u/colepercy120

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This isn't saying Canada shouldn't integrate with Europe; they are a free country and have a right to make whatever alliances they want. But I wanted to move past the ideation and praise and actually look at what this would entail.

As a baseline assumption, I am going to say that the "end goal" would be to make the EU as important a trade partner as the US for Canada. That's a much more achievable goal than total separation from the US and seems to be closer to what Canada actually wants. We also don't know yet what "Associate Membership" in the EU means either, so we don't really know what Europe wants in exchange. so this is by nature going to be pretty vague. There are bound to be a lot more issues than I can foresee, and there's a chance that at least some of the issues I see won't be as important.

The first thing I'll touch on is shipping costs. Right now, to ship a container from Canada to the US, it will cost you between 1000 and 4,000 USD, depending on where you're starting and ending. And it will take between a day and 2 weeks. Getting from Canada to mainland Europe takes between 2 weeks and a month for the East Coast, and several months from the West Coast. while costing between 4000 and 9000 USD To make that competitive in time and cost you will need massive subsidies to get companies to import from Europe instead of the closer and cheaper North American system (USA, Mexico, Central America). The government will have to pay for at least half the cost, probably more to account for time.

Which brings us to Shipping Volumes. Right now, Canada and the US trade roughly 850 million tons of freight per year, with the vast majority overland. Canada's East Coast Ports can handle a total of 76 Million Tons. That means they would need to increase by a factor of 5 to directly compete with the US on volume. And that’s not counting specialized infrastructure like pipelines from Alberta's oil fields to the East Coast for shipping.

The Final thing I want to look at is the regulatory burden and other non-direct commercial factors. Canada is in the same time zone as the US. While the EU is 6 hours ahead. In a normal 8-hour workday, there won't be much overlap for conferences. The EU runs on an entirely different electrical grid standard. This means all electronics produced for Europe will require an adapter to be used in Canada; and food safety standards are totally different, with Europe being much stricter and more protectionist. There will be dozens to hundreds of these little headaches to get Canada Integrated.

In total, integrating into the EU system will not be a simple, quick fix for Canada's economic issues; it will cost trillions to bring all of this together, and while it is a good idea to try to lessen dependence on any single trade partner, this won't be done fast and isn't really something that will happen before Trump leaves office. Really, it probably won't happen until trumps successor leaves office.

This is something that gets thrown around alot, especially on one of my earlier posts about the median US wealth. the general beleif is that Europe is a better place to live and than america despite the US being richer. and unfortianetly that just doesn't hold up when you look at the numbers

Starting off with the gold standard of quality of life stats, the Human Development Index. The US has an HDI of 0.938, while the EU average HDI is 0.915. while if you expand it to all european countries the Average falls to 0.898. while there are outliers in europe that do rank higher than the us, there are far more european countries who fall below it. (for additional Info, canada is essentially tied with the us)

If you don't like Human Development Index, the median per capita income (adjusted for PPP and considering Taxes and Transfers) for the EU is $26,909 while america is at $46,625. around 73% higher. While the Price Level Index puts the US at 44% more expensive than the EU, meaning Americans have roughly 20% more income adjusted for cost of living, after accounting for EU social safety nets. The conclusion is simple: despite the general wisdom, Europe is not a better place to live than the US.

Sources:

1: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks

2: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2024/06/society-at-a-glance-2024_08001b73/full-report/component-12.html#indicator-d1e8404-8cd0a55a48

3: https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/data

Ill get right into the numbers here, current GDP for China and America are 20 and 32 trillion USD, respectively. Over the last 10 years chinas GDP has grown on average about 1 trillion USD a year, while America has grown on average about 1.3 Trillion USD over the same period. Right now america is growing faster than china and is still roughly 50% larger. China is definitely on track to beat Europe's GDP here quick. (Europe has a current gdp of 23 trillion and is averaging about 600 billion USD increase a year) but even if we assume these current rates remain constant china would roughly match the us economy by 2100. But current growth rates are not likely to remain constant.

I think chinas demographic crisis is well known, but based on current UN estimates, Chinas population is projected to fall to around 600 million by the end of the century, a drop of little over 1/2, while americas population growth is projected to stay relatively constant and end the century at around 400 million people. Population collapses on this scale has caused an economic collapse in every historical example i was able to find. There is no reason to expect this to be any different. Chinas population has already peaked, and its now guaranteed that for the next 25 years the workforce will shrink every year.

In my personal opinion it is likely that china peaked during covid. Now china is losing ground realtive to the USA. And the ideal point to start a conflict was in 2021 or 2022 (hence why russia started the ukraine war, it was the peak of their power) and now every year china only gets weaker.

Sources:

1: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most\_recent\_value\_desc=true&locations=CN-US

2: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/india-china-europe-and-the-united-states-are-on-very-different-population-paths

Hi, does anyone know what the current projects Webber is working on? To end in fire ended on a cliff hanger and ive heard nothing about a follow up or sequel since it released. I know about "a call to deception" coming out next year, but is there anything else in the pipeline?

This is just something I noticed on a reread, the benton y rameriz family is credited with inventing prolong, and we know that the oldest humans are right around 125, with Allison's mother being listed as one of the earliest recipients. So does this mean that honors grandparents were on the team that invented prolong? Or atleast her grandparents? Its never directly brought up but seems to be a logical conclusion.

Playing ranked is really disheartening and annoying when losing against players ranked above you drops you by 30 instead of 10, I figure this is a start of the season change, but going from mid platinum to low gold in 6 sets feels terrible and im unsure if I really want to play more until its all settled again.

Im from the Midwest, and I think most post apocalypses tend to either ignore the region or make it essentially a no man's land without much going on. And im hoping afterworld can give the region some more attention.

The Midwest and Great Plains are by far the world's single most productive agricultural region. Even without modern fertilizer and farming techniques, the state of iowa alone can produce enough corn to feed 50 million people. With modern techniques and technology the state can easily feed the entire us, in addition to its raw agricultural potential the entire region is connected by the largest series of navigable rivers in the world, about twice the length of the next 2 or 3 systems put together. This has always been one of the core strengths of the us, easy interconnectedness and plentiful food. And given the environment of the post war us it would be one of the best places for civilization to survive or reemerge. (The mid west was already the place where the largest settled pre-Columbian societies lived)

I am hoping that the devs acknowledge the regions importance instead of just focusing on the coasts like every other post apocalypse. The midwest is the heartland, and it would be far more strategically important than the east or west coasts. Imagine a string of riverine cities either biult after the fall or were surviving remnants of Omaha, Minneapolis or Des Moines, or a rump state of the US ruling over moderately sized populations based out of chicago. The great plains are a lot like the western Eurasian steepe and could easily support a mix of settled people's and nomadic hordes in the vast plains. It potentially could be the most important interesting region in the game, if the devs give it attention.

Something Ive been thinking about is why Manticore never joined the league when the junction was discovered. In MA the league hasnt really gone bad yet, OFS doesnt exist and we're still in the period where the solarian league is still being run honestly. The junction puts manticore effectively 40ly away from the homeworld, well within the solarian core space. Over time as manticore integrated further into the solarian economy and the junction rose up to be the most important economic node in the galaxy why didn't the league try to get manticore to sign on. They had the financial power and the local autonomy provided to all member systems would make the prospect of joining attractive.

Im rereading the solarian arc of time series (along with the side series) and im reminded just how little time actually passes. From First New Tuscany to The battle of Sol is only about 14 months. A lot happens in that time, but it's still only 14 months.

Yet the league goes from tech roughly matching manticore at the start of the series (though most was still outdated) to having pods and mdms, and in the most recent book they are said to be developing podnaughts, carriers, and getting good ftl comms working. That tech took manticore and haven decades to create, and the league got decent enough tech in little over a year.

So if honor never went to earth and took down the mandrins, how much longer could the GA have lasted before the league started throwing thousands of podnaughts at them?

And honestly in the post war galaxy how long do you think the GAs edge on the league will last? They still probably have more industrial power than everyone else put together, delt with all the identified institutional issues we've seen, and started their rearmmament program.

Something I think could be a cool feature for Afterworld is some sort of "Fallen empire" similar to stellaris. There are many groups or places that could survive an apocalypse pretty much unscathed, or could produce enough food to maintain pre apocalypse populations. For example Iowa alone produces enough corn to feed the entire us currently, even accounting for no fertilizer or modern farming practices they could still feed about 58 million people. Having some surviving states and provinces that could be maintaining pre apocalypse tech and populations would be both realistic (who nukes iowa?) And would serve as good challenges for late game players.