Would America collapse under the weight of mass exodus?

Imagine we discover warp drive. Imagine we can get to another Earth-like planet in a week. Imagine what would happen to the US Government.

Many people who support the government would leave. The people who have a voice to change something whether it is due to poverty or need for justice or want for the illicit would have a greater voice at the discovery of a new colonizable planet then any group. Just after the first wave of warp ships built left San Francisco the nation would turn to itself and do a inventory. Many lawyers, politicians, enforcers, among others all went to the new planet to gain a sense of starting fresh. The question lies in the remaining portion of the USA. The people who couldn't afford moving out are the only ones left and its their decision on the future of the United States of America. The choice is yours.

If you were one of the few left on Earth, would you uphold every USA law and enforcement method, or do you predict the country would collapse and revolution would take place?

Personally, I think the oppressed class would start and win a revolution at that time.

reply to post by ChefSlug


There are so many factors to take into consideration. Is there still a strong military presence controlled by what's left of the government? Do the oppressed classes have access to the technology required to wage a revolution? That being said, in this hypothetical situation, there would be no option other than massive change and reform in the structure of this nation/country. I can only imagine what the outcome would be... it is still humans trying to agree on the way things should be.

reply to post by ChefSlug


Christian Fundies would seize any opportunity to eliminate the US Constitution and create a Theocracy.
As long as I draw breath, I'll be on the other side of that deal.

First of all, I'm not entirely sure that that many Americans who are disenfranchised would go, and I'm talking about the ones that could not afford it in the first place.

In other parts of the world, such as Dubai, workers from different countries are brought in with promises galore. And when they get there, they quickly realize that they are going to be sleeping in little better than cargo containers on bare floors with no insulation and no padding. They are worked forever, and sometimes are royally screwed even on what little pay they were expecting.

I can see a very similar situation happening in the case of a planetary exodus. The corporations would be the new governments, pure and simple. You would be under their rule of thumb. Think company stores. Think your children going to company provided schools. Think EVERYTHING about the bottom dollar.

So, all of this being said....particularly once some reports started filtering back as to the work conditions, I don't think the typical American would go for such a thing. Think of it, how many Americans are swimming across the rio grande? Crowding into boats. Etc ?

I think plenty of people who aren't afraid of hard work would leave and hope that the soft entitlement minded folks would stay behind. Maybe, a lot of the red state types who want bare constitutional type governance without a nanny state would go and do the hard work of making the place liveable, and yes, groups who feel that they are not being allowed to live the way they want to live, i.e. not allowed to live freely.

These are the people who left Europe to come to the New World in the first place.

These would be the same types who would leave all over again. The strong, the self-reliant, the ones not afraid to make something new and take risks.

And those of you who don't want to live that way can stay here and make what you will of what has already been built. I'm sure you'll have paradise and Utopia in no time, but even if you don't, you'll be more comfortable than the rest of us dirt grubbing on an undeveloped planet.

InverseLookingGlass
reply to post by ChefSlug

 

Christian Fundies would seize any opportunity to eliminate the US Constitution and create a Theocracy.
As long as I draw breath, I'll be on the other side of that deal.

With any luck, the fundies would go bible thumping offworld......

Forget the 'what-ifs' about warp drive and another Goldilocks planet and ask yourself what's going to happen when a tipping point minority of the population realizes the rad levels from Fukushima with regards to their own location and try to sell their houses and get out?

What will happen to the West Coast real estate and thus the economy both locally and as a whole nationally when say, 20% of the most expensive houses from Vancouver British Columbia to San Diego go up for sale without any buyers, or when people take their wealth and leave the country to somewhere slightly less contaminated?

To whatever extent, wealth does trickle down; without the retirees (who are the most mobile and most likely to leave), the service industries will suffer, which are the bread and butter of the blue collar households.

Already enough have awakened to be wary of eating fish from the Pacific Ocean; how long before the rad counts escape MSM induced silence and people start realizing on any given day, their location is getting silently irradiated?

Nuclear Emergency Tracking

In case this is the first time you've seen this map, it's hard to interpret; click on the different colored badges to get the local counts; green doesn't mean 'safe' it means the count hasn't changed for the worse lately. The darker colors can mean alert levels, but generally just indicate somewhere where the counts have increased. For a real waker-upper, go over to the Fukushima area, zoom in and check out the counts down wind from the plant. The numbers are breath-taking (anything over 100 is considered warning levels). The San Diego area has been getting counts in the 400s-500s now for weeks, some of the most expensive real estate in the world. What happens when people start noticing and reacting?

reply to post by zeroBelief


If there is another planet we could go to to colonize, corporations could NEVER keep us under their thumb. All a settler would have to do is move further into the wilderness and start a town there. Keep in mind that the planet would be like a completely fresh planet earth with small pockets of humans on it. People could easily escape corporate influence and live off the land again. Maybe back here on planet earth, corporations would own everyone and the governments, but not off world even if they paid to take the people there.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by zeroBelief

 

If there is another planet we could go to to colonize, corporations could NEVER keep us under their thumb. All a settler would have to do is move further into the wilderness and start a town there. Keep in mind that the planet would be like a completely fresh planet earth with small pockets of humans on it. People could easily escape corporate influence and live off the land again. Maybe back here on planet earth, corporations would own everyone and the governments, but not off world even if they paid to take the people there.

You are, of course, operating off of a few assumptions....

- breathable atmosphere
- non-hostile environment
- food sources we would be able to readily identify as edible
- etc,etc...

Now, honestly, even traditional hunting would be difficult...we are currently used to guns. Guess where the bullets would come from? They'd come from the corporation and their supply ships.

Sure, someone could start a foundry/forge/whatever...and start making their own...but, that also means someone would have to mine the ore.....of course...after finding the ore in the ground...most likely the technology for that would come from the corporation funding the trip......it would need to be smelted...etc...etc...etc.


So, whereas I love your idea of "hey, thanks for the trip...screw off...I'm livin off the land!"....well....let's look at one last thing. Imagine a company has paid to send you there expecting work to be done. If I were that company, I'd do a few things to ensure my investment in bringing you there was profitable. So, perhaps, tracking devices? Armed security forces to search for "deserters", etc.

Think it through. This would ALL be about money. Not about human lives or freedom.

reply to post by zeroBelief


The assumption in the OP was Earth-like planet so I was running with that. Tracking devices can only work well enough while you are in the perimeter that your handlers can keep track of you. Once you leave that perimeter, they are useless, and if you can find caves or dense forests, even those local perimeters would have blindspots. Without a global network of satellites to relay your position back to some central location, if you can manage to slip outside of that perimeter zone, the corporations would NEVER be able to find you. Human ingenuity has proven throughout history that when there is a will, there is a way. So only a few will have to escape at first. They get far enough into the wilderness and start their own town free of the corporations, then they could start an underground railroad of sorts to start funneling more people out of these corporate towns until their population can start breeding and raising their own.

ETA: Not all corporations are evil and out for a quick buck. While human rights violations may abound (especially in a location that is so remote the American government can't regulate them), there will be other corporations who would honor human rights and have looser restrictions.

ETA2: As for the OP, America wouldn't fall apart. As long as there are enough people in the 50 states to run politicians in office(or however many states we have by then), America would survive. Not to mention, colonization only exodus' a small percentage of the national population. You'd be looking at a good 90 - 95% of the population remaining on Earth. One more thing, how do you know America will still be a country by the time we have the capability to colonize a planet?

reply to post by zeroBelief


This is what the English Crown thought, too.

Basically, once the colony reached a level of being able to be self-sufficient, there is every chance the people could kick off any outside interference via revolution.

zeroBelief
First of all, I'm not entirely sure that that many Americans who are disenfranchised would go, and I'm talking about the ones that could not afford it in the first place.

In other parts of the world, such as Dubai, workers from different countries are brought in with promises galore. And when they get there, they quickly realize that they are going to be sleeping in little better than cargo containers on bare floors with no insulation and no padding. They are worked forever, and sometimes are royally screwed even on what little pay they were expecting.

I can see a very similar situation happening in the case of a planetary exodus. The corporations would be the new governments, pure and simple. You would be under their rule of thumb. Think company stores. Think your children going to company provided schools. Think EVERYTHING about the bottom dollar.

So, all of this being said....particularly once some reports started filtering back as to the work conditions, I don't think the typical American would go for such a thing. Think of it, how many Americans are swimming across the rio grande? Crowding into boats. Etc ?

You could argue that the same scenario you mention would have happened in the Americas, but it took them almost half a millennia to dig the claws back in. That's a pretty risky bet for TPTB if it was planned that way. Who knows.

Guess it would depend on who wrote the history and exactly what was left out...

Krazysh0t
reply to post by zeroBelief

 

The assumption in the OP was Earth-like planet so I was running with that. Tracking devices can only work well enough while you are in the perimeter that your handlers can keep track of you. Once you leave that perimeter, they are useless, and if you can find caves or dense forests, even those local perimeters would have blindspots. Without a global network of satellites to relay your position back to some central location, if you can manage to slip outside of that perimeter zone, the corporations would NEVER be able to find you. Human ingenuity has proven throughout history that when there is a will, there is a way. So only a few will have to escape at first. They get far enough into the wilderness and start their own town free of the corporations, then they could start an underground railroad of sorts to start funneling more people out of these corporate towns until their population can start breeding and raising their own.

ETA: Not all corporations are evil and out for a quick buck. While human rights violations may abound (especially in a location that is so remote the American government can't regulate them), there will be other corporations who would honor human rights and have looser restrictions.

ETA2: As for the OP, America wouldn't fall apart. As long as there are enough people in the 50 states to run politicians in office(or however many states we have by then), America would survive. Not to mention, colonization only exodus' a small percentage of the national population. You'd be looking at a good 90 - 95% of the population remaining on Earth. One more thing, how do you know America will still be a country by the time we have the capability to colonize a planet?

edit on 13-1-2014 by Krazysh0t because: (no reason given)

edit on 13-1-2014 by Krazysh0t because: (no reason given)

Sounds to me like you've got it all figured out, that this is going to be a holiday for you, and that you have a crapload more faith in a corporate entity than I do.

Good luck with that

ketsuko
reply to post by zeroBelief

 

This is what the English Crown thought, too.

Basically, once the colony reached a level of being able to be self-sufficient, there is every chance the people could kick off any outside interference via revolution.

Sure....hopefully history will repeat itself.....

zeroBelief

Krazysh0t
reply to post by zeroBelief

 

The assumption in the OP was Earth-like planet so I was running with that. Tracking devices can only work well enough while you are in the perimeter that your handlers can keep track of you. Once you leave that perimeter, they are useless, and if you can find caves or dense forests, even those local perimeters would have blindspots. Without a global network of satellites to relay your position back to some central location, if you can manage to slip outside of that perimeter zone, the corporations would NEVER be able to find you. Human ingenuity has proven throughout history that when there is a will, there is a way. So only a few will have to escape at first. They get far enough into the wilderness and start their own town free of the corporations, then they could start an underground railroad of sorts to start funneling more people out of these corporate towns until their population can start breeding and raising their own.

ETA: Not all corporations are evil and out for a quick buck. While human rights violations may abound (especially in a location that is so remote the American government can't regulate them), there will be other corporations who would honor human rights and have looser restrictions.

ETA2: As for the OP, America wouldn't fall apart. As long as there are enough people in the 50 states to run politicians in office(or however many states we have by then), America would survive. Not to mention, colonization only exodus' a small percentage of the national population. You'd be looking at a good 90 - 95% of the population remaining on Earth. One more thing, how do you know America will still be a country by the time we have the capability to colonize a planet?

edit on 13-1-2014 by Krazysh0t because: (no reason given)

edit on 13-1-2014 by Krazysh0t because: (no reason given)

Sounds to me like you've got it all figured out, that this is going to be a holiday for you, and that you have a crapload more faith in a corporate entity than I do.

Good luck with that

Where did I ever suggest that this would be a cakewalk? On top of resisting control of a corporation with access to far more resources than I can contemplate, people would be battling an environment so foreign to humans, it has NEVER been seen before by a human past or present. This would be EXTREMELY difficult for any resistance, but humans have demonstrated throughout history that they are very ingenious and can adapt to most circumstances. Of course keep in mind that no matter what technology the corporation has, they have also never seen this environment before and something as simple as atmospheric conditions could disrupt their tracking programs and systems. We just don't know, but to think that corporations could have some totalitarian slave control over a group of people living on an unexplored planet is just silly. It would be easier to believe that those will be the conditions for the majority of people left on Earth as opposed to those offworld.

reply to post by ChefSlug


Warp drive is just to fast for me. I'd be the guy who stayed behind
so he could reap the riches of the dispersed population.



I'd be the ultimate looter.

reply to post by zeroBelief


Well, we know where you'll be. Stuck back here on earth, yelling at us damn kids to get off your lawn!

Seriously, does your handle imply that you have zero belief in anything that might be the tiniest bit adventuresome or imaginative?

I do know that the "Bible Thumpers" you speak of are likely just as excited at the prospect of getting of your lawn as you are at having them gone. I'm split at whether I'd go with them or not or whether I'd head off with a more libertarian group so long as they agreed to tolerance of my opinions.

But the big thing is that heading off to other planets would allow us the chance to get. the eff. away. from each other for a while and let different groups cool off and either discover for themselves whether or not their ways actually worked or find out that maybe the rest of us weren't actually all that bad after all.

Then in a generation or four, we could get back together and talk again.

Distance, sometimes it works wonders for relations.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by zeroBelief

 

If there is another planet we could go to to colonize, corporations could NEVER keep us under their thumb. All a settler would have to do is move further into the wilderness and start a town there. Keep in mind that the planet would be like a completely fresh planet earth with small pockets of humans on it. People could easily escape corporate influence and live off the land again. Maybe back here on planet earth, corporations would own everyone and the governments, but not off world even if they paid to take the people there.

One helicopter gunship and a company size combat group is all the corps need to keep 'dissidents' in line, and with everyone being tagged, and tracked 24/7, they would not get far.

reply to post by pikestaff


Ugh... Do you not know how tracking systems work? They require satellite positioning. Something that wouldn't exist on a foreign world when we first colonize it. Therefore they'd have to rely on relay stations and line of sight to be operational, two things that can be easily overcome. Helicopter surveillance is pretty useless in forested areas, rocky areas, islands separated by large bodies of water, unknown aerial wildlife that could mess with them, underground, or just getting far enough away from the main camp that helicopters run out of fuel getting there. This surveillance stuff doesn't work on magic, understand the technology before chiming in.

reply to post by signalfire

Nuclear Emergency Tracking

In case this is the first time you've seen this map, it's hard to interpret;

I did some digging on that site previously -- it's a fear mongering scam site intended to scare you into buying their radiation monitoring equipment and/or detailed reports. There is no scientific method behind their "private monitoring sites", and public/government monitoring stations do not support their claims of impending doom.