Chad wrote:Zimbabwe beats, rapes, and kills it's own people
RainOfSteel wrote:So does the CS.
Where in canon?
Karl Prosek's regime has been beating or killing anyone in the CS who says anything negative about him or the CS for quite some time.
What do you think happened to all the magic users living in the CS? That they all just got to peacefully leave?
SB1 p.17 "As a result, it is easy to hate and
destroy, or use and abuse, such a terrible enemy [...]"
Don't think the officer's conference in MercTown was only ever directed at population centers outside the CS.
As for rape . . . no specific examples offhand, but in a nation filled with hate mongers who have absolute power over others, and some of whom are Diabolically aligned, I find it more than likely that it has happened.
Chad wrote:Zimbabwe has nothing in common with the CS. The CS is not a 3rd. rate power that brutalizes and chases it's own people out of it's country.
Yes it does.
Anyone who disagrees with the CS is either going to face exile at best, or torture and execution at worst.
Chad wrote:Karl's power base is determined by his people.
Karl's power is as firmly entrenched as Saddam Hussein's was. He has made a practice, even a science, out of making sure of it.
WB11 p.215 "Karl Prosek is an evil megalomanic whose every action is motivated by his lust for power, fame, and glory. He has manipulated the humans of hte Coalition States for years and has laid the frame work for
his empire with care and precision."
The nation is unlikely to be able to root him out on its own.
Chad wrote:It (his power base) is essential that his people are happy and content.
I guess it depends on what happy and content mean in this context.
If it refers to a mass of people who know little other than the pap of lies fed to them by the Proseks, who live fully repressed lives, who can say nothing and had better not think anything wrong lest they make a mistake, who spy on each other as much as the people in modern North Korea, and for whom fear of the CS's own government may be as great as their fear of the horrors beyond the walls of the cities, then they're happy.
If it refers to people who can dare to dream, live how they want, say what they wish, listen to the music they like, craft the art in their souls into objects of delight, and learn and speak what they want, then no, they aren't happy.
Chad wrote:The sick are taken care of, the injured treated (that's why they don't care about such things as literacy).
You did check the casualty figures from SoT, right?
For those living in Chi-Town after the SoT war, most would personally know someone who had died, and as they lived and worked each day, it would be virtually impossible to avoid running into injury victims. Cybernetics and bionics exist, but the cost to deploy systems for all victims would be as staggering as the cost of the war itself.
Not to mention the psychological cost to the war veterans. Rifts comes with insanity tables built into the core rules, and you can believe there would be plenty of victims.
The unavoidable conclusion is that Chi-Town is swamped with injured soldiers from the war. I most sincerely doubt it was able to take care of them all or provide any kind of meaningful post-care support for any of them.
Also, the CS-CT most certainly does not care for all of its citizen's health needs.
You should check RMB p.140, where it describes the lower levels of Chi-Town.
Chad wrote:That is why others want to join. The CS is not being sanctioned by the rest of the world (as stated earlier, they don't even recognize some other nations).
Just Tolkeen, the Cyber Knights, Lazlo, New Lazlo . . . wait, that would be the rest of the world that isn't in the grips of power-mad Diabolical tyrants. (Ok, Tolkeen's leader went down the tubes in cannon . . . if anyone in Tolkeen got what they deserved, it was him; but he didn't started that way.)
Chad wrote:They control 73% of all trade on the continent.
Is that stated somewhere? (I'm not saying it isn't, I just can't recall.)
Chad wrote:The UC has no choice but to be accepted in 'most' places.
Did you mean that people everywhere have no choice but to accept it?
I don't agree with that at all.
Chad wrote:True, if that is the case. I don't see a population that exists to play as fast and loose as what your referring to.
I don't understand about "I don't see a population that exists to play as fast and loose".
Populations? Existing to play as fast and loose?
It is not the population I was referring to.
It is the simple fact that as far as I can tell, the CS wouldn't be able to make payroll for its army, much less buy anything for them.
Chad wrote:Again, the CS is the economy in America.
It is the largest, but it is not the only one.
Chad wrote:There is no one for the CS to fall in debt to except themselves.
I would admit that there are banks operating in the CS and that the CS goverment could borrow from them and there would be nothing those banks could do if Karl Prosek didn't want to pay them back.
However, if he didn't pay them back, those banks would go out of business.
If he printed money (electronic money in this case, being inside the CS system) just to pay of fthe debt, and then handed it over, that would cause inflation, making it harder to pay the troops and equip and arm them.
In any event, the size of those banks and the amounts that they could loan to the CS goverment would be very limited.
There is absolutely no way the CS could float its way through the SoT on debtor spending as the USA has been doing for years.
The bond-issuing idea to help pay has problems, too, in that for the CS to even meet annual payroll for its troops it is going to be taxing its population to the hilts, they're not going to have any money left over for bonds.
The entire GDP of CS-CT couldn't pay for the stated equipment and weapons, not even by a fraction.
Karl Prosek's (and his coterie's) lifestyle, plus the CS-CT government operations, and stuff like medical care for citizens, that doesn't even enter the picture.
Unless, of course, we cut the numbers for the armies on both sides of the conflict down substantially . . . a move back to the smaller post-apocalyptic milieu where the CS-CT's economy actually can pay for things and I don't get whiplash from my suspenders getting snapped back in my face.
Chad wrote:The Coalition falling in debt to itself is simply a larger version of an individual falling in debt to oneself- How can you?
Anyone can maintain multiple accounts and can loan themselves money from one account to another and even establish interest rates, etc.
Charging yourself interest would be silly, though.
Trying to compare the CS-CT's financial operations to an individual's does not work.
Trying to compare the CS-CT's financial capabilities to the USA's also does not work.
The CS-CT doesn't have a 30th of the USA's population and, although only scraps were ever mentioned, I cannot imagine that the CS-CT's industry is so vast that it could arm and equip a 1,000,000 man army, or produce all of the vehicles implied by the various SoT story elements.
Stating you can't fall into debt to yourself has nothing to do with anything. It's true, but since you also can't pay for anything you don't have money for, and since you can't fall into debt because you can't borrow, the only thing you can do is print money, which causes ruinous inflation.