Questions tagged [politics]
For questions about governance of the people, including methods, effects, and interactions with the people.
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Political Concerns of Laser Propulsion System
Now it's 2085, and human civilization has started to reach the planets. Using the most advanced fission rockets, we can travel from Earth to Mercury in 8 months and from Earth to Jupiter in 1 year. ...
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Why would an advanced society settle most major political questions with games?
I want to make a society which settles most major political questions e.g. tax codes, war, foreign policy, etc with competitive games where different factions sponsor gamers to do games and where the ...
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Could a Luna-based colony successfully revolt against Earth? [closed]
Let’s say that a colony established by humans on Earth’s moon was, for whatever reason, entering a revolutionary war with Earth for its own long-term sovereignty as a planet/nation. Mars has also been ...
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Feasibility of One-Citizen Dictatorship [closed]
Does it make sense for a country to be dictatorial but with extremely limited power? The only citizen of the Autonomous State of the Panama Canal (roughly same borders as Panama Canal Zone) is the ...
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How would people arrange for protection in a truly propertyless society? [closed]
I’m working on a story involving a society completely devoid of property. Communists often want to abolish private property, like owning factories and the like, while maintaining personal property, ...
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Possible Factors that secure a Tyrants power [closed]
The Problem
Picture this: an incompetent and uncharacteristic hereditary monarch to whom I will now refer to as the “Last Monarch”.
The problem with him is that he is rather unsuited for retaining ...
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Why would two factions in a long-running civil war tolerate the existence of a city not controlled by either party?
In the world in which my story takes place, a large country is contested by two factions which both claim to be the legitimate government. There was armed conflict in the past, but both sides signed a ...
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What event, short of a war or apocalypse, could cause social and technological regress?
In the world in which my story takes place, interstellar transport was achieved and some tentative voyages were made. But then, something happened to cause a general and widespread technological and ...
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Why could the militaristically superior dwarves who are the only ones with magic weapons be isolationist?
I want to have a world with dwarves who were gifted a magic language from their creator god (different one than the one who made humans) that they can use to inscribe magic onto weapons and other ...
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Could a monarchy keep control of an empire just though controlling immortality?
Let's imagine a high magic world. Most of the cities, resources, armies, arms, and everything else is controlled by guilds.
There is a small generational monarchy that owns little but has a lot of ...
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What kind of regulation do dangerous space sports get?
The universe in question is one in which the Solar System has been colonized thanks to the perfection of a nuclear fusion reactor that doubles as a high-thrust and high-efficiency hydrogen engine. ...
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How to justify a racist empire's use of other sentient species as shock troops? [closed]
I'm writing a novel where an empire is on the rise, with a lot of discrimination against other species, yet, for plot reasons they use shock troops that are of another species, elves. The empire use ...
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How would an oligarchy dedicated to economic growth rule?
The nation in question is a One Party State, and has been for nearly five centuries. The party leaders are oligarchs in every sense of the term, deriving massive incomes from their control over the ...
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What govt. members need to be captured for a successful coup d'état? [closed]
I'm working on a story where a corrupt government official manages to blackmail his nation's government into secretly letting him and his cohorts run things from behind the scenes. This is achieved ...
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How likely is it for a father to succeed his late son on the throne, while this son also has a younger brother? [closed]
this is my first post on this forum. Please see the actual question in bold below, after the initial explanation and further information which is crucial to the question.
I have the following question ...
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The interplanetary cold war
A cold war, the tension between well-armed powers that doesn't directly lead to an all-out war, but to an era of tension, espionage, proxy-warfare and propaganda. In our own world, the most famous ...
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How can we have a three-way space race?
I want to have a setting for a thing I am doing set in a world with a three-way space race between countries X, Y, and Z. Each country has a space program roughly on par with the 1960s US and USSR. ...
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How can rules of war be kept sacrosanct?
After a great and terrible conflict on Earth, known as World War II to the planet's inhabitants, the various nations that survived the war put in place a set of guidelines which specified certain ...
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What are the practical reasons for a species of humanoids to all wear sexy, revealing clothing?
Many cultures throughout human history have depicted skin, but few have done so explicitly for the purpose of being sexually enticing, especially not in their everyday routines.
Hence, I've been ...
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Why would lunar megacorps install a government in this scenario? [closed]
The year is 2170. Ish. Humans have colonised Mars, but the planet has yet to rival the economic might of other solar system worlds. As of yet, the main colonial power in the sol system is our own ...
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Would the use of sulfuric acid "piranha" weapons be considered chemical weapons, and thus, War Crimes?
In an alternative reality, people where capable of taking information from the future, and thus, they decided to not only to replicate future technology for the betterment of manking, but also future ...
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How can a matriarchal society be maintained?
Any matriarchal hierarchy is in constant danger: any male dictator wannabe would hit evolutionary jackpot with a succeeded putsch. (Stop giggling, Shenzi—human sexual dimorphism favors the males ...
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Why would a republic still have the word Principality or Kingdom or Empire in their official long name? [closed]
I am writing a prospective that is set in a near future.
The United-Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern-Ireland is now a republic, which means the British royal family has been abolished by a ...
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Reaction to first emergence [closed]
I’m writing a story in which the beginning of superheroes arises when four people with vendettas commit extreme acts of violence using elemental abilities against a few countries.
Powers are as ...
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universal politics of alien warfare [closed]
My story is a space adventure, opera, and war with an advanced alien race going to war with each other using this [magic] [1] system plus FTL, iron stars, and Dyson spheres, but as I was world-...
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How would remnant tech impact the formation of a tribal "big man" government?
Big man refers to a phenomenon that happens in especially small communities when a population falls below a certain population (approximately Dunbar's Number). You see it a lot in isolated tribal ...
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Why would people colonize a ring of desert islands?
The Question
I am setting up a world for a D&D campaign. Magic and technology are as usual for D&D worlds.
This world consists of a ring of hundreds of islands, in which there is one lush ...
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How might these anarchic 'olm-men' originate? [closed]
The olm-men are a group of troglomorphic stygofauns found deep in the earth. Uniquely, they have no king, a court, or even an elected parliament; they have no leaders at all. All members of their ...
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How would a modern military deal with an organized uprising from a group of werewolves?
I remember hearing in a discussion about modern geopolitics and military strategy how modern terrorist groups for a Western liberal democracy. The technological advantage most modern militaries have ...
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When countries combine, how do they pick a new name?
I am writing a story where two countries decide to merge into one larger country, but I am having trouble figuring out what they would actually name the new country.
At first I though that they would ...
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Explaining the need for human representatives in an AI controlled society
In a relatively near-future event, a Sentient Artificial Intelligence or SAI is accidentally created, escapes onto the internet, and then, after a few days of browsing social media and the news, ...
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Can Communism become a stable economic strategy? How?
In a capitalist Society, you work, you earn money and you buy a shovel to dig a hole
In a communist Society, you are given a shovel and told to work
Alt History Hub
Communism was a major rival ...
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What's the most likely "post democracy" form of political government?
Most of our world is now ruled by Representative Democracy. People vote for representatives and those representatives then decide on laws and make executive decisions.
The only certainty in life ...
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Scooped up for military research: How realistic is it in this day and age?
Being 'scooped up' for military research - or being a creation of military research - has been a common trope of movies and TV for many years. However, in most western nations, if not most nations ...
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Why would multiple off-world colonies secede all at once? [closed]
So, we have a situation where various Earth countries, (the Republic of Alaska, the United States of Europe, etc) now all have colonies on Mars, over venus and under the surface of Mercury. Technology ...
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Imperial Kingdoms?
I am writing a fantasy story where a vast Empire has been weakened, and the previous (inept) emperor allowed the feudal lords to act nearly autonomously. Once he died, the lords that ruled their ...
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Justifying why the birth of a post-scarcity world would cause other planets to secede
So, in roughing out the basic historical timeline of this project o’ mine, I have decided that the two most important aspects of the 24th century are:
1st, the birth of a post-scarcity on Earth, ...
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Should world leaders be screened for psychological suitability? [closed]
So, in this sci-fi futuristic universe, I am trying to solve what i call the Basic Problem of Human Leadership, which is thus:
1 in any Democratic system, both good and bad people are able to come ...
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Will a Junk food war work?
So let's say 2 countries are at war, but as both aren't able to take any military action. One of them decides to wage a long term junk food war to destroy the health of the nation.
The plans goes ...
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How would a medieval society look if food was not a factor to consider? [closed]
The Context
To give a short context of the question, my world is called Atmos, and it's a world where continents float above a layer of clouds. They aren't just floating islands, there are landmasses ...
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Justification for foreign intervention in an anarchist Middle East? [closed]
What would be a rational reason for Western countries to unethically intervene in the Middle East following a total economic collapse?
I'm writing a story where Middle Eastern countries descend into ...
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Why would people want a benevolent AI-controlled society? [closed]
Inspired by the Orion’s Arm worldbuilding project, I am imagining a science-fiction scenario where humans are ruled over by entities known as GODS, or Geocomputing Directories. These are computer ...
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Under what conditions would a cybercommunist nation form? [closed]
In an imagined future timeline, over 350 years from now, humans have terraformed Mars and colonised Venus, along with constructing a score of rotating space habitats. These worlds are mostly governed ...
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Is a monarchic confederation possible?
In my world that is set in a future Earth, there is a transcontinental country corresponding to the respective areas of the Fifth French Republic, the United-Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern ...
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How to sell things that have been brought back from another world
The MC from our modern world (2016-ish) has been iseikaied to another world of swords and magics. But after the MC defeated the big bad, she declined the invitation to stay in that world and insists ...
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Why would an advanced civilization keep slavery? [closed]
In my world, there is a country made up of mostly demons (a species) and ghouls. Their economy is both capitalistic and mercantilistic, and their government is a constitutional dictatorship. Currently,...
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What is the most altruistic economic system? [closed]
I'm trying to write about a world with an altruistic society, and want an economy that facilitates that most of the time. I'm looking for an answer that improves public goods, retains some level of ...
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How could politicians protect themselves from hypnosis?
In my world, hypnotism is both powerful and reliable. With a few tools and a lot of suggestions, it is possible for trained hypnotists to put people in a trance-like state. While in this state, the ...
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How would a village use its river that it shares with another village downstream?
This question is for a fantasy story loosely based on medieval west Europe.
The story is centered around a small remote village in a mountain that sits by a river. The village uses its river for ...
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An Irish monarchy and IRA [closed]
I need a change in history so in the year 2020, Ireland is ruled by a Constitutional Monarchy. It is still a catholic nation (not celtic), has a democratically elected parliament and leaders, and the ...
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