Near-Future/Sci-Fi Settings, Societies, Cultures, Histories

Well, it's landlocked, and that area isn't well known for it's natural resources, so...

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Actually, that's incorrect.

• Kazakhstan has significant reserves of oil, minerals and metals, as well as vast steppe lands that it uses for both livestock and grain production. These currently form the backbone of Kazakh industry.

• Kyrgyzstan has plenty of gold, mercury and uranium reserves, although it's currently overdependent on its agricultural sector. It also has an abundance of hydroelectric potential (only enough of it has been realized to fulfill almost all of domestic electricity needs) that can be theoretically exported to its neighbors.

• Tajikistan similarly has huge reserves of various metals gold, silver, antimony and uranium (reserves of the last one still exist but are no longer being extracted for some reason; I assume loss of Soviet Russian technical support with handling of radioactive hazards), as well as vast hydroelectic potential through its rivers, which it is trying to capitalize on; it has also been recently discovered that it has natural gas reserves that could theoretically cover its energy needs for about 50 years.

• Turkmenistan has massive reserves of oil and natural gas, the latter ranking as the 4th largest in the world. It was also the world's 3rd largest producer of iodine in 2019, and is rich in various other minerals with substantial industrial value.

• Uzbekistan has substantial of silver, strategic minerals, gas, oil and gold; concerning the last one, it's the world's seventh-largest producer, has the 4th largest reserves in the world, and is home to the largest open-pit gold mine in the world. It was also the world's 5th largest producer of uranium in 2019.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The landlocked part however is an issue. Uzbekistan is one of only two Double-landlocked countries in the world, and the other one is a European microstate. (Liechtenstein for the record). And most of the other mentioned are landlocked in their own right (the Caspian Sea usually doesn't count because it doesn't connect to any other bodies of water). That means any hypothetical block/union is always going to be at the mercy of their neighbours when it comes to the transporting of those natural resources.

That list looks like mostly precious metals and energy. In other words, stuff you mine out of the ground. The problem with resources like that is that you need lots of capital and expertise to extract that stuff, then you need middlemen to market the stuff everywhere in the world. Historically, that's been a prescription for foreign dependence and extreme wealth disparity.

In your post you specified "regional power". Look who else is in their region: Iran to the south, Turkey to the east, China to the west, and Russia to the north. To access international commerce these people are going to have to go through at least one of them. Which do you see as being weak enough that this alternative power-base can deal with them with some sort of leverage?

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Turkey, though not because it's weak, but because IRL it's already part of the Organization of Turkic States, and it and fellow member Azerbaijan have been promoting the idea of the Zangezur corridor as a way to connect Turkey to the rest of the Turkic states (via the additional connection of the Caspian Sea). This, combined with China's proposed Silk Road Economic Belt, holds great potential for linking the landlocked Turkic states to the maritime trade network.

The one big problem with the aforementioned corridor, however, is that it necessarily has to cross through the non-Turkic state of Armenia, which currently has very bad relations with both of its Turkic neighbors over the Ottoman-era Turkish genocide of Armenians and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Even if we just handwave that the three countries achieve enduring resolutions for their respective disputes, it leaves me wondering about the odds of Armenia agreeing to lease the Zangezur corridor to Turkey and Azerbaijan, or even eventually joining the supranational bloc of the Turkic states out of simple pragmatism (assuming that the Turkic states' governments have liberalized and relations improved sufficiently that there's no real threat of them having plans to reduce Armenia to a client state).

FWIW, I'm asking this for the development of a setting in the late 21st / early 22nd century where almost every country in the world has joined a supranational union / superstate of some sort or the other.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 2nd 2022 at 9:23:49 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

...I have difficulty imagining Armenia and Turkey cooperating without, at the barest minimum, "please apologise for the genocide you've refused to acknowledge for over a century". That seems like a conflict hook more than something to gloss over as part of the backstory, and Armenia or Turkey or both would be likely to end up with a disproportionate amount of power over the other states in the union because they control the trade routes.

Why does everyone do this? Seems a bit like the more confederated equivalent of a Space-Filling Empire - i.e. mostly driven by the out-of-universe need for a clean map.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on May 4th 2022 at 5:37:36 PM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I suspect it's a question of simplicity; the "virial expansion" means the complexity can increase with the square of the number of polities involved, sometimes even with cube etc.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Then Turkey will be the regional power "He who controls the port controls the trade" including the economic spinoffs.

Is space colonization an important element in your worldbuilding project? If so, that might explain how a landlocked country becomes regionally important. It could also help explain why everyone is joining a global superpower (space being extremely resource intensive).

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Yeah, Turkey in my setting had undergone a revolution in a decade or two from today (as a side event to a second, much more successful Arab Spring) that saw it turn into a liberal democracy willing to own up to the Armenian genocide as well as stop undermining efforts at resolving the situation in Cyprus.

And Septimus' explanation is part of it, though for me, it's the natural step for humanity to take before a true world government could emerge (barring extreme circumstances that force us to skip straight to the latter). And yes, the setting does have a proto-world government in the form of a militarized UN, though it isn't quite there and experts can't agree on where it stands in the confederation—federation spectrum.

What do you mean by "economic spinoffs"? Also, I think that while Turkey would certainly be more or less the most important member of this union, the power dynamic with the Central Asian states wouldn't be as lopsided as you seem to be implying; as I pointed out, they have great potential for exporting excess hydroelectric power to their neighbors, and there would still be high demand for their petroleum reserves from several of their neighbors' industrial sectors (China especially), especially if we handwave some sort of Applied Phlebotinum that extends the ecological sustainability of petroleum and gas.

Maybe a revolutionary technology that makes carbon capture and utilization financially viable? It could even serve as a way to establish a source of tension between the world's blocs; say that the developed countries (i.e. Northern America, Western Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan) had managed to more or less phase out fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy, and are lambasting the rest of the world for lagging behind (ignoring all the difficulties in such a task for developing and especially undeveloped countries), only for this new CCU technology to be invented and leave the renewable energy lobby fuming as the countries they had once been deriding for "ecological irresponsibility" went all in on the "green oil" revolution. Now the world of supranational blocs can be divided into ones that have had the luxury to rapidly wean themselves off petroleum and yet couldn't check their privilege, and ones whose member states are taking a significantly slower and less strenuous path towards the end goal of 100% use of renewable energy and resent the former "camp" for all the economic hardship that they put them through in the past in the name of their "total sustainability, no matter the cost to human livelihood" (the sticking point is that the lion's share of the cost in question was shouldered by developing and undeveloped countries, on grounds that they had taken the developed world's place as the biggest sources of fossil fuel emissions).

And yes, space exploration and colonization have been undergoing a renaissance for a few decades by the time of the setting's "present" time frame; there's now an internationally operated permanent inhabited colony on Luna, nascent unmanned outposts on Mars, and the first attempts at mining one of Earth's closest and most stable asteroid quasi-satellite are underway. They as a whole are not a major element of the plot per se, though.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Ah, sorry, I didn't mean "why do writers always do this", I meant "what's the motivation for all the states to start forming close alliances with each other en masse". If the answer is "narrative convenience", then a handwave or passing lampshade is probably less distracting than trying to contrive an in-universe justification for every individual alliance.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

The in-universe reason is more or less the same reason the EU was founded: strength in numbers (especially if they are neighbors to a military power that they view as a threat, e.g. Southeast Asia and the Pacific vs. the expansionistic PRC), the mutual benefit of all members, and particularly ensuring no wars erupt between said members ever again. A secondary reason is that the major setback that globalization suffered IRL due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine was made worse in this fictional worldline by other events, ultimately leading to most countries choosing to form supranational blocs or even actual superstates with culturally and/or politically like-minded geographic neighbors and viewing "outsiders" with suspicion. International trade between the supranational polities still occurs, but it's nothing like the heyday of globalization.

And it's not like the formation of the supranational polities happens en masse as you put it; it takes place over the course of several decades, with each "superpolity" emerging in response to an event or series of events (which may even include the birth of an earlier superpolity).

Edited by MarqFJA on May 5th 2022 at 1:48:07 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

To be fair most of the nation's of the world are involved in some sort of regional organization. They're just not super tight.

Yeah, many of my superpolities are just logical derivations of real-life regional organizations, though some of the former are smaller in their geographical extent than their real-life counterpart. For example, the "Southeast Asia and Pacific" superpolity — the "Eirenesian Commonwealth"^note Eirenesia being a Greek neologism that literally translates to "peaceful/pacific islands", referring to the superpolity being almost entirely made of island countries that are located in the Pacific Ocean. — is an evolution of the real-life ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Forum (the latter being the subject of proposals for increased integration), albeit after the former had lost all of the Indochinese members sans Malaysia to the economic and cultural hegemonies of India (Burma) and China (the rest). And I already mentioned the Organization of Turkic States

Edited by MarqFJA on May 5th 2022 at 4:51:39 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Heh, there is this underlying idealism in your worldbuilding that seems to assume people act from egalitarian and humanitarian impulses unless they have some specific reason not to. I'm a little too cynical for that: I tend to assume that power equality between populations is an unstable equilibruim—people seek competitive advantage, so any slight imbalance will tend to become more extreme over time, until some reaction reverses it.

But don't let my embittered worldview affect your project!

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

FWIW, how idealistic this setting framework would be is going to vary from one story to another; I'm basically devising a basic template whose details I can then modify depending on my needs. One story may benefit from having one or more (or even all) of the superpolities be not all it's cracked up to be (and the degree of that would itself depend on the needs of the story), while another would instead benefit more from having them be generally healthy democracies (even if they vary greatly in their political systems), with the conflict instead being between the superpolities for past/ongoing grievances (whether real or perceived) and/or the global government (if it exists).

That being said, I appreciate the fact that you repsect what you perceived as my idealism (I bet you wanted to say "naivete" but wanted to be polite about it) and desire to favor narrative convenience over realism on certain points.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 6th 2022 at 12:55:34 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Naw, I'm actually a little jealous. I rather hope you are right, and I'm wrong.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Oh please, my actual view when it comes to the real world on this is far less optimistic; I'm not a pessimist, but the EU's example as the first and so far only supranational polity is not filling me with hope, what with the obsession with unanimous consensus even when it's obviously and seriously counterproductive, the madden chimera that is its system of decision-making and governance (because the governments and too much of their constituents are too scared to give up even a small part of their sovereignty to turn the EU into something more like a federation), and what not.

For clarity, I've been used to having people in this forum community essentially stonewall me with a "hard scifi or don't bother us" mentality when I come for advice on some scifi-related topic. You have no idea how tired I am of being told "If you're going to ignore real-world science for what's more convenient for your preferred narrative, then why even bother trying to seek scientific plausibility? Just wing it!" almost every single time.

Oh yeah, concerning what I said yesterday about globalization falling out of vogue in the setting being based on it already starting to happen IRL... The discussion beginning with this post probably explains it better than I could.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 6th 2022 at 1:02:10 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The first step toward managing globalization on a, er, global scale will be the major capitalist democracies agreeing on an international taxation regime. That is, tracking the flow of capital across international borders so that it can be taxed at agreed upon rates. This will make it much more difficult for billionaires to hide their money, or the way in which they profit from shifting jobs and commerce around. Corruption would be harder to hide.

After that, an agreement on social spending minimums so that money can't chase tax rates to the bottom. And then some minimum wage controls. This wouldn't solve all the problems right away, but it would provide a solid foundation upon which to take further steps.

Can't see this becoming an interesting basis for narrative drama, however! Ooh, "tax fiction!"

Edited by DeMarquis on May 6th 2022 at 6:14:40 AM

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Well, I do make political negotiations a major part of mine, so. But that world is Like Reality, Unless Noted and no closer to global tax treaties than ours.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Does that entail tax rates being invariant no matter which country are in? Or simply allowing countries to tax their citizens' foreign assets at their own rates rather than those of the countries where said assets exist, perhaps with the "host" country either handling the direct collection of the taxes in their stead (with a mechanism for transfering it to the home country) or simply being charged with sanctioning or detaining tax evaders as a roundabout way to force them to obey their home country's tax laws?

What do you mean?

It could serve as interesting supplemental information about the setting, for anyone who wants a deeper look into the background against which the story takes place. All in the Manual's examples show that there is more than enough precedent for this in fiction.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I have a bit of a dilemma.

Near-future, early-interstellar setting with limited FTL travel. Humanity has less than a dozen settled systems with a combined offworld population in the low tens of millions (forced emigration was involved). Government is only partially democratic and has a sizable military complete with political officers. Colonies do have some independence advocates, but these are rather low-key because the one time a system actually tried to secede, it got slapped down violently.

In this setup, Earth gets hit by a Class 4 Apocalypse that takes around 99% of humanity with it and temporarily turns Sol into a No Warping Zone. There are survivors, but they remain unknown to the others and largely a non-factor. Now, the intended aftermath is that with the capital world gone, humanity's One World Order splits into two states, with the former core worlds banding together into a loose federation led by democratically elected leaders (albeit marred by rampant corruption and oligarch shenanigans) while the fringe worlds are rallied by a junta consisting of most of the old regime's surviving military, mostly fleet assets.

Problem is, as the saying apparently goes, is that one guy with a gun can control a hundred without. That is, why would the military go off and start their own state in the boonies instead of just pulling a coup as soon as the emergency elections don't go their way? Maybe they did try to pull a coup but were unable to rally popular support and backed off when it became clear the populace won't submit without a massacre all but the most diehard fans of the old regime felt would've been Too Soon?

"Does that entail tax rates being invariant no matter which country are in?"

Ideally, capital is taxed in the jurisdiction where it is held: the bank managing the account, or the warehouse full of art. What we want to avoid is the current situation where someone makes a lot of money in one country, moves it overseas into a series of shell accounts, gets spent on property belonging to a business partner, who loans the money back, and it never gets taxed by anyone. It is not known how much "dark money" there is out there, but it's estimated in the trillions. Once the entire "money chain" is mapped out and accounted for, taxes are a matter of international treaty.

"After that, an agreement on social spending minimums so that money can't chase tax rates to the bottom."

What I mean by this is that money seeks the countries with the lowest tax rates, and those are also the countries that have the lowest spending on public services (frequently referred to as "Austerity Plans"). If international treaty established minimum parameters by which social spending should occur (probably as a percentage of GDP) then there would be no incentive to reduce spending in order to lower taxes.

@amitakartok: The only reasons I can think of is that the democracies possessed the means to defend themselves, or there was some undeveloped resources out in the boonies that made a shadow colony worthwhile. Typically, wealth and weapons go together, but they can separate under certain conditions. Either the fringe areas have a different basis to their economy that allows the development of military forces slowly over time (the Mongel Hordes in Space scenario) or there's alien tech out there that only a few well connected individuals know about (The Expanse).

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Attempted coup made enough of the remaining fleet switch sides to create a stalemate where forcing the issue would've been a Pyrrhic Victory?

Actually, now that you mention it, there is alien tech but it's in the hands of a third group consisting primarily of refugees who side with the nascent federation due to being in dire need of humanitarian aid. Their refusal to share said tech for valid reasons ultimately breaks down relations between the two down the line and the third party decide to go off as independent Space Nomads rather than pick sides.

Edited by amitakartok on May 14th 2022 at 12:13:59 PM

Here's an interesting quandary that I've run into. In the "present" time frame of my fictional near-future setting, the following supranational polities (or "suprapolities") exist in the region of Western Asia:

• Turan, born from the Organization of Turkic States and taking its name from the eponymous historical region. Includes the Central Asian states, Azerbaijan and a post-Erdoğanist Turkey.
• The Union of Miroslavian Republics, the aforementioned "pan-Slavist" superstate whose definition of "Slav" has been decoupled from ethnic ancestry.
• The Akhandian Confederation, a successor to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation that takes its name from the term Akhand Bharat (Akhand means "complete; whole; united; indivisible"), and which includes Myanmar and a post-Khomeinist Iran^note Iran has floated the possibility of joining SAARC, which India has expressed support for..
• A "greater Arabia" that was born from the ashes of the Arab League in the wake of a Second Arab Spring wave of revolutions that were much more successful in throwing off the yoke of the reigning dictatorships. Not a superstate, but rather a more EU-like union.

The fires of the Second Arab Spring, the counter-Khomeinist and counter-Erdoğanist revolutions overlapping in their time frames, however, had created an opportunity for the Kurds to rise up in Turkey and Iran, merging with the already existing Kurdish proto-states in Iraq and Syria to form a united Kurdistan.

And while I've initially included Armenia as a member state of Miroslavia due to its history as a former Soviet republic, ever since I split off the Turkic states that had been former Soviet republics into their own suprapolity and ran into the issue of connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey, I've been having second thoughts.

So the question here is this: Which of the aforementioned four suprapolities would it make sense for Armenia and a united independent Kurdistan to join?

• Armenia's choices: Turan, Miroslavia, Akhandia.
• Kurdistan's choices: Turan, Arabia^note You can justify this as a "special relationship" where Kurdistan is not a de jure member due to not being an Arab state (in terms of national identity, at least; Arabic had been a second language for Iraqi and Syrian Kurds), but in practice has all the benefits and duties of being one. Alternatively, the suprapolity in question touts itself as Middle Eastern rather than specifically pan-Arab., Akhandia.

The answer should fit with the following assumptions:

• From an objective POV, none of the suprapolities can be reliably said to be worse than the other, whether morally or in overall practical performance.
• On the "liberal democracy—open dictatorship" spectrum, all four suprapolities are roughly neck to neck and can be said to be liberal democracies on both the supranational and national levels.
• Whatever offers the suprapolities are dangling in front of the two countries are objectively more or less equally appealing in all considerations but the considerations of each one's physical geography (that is, which one offers better/worse opportunities for economic connectivity), politics, culture, ethnic composition and religious makeup.
• No, having Armenia and/or Kurdistan carved up between neighboring powers by either civil war or invasion is not an acceptable answer.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 16th 2022 at 12:04:48 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

"So the question here is this: Which of the aforementioned four suprapolities would it make sense for Armenia and a united independent Kurdistan to join?"

Geez, I don't know. I think you may have exceeded my ability to absorb and process detail. From your bullets, were I in charge of Armenia, I wouldn't fully join any of them, but sort of partner with all of them, playing them off one another and hoping to preserve my independence.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."