Re: NAC - American style [LONG]

Now I don't want you to get me wrong or anything... I love my country,
and I most certainly don't like the idea of anything happening to make
it collapse or anything... God Bless the USA... but if you look
around... there's actually evidence to support such hypothetical
futures such as the one presented in JMT's setting...

For instance... consider the following....

Currently the majority of companies are finding it cheaper, and thus
easier to stay in business, to use foriegn labor... meaning the more
and more jobs are being shipped overseas. Making our belove country
more dependant on foriegn labor pools.... The only real job markets
that are thriving well in America are those that are tech or service
related... and many of those are being funneled overseas.... The
dependancy on those foriegn labor pools puts us at risk... if anything
should happen, from labor strikes to nuclear strikes, to that labor
pool, our economy could suffer a huge blow... Not only would you have
the obvious impact of companies that would suffer from not having
produced a product, but you'd also have to consider many of those
companies would probably face penalties for not delivering on
contracts, would would be more moeny they lose... and are they really
going to be able to recoup their costs from legal pursuit of these
foriegn labor pools? I think they'd lose evven more money....

Immigration from our northern (why Canadians would want to leave their
trees and come here is beyond me!)and southern borders seems vitually
unchecked. I mean, we even have a border policy that suspposedly
doesn't have an effect on people from the countries that share those
borders! As more and more of these imigrants come in, they have two
major impacts... first the elimination of jobs from the market... now
granted, most of these are jobs that most Americans don't want.... but
they are >need< jobs, and they aren't there for us when we need to have
them.... And because a large number of these immigrants are not here
legally, they aren't paying taxes... which means that the overall tax
base is smaller, which means that the government has to increase
taxes... and that means less money you keep, and more that you spend...

Now lets consider the current administration... I'm not Anti-Bush, and
I'm also not Pro-Bush.... But the simple fact is... we do have a major
portion of our forces deployed overseas... and with current events....
it looks like wew'll have even more going overseas.... add to this the
reports that recruiting isn't going very well for out services and
reserve services... it doesn't look good at all... it may come to a
point that the only real military we have still "in-country" are
militia units and a few national guard units.... This puts us in a very
bad position as far as giving appropriate defensive response to
elements of our infrastructure..... there's also another problem that
arises.... it seems that some states are responding to inadiquate
border policies with their our form of "anti-immigration" rules... and
while the idea of increased state-rule isn't necessarily a bad thing...
it does raise the possibility of such states being declared...
"rebelous".... requiring the need for martial law... that right there
would give you your opening stages of the 2nd American Civil War....
and with all of our troops overseas... and I highly doubt that the
local Guard and militia units would be up to the task (resource-wise
and moral-wise) of suppressing a fellow state... which would mean
having to ask for foriegn assistance... "at least until we could get
our own troops back home" which would mean foriegn occupation of true
american soil on a major scale, for the first time in how long? And how
easy do you really think it would be, and how long do you think it
would take for us to extract ourselves from the current messes we're
in?

--- John Brewer <JBrewer@webtv.net> wrote:

> I have two problems with the NAC as written up by Jon Tuffley - The
> rather confusing nomenclature of the ships as presented in FB1, and
> the
> future history which has the collapse of the US and the re-emergance
> of
> the British Empire.  I don't disparage the dream of a return to the
> days
> of colonial glory, and the idea of the US falling into a chaotic
> distopia is, to say the least, pragmatically amusing to some Brits,
> but
> it does come to seem a little insulting to American players, as well
> as
> somewhat less than believable, considering that our economy continues
> to
> grow, thanks to immigration - legal & otherwise - from South &
> Central
> America.  Besides, that sci-fi convention has been done to death
> since
> the late 70's.  It has also inspired many trivial debates on the List
> concerning American title peerage and whether or not the British
> military could put down an insurgency in America, let alone a
> potental
> insurgency in every country in the Western Hemisphere south of the
> 49th
> parallel.  

=====
Remember, even light is shaped by the darkness that surrounds it, and
the true crafters are seldom ever seen. Welcome to the shadows kid.

		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250