Lonan said:
[
You basically want one world government, and think it should be the U.S. principles. The United States has utterly neglected to do anything about greenhouse gas emissions, and literally half the American population does not think it is caused by humans. The centre of the denialism effort has been from American interests. Very successful American interests. This is a country where 31 out of 50 states voted against gay marriage. Keep away from Canada, because we believe in real freedom, not just "whatever words it takes to get what I want" freedom. Freedom from the British, not real freedom and Liberty like Canada has. You are against us becoming stronger because you want to conquer us. As for this being a real dispute over video game development, no one really cares about video games in either Parliament. It's not a real issue, it's a minor disagreement that was soon forgotten.
You're musing about space aliens is absurd. There is a one in 1 000 000 000 000 000 chance of a planet having all the ingredients for life which earth has. If there's another like it, it's too far away for anyone to ever travel to earth. Anything alien would probably be a probe that would take centuries to transmit back it's data. And that's given the hugely unlikely chance that they could even find us. It's incredibly hard to see planets because of the brightness of it's star. Finding earth would be hard enough, much less having the will to send a probe to get to it in centuries.
Increased population is generally a bad thing, but American imperialism is a bad thing as well, can we agree on that? Most of the increase would be through immigration. If Canada could get it's population growth to replacement (2.1) rather than the 1.66 it currently is, that would be fine with me. Even 2.0 would be enough, but I don't want the population to have to be replaced by immigrants. I am very pro-immigration, but anything below 2.0 disturbs me. Canada is improving in many more ways than just video games. Let me put it this way, are you for that, or against it?
*edit*
My accusations that you want to conquer Canada were uncalled for. I wish to withdraw, but leave the original here for honesty's sake. Also, I am not having trouble understanding you, so don't worry about that. If we could discuss WWII (whatever you were thinking of there) I would be okay with that.
Argueing too many specifics would derail the arguement. I will say that "space aliens" have next to nothing to do with it, that's only a side point. The major issue is space exploration for the aquisition of more resources and living space. Something that is impossible with the world divided into seperate nations. Simply put there is too much paranoia about what various nations are going to put into orbit (a lot of people currently worry about that), not to mention bickering over those resources and colonization itself. Seriously putting up moon bases, terraforming mars and mining mars (we have the technology actually), and similar things are out of the question as long as the world remains divided. Without expansion we will run out of resources and die out, perhaps millions of years later when the sun dies, but it will happen.
I'll also be frank in saying that if you read what I'm saying (if I wrote it properly) is that conquest is the last resort. Yes it WILL come to that in some cases I'm sure, but the idea is to unify as much of the planet as possible through the spread of ideas to minimize the number of people who would have to be wiped out. Ideally you wouldn't have to kill anyone, but with the clock ticking options are of course limited. The overall point being that if and when it came to that, even if billions of people die a world unity is worth it since even more people will benefit over countless generations from the results.
Most hypothetical writing about the future, and sociological analysis agrees with me. In speculative fiction however a magical "disaster" is brought out to remove the need for any kind of dubious action on the part of humanity. A plague, scientific accident, or other things that reduce the population and force people to unify for survival. Lacking such a "happy" occurance, humanity will need to be unified through human action without any X-factors.
When it comes to modern politics I by and large tend to oppose anything that throws up more walls between nations, encourages excessive nationalism, or thoughts of "independance at any price". Canada not being alone in this. I am not a world leader, or anyone who makes desicians (which I'm sure many are thankful for) I'm simply someone who views things in a "big picture" kind of way and expresses my views in the futile hope that enough people will agree with me (and others who think like me) that we can "beat the clock" so to speak and stop dooming outselves.
-
As far as American "follies" go, a lot of that comes down to opinion. It's important to note that when it comes to things like "gay rights" that's what freedom is all about, the abillity of people as a whole to make desicians and for the majority to get what they are comfortable with. This is incidently one of the very reasons why I think this could work on a global scale because for good or ill it comes down to everyone getting a say in what transpires, even if they don't get what they want. Most other systems that are prominant enough to even have an off chance of unifying the planet don't have this advantage.
Before you get into semantics you'll notice I talk about "American Principles" and not the American goverment itself, which I feel will dissolve. What's more assuming something similar to our representitive republic is established globally it probably won't be people from what was America calling most of the shots, especially in the long run. Ironically once the principles are accepted by the odds we'll probably see most major cantidates being voted in from regions like Asia simply going by numbers and the population. Food for thought.
I'll also comment on the fact that I think one of the problems the US faces is global ignorance, combined with the perception that the US are the ignorant ones. A lot of people internationally think they enjoy far more in the way of information and freedom of the press than they actually do.
In the case of things like greenhouse gasses, global warming, and other things I think that ironically the US is probably the best informed on the issue. A lot of people like to simplify the issue by claiming that US business interests claim that the issues don't exist. There are those aspects, but at the same time there are a lot of competing theories including a fairly well grounded one that argues that global warming might not be a bad thing. You might have heard comments over the years here and there about how the US is overdue for an ice age. The earth not just rotating around the sun but doing so in slowly expanding and contracting paths that moves it closer and further away in an absolute sense. When it starts to move further away over millenia it of course cools. Evidence supporting this theory has been found in various places, and this is what a lot of the junk about "core ice samples" and such comes down to. The basic point being that things like greenhouse gasses raising the temperature and trapping heat have prevented the planet from freezing, and ultimatly preserved human life. Guys like Larry Niven have written science fiction on the subject, Niven's book "Fallen Angels" is ultimatly about this, and he goes into the facts he based it on in some detail in the afterwards of the story, explaining that it could be considered "science fact" rather than a story of fiction.... the point here is not so much that I believe that verbatim, but that the theory actually has as much weight behind it as "OMG we're going to kill ourselves with global warming and the greenhouse effect". By some theories we kill ourselves from heat, by others we cut the heat and we freeze ourselves to death and die the way the Dinosaurs presumably did (ie their ice age was a naturally occuring phenomena). Right now there might be problems, but things are relatively stable, and I generally agree with the consensus that rolling those dice right now without more information is a bad idea. People around the world hear less about this kind of thing, and on top of that one has to remember that there are economic concerns behind a lot of this because if the US was to conform more to some of the standards people around the world want, it would wind up costing us money while boosting their revenues and opening up oppertunities for them. We slow production of a product, someone else picks up the slack and makes the money. People can talk about American greed since we're the dominant world power (the big guys always get picked on) but the same thing works in reverse with people wanting to believe what is going to wind up benefitting them.
I went into more detail here than I wanted to, but the point of the above rant is simply that it's another reason why I feel a global unity is needed. When it comes to big issues everyone has their own spin on things depending on what is going to benefit them. Remove national competition and you'll see less bias in research on things like Global Warming, businesses will have stakes in things of course, but without competing goverments in the equasion as well it should gradually even out somewhat.
