No Georgia?
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You can have Georgia too. Just donât think youâre getting a bundle deal without NC. 
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OK, you seem to be having difficulty with the symbolism here, so let me help you out. This story? Itâs not about water. In the story, the US certainly could have implemented energy water saving measures and built solar desalinization plants and developed other energy independence water reclamation technologies, but they didnât because thatâs something for pansy foreigners the terrorists would win.
Oops. Guess I gave away the symbolism on that last one there, huh?
Yeah, it would probably make more sense for the US to build desalinization plants and other related measures, but in general, thatâs not really what our country does, at least not historically. Why would we change in a 100 years?
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Not ALL of North Carolina! We have to take Asheville for us! They can take the rest of the state, though. I think the Canadians will dig the blue ridge parkway!
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Oi! Hey! Donât those of us here in the ATL get a say?
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Asheville is one of the best places in the state. (We went to the zoo there a lot when I was a kid.) Iâd also like to give my mom the opportunity to move somewhere better, but then again she hasnât done that in 60+ years of living there, so not really much hope. Come of think of it, I have good friends living in the Pittsboro area âŚ
OK, so we can still trade some states for Canadian provinces, but each country retains visiting rights. Could this be a subtle way of rolling back the idiotic border guard madness to what it used to be? Weâll simply never know, will we?
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Yeah, Asheville is nice, for sure. Plus, we canât let the Canadians have the Moog Factory!
But maybe I want to move there and then let Canada have the whole state? That way, I get pretty mountains, the Moog Factory, and decent health care!
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I suspect that itâs partly just for dramatic effect(even if youâve only seen pictures, a âdrought/crops withered/cracked mud/starving livestock/children with bloated bellies and big glassy eyes under the relentless sunâ scenario is pretty evocative); and party because, when it comes to basic inputs used in massive quantities, price matters.
Consider energy extraction: thereâs really not much to oil, gas, or coal(aside from some nasty impurities) that a decent chemist with access to water, any of a wide variety of biological feedstocks, and energy couldnât manufacture for you. Bulk carbon or hydrocarbons of various lengths arenât all that fundamentally tricky(unlike comparatively scarce elements with useful properties like gold/copper/indium/etc. where synthesis is theoretically possible but only with absurdly expensive nuclear chemistry tricks). However, doing it that way is expensive enough that the shit hits the fan if the supply of relatively easy-access subsurface deposits is disrupted.
Water, similarly, can be desalinated, synthesized from atmospheric oxygen and any hydrogen source(you could even combine the oil wars and the water wars by using hydrocarbons as a feedstock!), recycled from a variety of waste materials with some moisture content that we currently just landfill; but not as cheaply as it can be pumped out of an aquifer or diverted from surface freshwater sources. And when you are using the stuff by the âacre-footâ, cheap counts.
For your mars colony or your coastal plutocratic petrostate, the fact that desalination is an option changes everything; but if you want food to be cheap enough that you donât have malnourished peasants rioting and trying to burn down your palace, price is everything.
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Only if the deal includes getting rid of their hideous keyboard layout. That thing is unnatural.
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Iâd be fascinated to see what would happen in such an instance: the Canadian government is usually pretty warm-and-fuzzy when it comes to (at least theoretical/for-other-people) stances on âself determinationâ and democracy and such; but I have to imagine that a Nation-Stateâs survival instincts would kick in pretty dramatically at the prospect of such a buyout.
Quite a few countries already restrict foreign ownership of domestic property and companies(sometimes all, sometimes in certain sectors deemed strategic); and thatâs ownership without any claim to change of sovereignty. Actually buying sovereign control over territory usually seems to happen only when The Powers That Be are divvying up colonial holdings and divesting themselves of ones that donât align with their core competencies(eg. Louisiana purchase, Alaska, etc.)
On the one hand, if â89% of Manitoba residents voted to become the 51st state in a free and fair election without evidence of coercion or dirty tricksâ were the case, itâs hard to see the principled argument for sending in the army to suppress the dissidents, rather than just wishing them luck and sarcastically telling them to make sure that their health insurance is in order; but itâd be such a violation of the âdecorum among nation states who mutually agree that they are part of the nation-state clubâ that Ottawa would be very, very, unlikely to be happy about it.
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vs
I know exactly nothing about vote-buying laws in Canada, so handing over 100k Dollars (Canadian or US?) may be totally fair and square.
Itâs certainly deeply illicit to buy the votes of representatives, since the whole point of that is to get them to vote in your favor rather than in favor of the interests of the people they are representing; but Iâm not sure whether the ethics of buying the voters themselves are so clear cut: after all, voters voting for the people they believe will be best for them is considered more or less the intended state of a representative democracy; and while âIâll give you $100,000â is certainly blunt to the point of rudeness; itâs different only in degree from âIâm going to grow the economy and create jobs!â; and much more verifiable.
It definitely smells dodgy; and sovereignty-transfer in general seems to be something that nation states would prefer to pretend simply never happens(except through the occasional Just And Glorious war); so it isnât well codified; but if there is anyone whose vote it is legitimate to buy, itâd seem to be the voting public(and buying them off is certainly less coercive than more typical flavors of electoral fraud and voter intimidation, though it certainly has a bad-old-days-of-the-political-machines flavor to it).
in Germany itâs clear: clause 108b of the criminal code forbids buying of votes. this is probably the cause why every government breaks the election promises.
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Interestingly, it looks like itâd be illegal if an American tried to buy a vote, but not if a Canadian did so.
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-2.01/page-31.html#h-90
Prohibitions â outside Canada
282 No person shall, outside Canada,
(a) by intimidation or duress, compel a person to vote or refrain from voting or vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate at an election under this Part; or
(b) by any pretence or contrivance, including by representing that the ballot or the manner of voting at an election is not secret, induce a person to vote or refrain from voting or vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate at an election under this Part.
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They wouldnât be buying votes. The offer would be $100K per Manitoban if Manitoba joins the Union. Regardless of how they vote, and regardless of whether theyâre old enough or eligible to vote.
In the same sense a promise to lower taxes or raise the minimum wage - both of which put more money in the pockets of voters - is not considered buying votes.
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âŚdid you just create a convincing argument to get rid of Churchill Manitoba? Well done sir!
I get the sales pitch but you know Alberta is going to be the first go. Notley and her NDP are a glitch in the matrix. Harper will come back with his wildroses again, you just watch!
Also, weâre fucking keeping Quebec! Cheese, wine, sexy accents, its all good!
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Alberta has 3.5 times the population, so the cost would be 3.5 times higher. And itâs land-locked, while Manitoba has whole new coast and port for America just as the northern routes open up.
Also Manitoba is politically irrelevant. That is, the northern half of the population can be counted on to vote left, while the southern half votes right. So the province has no net effect on Canadian federal elections, and would have none in the US.
Alberta on the other hand would vote Republican most times. And so Democrats would block the purchase.
Agreed on Quebec.
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What in the world has made you confuse Quebec and sexy accentsâŚ
