Weinbaum's Universe - World facts

[ffutures]

Following on from the previous post, here are some carefully researched (yeah, right...) figures for the main nations circa 2100, based on the political situations previously described. Anything look implausible?

Later Now completely revised - hope this makes a bit more sense...

Nation United Americas Brazilian Federation Russian Empire Europe Britain and allies Africa Pacific Alliance China [1]	Population (Billions) 0.96 0.42 0.33 0.46 1.05 0.60 0.35 1.40	GNP (Billions) 14,592 4,620 3,036 6,164 15,225 1,260 1,925 < 600	Military Spending (billions) 583.7 184.8 151.8 180.9 761.3 68.0 134.6 Unknown	Average Income (dollars) 15,200 11,000 9,200 13,400 14,500 2,100 5,500 < 400	Life Expectancy (years) 85 82 85 88 87 72 75[2] < 50	Infant Mortality per 1000 births 2.7 4.1 3.6 2.9 4.5 22.8 16.5 > 250	Registered Spacecraft 54 16 18 23 26 3 2 None	Interplanetary Colonies 6 2 3 5 4 None None None
[1] All figures for China are estimates based on partial data and should be treated with caution. [2] Currently reduced due to deaths of Pacific War veterans, will probably rise to 80+ within ten years.

Comments

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

How does Brazil's GNP end up three times that of Europe's when they have comparable populations and Average Incomes?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Crap maths? I've done something stupid here, and I'm too tired to sort it now, I'll have a look when I'm properly awake.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Do you really mean billions for both population and GNP? Because, for the United Americas, GNP of 27.5 billion (dollars? credits?) divided by population of 2.50 billion gives 11 (currency units per capita per year), which seems astonishingly low. I think you'd get a more plausible result if you made GNP trillions. (These are American billions and trillions, 10^9 and 10^12, yes?)

Total world population of over 16 billion seems singularly high. I don't believe anyone in the 1930s imagined the world population reaching even its current 6 billion. I would divide by between 2 and 5.

I don't get how you are figuring average income. Is it meant to be GNP/population? Because that doesn't give 15,200, or even 15.2, for the United Americas. If it's average income per employed person, then you're getting about 70% of the population working, I think, and that's way high, especially if you assume that women who get married stay home.

I'm surprised that Pacific Alliance life expectancy is less than African.

Your figures give GNP/capita of 11 for the Americas, 11 for Brazil, 9.5 for Russia, around 5 for Europe, 11 for Britain, 6 for Africa, 16 for Pacific Alliance, and 0.1 for China. The relative figures seem low for Europe and high for the Pacific Alliance.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think I've lost track of decimal points or something somewhere along the way - not a good idea to do things like this when I'm half asleep. I'll have another look at it tomorrow, try to change it to make a bit more sense.

[kyte.livejournal.com]

Small suggestion - "Britain and Allies" might be usefully renamed "Commonwealth".

[kyte.livejournal.com]

Actually, a quick Wikipedia crib suggests that "British Commonwealth" would be the right term.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'mm trying to avoid it, actually.

[kyte.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Better than "British Empire", though :D

Maybe it could have an evolved title? It clearly *is* very close to the Commonwealth.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'll think about it. I'm not sure when the term first came into use to describe the former British bits, if it's pre-1930s I'll go for it, but I think it was much later.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside Cromwell's use of the term, this is what Wikipedia says about the British Commonwealth:

Although performing a vastly different function, the Commonwealth is the successor of the British Empire. In 1884, while visiting Adelaide, South Australia, Lord Rosebery described the changing British Empire, as some of its colonies became more independent, as a "Commonwealth of Nations"[citation needed].

Conferences of British and colonial Prime Ministers had occurred periodically since 1887, leading to the creation of the Imperial Conferences in the late 1920s.[3] The formal organisation of the Commonwealth developed from the Imperial Conferences, where the independence of the self-governing colonies and especially of dominions was recognised. The Irish Oath of Allegiance, agreed in 1921, included the Irish Free State's adherence to and membership of the group of nations forming the British Commonwealth of Nations. In the Balfour Declaration at the Imperial Conference in 1926, Britain and its dominions agreed they were equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. This relationship was eventually formalised by the Statute of Westminster in 1931.


So it looks pre-30s to me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks, I'll go with it then.

[kyte.livejournal.com]

:-)

I was just coming here to give a similar blurb, but I was beaten to it!

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

You might go with the term "Imperial Federation". It was much more common to before WWI than between the wars, the Commonwealth idea having replaced it around 1920, but it wouldn't be too anachronistic.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I have a good reason not to - if I put "British Imperial Federation" into that table in Word it REALLY screws up the layout! "British Commonwealth" fits.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Okay, let's see, that gives us

World: 5.57 billion inhabitants
$47,422 billion/year GNP
$9,600 billion/year military budgets (20.2%)
$8,514/year per capita income
75 years life expectancy

and it's not possible to figure an average infant mortality, because we don't have birth rates, and infant mortality needs to be weighted by number of births and not by number of population. I'm betting that birthrates are different in different countries; probably lowest in Europe, and highest in Africa.

Of course, if we assume that populations are stable, rather than growing, then birth rates would be the inverses of life expectancies; for example, a life expectancy of 88 years in Europe implies an annual chance of death of .01136, or roughly 11 per thousand, whereas Africa would have .01389, or roughly 14 per thousand. But I'd bet that there were divergences. By the literary stereotypes of the era, Europe might be an aging, slightly decadent society with a birth rate of, say, 10 per thousand and a shrinking population, while Africa might still have comparatively high fertility and a birth rate of maybe 17 per thousand.

This is all going to be complicated by the relationship between infant mortality and life expectancy. If, for example, Africa has a life expectancy of 72 years, then per thousand live births it should have 72,000 years of total lifetime. If it has 22.8 deaths per thousand live births, then those 22.8 are only going to contribute, say, 11.4 years to total lifetime. The other 977.2 will then have total lifetime of 71,988.6 years, which gives about 73.7 years life expectancy. At the other extreme, Europe will have total lifetime of 88,000 years, of which 1.45 years come from infant mortality, and that gives 88.3 years life expectancy. So the difference is slightly less than appears from crude life expectancy; a child who makes it through the first year has a slightly longer life ahead of him.

As to military budgets, checking my (several years old) copy of How to Make War, I see that NATO had about 6 trillion GDP and 189 billion military budget; that looks like maybe 3% military spending. A while back, I reviewed the comparative figures, and it looked as if a plausible rule of thumb might be 1% for countries that were defended by their allies, 2% for inward-looking democracies (Europe?), 4% for militarily active democracies (Britain?), 8% for highly mobilized democracies (Africa?), 16% for out and out authoritarian states (Pacific Alliance?), and only rare outliers beyond that range; if you push above it you're starting to risk negative economic growth and declining ability to wage war, and if you fall below it you're really not a state at all, except by courtesy (in this world, possibly the Vatican?). But in any case, the world average military budget of 20% of GDP looks way high for a world that's not actively at war. Dividing all those figures by 3 might look about right.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much - I must have worked out the percentage wrong when I looked at this. Easy enough to change anyway.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, I've now taken it down to 3-5% for most nations. Thanks again for your help!