Friday, September 19, 2008

You will be assimilated

Marco's re-posting of my comments long-ago contrasting Australian and American democracy omits my conclusion, which was as follows:

From this I draw the conclusion that instead of trying to change our system with stupid constitutional referenda, we should be encouraging the US to adopt our system. We can pick Hawaii off pretty easily as state #7, and once we have taught them to play proper forms of football we can annex the West Coast as states #8,#9, #10, #11. We could get rid of the federation star and put a representation of Coma Berenices in the top right of the flag to represent the New Far Northern states. This will make more sense than building nuclear reactors in Australia, because they already have nuclear reactors in California.

I've pasted on the Ursa Major stars from the state flag of Alaska instead, conceding this is a more immediately recognisable Northern Hemisphere constellation, and can do double duty for the bear of the California Republic flag. The seven stars also replace the Federation star to symbolise the seven* states of Australia, while the five stars of the Southern Cross will also represent the five states of the Borealia part of the Federation.



* I have promoted the Northern Territory. Unfortunately, it will be necessary to relocate the Federal Capital to a more central location, such as Palmyra Atoll, so the current ACT will be resumed by New South Wales.

4 comments:

Marco Parigi said...

The conclusion was very highly Clamly but quite un-Marconomic as it stands, so I like your idea of expanding it here!

Marconomically, the shift in the geopolitical equilibrium required to actually imagine this happening is quite difficult. Of course there are key strategies that I have thought of that could move it to be a possibility.

If there is one thing to be learned from the Russians in Georgia it is this: that offering nationality/passports to citizens in places that you may intend to annex is a brilliantly effective strategy with no downside that I can think of.

Thus the evolutionary path for pacific islands is thus (guest worker visas, full working visas, easy Aus passports, full Aus citizenship, military "support", military "peacekeeping... etc.)

Marco Parigi said...

I, in no way find terminating the governor to be a likely way to succeed in annexing a province :(

Dr Clam said...

It is a great model, but I think the 'international community' will work to somehow nobble it after the Second Crimean War (er, let's say, March-May 2010).
It is terrible about the governor. :( I guess the downside of surrounding yourself with armed men, which is a necessity in these sort of places, is that they have to be *very* professional to avoid being shot as possible members of the other side by other groups of armed men protecting other people like you.

Dave said...

I suspect that between Pacific island bailouts and rising sea levels, we're probably less than 50 years away from becoming Greater Oceania (with NZ to become Oceania Minor).

And yeah, then it's one small step to annexe Hawaii - the US is going to be so strapped for cash that they'll let it go for a song and the promise that we won't shoot any more governors.

(I am being indefensibly flippant about the governor thing, which is hopefully not the appalling screwup it sounds like - and how come this hasn't been on the news? Did I miss it?)