Post by m***@willamette.eduHow does this impact on internal British politics?
[GD helps Tories]
Post by m***@willamette.eduOn the other hand, the money that Britain gets from the green door
could result in less of a need to roll back socialism and that could
help the left.
Ugh. A world where Thatcher is even more necessary, and much less
likely.
Post by m***@willamette.eduI think you really need to TL it out to see exactly how it would go (in
that TL at least).
Undoubtedly. Anyone feel like e-mailing me a reading list?
[deletia]
Post by m***@willamette.eduHow much more important is the Commonwealth,
Less than the EU, more so than the UN. Commonwealth countries,
especially the poor ones, will probably want to keep closer ties to
Britain so as to have more access for their citizens to the Green Door.
Innnteresting. This may have consequences for South Africa, Rhodesia
and such. They stay on good terms with Britain longer, and when things
go pear shaped from the white POV there's a place to Settle again, and
the chances of the lefties getting rid of them approximate to zero if
they're a significant fraction of the settler population. Also, they're
educated, and they have all this frontier, survivalist stuff, and ZA,
in particular has massive mining experience.
Post by m***@willamette.edueffects on the EU?
I think Britain could very well end up outside of the EU in this TL.
"Between Europe and the Green Door, Britain will always chose the
Green Door." A UK-less EU would be a pretty interesting
development.
Ever closer union is right. Ireland is a British appendage.
Post by m***@willamette.eduIts been my experience that the children of Utopianists almost never
quite fully assimilate. Never quite mainstream at least, not that
there's anything wrong with that. And the green door will attract
all sorts of idealists, including those wanting to escape "Cool
Britainia.".
You could end up with a situation like Orange County (IIRC) with half
the population being ex-Army and the other half being 1st, 2nd and 3rd
generation hippies. Interesting local politics there.
You'll also see right wing settlements over there, as well as left wing
utopian, and I suspect that, along with the truly nasty right wing
ones, many of which I imagine, would have a strongly British flavour
(the underclass may have to be imported, rather than from Britain)
which would fail, you'd get some USAn libertarian wing nuts, willing to
pledge allegiance for the chance to play the "Let's set up a society"
game. Some of the right wing ones, and religious settlements would
expand. If weird groups form a significant fraction of settlement, say
the bare majority, all together, with "normal" settlers ~45-49% you get
something like Israel, with the normals playing the role of Israeli
sabra. Thing is, you'd need massive immigration for these kind of
effects.
Post by m***@willamette.eduMore Imperial experience.
Not sure I agree with that. The US has had this type of imperial
experience from since before it was the US. Keep in mind that
UK-emigrants to Australia didn't exactly treat the natives better
than he US did.
That's actually probably the best analogue to use for Settler
attitudes. They have no concept of land tenure, and they're not human.
Terra Nullius is going to be real easy to pass.
Post by m***@willamette.edu. Also, even
the British right wing is more soft and cuddly than the US variant.<
There is also the "real life experience" factor to consider. That
is, it's very easy for Sweden not to have any serious prejudice
against Africans, because they have almost none in Sweden. But stick a
bunch of Swedish immigrants in Africa and many of them will develop
Boer-like attitudes over time.
That's nice. No doubt the man on the ground gets to make policy for
some time, but by max. 10 years, all policy comes from the Otherside
Office in Whitehall, and it's informed by a British public opinion that
sees the OtherSide natives in about the way we'd see chimps if they
were smarter, and they all used sign language. Just means they're not
vermin, not that we can't take their land.
Post by m***@willamette.eduSame-same for the UK and the green door. It's very easy to be
sympathetic to the natives when you aren't a settler, but when
suddenly it's in your economic interest to take the natives land and
get the goodies for yourself it becomes a different ball game.
talking about second and third generation unemployed,
undereducated,
Post by m***@willamette.eduno aspirations people. These are people with no cultural concept of
succedding through hard slog, and long sustained effort.<
Such people would not be likely to emigrate through the Green Door.
Such people would be likely to live off the oil wealth generated by
those who are motivated and willing to work hard on the other side of
the Green Door.
Involuntary emigration, combined with great money in a labour poor
environment, and free housing, but not free food? You can get a ranch
house over there in a place that's still "British" ITTL there will be
no Milton Keynes. Much, much council housing built Other Side, in a
desperately labour poor place, results in even stupid people looking on
working as a much better alternative than the Dole. May be politically
unfeasible.
Post by m***@willamette.eduIt's not like finding oil and exploiting it are something any dumb
yahoo can do either. It's a highly skilled profession and a drunken
looser isn't going to be able to do it very easily.
I know it's highly skilled, but there's a place for unskilled labour
everywhere, particularly if by shifting yahoo from A to B, you solve a
problem both sides. Also, money is an excellent motivator in remedying
dreggishness.
Post by m***@willamette.eduPlausible upper limit, if the policy goal is to get them to settle
there? If it's a decent place to live, 5 years should probably be
plenty.<
5 years would seem to be reasonable to me.
Mind you, that's IF the goal is citizenship. And it doesn't have
to be. The UK could just give "Guest-Worker" permits for people to
work on the Otherside, with no promise of citizenship at all. Just a
promise to pay them for a few years before they return home. Like what
Germany did for the Turks in the 60's.
Both alternatives seem quite plausible, with citizenship shading
guest-worker, because Britain never did any such metic system OTL, and
there would certainly have been support. Also, the Other Side will
impinge little on FirstSide, except in economic fashion. There will be
fewer votes in being racist towards people on Other Side than in
keeping those goodies flowing.
Post by m***@willamette.eduMind you, suddenly they'll wake up to find that there are second and
third generation non-citizens on the Otherside and that's when things
become interesting. I actually see this as the higher probability
outcome than a UK which decides to use the Green Door as the pathway to
citizenship.
Perhaps this is where the going native persons come from?
Post by m***@willamette.eduIronic that the promise of no-citizenship is more politically viable
than the promise of citizenship in 20 years, no?
People are damned stupid.
Post by m***@willamette.eduMaybe Argentine style settlement? Managed, but with rapid
expansion.
"After the conflict between the Green Acres Settlement and the Ark
Royal, it became Crown Policy that adjacent Steadings be, insofar as
possible, settled by groups of compatible ideology, resulting in
gradual clines of ideology, so as to avoid small scale civil war. The
remnants of this policy can be seen in the tendency of the West of New
London to vote Tory, and East to vote Lib Dem. The spider web pattern
of nodes of urbanisation also grants plenty of green space between
poleis."
Post by m***@willamette.eduyou're going to get some people going native, because humans are
weird
like that.<
Yes, but it's going to take a couple of generations. I don't'
see it by 2004. For one thing the Otherside will be to economically
dependent upon this side.
You don't think they'll be capable of independence by 2004? Not saying
it wouldn't be nasty, but surely possible? It would be totally
economically integrated, a resource economy if ever there was one, but
I'd see light and heavy manufacturing.
Post by m***@willamette.eduI really don't see it as being primarily rural, more mining than
anything else.<
Bottlenecks. Shipping food over would be a waste of Green Door time.
The things needed to be shipped over would be those things that can't
be easily made on the Otherside, like high tech manufactories. Food
can be grown, therefore lots of farms to support the mines and oil
wells.
Makes sense. Likely one of the first things the Army does with it's
base. This need not take that may people though. Industrial farming
just keeps getting better at mechanisation. Hey, Earth food would be
_expensive_ Other Side, probably so much so that luxury premium is an
insignificant modifier compared to the cost of transport. For
bottlenecks and such: I wonder how fast you could run trains if the
life span of rolling stock was a negligible cost, if the cargo was all
pretty damned valuable. For super silliness say that each end of the
"port" facility is five miles long, pressurised, yadda, yadda. You send
TGVs back and forth at speed, with cranes to pick up containers, in the
half a minute the train is at rest and transfer them to the conveyor
belt, then the train cycles back. You need to shut down one day a month
to replace _everything_ but eventually you've got this down to a fine
art, and the raw materials make the cost of the "port" trivial compared
to having a world's worth of minerals, oil and exotic flora and fauna.
Post by m***@willamette.eduHow Japanese will these immigrants be by this stage though?
That's one of the most interesting things about a continued Japanese
Empire TL, the very definition of what "Japanese" is gets radically
changed from OTL. Pre-Surrender it was already warping due to
increased immigration to the home islands and emigration of native
Japanese to parts of the empire, then the end of imperial Japan
resulted in the pretty homogenized definition of Japanese that we have
today.
Yeah. Isn't Japan the example used of a homogenous first world society?
Absent WW2 we'd use a relatively homogenous white Australia, or, if
that didn't exist, we'd have people saying that monoethnic first world
societies couldn't sustain first world levels of growth or other crap.
Post by m***@willamette.eduAgain, how Japanese will they be?
Second and third Korean immigrants through the green door probably
speak Japanese perfectly. They are likely to be more Japanese than
those Koreans who remained in Korea, but to still be "off". Again,
you've got to TL it out to get specifics. "Do they have equal
rights?" needs to be answered to determine how assimilated they are.
I'd assume that all the discrimination they'd face would be unofficial.
Japan seems to have been surprisingly good at learning from other
people's mistakes OTL, more than likely doing as well as possible in
Korea, and brilliantly in assimilation in Micronesia. The nisei and
sansei Koreans behind the Green Door have no realistic choice but
Japan, and have never lived in any other cultural milieu, doubtless
their world view is informed by that. Also, the ancestral homeland is
under Japanese dominion, so they can even feel patriotic, in a way that
no "real" Korean would.
Post by m***@willamette.eduWhat about those ports to deny Russia Pacific Coast I had in the
first post? Plausible?
The best bet would be during the Russian Civil War. If Japan is really
desperate it might be able to set up a White Regime heavily backed up
by Japanese bayonets to keep the Soviets out of Siberia.
I was working under the assumption that Japanese colonial interests
would shrink to Korea, Taiwan, Micronesia, and the Green Door, with all
else being subordinate to keeping the Green Door Japanese. ITTL there'd
be no horsing around in China, no Manchuria business, and in order to
keep the Soviets from the GD, a White puppet regime would be excellent,
they'd even be an excellent cats paw for Manchuria. That way Japan
still has considerable influence there, and the White puppet regime
might actually get enough Russians to look plausible.
Post by m***@willamette.eduLow-probability though.
Junior partners in the way
the Scottish were in the "British" English Empire, or in a 10% of
population leaves upon independence fleeing anti-collaborator mobs
way?<
The latter. I've always thought that a continued Japanese Empire
might have Korea go Algerian if/when Japan democratized and loosened
up
The one need not imply the other though it would be awkward. Really,
really awkward, and the effects of Korean unpleasantness on Manchukuo
would be interesting to watch, and thus unlikely. I suspect an awful
lot more Koreans would end up in Manchuria than in Japan, and that
those fleeing would continue to be followed by those looking for money,
Algeria is right. No way this would happen before the 70's at the
earliest so Korea would be a part of the Japanese cultural sphere
anyway, with 60 or 70 years of exposure to the language.
When are the promises next instalments of the Ishiwara Option coming?
Next month? Next two months?