Last time you determined my general strategy for 8 years of game time, and clarified how humanity would expand into space it had already claimed. This time, you will determine the future progress of my entire campaign, including all the fiction I'm going to try to write about it, for 100 years or more. Your decision will be SO influential that you will, in fact, affect the very NAME of my campaign on this forum. This is not an election for the head of an already-established system with checks and balances and the like. now you get to decide which SYSTEM to introduce, from a near-dictatorship to a anarcho-capitalist utopia (or dystopia). Most importantly, last time, you got to make your decision based on a few snippets of dialog in answer to one question. This time, you get to ASK the questions. Seriously, post your questions below and I will answer them in the voices of these candidates, ignoring all the ones that in my opinion would break the flow of the story. I don't know how successful this experiment will be so if there's not a lot of activity I'll ask and answer my own questions, just like real politicians. This campaign has been played, on and off, for about half a year now.
This poll will stay open for 25 earth days, and you can change your vote at any time.
History from 2020 to 2123It's been a slow climb to the stars for humanity. In 2025, the "aurora program" became the first truly international space program, an attempt by Russia, the United States, and the European Union to build 3 long ranged, piloted spacecraft. In 2027 humanity returned to the moon aboard the "Altair" and from there, they moved beyond to comets and asteroids in close range. Mars was reached aboard the "Aurora" and "Ariel" in late 2029.
In the 2030s the UN began a series of broad reforms and global megaprojects under the blanket term "Lasting Peace Project," The project had some dramatic successes, vastly reducing the cost of energy and establishing a minimum income system which is still in place today. However, it failed utterly in its most important goal of global disarmament. By the 2040s, two distinct world powers had emerged which were vying for global dominance, and refusing to comply with the wishes of the UN: the "China Sphere," composed of China, The Democratic Republic of Korea, the Republic of Taiwan, and Japan, and NATO-Russo, a board military alliance containing most NATO member states and Russia. War between these two powers was absolutely unthinkable, but political and economic obstruction between them was a daily occurrence. Most critically, certain EU states were unwilling to share the "transnewtonian" secrets discovered by their hypercyclotron facilities, which no other nation could duplicate. Throughout the 2040s, the position of "Director" of the lasting peace project became a political football, hotly contested by states on both sides of the divide, and "lesser nations" that sought the international power of the position. All in all, while the UN made great strides in the 2040s, including forays beyond the astroid belt and beyond, they were far too weak to face their first real crisis.
In 2046, the EU broke from both the NATO-Russo political concordance, on the subject of sharing Transnewtonian secrets. For 5 years, the "director" of the lasting peace project transitioned daily between factions sympathetic to the EU or the rest of NATO-Russo, with the China Sphere waiting anxiously on the sidelines, never quite asserting meaningful control. For most of this time, the directorship was held either by Ivanova Kuzmin, a former russian energy tychoon with a famously optomistic, utopian outlook, and Frederic Crevecoeur, a brilliant scientist from the European Union with a decidedly more cynical view. The feud between these two dominated world affairs in the late 2040s, and the UN lost all but its most ceremonial powers in 2051.
The 2050s were marked by a series of horrific, non-nuclear ground wars, mostly between Russia and China, which culminated in the "black year" of 2055, where most major world powers were threatening violence while putting down bloody revolutions at home. We have very little political information from this time period. Sometime in late fall of 2055, Crevecoeur was killed by a close aide, and a russian transatmospheric battle wing disarmed most orbital nuclear platforms in a 3 hour action now remembered as the "Battle of the Blue Axis" By 2056, Kuzim and her NATO-Russo allies had reinstituted the directorship and established it as, effectively, an autocratic entity in charge of most worldwide energy production, and all space-based infrastructure.
The "Kuzmin Directorship" lasted more than 30 years, and their historiography is bitterly contested. It's simply an objective fact that the quality of life on earth massively improved under Kuzmin, though it's known that this came at the cost of slightly diminished civil liberties and local government control. Nations retained their sovereignty, but found themselves dependent on Kuzmin and the close circle of space-based corporations (most importantly the Patel group) in order to expand offworld. Under Kuzmin, colonies were established on mars and titan, and transnewtonian technology was applied to virtually every industry. As the technology became more common, stranger uses were developed. Chinese Scientist Tam Mei Lin "Accidentally" discovered its ability to instantly move objects vast distances instantaneously in 2064, but he believed it had only microscopic applications, and it took a close partnership with NATO-Russo scientists to apply the technology to spacecraft. By 2080, the "First Light" became the first ship to jump to another star system, and Mars was green.
Kuzmin had initially promised to hold power for only 25 years, but as "jump drives' became a reality, she saw their potential to further fracture the United Nations. Initially, she simply requested a 5 year extension, but this proved unpopular and lead to small revolutions. so, rather than simply re-institute the newly-empowered UN and turn the lasting peace infrastructure over to whoever took power, she chose to run as a candidate for secretary general, winning by a narrow margin and buying herself four more years of power under the newly established "United Nations of Earth". When even that did not grant her the time she needed to establish interstellar colonies to her satisfaction, she resigned but turned the majority of her power over to Lura Sorokin, a close political ally. In the face of mounting instability, especially on mars, where most of her ardent opponents had taken up residence, Kuzmin handed over all control of the Lasting Peace infrastructure to the United Nations of earth and forbid most members of her circle from running. Nevertheless, the next two presidents were from the NATO-russo sphere of influence as well. It wasn't until 2106 that viable factions emerged to finally dismantle NATO-Russo control over the planet.
NATO-Russo never really bounced back after 2100. Scandal after Scandal emerged after the government opened up. They had suppressed the discovery of alien ruins in the last 2090s, taken great pains to develop "planet killing" high-radiation nuclear weapons in secret laboratories on mars, and suppressed the development of offworld colonies by nations politically opposed to the united states and russia. Kuzmin, once seen as a visionary utopian, was now seen as a dangerous dictator. She was never seen publicly after 2098. By 2102, there were no viable NATO-Russo candidates for any major world office.
The two candidates that emerged in 2102 defined the next few decades of political discourse: Mitchell Powell, a young martian-born polymath, became a poster child for off-world development and decreased national sovreignty. Powell's vision was to massively develop offworld colonies into "second earths" each under the control of world governments without loyalty to the central UN. Powell also advocated for increased deep-space exploration and the expansion of Humanity's meager research infrastructure. He envisioned whole "Laboratory worlds" and massive, 25,000 ton science vessels venturing up to 100 light-years away from earth, chasing whoever had built the ruins on teegarden's star. His opponent, Felipe Almanza Coronado, was much more practically minded. A career politician, he knew the fragile state of the post-kuzmin UN, and wanted to take dramatic steps to assure that the wars of the 2050s would never happen again. Corornado wanted to create a massively powerful "United Nations Fleet" that no individual nation could hope to oppose in space combat. He also hoped to create a powerful, central government on earth and leave the colonies in deep space to develop under the hand of sovereign nations. Most importantly, he wanted to discourage offworld expansion in favor of further developing earth, humanity's natural home. Both candidates accused the other of furthering Kuzmin's dreams of absolute, autocratic and regimented world power...but ultimately the public found Powell's message more convincing...at least at first. The Powell administration was politically disastrous. First contact was made with the beings that had built the strange complex found on teegarden's star...but they were far from friendly. Colonies, massively developed under Powell, began to demand independence and break down into violent land wars between homesteaders and greedy colonial powers. In 2106 coronado won by a very large margin on the promise of protecting earth and her colonies from the alien menace, and began putting together a fleet to do exactly that.
Coronado easily won re-election in 2110 on this same campaign promise, and almost immediately afterward Humanity won several decisive deep-space battles against the "Clan remnant" the robotic beings menacing humanity at the edge of explored space...however, by 2114 his record had begun to tarnish. As humanity learned more about the remnant, they came to understand that Coronado had acted rashly and sacrificed human lives needlessly in order to dominate, and discover the secrets of, robotic beings that had no interest except mechanical defense of a few worthless systems. Coronado ran for a third term in 2114 (still against powell) and only narrowly won re-election for a third term. During this time, humanity made contact with another race in the constellation Cassiopoea. We still do not know much about this "Commune of Achird" but their intentions, while mysterious, seem friendly, or at least non-hostile. Coronado's political luster continued to diminish at the close of the 2110's: he never truly accepted the Commune as an ally. Researchers on Teegarden II, acting under his orders, activated robotic ground forces of the clan remenant that had lain dormant for 600,000 years, leading to the death of a million colonists and the last military action in the now resolved "clan war"
With several political controversies about to explode at once (see below) Coronado resigned, and dissolved most of the organs of UN governance. In his stead, the united nations appointed the Bureaucratic and steadfastly apolitical Long Hua Yun to power. Under Yun's management private industry and global innovation are returning, having grown stagnant under Coronado's three and a half terms of near-martial law, however, Yun knows he cannot reign for long...and his term of office, which ends at the stroke of midnight on December 30th, 2123, cannot be renewed by UN law. In December of 2122, delegates from every nation and planet have gathered in New York to, ideally, construct a system better able to accommodate humanity's expansion to the stars. Here's what they're fighting over:
Terriformed ColoniesEarth (sol)
Population: 2.1 Billion
Geopolitical breakdown: 50% NATO-Russo, 20% China Sphere, 15% African Union, 15% Brazil
Earth is still home to the bulk of humanity's space-based manufacturing, military installations, research facilities, and economic centers. However, it is totally dependent on other colonies (in fact, other systems) for transnewtonian materials. Earth is the only large world where the NATO-Russo alliance still holds majority power.
Mars (sol)
Population:2.1 Billion
Geopolitical breakdown: 33% Brazil, 33% China Sphere, 33% African Union
Mars is a warm, dry, yet verdant world which has nearly matched earth's population and agricultural output. Political motivations of the Patel corporation and several UN presidents have dramatically stutent mars' growth, and the development of mars is the most politically contentious issue of 2123.
Monticello (epsilon eradini)
Population: 1.3 billion
Geopolitical breakdown: 40% Brazil, 40% EU, 10% Japan, %10 India
Monticello is a cool mountainous world with abundant mineral wealth, home to many extremely powerful manufacturing and mining barons, and the last of the old EU powerbrokers. Monticello, unlike mars, has a surplus of raw materials that would make it much easier for the colony to become truly self-sufficient. Monticello's commercial importance made it the home of powerful pirate factions in the 2000s, but those broke apart in the late years of the Kuzmin directorship and are now mostly legends....mostly. Monticello is situated at a crucial halfway-point between the commune of Achird's homeworld and earth.
Tiamat (Tau Ceti)
Population: 24 Million
Geopolitical breakdown: 33% Japan,33% China Sphere, 33% india
Tiamat is a hot, stormy world almost entirely covered in water. It's a truly alien place which takes nearly 2 months to reach from earth by the fastest ships out there. The oceans abound with spectacular barrier reefs which merge seamlessly with artificial, mountain-sized duranium mining derricks. Storm systems on Tiamat grow to the size of continents and persist for decades, and its art-deco cities are virtual pleasure palaces of the super-rich, who reign like old nobility with almost absolute power. Tiamat is expected to grow rapidly over the next few decades but is currently largely unclaimed and undeveloped.
Unterriformed coloniesTitan (sol)
Population: 319 Million
Geopolitical breakdown: 25% Japan, 25% China Sphere, 25% African Union, 25% Mexico and Central American Affiliates
Titan was colonized early by Kuzmin dissidents but its political makeup has changed dramatically since then. Currently it is populated by professional spacers and boasts a large research population anxious for more research centers.
Luna (sol)
Population: ~100 million
Geopolitical breakdown: None
Luna is legally an apolitical zone, effectively a waystation to the stars. Its population is mostly transient and only about 10 million people live there permanently. Its population is mostly temporary tourists or stopovers bound for grander worlds.
Euphrates (proxima centauri)
Population: 82 million
Geopolitical breakdown: 33% Nato-Russo, 33% Brazil, 33% Mexico and Central american affiliates
Euphrates started as a mining colony, but grew into a powerful planet-sized military installation as kuzmin, and later coronado, filled the old mines with research facilities and massive spacedocks. Euphrates is an airless rock, far too small to have a meaningful gravitational field. That and its mineral abundance make it an ideal location for large-spacecraft manufacturing, but it will never truly be a self-sufficient world.
Tolkien (Wolf 359)
Population: 9 Million
Geopolitical breakdown: 40% England, 40% Ireland, 20% France
Colonized recently after the breakup of the earth-based European Union, Tolkien is a mining colony and currently nothing more, though Powell and several of his political descendents dream of terriforming tolkien and turning it into another great, self-sufficient world.
Vadim (Ross 154)
Population: 8 million
Geopolitical breakdown: 100% Nato-Russo
Vadim is nothing more than a collection of military bases on a cold, distant world. Top secret, alien research is conducted here, as NATO scientists pick over the remains scavenged during the campaigns against the clan remnant.
Mediterranean (Alpha Centauri)
Population: 3.5 million
Geopolitical breakdown: 33% African Union, 33% India, 33% central asian combine state
Mediterranea is another recently-colonized world, and hasn't very much to offer. It's considered unterriformable and exists merely as a base of operations for miners digging up the asteroid-rich alpha centauri system.
Political IssuesThere are of course a great many issues for political discussion, but most of the political disputes that currently exist involve modulating between extremes on a three-axis political spectrum:
Statism vs. Globalism: When space colonization began, the UN did not hold much power over its member nations. Even during the Kuzmin directorship, Kuzmin was only able to maintain power by appeasing UN member nations through the apportionment of colonies on newly discovered worlds. As it stands, each colonized world is a patchwork of territories controlled by different nations, many of which have competing interests. Colonists on offworld colonies are themselves divided on whether they are, for example "Japanese" or "Monticellan". "statist" politicians want to preserve national sovereignty on earth and on offworld colonies, some statists even want to return to the kuzmin days when some nations had independent space navies. Globalists want a stronger UN Government in order to decrease factionalism and preserve world peace.
Colonists vs. Independents: At present, Earth is massively well-developed while most offworld colonies are perfectly-terraformed untamed wilds. The dominant economic model over the last century has been quite similar to 18th-century mercantilism: Raw materials are mined offworld and transported to earth, where they are assembled into finished products (most crucially, civilian and military spacecraft, and trade goods). While many powerful interests are totally invested in this model, it has been increasingly difficult to maintain as humans have migrated offworld. Earth and Mars both have a population of 2.1 billion, and Monticello, close behind, has a population of 1.3 billion. Colonists want to maintain the primacy of earth, the natural home of humanity and by far the most hospitable world located. They fear interstellar war would follow from allowing other colonies to develop to their fullest extent. Independents want a degree of autonomy granted to offworld colonies, though they are often divided on how this is best accomplished. Old school independents like Mitchell Powell believe this is best accomplished through massive investment and development on earth, while newer independents embrace a libertarian philosophy: simply remove earth's meddling, outmoded rules and the colonies will develop themselves.
Individualists vs. Corporatists: For the past century humanity has struggled with something now called the "Regimentation problem"...interstellar politics is demanding training and workforce participation that the old-world economic models cannot support. "Corporatists" want to run society more like a business, or an army, where individual workers have less autonomy but are well cared for, and well compensated, for their time. Kuzmin demonstrated quite effectively that slightly limiting civil rights can produce enormous technological and economic gains under the right ruler. Individualists, highly skeptical of this philosophy, believe Kuzmin, and to a lesser extent, Powell, advocated oppressive policies which border on tyranny. They want to preserve the idealistic, enlightenment-era political ideal of the primacy of free choice and self determination.
Political systems you'll be voting on United Nations of Earth (nationalist, Colonist, Individualist)
Representative: Grace Francis
This is the established political order, and grace francis is an establishment politician. She has effectively "Governed" earth at Coronado's right hand since 2106 and is massively popular on Earth, Titan, Euphrates, and Mediterranea. Under the Francis administration, very little would change: offworld colonies would develop slowly, sending their mineral wealth back to earth to be turned into spacecraft and infrastructure that would keep the peace on earth, ideally forever. Nations would retain their sovereignty but would not be permitted to manufacture space navies, and ideally they would have nothing to fight over anyway. Francis' supporters see her as the continuation of a successful, earth-focused tradition going back more than a century. Her opponents see her as an establishment leech, benefiting off the sweat and toil of subservient off-world colonies, or worse, as simply a puppet that will allow the Coronado administration to maintain power.
Concordance of Worlds (Globalist, Independent, Individualist)
Representative: Leopoldo Fransa
Fransa represents a new way of thinking largely born of the rise of brazil and mexico as major interstellar powers (largely thanks to their spacefighter technology). Fransa is a student of the controversial "Shah Doctrine" after the UN Space Navy's most venerable admiral. Advocates of the Shah doctrine believe that the last century has demonstrated the only real power a sovreign needs is uncontested control of an overwhelmingly powerful space navy. Under Fransa, colonies would be left to their own devices, freed from parasitic earth-based bureaucracies. Instead of electing distant administrators and representatives, control of each world will be local, and all citizens will have a hand in electing members of a five-member council...which will be at the hands of an even more powerful space navy than the one that is currently in operation. The concordance will maintain control merely by having a monopoly on space power, and Fransa believes this can be done ethically without government overreach, as military history has demonstrated that spacecraft cannot control planets effectively without simply killing everyone. Fransa is extremely popular on monticello and among some of the naval and scientific elite. His supporters see him as an idealist and a visionary, while his detractors see him as a nationalistic warlord more concerned with inflating the power of Brazil than bettering humanity.
Free Worlds/Free Stars (Independent, Individualist)
Representative: Xie Song Bo
Xie is a hard-line libertarian, some might even call him an anarchist, however, he is massively popular virtually everywhere the china sphere holds influence. Xie sees world governments of all kinds as intrinsically evil, and particularly detests the governments of NATO-Russo, he sees the UN as a NATO puppet and advocates absolute local sovereignty for each colony. Under a Xie administration, each colony would be totally independent, free to develop its own armies and navies, and sell or distribute its resources as it sees fit. Mars, Monticello and Tolkien would likely develop rapidly and could have their own space navies within a decade. Xie's supporters see his philosophy as the key to ending a century-long, bloody struggle between world governments and the UN. His opponents believe that, if carried out, his extreme form of libertarianism will lead to millions of deaths as colonies find themselves unable to support colonists without a central bureaucracy...and millions more may perish in the event of an interstellar civil war.
The Directorship (Globalist, Colonist, Corporatist)
Representative: Scott Thompson
Thompson represents the latest incarnation of the "Directorship" philosophy that first arose under Kuzmin in the 2050s. The idea is simply to structure all of human society like a massive open-ended research project, with a small group of experts in power and a single executive officer at the head with incredible power. Under the thompson administration, offworld colonies would expand very rapidly, thanks to support from Earth's industry and research. Virtually the entire human population would be put to work in construction, education, or pure research. Humanity would advance very fast, though possibly at the expense of individual self-determination (thompson is enlightened enough to know this is a terrible, though necessary, sacrifice). Thompson would, if elected, serve for a ten year term during which he would have personal control over virtually all human power generation, information transfer capability, and military might. Thompson is certainly the most ambitious of the politicians who may emerge as humanity's leader, but obviously his plan is the most dramatic. His supporters see him as advocating a path to transcendence and mastery over the entire cosmos. His detractors see him as the enemy of all human freedom and individuality, a tyrant waiting to happen.Thompson is massively popular on Mars and Tiamat.
NATO-Russo (Nationalist, Colonist, Individualist)
Representative: Eduard Nazarov
Nazarov is a political relic, a mid-level politician in nearly every administration for the last 30 years, the last NATO-Russo politician with a shot at winning. As time has gone on, NATO-Russo has grown more and more insular, and less and less powerful. They are still a force to be reckoned with: their states have the most advanced technology, the most sophisticated power grids, and the largest corporations...but their influence offworld is basically zero, and politically they are connected with the worst excesses of the Kuzmin and Coronado administrations. Nazarov is openly advocating a worldwide coup, where NATO member nations sieze back the reigns of power and rebuilt the once great Lasting Peace project. His supporters see him as, basically, Kuzmin reborn, destined to bring humanity back to the glory days of the 2070s. His detractors see him as a petty dictator with no chance of winning, and question why he is running in the first place.
Poll
