors with nuclear war. I'm sure that New Holland's main backer in the Russian Empire is looking for any excuse right now to dump New Holland, especially now that the new Diwan of the Mughal Empire is quite belligerant and posturing ATM and tensions have risen to the highest point since the collapse of the Empire of New Spain.
 
We've known since the 1980s that New Holland has a lot more resources than is being tapped but the Toereers and the rest of Goudenpoort [OOC: Perth] won't allow it to be tapped - afraid of setting up an extra powerbase for someone else, the way Pop Toereer took over when he ran the Atomic Commission.

So the simplest POD is Pop Toereer gets caught before he can make his move (and IIRC he almost was). Stadholder Verhoeven was a weak figure at the time and would have been quite happy to look to the Indonesians if he'd lasted a year, and they'd have loved having a new market to exploit.

You could go back to the rise of the National Unionists but then you might as well go back and say "if only New South Wales had annexed old New Holland and not the other way around". Other than the South Welsh not being sent to camps and ghettos, who knows how that'd turn up? Could just be Pierjoubert Stad - Sidney as they'd call it - would be the one ordering New Dutch to camps.
 
Even without inefficient Totalitarianism, New Holland would have a tough time feeding itself. The whole island put together simply can't support the 63 million people it has. There's a reason New Holland's biggest export is people, followed only by the few raw materials that haven't been picked clean.

The biggest problem for New Holland is that they are historically a settler colony, but unlike the colonies in the Americas never really had anything valuable. Sure, the Netherlands established New Holland in the 17th century as a way to both get rid of prisoners and extract resources, but soon after almost all of the Netherlands' food needs were met from their North American Colonies. It was always a lot cheaper to grow food in the Americas, and due to distances involved cheaper to ship it as well, so ever since then New Holland was principally just good for subsistence farming.

This didn't stop the high population growth of settler colonies, and once you fast forward a few hundred years New Holland has run out of space to farm. Once oil and other resources dry up (and they damn near have), New Holland has little left to offer the world. They're out of the way of most sealanes and the Netherlands never bothered to invest much into them. It was pretty much inevitable that they would become the poorest Western State in the world.
 

samcster94

Banned
New Holland's main problem is the fact that the government of New Holland is a kleptocratic family clique using a thin facade of National Unionism (OOC: Essentially alt-Fascism) to justify the rule of the Toereers family, which squanders New Holland's resource wealth on the military (which is one of the largest in the world with 8% of New Holland's population in the military) and their sunbomb program. The latest dictator, Mart-jan Kleine Toereers, has just carried out three nuclear tests ever since he took power in 2013 and constantly threatens New Holland's neighbors with nuclear war. I'm sure that New Holland's main backer in the Russian Empire is looking for any excuse right now to dump New Holland, especially now that the new Diwan of the Mughal Empire is quite belligerant and posturing ATM and tensions have risen to the highest point since the collapse of the Empire of New Spain.
National Unionism is a bad idea. The Ukrainians tried it once, and they lost their independence after foolishly fighting the Russian Empire(and a lot of Jews died in the process)(OOC:it was like a one sided war like Paraguay).
 
National Unionism is a bad idea. The Ukrainians tried it once, and they lost their independence after foolishly fighting the Russian Empire. An Andean Terrorist Group has also used it to empower peasants.
Ironically, Russia is probably the main backer of the nutjobs in New Holland with most of New Holland's "modern" weapons being 15-20 year-old Russian weapons.
 
This isn't an answer to OP's question, but as a former citizen of Nieuw Holland, I feel like I should comment. You are overestimating how much control the Toereers actually have over the population. Few people actually like the government or believe their propaganda, we're simply too poor to actually revolt. Even if we did Russia would just come in to 'restore the peace' so there isn't a reason to try.

So, how much of a threat is the National Free Christian Republic of New Holland to the rest of the world and why?
None. For all the government threatens with its bombs, most of them don't even work and the ones that do would only maybe reach Malacca. The only people country who could actually be threatened by them would be Indonesia and they keep investing in AA weapons for that reason.

Russia is really the only reason that Nieuw Holland still exists is Russia finding them helpful and if Indonesia keeps its current economic practices they might be strong enough to bring down the Toereers soon anyway.

Sorry for my bad english, I'm still getting used to the language.
 
Russia is really the only reason that Nieuw Holland still exists is Russia finding them helpful and if Indonesia keeps its current economic practices they might be strong enough to bring down the Toereers soon anyway.
Well, the new Mughal Diwan has declared that if Russia wouldn't keep Nieuw Holland in line, the Mughal Empire would "deal with" Nieuw Holland.
Few people actually like the government or believe their propaganda, we're simply too poor to actually revolt.
Yea, their propaganda makes me laugh like how their dictator claims to be "guided by Christ" and how the Mughals are "spawn of Satan".
 
Well, the new Mughal Diwan has declared that if Russia wouldn't keep Nieuw Holland in line, the Mughal Empire would "deal with" Nieuw Holland.

Yea, their propaganda makes me laugh like how their dictator claims to be "guided by Christ" and how the Mughals are "spawn of Satan".

The Mughals also said they'd stop the Zanzibar Massacres and we all know how that turned out.

Yes, Mart-jan is ridiculous. I find it funny how as soon as the last "satanische zwarter" was "put down" they immediately started claiming that the Mughals are the ultimate evil.
 
I find it funny how as soon as the last "satanische zwarter" was "put down" they immediately started claiming that the Mughals are the ultimate evil.
You know how totalitarian dictatorships function, once they've eliminated dissent from their country, they start demonizing their external enemies.
 

samcster94

Banned
So, aside from New Holland, which countries do you think are "rogue states" and why?
Iceland may not threaten anyone but are very brutal to their people(OOC:Belarus), reintroduced the death penalty after independence from the Danish Empire, and censor hypernet(OOC: internet) connections.
 
Iceland may not threaten anyone but are very brutal to their people(OOC:Belarus), reintroduced the death penalty after independence from the Danish Empire, and censor hypernet(OOC: internet) connections.
Don't forget the Empire of Corea, where the government is effecitvely dominated by a shamanistic cult and where the government is rumored to be developing nukes (even though any Corean official would deny such allegations and say they are developing nuclear enrichment capabilities for "peaceful reasons"). They also are rumored to be backing militant Buddhist terrorist organizations as well.
 

samcster94

Banned
Don't forget the Empire of Corea, where the government is effecitvely dominated by a shamanistic cult and where the government is rumored to be developing nukes (even though any Corean official would deny such allegations and say they are developing nuclear enrichment capabilities for "peaceful reasons"). They also are rumored to be backing militant Buddhist terrorist organizations as well.
OOC:seems a bit too North Korea(even though they are trying to make an Iran analogy)
 
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