Alternate History Ideas and Discussion

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Out of curiosity: What kind of immigration policy do you think that a surviving A-H would have? I know that some libertarians are in favor of a presumption in favor of open borders, so I'm wondering if they would actually like whatever immigration policy A-H would have actually had in recent decades.
Impossible to predict. A lot of OTL's policy points depend on the economic model we've chosen (lots of Neo-Keynesian bullshit) and social-democratic welfate state realities. If one supposes that this might have turned out differently, the situation surrounding immigration would be different as well.

Overall, I have a gut feeling that a surviving Austrian Empire might naturally evolve towards a "points system" for immigrants, where they welcome university students and economically valuable migrants, but refuse piss-poor fortune seekers who would most likely end up becoming a permanent underclass anyway.



BTW, the most logical arrangement would be similar to what Europe has right now: A bunch of nation-states, but unified in a supranational union such as the EU. This would allow for free migration not only within A-H, but also throughout most of Europe while still fulfilling most Europeans' wish and desire for national self-determination.
Is that necessarily logical? It might be, but as I mentioned: there's more at play than economics.

And even when we purely discuss economics... too-close ties between countries with wildly different economies is recipe for disaster. You cite the EU, but the EU is a suicide pact for the Northern countries. It would have been a million times better to have a Northern European Union ("the Germanic countries") and a Southern European Union ("the Romance countries"). These two could have had free trade, but they should NEVER have had the same currency.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Impossible to predict. A lot of OTL's policy points depend on the economic model we've chosen (lots of Neo-Keynesian bullshit) and social-democratic welfate state realities. If one supposes that this might have turned out differently, the situation surrounding immigration would be different as well.

Overall, I have a gut feeling that a surviving Austrian Empire might naturally evolve towards a "points system" for immigrants, where they welcome university students and economically valuable migrants, but refuse piss-poor fortune seekers who would most likely end up becoming a permanent underclass anyway.




Is that necessarily logical? It might be, but as I mentioned: there's more at play than economics.

And even when we purely discuss economics... too-close ties between countries with wildly different economies is recipe for disaster. You cite the EU, but the EU is a suicide pact for the Northern countries. It would have been a million times better to have a Northern European Union ("the Germanic countries") and a Southern European Union ("the Romance countries"). These two could have had free trade, but they should NEVER have had the same currency.

I'd be all in favor of a points system if one also allowed IQ testing to be used as a part of this! ;) This would give the world's poor and uneducated but also smart and talented a case to prove their case, after all.

As for the Eurozone, southern Europe's problems are primarily due to their different time orientation relative to northern Europe, no? As in, they're less capable of planning ahead and are, on average, more impulsive and thus more eager to spend now in the hopes of achieving quick results, right? Whereas northern Europe is more willing to save money and wait for later for results to bear fruit, in the hope of achieving bigger returns.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member

This is also a problem with Russians, apparently. Short-term impulsiveness at the expense of planning for the future, I mean. Obviously I'm talking about averages here.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
PC: Have an Actual Communist Dictatorship rise in any Scandinavian Country.

Besides Finland, who might have had an actual communist dictatorship, should the Finnish Civil War end in a Red Victory, would nations like Norway, Sweden, or Denmark have fallen to communist totalitarian rule?
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
PC: Have an Actual Communist Dictatorship rise in any Scandinavian Country.

Besides Finland, who might have had an actual communist dictatorship, should the Finnish Civil War end in a Red Victory, would nations like Norway, Sweden, or Denmark have fallen to communist totalitarian rule?

If the Red Army ends up a bit further to the east at the end of WWII, wouldn't it be possible and perhaps even likely for them to install a Communist dictatorship in Denmark? Or at least in mainland Denmark?
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
To elaborate: We could see a Communist Jutland but non-Communist Danish islands, including the island with Denmark's capital Copenhagen:

Denmark-Map.jpg


Non-Communist Denmark (on the islands) is likely to be formally neutral but informally aligned with the West, similar to Sweden in real life. It is also likely to have extremely close military and economic ties to its next-door neighbor Sweden.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
They would have to invest more in a westward push towards Germany in this case. Funnily enough, would this scenario that I mentioned above go well with a neutral Fascist Italy that doesn’t get involved in WWII? Having neutral Fascist Italy that carves out its influence in the Balkans plus Romania would have deterred Soviet advances into the region. However, this might also mean that Finland becomes an even bigger meat grinder as well.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
They would have to invest more in a westward push towards Germany in this case. Funnily enough, would this scenario that I mentioned above go well with a neutral Fascist Italy that doesn’t get involved in WWII? Having neutral Fascist Italy that carves out its influence in the Balkans plus Romania would have deterred Soviet advances into the region. However, this might also mean that Finland becomes an even bigger meat grinder as well.

A neutral Fascist Italy would radically affect the war altogether since there would be no North Africa, Sicily, and Italian campaigns, et cetera. Maybe the lack of any Western Allied progress would compel the Soviet Union to make a separate peace with the Nazis sooner or later, for instance?

Maybe this would be the best way for the Soviet Union to advance farther into Germany?

 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Two questions worth asking on alternatehistory.com:

1. Is there any realistic way for Russia to eventually experience a 1991-USSR-style breakup if it federalizes under someone other than the Bolsheviks, such as the Socialist Revolutionaries, if they somehow manage to win their power struggle against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War?

2. Just how likely was it that among the Soviet men born in 1910-1927 and who were killed in World War II, there was at least one man who was capable of rising to the top of the Soviet leadership after Andropov's or Chernenko's deaths and who was more capable of successfully reforming the Soviet Union relative to Mikhail Gorbachev in real life? I'm speculating about what could have happened had the Soviet Union and especially its younger male cohorts would have avoided suffering extremely massive losses in World War II, such as if France didn't fall in 1940.
 

lordhen

Well-known member
To elaborate: We could see a Communist Jutland but non-Communist Danish islands, including the island with Denmark's capital Copenhagen:

Denmark-Map.jpg


Non-Communist Denmark (on the islands) is likely to be formally neutral but informally aligned with the West, similar to Sweden in real life. It is also likely to have extremely close military and economic ties to its next-door neighbor Sweden.

Nice idea, could the Non-Communist Denmark have Swedish bases on it, sort of a mini neutral Scandinavian block (minus Norway) but with Finland included.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
....all that being said, I still don't actually think that the Russian interior would become "more developed than the Raj" (assuming, of course, a Raj that stays intact and continues its own pre-war developmental trends). Nor would such a scenario as this yield the (frankly ridiculous) outcome of massive South Asian migration into Russia. A non-communist Russia would be so much better off that Russia's own pre-war demographic trends would continue. This means that there would be many, many more Russians. A fair number of them would be settling the Russian interior.

FWIW, the idea that South Asian coolies were eventually going to migrate into Russian Central Asia was mentioned in this 1915 book by Arnold J. Toynbee, a British scholar:

 

WolfBear

Well-known member
What would the fate of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have been without the French Revolution, or at least without the FR actually taking an extremely violent turn in the early 1790s?

Back then, the PLC had already experienced Partition #1 but not Partitions #2 and #3:

Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth_1773-1789.PNG


Would Partitions #2 and #3 thus be completely avoided in this TL? And would the rump PLC eventually enter into a personal union with the Russian Empire?
 

Atarlost

Well-known member
A neutral Fascist Italy would radically affect the war altogether since there would be no North Africa, Sicily, and Italian campaigns, et cetera. Maybe the lack of any Western Allied progress would compel the Soviet Union to make a separate peace with the Nazis sooner or later, for instance?

Maybe this would be the best way for the Soviet Union to advance farther into Germany?

The Italians tied up a lot of the Royal Navy. Neutral Italy means several extra modern capital ships and their accompanying destroyers and cruisers steaming to Singapore early in the Pacific war just to start with.

Without the losses in North Africa, I'm not sure why the Nazis would want peace with the Soviets.
 

lordhen

Well-known member
I was thinking more along the lines of the Soviets wanting peace with the Nazis due to a lack of Western Allied progress.

Making peace to build up your forces for a new attack in the future, the Soviet Union would do it if needed, ore that is what i think.
 

ATP

Well-known member
I was thinking more along the lines of the Soviets wanting peace with the Nazis due to a lack of Western Allied progress.

Soviets wanted that from 1941 to 1943.Mission Impossible,germans always refused.You need kill Hitler to change that.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
It doesn't matter if one side wants peace. If the other still wants war there will still be war.

Might depend on just how much the Soviets are willing to offer the Nazis and whether the Nazis think that they can actually achieve a better deal/settlement on the battlefield.
 

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