Affirmative Politics, or why Canada should sell land to the Japanese

[Helios]

There are two islands just off the West coast of politics. Vancouver Island (with a population of half a million), and Haida Gwaii/The Queen Charlotte Islands, with a population of under 10,000

A fundamental aspect of Politics is you cannot choose your neighbors. We actually can though.
If we sell this island to the Japanese, we can go from having a backwater island with under 10,000 people on it, to an island of close to 2 million Japanese, who export Japanese products to the US and Canada, or import products from Canada and the US to their shores.
Japan is also wise to China's tricks, and could act as a bulwark to continued Chinese land holdings and political influence over Canada. Japan makes anime. China loads religous minorities handcuffed and blinfolded into trains so they can be sent to forced labour camps. I'd rather be friends with the Japanese.

What I mean by affirmative politics, is one that's not based on victimhood. One's that isn't based on aggrievement, like so much of politics can be. The entire point of this deal is to make both sides better off through trade, and utilizing the strengths of both countries to cover each others weaknesses.

It's about half the size of Shikoku, which has a population of 3.8 million, meaning if the population density carries over, it would be 1.9 million residents.

[Armhulen]

I actually just genuinely like the place though, I don't want to have a mini japan right smack dab next to me.

[Helios]

I actually just genuinely like the place though, I don't want to have a mini japan right smack dab next to me.

I get it.
Japan's problem is declining economic growth, and the repercussions of an aging and shrinking population.
Japan's strength is high quality of life, with a consumer market that can't be beat, in terms of food diversity, choice, nutrition and so on. They also make pretty good consumer electronics.
Canada's problems, well I could fill a book with.
In terms of strengths, Canada has a population density of 4 people per Km2. Japan has a population density of 348 people per Km2. We have a small population and a lot of land.

I think that partnering with Japan's developed manufacturing economy, alongside our vast natural resource wealth could result in a partnership that benefits both parties.
It's not going to be free, there will be costs to this friendship, but I believe the benefits outweigh the costs when it comes to having Japan as a neighbour.

[Ayy Lemoh]

I actually just genuinely like the place though, I don't want to have a [group of people] next to me.

Judging by a lot of history and 21st century politics, I wouldn't hold your breath since something like it WILL happen sooner or later. Maybe not specifically Japan though.

Spoiler:

arm when mini japan is smack dab right next to him
[youtube]lXna1a-806Q[/youtube]

we can go from having a backwater island with under 10,000 people on it, to an island of close to 2 million Japanese

well this is kinda what i mean, believe me where i live has a lot of Japanese and has for generations, but I can't imagine what they'd do to that sweet old island

I deleted that post since I thought it would just cause a shitstorm. Meh. Anyways, the two most likely things to happen are either the Japanese or Chinese to go there. One may mention other groups however I doubt that. Either way, people are likely going to go there sooner or later.

[Helios]

I don't in any way view this as an inevitability.
Japanese people don't really have that much interest beyond their borders from the discussions I've had with them. I would say that a lot of Japanese, like many Americans I know, have never left the country, let alone the continent.
What do you think would be an appropriate payment?
I'd like them to build a bullet train between Toronto and Montreal, Canada's first and second biggest cities, with a stop at Ottawa in between, our nations capital.
I'd base this off of 2 things.
1. Giving them eminent domain power (with government approval, with land only being used to build these trains)
2. Having Japanese work crews do the job, under their labour regulations and codes.
The bullet train was invented in 1960. in 2020, 60 years later, we're not any closer to getting them in Canada. You guys in the US aren't close to getting them either. There won't be a bullet train between DC and New York in 2060 either. For whatever combination of zoning restrictions, construction unions, and what I can only describe as bureaucratic autism, they're not a thing here. They are a thing in Japan. We can get their help to make it happen

[bobbahbrown]

giving japan naval bases on both sides of the pacific..............


what could go wrong...........

[Space Panda]

[Sheodir]

Just to clear up a small misconception, whilst you correctly cite "dwindling population that can't support their senior population" instead of the often more cited but incorrect "japan's dwindling population", it's a problem they've kinda crossed the event horizon of and are just eating shit for it already. Birthrates have been low since a little before the Heisei era started, so we're at a point they're likely more looking into hunker down and wait out the numbers to stabilize than anything else.

As for your plan, whilst neat conceptually, I feel the difficulty is getting the nigh 2 million JP population to want to do the trip. Financial incentives don't quite cut it, they aren't hurting for money back there, and they're contracting most of their hands-on labor to other countries.

[Helios]

giving japan naval bases on both sides of the pacific..............


what could go wrong...........

They don't have any Navy.
Article 9 is still in effect. They don't have a military, just a Self Defense force.
Seriously though, the US is going to be the one who's scared of Japanese military right off the west coast. The US is going to be the one intimidated on that front. But they also don't have a say. This would be a bilateral agreement, between the nations of Canada and Japan.
I'm not worried about Japan right now. I am worried about China.
Until there is regime change, there will be 1 billion chinese led by Xi, and as I said they don't have the same moral scruples as Japan or Canada.
[youtube]sTp79v9brvU[/youtube]
I want to prop up Japan, the unsinkable aircraft carrier off of China's shores.

[Space Panda]

[youtube]ZhCFiHMSyAw[/youtube]

[Helios]

Just to clear up a small misconception, whilst you correctly cite "dwindling population that can't support their senior population" instead of the often more cited but incorrect "japan's dwindling population", it's a problem they've kinda crossed the event horizon of and are just eating shit for it already. Birthrates have been low since a little before the Heisei era started, so we're at a point they're likely more looking into hunker down and wait out the numbers to stabilize than anything else.

As for your plan, whilst neat conceptually, I feel the difficulty is getting the nigh 2 million JP population to want to do the trip. Financial incentives don't quite cut it, they aren't hurting for money back there, and they're contracting most of their hands-on labor to other countries.

You're right.
I had an incentive planned, but I'll get into that later.
Basically, the central benefit is this island would just be off the west coast. An hour north of Seattle by flight. The shortest distance (air line) between Japan and Usa is 6,043.87 mi (9,726.66 km). They are very far away. This island is close by. Everything that makes this place a pain in the ass would make it useful for the Japanese.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... on_map.png
It's a highly mountanous island. It's a pain in the ass to live there, as all your supplies have to come in by ferry from Prince Rupert. It has a small native population, without much paved roads or industry. There is a lot of really low hanging fruit for them to invest in, and make money hand over fist.
From a trade perspective, if these airports were expanded, you could have goods fly in from Japan in an hour instead of 13, with 1/13th the fuel costs. You could have Japanese trucks loaded onto ferries, and then drive into Canada and the US and deliver these goods. It opens 2 alternative logistics networks to trade into the country, supplementing their commercial navy.
I live in Canada. These instore prices actually do suck. If Canadian business had to compete with Japanese imports, I'd spend less on groceries
https://tgstation13.download/dip/discordimageproxy.php/attachments/ ... 134335.jpg
6.49 for a 3 pack of peppers is how much it costs at my local grocery. Shit sucks
Edit:I am unembedding the images because they're huge

[Omni]

I feel like this is a good idea, even though I am yuro, so it doesn't really concern me whatsoever.
Variety is the spice of life as they say, and when chinese are your landlord, one island for japanese is step in better drection.

[cybersaber101]

How about we don't sell our nations land...that's a good idea.

[Armhulen]

How about we don't sell our nations land...that's a good idea.

lmfao America's hat

[Helios]

How about we don't sell our nations land...that's a good idea.

Why?
We're barely using that island. Do you want to guess its economic output?
https://d36tnp772eyphs.cloudfront.net/b ... ation1.jpg
Take another look at that image I posted, and give me a good reason as to why we shouldn't sell land.

[Farquaar]

Why?
We're barely using that island. Do you want to guess its economic output?
https://d36tnp772eyphs.cloudfront.net/b ... ation1.jpg
Take another look at that image I posted, and give me a good reason as to why we shouldn't sell land.

Population density =/= land usage.
We have plenty of mines and oil fields up north. You don't need to have urban sprawl on every inch of land for it to be considered productive.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Why?
We're barely using that island. Do you want to guess its economic output?
https://d36tnp772eyphs.cloudfront.net/b ... ation1.jpg
Take another look at that image I posted, and give me a good reason as to why we shouldn't sell land.

Population density =/= land usage.
We have plenty of mines and oil fields up north. You don't need to have urban sprawl on every inch of land for it to be considered productive.

uhm oil comes from the gas station, retard...

[terranaut]

Why?
We're barely using that island. Do you want to guess its economic output?
https://d36tnp772eyphs.cloudfront.net/b ... ation1.jpg
Take another look at that image I posted, and give me a good reason as to why we shouldn't sell land.

Population density =/= land usage.
We have plenty of mines and oil fields up north. You don't need to have urban sprawl on every inch of land for it to be considered productive.

uhm oil comes from the gas station, retard...

wouldnt it be called oil station then you bumbling buffoon, you goddamn retard, you unbelievable cretin????

[Super Aggro Crag]

do you call mcdonalds "the big mac station" idiot, gas station is a trade name.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

prison island?

[terranaut]

your mum is a trade name in the red light district of amsterdam
gottem

[cacogen]

ok let's do it

[oranges]

we're gonna sell them the south island instead

[Helios]

we're gonna sell them the south island instead

I wouldn't mind selling them Vancouver Island.
I'm just concerned about selling an island with the provincial capital of Victoria.

[Farquaar]

Remember when Russia sold Alaska to the Americans and then they discovered gold and oil there?

[Helios]

Remember when Russia sold Alaska to the Americans and then they discovered gold and oil there?

There's area in Northern Canada humans have never reliably lived in.
What was the population of Alaska prior to the sale, anyways? What good was it doing the Tsar?

[Space Panda]

Remember when Russia sold Alaska to the Americans and then they discovered gold and oil there?

There's area in Northern Canada humans have never reliably lived in.
What was the population of Alaska prior to the sale, anyways? What good was it doing the Tsar?

What Farquaad means is that while the land isn't very useful for Canadians at the moment, it may become a lot more valuable in the future.

Even if it didn't have those very valuable resources, imagine if Russia had control of Alaska during the Cold War. Things would've been very different.

You're thinking too much about the present, but not enough about the future.

[Farquaar]

Farquaad

[Helios]

Remember when Russia sold Alaska to the Americans and then they discovered gold and oil there?

There's area in Northern Canada humans have never reliably lived in.
What was the population of Alaska prior to the sale, anyways? What good was it doing the Tsar?

What Farquaad means is that while the land isn't very useful for Canadians at the moment, it may become a lot more valuable in the future.

Even if it didn't have those very valuable resources, imagine if Russia had control of Alaska during the Cold War. Things would've been very different.

You're thinking too much about the present, but not enough about the future.

If Russia had control of Alaska during the Cold War, the world would be more likely to end in nuclear fire IMO.

>while the land isn't very useful for Canadians at the moment, it may become a lot more valuable in the future.

The problem with this is there's no reason it would be valuable, or disrupt the status quo. This island has its strengths, but also can be a pain in the ass to live on presumably, which is why under 10,000 people are living on it.

A lot of things could happen, but don't. The bullet train was invented in 1960. The US or Canada could have built high speed rail. It's 60 years later and we haven't, but we could. And in 2060 when we still don't have any, hey in the future we COULD make them so why change the status quo?

[Farquaar]

A lot of things could happen, but don't. The bullet train was invented in 1960. The US or Canada could have built high speed rail. It's 60 years later and we haven't, but we could.

Do we need one?

[Helios]

A lot of things could happen, but don't. The bullet train was invented in 1960. The US or Canada could have built high speed rail. It's 60 years later and we haven't, but we could.

Do we need one?

Did we need cars?
Not really.
Do we need a bullet train? Not really.
Being able to get from Washington DC to New York, or Toronto to New York by train would be nice, especially since you don't have to deal with the TSA on trains, and don't have to worry about grandmas getting groped, or kids getting strip searched.
https://www.foxnews.com/travel/tsa-sued ... ch-lawsuit
https://professional-troublemaker.com/2 ... -genitals/
But that's talking about the US and not Canada. Montreal and Toronto can be far away culturally, physically as well, 541KM away.
I can't tell you the specific relationships or innovation that would be a result of Canada's 2 biggest cities being much more accessible to one another, but the network benefits would be pretty massive.
Flights between Toronto and Montreal are pretty regular, but aren't going to be as efficient as a bullet train when it is set up, as there is more energy required for a plane to take off, get to the cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, then go back down to the ground, as opposed to a train just running a long the surface of the ground in a straight line. Electricity is going to be cheaper than jet fuel, though I'll admit the maintenance costs on the line may be steep, so it doesn't come without its costs

[Farquaar]

Did we need cars?

Yes. Our entire way of life depends on them. Not everywhere is a big city where people can get to work by walking or taking the subway. Nor is it practical to have every mine and lumberyard hooked up to a rail system.

See, the thing about your bullet train argument is that you're thinking about "how convenient would this be for me?", rather than "what incentives are there to build one?". Unlike the tightly packed island of Japan, America and Canada are vast, with spread out population centres. Government bodies and private interests recognize the enormous construction and maintenance costs a long-distance maglev train would demand. It's not that local leaders lack the forward-looking vision of glorious Japanese, it's that they recognize that it's just not cost-effective to build here.

If you sell land to the Japanese, it won't magically become populated with technologically advanced urban neo-Tokyos. They'd be limited by the same laws of economics that everyone else is limited by.

[Helios]

Did we need cars?

Yes. Our entire way of life depends on them. Not everywhere is a big city where people can get to work by walking or taking the subway. Nor is it practical to have every mine and lumberyard hooked up to a rail system.

Our entire way of life depends on them now, but didn't before. I was leaning on the past tense in my statement. When cars were just invented, we didn't need them. Horse and Buggies did us just fine, in the same way regular rail is doing us just fine now.

[Helios]

I still think this was a good idea

[Farquaar]

I still think this was a good idea

[oranges]

I still think this was a good idea

Why would japanese citizens move there, it's far away from their homeland, there's no jobs or infrastructure.

it would take hundreds of years to develop into a metropolis like the rest of japan and who knows what the geopolitical outlook would be then, you cant just take the average population density and assume it applies to empty land, people need things to be in place before they live there.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

Bruh are you implying that the Japanese are the new Aryan race and that by giving them an island close to burgerland they'll magically solve the fact you live in a shithole country?

That by giving them this island they're going to just instantaneously turn it from a backwater into a titan of industry?

If it was a good place to build factories in, there would already be factories.

Also, did you just say Japan's strength was "quality of life and consumer market" when their society has one of the highest suicide rates in the world?

[thehogshotgun]

I despise japan. They are literally genocide deniers. Lol!

[Farquaar]

I still think this was a good idea

Why would japanese citizens move there, it's far away from their homeland, there's no jobs or infrastructure.

it would take hundreds of years to develop into a metropolis like the rest of japan and who knows what the geopolitical outlook would be then, you cant just take the average population density and assume it applies to empty land, people need things to be in place before they live there.

Bruh are you implying that the Japanese are the new Aryan race and that by giving them an island close to burgerland they'll magically solve the fact you live in a shithole country?

That by giving them this island they're going to just instantaneously turn it from a backwater into a titan of industry?

If it was a good place to build factories in, there would already be factories.

Also, did you just say Japan's strength was "quality of life and consumer market" when their society has one of the highest suicide rates in the world?

Guys, we tried this conversation months ago. You won't convince him. Grorious Nihon is just too goodaru

[Lacran]

I get the basic premise that japan utilizes land well, and reducing shipping costs to trade with japan is good aswell, but there's a few key issues here.

First of all, asset sales on a national level are almost always an awful idea if your country is in a position to develop the region themselves, which Canada is.

Shikoku is literally the japanese mainland, you're not going to get anything remotely comparable regarding industrialization from an island across the pacific.

The amount of time required to get to the levels of production you're hoping that would offset selling off natural resources is considerable.

The amount of investment required from japan is huge, they're not in a financial position for this, look into their debt crisis, they aren't a strong economy.

Not only will you be selling the island, you will be selling miles upon miles of Canadian coastline full of fishing and off-shore oil reserves.

Should Japan simply refuse to develop the island, there's nothing you can do about it, nor if they sold it to someone else.

The trade Canada profits from with japan are primarily basic products and extracted natural resources, these are resources you would be simply giving to Japan for them to export to themselves:

Spoiler:

So what I don't understand is, if you want more japanese products, why not just immigrate more Japanese entrpeneurs, or encourage japanese business to open in canada locally? the things you are importing like car parts, information technology related products and industrial machinery can all be made in canada locally, and far cheaper, you don't need the Japanese government for this to occur.

[cacogen]

The weeb fantasy of jp coming to you

[Rohen_Tahir]

I don't think selling the island to the Japanese will automatically create a portal between it and Japan.

[IkeTG]

Also, did you just say Japan's strength was "quality of life and consumer market" when their society has one of the highest suicide rates in the world?

oh really, the highest in the world?

[XivilaiAnaxes]

oh really, the highest in the world?

One of. Read in future.

[Farquaar]

Also, good luck reconciling any potential sale of British Columbia with section 35 of Canada's Constitution. You'd be screwing over the natives even more than they're being screwed over now- assuming the courts would even allow such a boneheaded move to begin with.

[IkeTG]

oh really, the highest in the world?

One of. Read in future.

not even close, mayb you should do your own reading idiot

[saprasam]

used to live on victoria, was a good time
dont want to sell it to the japanese though

[XivilaiAnaxes]

not even close, mayb you should do your own reading idiot

I was about to start copying articles, but I remembered it's an Ike post, effort is wasted on you.

[IkeTG]

I was about to start copying articles.

that's plagiarism. Your honor, this man is cringe

[cacogen]

I don't think selling the island to the Japanese will automatically create a portal between it and Japan.

You underestimate their power