Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg

Nyvis

Nyvis

teddy lives said:
I kind of wonder if the Internationale seemingly not trading a lot with other countries has more to do with ideology than any sort of embargo.

If unions really are in control and they're pushing very worker friendly policies, it's likely that their goods/services are significantly more expensive than places that don't have such worker friendly policies. That would make it difficult to export large amounts of goods/services, and imports would likely have to be controlled as well lest cheaper foreign goods undercut the domestic market.

That's kind of always been my headcanon for why the Syndies aren't affected by Black Monday, they're already as close to an autarky as they can physically manage and so protectionist they'd make a Junker blush.

It also puts another spin on why they're so desperate for world revolution, they quite literally cannot afford to have any major country not doing things the same way they do.

No wonder France attacks Germany even if you give them Alsace-Lorraine back.
Click to expand...

Frankly, no.

It's been proven good labour regulations improve productivity. And yeah, the internationale is probably against delocalization and similar stuff... But that just wasn't a problem in the WW2 era. It's a much younger issue. The rest of the world isn't industrialized enough to undercut them. Most industry is still located in the few rich developed countries.

I do agree they would try for autarky when possible, but mostly because they don't want to feed their enemies if avoidable.

Of course, if they win the war, this will become a question, especially if the Indian syndicalists win and start industrializing. But in the second weltkrieg? Nah probably too early.
 

teddy lives

Nyvis said:
Frankly, no.

It's been proven good labour regulations improve productivity. And yeah, the internationale is probably against delocalization and similar stuff... But that just wasn't a problem in the WW2 era. It's a much younger issue. The rest of the world isn't industrialized enough to undercut them. Most industry is still located in the few rich developed countries.

I do agree they would try for autarky when possible, but mostly because they don't want to feed their enemies if avoidable.

Of course, if they win the war, this will become a question, especially if the Indian syndicalists win and start industrializing. But in the second weltkrieg? Nah probably too early.
Click to expand...

Good labor regulations, sure, but we're talking about a government and economy run by unions. From my own experience as a member of a union it is very difficult to get rid of members even if they're unproductive, and unions will generally push for very generous terms.

In a system where the unions are the government, there's very little to check demands. If the workers in France and Britain have contracts that guarantee no more than 40 hours per week, pensions, healthcare, vacations, lunch provided for free, high wages, breaks, all things that my union has fought for, you're going to have to raise the prices to account for all of that, and price raising is going to hurt your competitiveness on the world market.

There's been a major shift of industry out of the developed world and to third world countris precisely because it is cheaper, largely because those places lack the regulations and benefits demanded by the developed world.

Even prior to the second weltkrieg, you still have competition from other developed nations such as Germany, who if they lack everything given to the workers of the Internationale will have the cheaper goods and thus be preferred on the market (and if they do then the Internationale's entire 'workers are oppressed' narrative goes up in smoke).

The Syndies aren't Bolsheviks who can just throw bodies at a problem and push people to insane quotas, so in order to maintain the high workers standards they're espousing they should be extremely protectionist and relatively isolated from the world market. Hell, even the 'Revolutionary Oil' national spirit they get supports the idea that they're largely insular and do relatively little trading with the world.
 
Worffan101

Worffan101

The thing with syndicalism is that it isn't like modern France with corporations and strong unions. The unions ARE the corporations, each syndicate is run on democratic lines, collectively managing the means of production.
 

teddy lives

Worffan101 said:
The thing with syndicalism is that it isn't like modern France with corporations and strong unions. The unions ARE the corporations, each syndicate is run on democratic lines, collectively managing the means of production.
Click to expand...

I get that, I'm not accusing the Syndies of faking their concern for the workers or secretly running oppressive dictatorships.

I'm simply saying that they are likely very protectionist because of how much they're giving their workers, and that there is consequences for that on the marketplace.

The push for world revolution I view as likely an economic issue is because of the way the focus trees are set up. Even if Germany embraces the FAUD, hangs Switzerland out to dry, embraces womens suffrage, doesn't intervene in any Syndicalist uprising in the Reichspact, and gives back Alsace-Lorraine, France's very next focus is "attack them anyway". IIRC the only French government that can even select the peaceful revolution focus is the Jacobins, and those are full-on "socialism in one country" Stalinists.

Same with the CSA, your foreign policy either revolves around following France (which usually means war with all non-Syndies), or making the New World Syndie, which means overthrowing the various non-Syndie governments in the Americas.

Even Pelley has the option of turtling up and going full Fortress America, so the fact that the Syndies can't leads me to one of two conclusions.

1: The Stndies are so rabidly ideologically fanatic that the mere existence of non-Syndicalist states constitutes an offense worthy of war in their eyes (which makes Syndicalism sound less like a government and more like a medeival religion), or

2: The extremely high standards they give their workers are vulnerable to being undercut by competition on the world market, which means they need at least most of the world to be Syndicalist, thus explaining their world revolution drive.

The second one makes them seem less insane to me, so that's the one I think is more likely.
 
Nyvis

Nyvis

teddy lives said:
In a system where the unions are the government, there's very little to check demands. If the workers in France and Britain have contracts that guarantee no more than 40 hours per week, pensions, healthcare, vacations, lunch provided for free, high wages, breaks, all things that my union has fought for, you're going to have to raise the prices to account for all of that, and price raising is going to hurt your competitiveness on the world market.
Click to expand...

France had all those things OTL though :biggrin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Front_(France)#Labor_laws
 
Nyvis

Nyvis

teddy lives said:
I don't see healthcare, pensions, paid lunch or breaks.

From what I've been able to find France also had lower gdp growth following that then Japan, Italy, the USSR, Germany and Great Britain, so maybe not the best example of how incredible such policies are for economic growth.
Click to expand...

All those countries except the UK were starting from lower though. Growth is kinda meaningless once you free yourself from the constraints of capitalist finance and interest payments. What matter is your industrial output.
 

teddy lives

Nyvis said:
All those countries except the UK were starting from lower though. Growth is kinda meaningless once you free yourself from the constraints of capitalist finance and interest payments. What matter is your industrial output.
Click to expand...

Admittedly, I'm having difficulty finding raw numbers, however I have found charts from the economic database of the St. Louis federal reserve. Setting their 1913 totals as 100, by 1937 (the year after France made their reforms), total industrial output for France was at 101, for Great Britain it was at 131, and for Germany it was at 118. While both of those countries did have the advantage of not having part of their country be a warzone, simply becoming Syndicalist after the war doesn't change that.

Found here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A018BAFRA324NNBR
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A01181GBA324NNBR
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A018AEDEA338NNBR
 
Nyvis

Nyvis

teddy lives said:
Admittedly, I'm having difficulty finding raw numbers, however I have found charts from the economic database of the St. Louis federal reserve. Setting their 1913 totals as 100, by 1937 (the year after France made their reforms), total industrial output for France was at 101, for Great Britain it was at 131, and for Germany it was at 118. While both of those countries did have the advantage of not having part of their country be a warzone, simply becoming Syndicalist after the war doesn't change that.

Found here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A018BAFRA324NNBR
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A01181GBA324NNBR
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A018AEDEA338NNBR
Click to expand...

Yep, France's industry at the time was very focused on the north, and quite a bit on the frontlines. WW1 hit it pretty hard. As you say, being syndicalist won't magically make it better, but I have doubts it would straight up make it worse. France probably has roughly OTL level of industry, minus Alsace-Lorraine. It's also probably a lot more geared towards war though.

One thing to remember though: I doubt the CoF and UoB will care about paying back what the previous governments owe to a bunch of creditors for their WW1 debt.
 

freivolk

Nyvis said:
Yep, France's industry at the time was very focused on the north, and quite a bit on the frontlines. WW1 hit it pretty hard. As you say, being syndicalist won't magically make it better, but I have doubts it would straight up make it worse. France probably has roughly OTL level of industry, minus Alsace-Lorraine. It's also probably a lot more geared towards war though.

One thing to remember though: I doubt the CoF and UoB will care about paying back what the previous governments owe to a bunch of creditors for their WW1 debt.
Click to expand...

I think not paying back the war debt, may be the reason, that the International has problems to trade with the USA.

Beside that, its my head canon, that the Commune has to start the war in 1939, because the their economy can´t bear the strain of a long term arm race with Germany.
 
Nyvis

Nyvis

freivolk said:
I think not paying back the war debt, may be the reason, that the International has problems to trade with the USA.

Beside that, its my head canon, that the Commune has to start the war in 1939, because the their economy can´t bear the strain of a long term arm race with Germany.
Click to expand...

The part about the USA makes sense.

As for the arms race... Depends really. The commune by itself, sure. But with the UoB also in the game?

I imagine the main reason the commune rushes to war is that it want to take advantage from Germany's economic troubles following the crisis and doesn't want them to get their political shit together either.

Also, they're probably worried about Austria solving their internal problems and joining in with Mitteleuropa. Especially if Russia isn't looking to open another front.

I imagine with the experience of the first weltkrieg defeat, France really wants to avoid doing a replay of that.

If they have problems sustaining an arms race, it's likely it's an issue of raw material supply, especially oil, more than industrial capacity.
 
Lord Insane

Lord Insane

It's been a long time since the King could set up shop in another country in the Empire-in-Exile (although the PR says Entente instead), but it never did seem something that was removed for being unrealistic or anything like that, just tricky to code, so it is nice to see it return.
 
AvatarOfKhaine

AvatarOfKhaine

Think it's a bit annoying to have Eddy be potentially be replaced given how the idea of Eddy reforming/half-reforming and half becoming hell bent is something near iconic to KR.

Would be interested in AI percentages on how often he does to see how probable the possibility is intended to be.

Generally though this continues the trend of me finding some of the new ideas neat enough to steal for my personal KRDH and many of them near sacrilegious in terms of being boring/going directions I find uninteresting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top