Free Canada Movement

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Apparently when I was gone Atlasia annexed Canada. This blatant act of imperialism cannot be allowed to stand. And so I hereby announce the formation of the Free Canada Movement. Its goals are simple and obvious: Canadian Independence.

[Adam Griffin]

We didn't annex Canada. We have a common market agreement with Canada. Atlasians residing in Canada have the ability to vote in our elections, like in any other civilized country. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

[Barnes]

We didn't annex Canada. We have a common market agreement with Canada. Atlasians residing in Canada have the ability to vote in our elections, like in any other civilized country. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

Precisely.  Although, I will say that this is a common misconception held by a lot of people who don't actually read the detail of the agreement.  Perhaps we should better integrate the common market into the game policy-wise?  To my knowledge, after the agreement itself was ratified, nothing else has been done.

[Simfan34]

I will join this movement.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

...and this is where things get dubious. That's fycking with Canada's territorial integrity and effectively deleting its sovereignty from the map.

[homelycooking]

We didn't annex Canada. We have a common market agreement with Canada. Atlasians residing in Canada have the ability to vote in our elections, like in any other civilized country. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

Is there any provision for voting for Atlasians living abroad - e.g., if an Atlasian attempted to  register with RG Fritz in Mexico or France? Obviously he could not vote for regional Senate, but could he vote for president?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The Northeast Catholic Church has no opinion.

[Adam Griffin]

. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

...and this is where things get dubious. That's fycking with Canada's territorial integrity and effectively deleting its sovereignty from the map.

In reality, every other country's sovereignty is contingent solely upon what the GM and SoEA say.

We didn't annex Canada. We have a common market agreement with Canada. Atlasians residing in Canada have the ability to vote in our elections, like in any other civilized country. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

Is there any provision for voting for Atlasians living abroad - e.g., if an Atlasian attempted to  register with RG Fritz in Mexico or France? Obviously he could not vote for regional Senate, but could he vote for president?

To my knowledge, we only have that that arrangement with Canada.

[Marokai Backbeat]

. Each province is also considered, for regional voting purposes, to be associated with one of the five regions.

...and this is where things get dubious. That's fycking with Canada's territorial integrity and effectively deleting its sovereignty from the map.

From the perspective of how the game works, it was an treaty both countries agreed to. It wasn't foisted upon them.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Except that no country (and certainly not Canada!) would willingly agree to sacrifice their territorial integrity in that manner. I mean it's like something out of Infinite Jest. This is a really great example of why the GM position needs to go.

[Adam Griffin]

Except that no country (and certainly not Canada!) would willingly agree to sacrifice their territorial integrity in that manner. I mean it's like something out of Infinite Jest. This is a really great example of why the GM position needs to go.

Canada wouldn't agree to having standardized freedom of movement with its biggest importer of goods, several tariffs against the importation of its products lifted, its citizens being able to open businesses within Atlasia with the same ease as Atlasians, and all other NAFTA trade restrictions essentially being lifted?

[Marokai Backbeat]

Except that no country (and certainly not Canada!) would willingly agree to sacrifice their territorial integrity in that manner. I mean it's like something out of Infinite Jest. This is a really great example of why the GM position needs to go.

With any other group of people, in any less structured situation, people would just randomly declare "We annexed Canada for the lulz!" and this would be treated as every bit as valid as any other crank's delusions.

The GM and SoEA were equal partners in implementing the Common Market Agreement, which wasn't just a random declaration, but rather a lengthy proposal passed through the Senate before it became a thing. Canada remains an independent nation and we merely consider certain provinces as part of certain regions for voting purposes. Nothing's been taken away from them and everything was done on the up-and-up. I made sure this was done in as "serious" a manner as possible relative to how most other things get done around here precisely because I didn't want it considered a joke done on a whim.

[Adam Griffin]

Except that no country (and certainly not Canada!) would willingly agree to sacrifice their territorial integrity in that manner. I mean it's like something out of Infinite Jest. This is a really great example of why the GM position needs to go.

With any other group of people, in any less structured situation, people would just randomly declare "We annexed Canada for the lulz!" and this would be treated as every bit as valid as any other crank's delusions.

The GM and SoEA were equal partners in implementing the Common Market Agreement, which wasn't just a random declaration, but rather a lengthy proposal passed through the Senate before it became a thing. Canada remains an independent nation and we merely consider certain provinces as part of certain regions for voting purposes. Nothing's been taken away from them and everything was done on the up-and-up. I made sure this was done in as "serious" a manner as possible relative to how most other things get done around here precisely because I didn't want it considered a joke done on a whim.

It's important to reiterate that for all Canadians, there is absolutely nothing different for them when it comes to their sovereignty (as it pertains to voting, governments, or any other government interaction). Only as it pertains to economic cooperation between the two countries did anything for the country of Canada change, as did it for ours.

Limited jurisdictional authority only affects Atlasians who live in Canada. Each Atlasian residing in Canada is given the right to participate in both regional and federal elections based on which province he or she may reside in at the moment. But Al already knows this.

[Napoleon]

I felt the same way but then I thought Canada wouldn't agree to having standardized freedom of movement with its biggest importer of goods, several tariffs against the importation of its products lifted, its citizens being able to open businesses within Atlasia with the same ease as Atlasians, and all other NAFTA trade restrictions essentially being lifted?

[Marokai Backbeat]

It's more than a little amusing to me that someone advocating the abolishment of the one position that gives actions context, seriousness, and meaning, is basically saying "What?! This happened?! How silly, that would've never happened in real life! Grow up, guys!"

Exactly how would you intend to enforce that particular mentality, without a GM? In a position where what anyone makes up is equally valid?

[Gass3268]

As an Atlasian living in Canada, this movement scares me!

[Yelnoc]

I support this movement. I've copied below what I said on the subject in the Game Moderation Abolition Amendment thread.

I cannot imagine a set of reforms which would fix all of the above problems. Let's take them one-by-one.

• GM Activity: When the GM is inactive, the system collapses. There are very few people willing to take on the position of GM to begin with, considering what a thankless job it is. Of that very small pool, few (if any) have the time, energy, and imagination to produce the various plot points needed to give the game it's "story" and worry about cost estimation and legislation consequences. That's a huge amount of drudgery to ask a person to do, which is why some of that work was farmed out to the SoEA and SoIA. But the same problems apply to those positions- no respect, no real ability to influence the game. Why bother with it?
• Story Consistency: Apparently we annexed Canada while I was gone? Under what circumstances, I don't know. I'm sure there are some helpful mod posts somewhere from that time, outlining how that happened and what the initial reactions were. Whether annexing Canada could possibly have been made to sound like a logical and not Germany-in-the-Sudetenland aggression I don't know. Has that plot point resurfaced to influence future 'foreign policy' story lines? I doubt it. This sort of one-off plot vomit is the stuff of nightmares for a dedicated GM who wants to figure out the 'in-game' or simulated situation in which Atlasia resides.
• Historical Understanding: Related to plot consistency is our understanding as players of plot. The lack of consistent story telling, coupled with the immense age of this game, makes it easy for confusion to arise as to what kind of debates should be taking place in government. To use an example from my time in the IDS, when creating the budget I found that past governments had passed various contradictory tax plans many many times without understanding that the previous governments had already covered that ground. This may be less a problem at the Federal level, due to the presence of players which preserve a very long institutional memory (looking at you North Carolina Yankee), but it is still a problem inherent to this system, which becomes particularly difficult when people refuse to acknowledge a shared understanding.
• Non-Cooperation: Oakvale's example of ephemeral policy fits here. Ultimately, we take our cues from the real world. When something interesting happens outside, we like to react to it, even if it contradicts the Atlasian version of history preserved by the GM. Another, particularly egregious form of non-cooperation is when elected officials refuse to interact with the story points created by GM's, either because they don't find them interesting, or they feel the plot does not fit with the (their understanding of) the game.

[Yelnoc]

Continuing to claim we did anything close to "annex" Canada, or did so in anything close to the manner you imply, speaks only to your ignorance.

Here is the text of the bill, for those interested.

This points to an interesting cleavage between the game and the fantasy world built by the game. The legislators went to great lengths to not "annex" Canada, driven no doubt by their own sense of plausibility; yet as far as the actual mechanics of this elections game goes, Canada has been annexed. The Canadian provinces have been added to our regions, allowing players to register and participate from there. In the real world, no common markets agreement would assign ex-pats to vote in specific internal subvisions of their home country based on the internal subdivision of the country in which they now reside (which just so happens to be contiguous to the aforementioned subdivision, and thus quite pretty on a map). The deviation from the conscientious (suffocating, even) realism of the rest of the bill in Section V highlights its importance. The rest of the legislation was window dressing, irrelevant but serious looking fluff which served to obfuscate the desire to expand the map, our only reliable tool with which to judge our relationship with the rest of the fantasy world.

[Marokai Backbeat]

You can think whatever the hell you want of the proposal itself; the point was that whatever the actual idea was, it was dealt with as seriously and sincerely as you could possibly get in this game. It was put in Labor's platform, I ran on it, Nix and I wrote it (and I wrote a speech on it, which few Presidents bother doing with anything), the Senate debated and passed it, and the the SoEA and GM did stories on it and cooperated in its implementation.

Calling it "one off plot vomit" is offensive to me (and should be to anyone who spent hours of their time working on it), and presenting it as a GM-related problem is irrelevant to the GM's issues at best, and at worst actually a good example for the importance of maintaining the GM position, since the proposal of it was going to happen with or without a Game Moderator.

This gets back to exactly what I criticized Al's posting of this for in the first place: You simultaneously complain someone should've stopped these supposedly silly and unrealistic Canada policies, but use this as an example of why we should get rid of the Game Moderator. But it wasn't, in fact, the Game Moderator that put it into place, or even came up with the idea to begin with. A single Senator stood against it at the time. From your perspective, the Game Moderator would be the person best suited to stop alleged "silliness" like this, since they are the sole individual with the weight to stop it in its tracks. Without the GM, we end up with a "nothing is true, everything is permitted" situation where more situations like that are likely, not less. Do you remember what happened after DemPGH resigned and Tyrion was banned? That's what you get without a Game Moderator.

The push to abolish the GM is utterly shortsighted, and evidently, influenced by half-cocked information to begin with.

Annexing Canada was rather en vogue at the time, and considering the nature of what we ended up with, you should be thankful. The exact Common Market proposal was my idea, meant to stem the tide of people just shouting "Let's annex another country on a whim! Yay!" and to accomplish the same ends in a more "serious" fashion that respected the way the game works, in as grounded a manner as possible. The only thing that makes this different than a Common Market, free-movement zone wherein residents abroad can vote in at-home elections is that we designate residents of certain foreign regions to certain electoral districts. You can call that unrealistic, but I call the obsession on that single (minor) detail of it petty.

[Simfan34]

I urge the revival of this organization.

[Boston Bread]

If this happened IRL I would absolutely revolt, but ingame I'd rather be able to conduct my schemes from the safety of my home province.

[bore]

I don't have strong feelings one way or another over whether Canada should be involved in atlasia, but seeing as you can legally register there we have to include it in the Electoral Reform amendment. This is not an example of atlasian imperialism and it seems kind of odd to oppose the amendment over this.

[Adam Griffin]

Yes, do be quiet, Simfan.

[Simfan34]

I don't have strong feelings one way or another over whether Canada should be involved in atlasia, but seeing as you can legally register there we have to include it in the Electoral Reform amendment. This is not an example of atlasian imperialism and it seems kind of odd to oppose the amendment over this.

Could we at least include some more flexible wording? "Other territories" or something?

[Clyde1998]

If Canada becomes independent, then I want an independent North-East!

Is Canada legally part of Atlasia or not?