Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[moontheir4]

Seriously, though. Could you imagine this system in action? Conquer your neighbors by virtue of being a nicer place to live than they are. Also... don't treat your population like shit, they can leave you. And if you can get a hundred people together, you can found any kind of community you want. Though you'll need a LOT more than that if you want to grab a particularly large chunk of land.

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This kind of reminds me of the imperial planet from Simon of Space. The whole globe was sectioned out into territories with static boarders, and the only imperial rules were that a government could hold only one territory and that no government could restrict immigration or emigration. The intent there, though, was to apply natural selection to the problem of governing systems.

 

[abyssmal_kismet]

For example: AI's can vote, right? Do 10 near-identical copies of Dragon get 10 votes?

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Oh, god. How do you resolve that? I mean, of course the copies shouldn't all get votes; otherwise, Dragon instantly rules democracy forever. On the other hand, if an offshoot is different enough to be in personality a different person, then sure! Problem is, at what point is the offshoot to be considered a different enough personality? I guess make all off-shoots of any nature (clones and AI-clones) not able to vote until they are x-year(s) old?

EDIT: How, then do you prove how old an offshoot is? Eh, lie detection tech. "When were you made?"/edit
And yes, that is exactly the type of minutia that needs to be made clear when it is thought of. That's why amendments are a thing- to cover things you haven't thought of just as much as changing times.

 

[dasstan]

Oh, god. How do you resolve that? I mean, of course the copies shouldn't all get votes; otherwise, Dragon instantly rules democracy forever. On the other hand, if an offshoot is different enough to be in personality a different person, then sure! Problem is, at what point is the offshoot to be considered a different enough personality? I guess make all off-shoots of any nature (clones and AI-clones) not able to vote until they are x-year(s) old?

EDIT: How, then do you prove how old an offshoot is? Eh, lie detection tech. "When were you made?"/edit
And yes, that is exactly the type of minutia that needs to be made clear when it is thought of. That's why amendments are a thing- to cover things you haven't thought of just as much as changing times.

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Dragon probably refrains from voting? Or she is treated as a country unto herself.

 

[pepperjack]

That's why amendments are a thing- to cover things you haven't thought of just as much as changing times.

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Typically, questions of interpretation are resolved via case law. The first time it comes up, it climbs to as high a court as it needs to and then a ruling is made.

This is good, because if the system of making amendments were easy enough and streamlined enough to facilitate making minor clarifications quickly and easily, that would sacrifice a lot of the benefit of having a constitution in the first place. This is a document that should be very difficult to change.

Now, if something like this comes up and the court ruling (at the highest level) ends up being something undesirable, that's when you might see a movement to amend.

 

[Masterjaxx]

Something seems really off about every single distance measurement you gave for territory except for the very first one. They all are extremely small, extremely, extremely small. There are single owner farms and ranches bigger than the largest land grant you laid out.

Looking at those numbers I can only conclude that you want every settlement to be within eye sight of all its immediate neighbors, you have no intention of this ever becoming a society that uses vehicles to travel long distances, you have no intention of any of them ever providing their own food via farming or livestock grazing land, you have no intention of ever letting any of them mine or exploit the land for its resources.

No two villages with a population of more than 1000 people each should ever be closer together than an encumbered man can walk in a single day. Which adds up to be about 15-20 km apart. Larger settlements should be even farther apart and be surrounded by small satellite villages that maintain the former spacing. The space is needed for farming and livestock. Without this basic spacing farms will be unable to feed towns, cities and nations without direct intervention from Amelia.

Maybe i am misinterpreting things, perhaps the intent here is that this is the size of land they will be granted from which they can expand endlessly until they encounter a neighbor. But i do not think that was the intent.

These packages of land need to be larger with at least another zero added onto all of them.

 

[TanaNari]

Actually, the numbers are in fact very VERY generously large. In most of the US- a country with remarkably low population density in most of its territory- populations of 5,000 are regularly found in cities that only measure a total of 5 square miles (12 km).

With this system... you can *easily* have a city population of under 2000 with a total territory of control measuring around 100+ square miles.

The big cities? The cities on the east and west coasts? Chicago? Could have rights to claim state sized chunks of land, depending how the population sprawls.


As opposed to our world, where Boston has 89sq miles. All of New York city has less than 500 square miles.

City states easily have the potential to cover that kind of area without batting an eye. Commonwealths could cover the entirety of the east or west coast as a single nation. While the central states, by definition, would be insulated by distance and limited to smaller population groups. Allowing them to maintain their own governments as they see fit, instead of being beholden to the control imposed by larger states that are a thousand miles away from them, but have the majority of the population.

 

[dasstan]

Hey, Tan-Tan-Can-You-Do-The-Tan-Tan, what are the plans for dealing with Earth-Bet based flora and fauna? Are people being given tinker-pills that replace the bacteria in their bodies with Earth-Avalon friendly versions?

Also, is Amelia learning anything new from examining Nilbog's creations? IIRC, Nilbog can create beings with abilities. Is this something Amelia is going to be able to duplicate with her [TOTAL BIOLOGICAL CONTROL], or is it something that gets shunted off onto Nilbog's shard?

 

[BlackBulletOfSeven]

Why doesn't this story have a Tvtropes page yet?

 

[cosoco]

Dragon probably refrains from voting?

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That doesn't really solve the problem, though. If she's a citizen of a country, she increases their voting power in the Legislative Assembly, just by existing.

Of course, she'll probably refrain from doing anything that would hurt AI rights down the line. She might create a 'daughter,' though.

Or she is treated as a country unto herself.

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Probably not. I mean, each country has a right send a representative to the Assembly, and giving every citizen the right to do that would be crazy. They need some sort of mechanism to directly govern citizens anyway, since presumably Avalon will intervene if one of their governments collapses.

No two villages with a population of more than 1000 people each should ever be closer together than an encumbered man can walk in a single day. Which adds up to be about 15-20 km apart. Larger settlements should be even farther apart and be surrounded by small satellite villages that maintain the former spacing. The space is needed for farming and livestock. Without this basic spacing farms will be unable to feed towns, cities and nations without direct intervention from Amelia.

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It says that they need to be at least that far apart.

 

[Masterjaxx]

Actually, the numbers are in fact very VERY generously large. In most of the US- a country with remarkably low population density in most of its territory- populations of 5,000 are regularly found in cities that only measure a total of 5 square miles (12 km).

With this system... you can *easily* have a city population of under 2000 with a total territory of control measuring around 100+ square miles.

The big cities? The cities on the east and west coasts? Chicago? Could have rights to claim state sized chunks of land, depending how the population sprawls.


As opposed to our world, where Boston has 89sq miles. All of New York city has less than 500 square miles.

City states easily have the potential to cover that kind of area without batting an eye. Commonwealths could cover the entirety of the east or west coast as a single nation. While the central states, by definition, would be insulated by distance and limited to smaller population groups. Allowing them to maintain their own governments as they see fit, instead of being beholden to the control imposed by larger states that are a thousand miles away from them, but have the majority of the population.

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It is now clear to me that we are thinking of entire different things. You are thinking of the square footage upon which the settlement will be built and are paying no mind at all to the necessity of farmland and pastureland required to feed the people in that settlement. You are also disregarding land required for them to mine for resources or log for timber for use in construction.

If the allowance for that extra required territory around every single settlement is made then i have no issue, it went unremarked upon so i assumed that the provided numbers were the legal outer border to which each polity was restricted from exceeding when colonizing. Rather than it just being the outer border of urban expansion beyond which rural expansion was still allowed.

If all you care about is building a town or a city then fine, the land you gave out is enough. But now i ask you how they are going to feed themselves? New York does not feed itself, it cant. Do not use that as an example.

 

[sephlington]

It is now clear to me that we are thinking of entire different things. You are thinking of the square footage upon which the settlement will be built and are paying no mind at all to the necessity of farmland and pastureland required to feed the people in that settlement. You are also disregarding land required for them to mine for resources or log for timber for use in construction.

If all you care about is building a town or a city then fine, the land you gave out is enough. But now i ask you how they are going to feed themselves? New York does not feed itself, it cant. Do not use that as an example.

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They're going to feed themselves on Yggdrasil fruit. It was part of the original offer for settlers.

Also, construction materials? Yggdrasil. You can also then use all the spare space you were going to try and grow timber and food in, and use it for mining for resources.

 

[TanaNari]

If all you care about is building a town or a city then fine, the land you gave out is enough. But now i ask you how they are going to feed themselves? New York does not feed itself, it cant. Do not use that as an example.

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They... buy it? Imports and exports are a thing.

The whole state of New York doesn't have enough food production to feed Albany, let alone New York City. They purchase that food from places like Indiana and Illinois. And even then, they don't purchase it from the state, they purchase it from the farmers. Or from wholesalers who purchased it from farmers.

Also... this is a place where you can literally eat the walls of your houses. It's nutritious and it grows back. By the time a city needs to really concern itself with food production, it's graduated to a metropolis that builds with concrete and steel, not wood. And that goes right back to purchasing goods.

Because last time I checked, New York City wasn't pockmarked with thousands of stone quarries and steel mines and refineries.

Half of the raw materials making up large cities don't even come from the country that city's built in.

 

[Masterjaxx]

They're going to feed themselves on Yggdrasil fruit. It was part of the original offer for settlers.

Also, construction materials? Yggdrasil. You can also then use all the spare space you were going to try and grow timber and food in, and use it for mining for resources.

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That was also part of my original post, that by limiting the size of each nation it implied that Tananari and by extension Pantheon had absolutely no intention of ever having these nations capable of being self sufficient. They will be forced by land limitations to rely upon free handouts of food and housing for the foreseeable future. Its not just the easy option, its the only option. They just don't have enough land to feed and provide for their needs without assistance from pantheon or trade with other nations.

EDIT:

I think there's some kind of fundamental disconnect feeding this argument that needs to be resolved.

If you are adding another town or another city or another metropolis to a country or nation that already exists and has a government and trade infrastructure with all those good nation building and support tools in place then thats great. A town or a city or whatever can easily be supported by the preexisting infrastructure of the larger nation. Just like New York.

But these are not towns and cities and metropolis being built in an established nation regardless of the cheats and shortcuts offered by Pantheon.

These are new nations settling a new world. Independent nations which are striking out into a new frontier. Sure Pantheon is going to make things easier for them. But they are going to want their own independence, the ability to control their own destiny and part of that is the ability to grow their own food and gather their own resources if they should happen to want to do so.

If they dont want to then whatever, they can live off free handouts. But by denying them land you take away the ability to choose. A Nation needs enough land that if they wanted to become self sufficient and eventually stop needing to rely on outside assistance that they can actually eventually get to that point. If they dont have enough land, eventually they will try to take it from their neighbors.

 

[sephlington]

That was also part of my original post, that by limiting the size of each nation it implied that Tananari and by extension Pantheon had absolutely no intention of ever having these nations capable of being self sufficient. They will be forced by land limitations to rely upon free handouts of food and housing for the foreseeable future. Its not just the easy option, its the only option. They just don't have enough land to feed and provide for their needs without assistance from pantheon or trade with other nations.

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Seeing as they only have a breathable atmosphere due to Pantheon, I personally don't feel also getting as much free food from them as I want is that much of a problem. By allowing my nation to not have to bother with providing basic nutrition, it would allow me to focus my efforts on luxuries - either prioritising my trade for acquiring luxury food, or devising a method of making luxury food as one of my outgoing trade goods. Self-sufficiency wouldn't really be my priority in this day and age, especially if the trade-off is guaranteed basic food and housing.

 

[dasstan]

That was also part of my original post, that by limiting the size of each nation it implied that Tananari and by extension Pantheon had absolutely no intention of ever having these nations capable of being self sufficient. They will be forced by land limitations to rely upon free handouts of food and housing for the foreseeable future. Its not just the easy option, its the only option. They just don't have enough land to feed and provide for their needs without assistance from pantheon or trade with other nations.

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Not letting people be self sufficient is sort of Pantheon's bread and butter. See Yddrasewers and Police bots for examples.

 

[Jans]

All people that are found capable of safely functioning in society must be treated equally under the law.

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This is an interesting passage. Despite the obvious purpose of the law being for artificial life and such, it allows for repeat offender criminals or anyone with a history of violence to be specifically targeted by legislature regardless of current activities.

Don't know whether that would turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing (especially considering it could be used to target the mentally ill or physically deformed as well) but it is interesting.

 

[dasstan]

Don't know whether that would turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing (especially considering it could be used to target the mentally ill or physically deformed as well) but it is interesting.

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Rapture, Cranial, Amelia. Deformities and mental illness are going to quickly become nonexistent on Earth-Avalon.

Honestly, the biggest hurdle that Earth-Avalon is going to face (again, barring Scion and his murder spree), is going to be the struggle to redefine themselves as a society. Fortunately, they have thinkers like Accord around to handle all the details.

I think that once Earth-Avalon gets up and running, it's going to become the multiverses producer of all things that fall under the blanket of the Humanities. Art, music, etc.

 

[Masterjaxx]

Not letting people be self sufficient is sort of Pantheon's bread and butter. See Yddrasewers and Police bots for examples.

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The stance i have been arguing is just one of the points that will be a significant issue regarding immigration in the story and will likely be one of the harder to manage ones as well.

People who dont like big sister always watching wont go there, so thats a big chunk cut out. People who have basic beliefs that pantheon finds morally repugnant wont go there but will try and be rebuffed. But there isnt actually anything bad about a nation wanting to become self sufficient and able to export products produced on their land once its had a chance to get up on its feet. Pantheon seems to be all about letting people take care of themselves if they are capable and not a threat to the greater group. So i can see arguments about land allotments being a really big thing that can be touched on in future chapters.

 

[dasstan]

The stance i have been arguing is just one of the points that will be a significant issue regarding immigration in the story and will likely be one of the harder to manage ones as well.

People who dont like big sister always watching wont go there, so thats a big chunk cut out. People who have basic beliefs that pantheon finds morally repugnant wont go there but will try and be rebuffed. But there isnt actually anything bad about a nation wanting to become self sufficient and able to export products produced on their land once its had a chance to get up on its feet. Pantheon seems to be all about letting people take care of themselves if they are capable and not a threat to the greater group. So i can see arguments about land allotments being a really big thing that can be touched on in future chapters.

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People on Earth-Bet do not have the luxury of caring about Big Brother. They just don't. They live in a world where an entire continent has been written off as a bad job because it's under the rule of war lords, countries have been condemned because of Endbringers, cities have been abandoned for the same reason, and India is dead.

The entire planet is basically a war torn third world country, and Pantheon is offering the citizens of that country the means to start over. Sure, a few die hard patriots will refuse to go, but the people in the most dire of situations are going to leave. They would leave even if Pantheon wasn't offering such a sweet deal. They would leave if they had to forfeit everything they own, because leaving means having a chance to see your children grow up.

 

[Beyogi]

Nice. I'm curious how that's going to work out. Lolbertarians vs Socialists. The slap fight

 

[TanaNari]

I think there's some kind of fundamental disconnect feeding this argument that needs to be resolved.

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There absolutely is. Namely: you have no comprehension of how national development actually works.


Remember- Avalon is going to lack "seed" governments. They won't be able to go "hey, look, the British own this land" or what have you. They'll be starting straight out of the Stone Age (only vastly accelerated). There's a reason it's called "city states"- because that's the model of government *used* back before countries were a real thing.

All nations created on Earth- or Avalon- start, functionally, as self sustained colonies intent on producing something of value for trade. Or, sometimes, just as a middle finger to others and a plan to be truly self sufficient.

They also tend to start as populations less than a couple hundred.

... A couple hundred people can *easily* be sustained by the "natural" environment of Avalon. Or, for that matter, it can be sustained with a few large farms that would in no way not fit in that starting colonial grant.

From there? They build. After a certain level of population, it becomes mathematically impossible for them to sustain themselves, and they MUST seek outside trade. So if they wish to remain truly independent, they can't go above a certain population limit. Same as in the real world.

So. Yeah. Buy it or make it yourself. If you make it yourself, you're using your own land to do it. Don't have enough land? Get more communities to join yours. Because, unlike in real history, you do not have the option of taking it from your neighbors by force.

 

[Snake/Eater]

if Nilbog can create sentient creatures,could he create a sentient race of Bacteria?

 

[Fouredged]

What IS self sufficiency outside of Pantheon in Avalon? It is a totally artificial biosphere, why think in terms of country/city. A nation will have the population density they desire so long as they can fit it within the area they have been assigned. They have tech capable of generating functionally unlimited energy and using that energy to generate functionally unlimited food. In OUR world, you need sufficient solar energy to generate the food needed for a city, and that means huge tracts of open farmland SOMEWHERE. In Avalon, you could feed a whole city from underground super-greenhouses that pump out food in daily harvests generated from tinkertech light generators and super fast growing foodstock plants. There is no mandate that a nation HAVE a country area. I suspect that parks and public forested areas become a norm in many nations, but industrial greenspace would be something of the past.

If you really wanted to, and accepted the population density of cities like Tokyo or New York, you could fit the whole world's population in Madagascar. Even sprawling out significantly, I would expect Avalon to hit populations number exceeding 30-40 billion before they expand much past Europe. They could choose to spread out more, but there are advantages to keeping things relatively close together...

..until they crack Eric's power with tech and make wormhole trains.

Now the really interesting thing is what kind of societies Avalon will generate. Without the competition over resources, and without the need or ability to gather land to control those resources, a society will be free to dedicate itself to other pursuits.

Cities filled with poets. Whole towns dedicated to the creation of music. Art could take off in a way that it just can't here due to the need for a significant dedication of resources towards food, security, and the division of said resources.

 

[TanaNari]

They could choose to spread out more, but there are advantages to keeping things relatively close together...

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Actually, their system rewards sprawling out like fuck at first. And it encourages the nation-states that form to find methods to draw in their own colonists or encourage people to produce large families and/or adopt-all-the-orphans-on-Bet. They'll have dozens of colonies on every continent ASAP.

Now the really interesting thing is what kind of societies Avalon will generate.

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I imagine it'll look a little like Japan, and for much the same reason. Thanks to the treaties of WW2, Japan can't really have its own military. The USA still occupies Japan (in much the way as Afghanistan and Iraq... only more peacefully...), and that means they don't dedicate their resources to their military. Instead pushing more strongly for an advanced education system and technological development.

Because "science+entertainment=money" is the formula they've discovered.

 

[GiftofLove]

What I'm looking forward to is seeing Nilbog's nation. Because he can expand enough to grab however much land he wants. I imagine the only caveat is that they have to be fully sapient creations, but still. His nation is gonna be epic. I can hardly wait.

 

[TanaNari]

Nilbog has one of the "special dispensation" clauses. He can't. Because his sapient creations are still entirely loyal to him. The lack of free agency means either they can't be recognized as "people", or Avalon has to kill him.

... Although, in reality, they did the 'loyalty reprogramming' much they way they did to Coil. Because they're not effing retarded.

what are the plans for dealing with Earth-Bet based flora and fauna? Are people being given tinker-pills that replace the bacteria in their bodies with Earth-Avalon friendly versions?

Also, is Amelia learning anything new from examining Nilbog's creations? IIRC, Nilbog can create beings with abilities. Is this something Amelia is going to be able to duplicate with her [TOTAL BIOLOGICAL CONTROL], or is it something that gets shunted off onto Nilbog's shard?

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There's no need for the former. Avalon's Yggdrasil is far more hardy than the stuff built on Bet. Makes it less easy to manipulate, but there's so damn much of it that that doesn't matter.

And no, Amelia can't magically allow her creations to break the laws of physics simply by touching something that breaks the laws of physics. If she could, then she'd be building billions of hornets with Alexandria's powerset.

 

[Fouredged]

Japan instead has to worry endlessly about power and food generation, a problem Avalon cities may well find themselves with easy answers to. I could see that being the direction things go though, peaceful, isolationist, highly productive.

I have run into some interesting trends in your numbers though. You have this breakdown, Community -> City -> State -> Nation

For a community, they have at most 1*10^6 to as little as 1*10^5 sqft per person.
A city has 3*10^5 by 3^10^3
A state has only 8*10^3 to 2^10^3
but then a nation jumps back to 4*10^4th

This is going to FORCE development to vertical living in cities. Without most of their population living in towers a city won't have the space for communal roads and any kind of communal spaces. Those who want more space per person should align themselves into a consortium of communities rather than nations.

That said, it should still be reasonable that even in a dense city each person could have 20,000 sqft of living space due to the ability to stack 10-20 houses on top of one another in the form of apartments and the human tendency to live with multiple people per residence. This would seem like luxury compared to the 500sqft apartments you see in Tokyo.

The other big issue I see is how you deal with alliances. You get more land per person in communities, so what stops a ton of communities from linking their laws and simply spreading out far past what their population should allow?

Also, with multiple countries and multiple currencies linked to a central dollar, how will you handle the printing of money? Will one state be able to print money to pay debts or deal with an expanding population and still maintain the same exchange rate to the central dollar?

 

[TanaNari]

You get more land per person in communities, so what stops a ton of communities from linking their laws and simply spreading out far past what their population should allow?

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Absolutely nothing. In fact, that's the *goal*.

You're not suppose to just go "bam, city, 1k people in this area"... you're suppose to go "bam, ten communities of 100 each within range is now applying together to be recognized as a city, suddenly they have a range bubble surrounding them for further expansion". You *can* just pump a huge populace into a small area right away. It's just not the most efficient method. Nor is it recommended in the slightest. Avalon's developmental architects (re: Dragon and Accord) prefer people don't do it that way.


The whole point is to generate massively sprawling low density populations (of suitably like minded people) and once they've grown "out" enough, they'll start growing "up".

Just like how development works in real life.

 

[Divabot]

... Although, in reality, they did the 'loyalty reprogramming' much they way they did to Coil. Because they're not effing retarded.

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There is that, but this could do with mention in the text somehow (it's not even retrospectively obvious, though it does explain why they'd put up with him being on the same Earth).

 

[GiftofLove]

Nilbog has one of the "special dispensation" clauses. He can't. Because his sapient creations are still entirely loyal to him. The lack of free agency means either they can't be recognized as "people", or Avalon has to kill him.

... Although, in reality, they did the 'loyalty reprogramming' much they way they did to Coil. Because they're not effing retarded.

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Darn. I was really wanting to see his moeblobs Uncanny Valley their way to world domination. (Joke)

I guess I'll just have to be content with possible tourism in the future. Something tells me Nilbog's nation, if ever allowed to have visitors, would quickly become the . . . entertainment capital of the world. Because his fetishes can best be described as 'yes'.