A bigger Canada?

I'll guess that there's not another thread around here, but I somehow feel like it's a pretty hot, if closeted, issue. So, to be blunt, we're a very sparsely populated country. Second largest country in the world, a huge amount of fresh water, but a pretty tiny population. Yet we're world-renowned for having some of the best living conditions in the world. For a while now, I've been wondering why we seem to have no people, and I started doing some serious research into all sorts of facts and figures, at the basics a general study of why people live in certain places, and why they don't and theoretically couldn't live in Canada. So after a good 1 1/2 months of hardcore hobby research, I've come to the conclusion that there's really no reason why more people don't live here.
So now, in the 21st century, we need to grow our population. I believe we need to do this primarily not because of the economic benefits, or the better political weight we'd have as a bigger country. No, Canada should do this for the overwhelming social benefits that a larger population would garner. If Canada was to have a higher density, it'd give Canadians a certain density of scale that exists in places like Europe, which would allow us to specialize more in what we want, build a distinctly Canadian culture, and give more Canadians the kind of amenities that denser regions have.

I would propose that Canada grow it's population to about 100 million people in about 40 years, by 2050. I would call this achievable if we dropped all our things and got to work on growing our country, but I think that realistically it could happen by around 2060, giving about 10 or 15 years for us to steadily set our course as we gain national confidence. This would almost all be accomplished through immigration. Basically, like 99.9% of our 100 million people would live within ~500 km of the US border, with areas like the Canadian shield, northern prairies, and the territories seeing very little of these new immigrants. Obviously, there's tonnes of room for people in those areas to live fairly comfortably (and economically,) but likelihood is that they'll settle in southern Canada, which is even better because it creates a greater density in those areas, while keeping our more delicate northern natural environments intact.

This new Canada emerging with 100 million people would be an entirely different country, and perhaps more importantly create a chance to totally rebuild our country. Programs would be made to make sure people are dispersed evenly throughout the country, not just in the cities or 5 biggest metropolitan areas. I'd guess something like 5 million people in the Maritimes, 15 million in Quebec, 40 million in Ontario, 25 million in the Prairies, and 15 in BC, resulting in huge growth in both cities and rural areas.

All the development and new economies forming would be based on sustainability and the most enriching in a social context. Both cities and towns would build up, keeping as much farmland as possible and also creating denser, more lively cities and towns. development would include things like urban agriculture, mixed use building, and focus on walking, biking or public transit. We'd already have a head start in these, as a vast majority of immigrants that we'd be getting from developing countries are already reliant on these kind of lifestyles. What we'd be offering them is security, stability, and freedom. Instead of offering them a slight upgrade to the American dream, we'd be giving them something completely different globally. Our economy would have to be boosted through grassroots businesses and industries mainly serving the local level, which would not only be a lot easier to organize with the introduction of many many new people (i.e. you don't really have to,) but would allow for more enriching lives when combined with Canada's current social security network (and a possible network of the future.)

So why is Canada special here? Most importantly is our social stance. Canadians are some of the most tolerant people in the world, and our current immigration rate and ethnic diversity is a pretty good indicator of that. We're also no strangers to letting out a helping hand, which would be required to undertake the infrastructure and social programs that we need anyways but would become imperative for our population to increase by 60 million in 40 years. I truly believe that many Canadians want this, and we can definitely achieve it.

Who's with me? Comments on this? It's currently at the basics, cold hard speculation fueled by imagination and hope for the future. But I think my general premise isn't too far off from the truth.

EDIT: And this thread could probably be in a better spot, like the general discussions thread.

it takes alot of resources to live in canada. don't we have some of the highest energy usage per capita? maybe with canada expanding its population, we might be doing more harm to the planet.

Two things: Firstly, a large amount of those energy costs could be avoided by retrofitting buildings and in general adopting more green protocols. Not to mention that if people were to adopt more compact lifestyles and the country was to have much denser cities and towns, it would allow opportunities for things like community heating or simply the benefits of multiple households in a building.
Secondly, countries like India and China are developing. And when their people start getting better lifestyles, they're going to be adopting american lifestyles, meaning much higher energy use, including things such as air conditioning which have very high energy costs too.

but how much is climate related and how much is lifestyle?

Not to splash cold water on this project but what would all these new people do for a living? A viable economy presumes a high level of employment producing tangible goods or services that have value on an international scale, not just cutting each others grass.

Hmmm.

While there is little doubt that on a strictly comparative basis, Canada is underpopulated....this is at best a misleading comparison.

Having had the good fortune to be able to travel in my life; I can tell you firstly that when I spent time in Europe, while I found much to admire, I also found....a complete dearth of nature; with the exception of far eastern and northern Europe, (Siberia and Sweden)......there is little real nature to admire. There are few forests and what they pass off as them is as often as not, 500 acres. Which is to say, nothing, you can still hear the highway, even in the dead centre; and there are few or no large mammals left.

Not to mention that coin laundry in Rome or Paris will set you back $6.00 per load without difficulty. Drying on a clothesline is something I endorse, but we would do well to remember that for the much of the world's population it is not a choice, but a necessity given the price of water.

Put simply, while European densities have their advantages........they have drawbacks, not only locally in both cost and ecological terms; but also internationally.

There is after all a finite resource pool, not merely for oil or gas, but of gold, silver, iron, platinum, uranium and so on.

Dividing this pool among ever more people mean less for every person!

I would suggest that based on best resource estimates to date of non-renewable resources, that if we desire to have any access to them as a population in 500 years, a pretty small period of time in celestial terms, that we need to have a global population no greater than 3 billion or so.

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In other threads this issue (global population) has been discussed, there has been the unfortunate and intellectually dishonest suggestion that population growth restriction and or a goal of reduction is either racist or somehow cruel.

I want to be clear in that I do not suggest any person of any background suffer a pre-mature death merely to benefit some arbitrary estimate of global sustainability. Nor do I think any longer-term maintenance and/or reduction of population should fall upon any particular ethnic group, or country etc.

Rather, I merely use this to point out that I don't think further global population growth of humans of any description is not particularly desirable.

From both an economic and an environmental perspective, fewer people dividing the pie means bigger pieces for everyone!

A goal I suggest be achieve largely through increase living standards and education for the poor throughout the whole world; along with the widespread availability of contraception of all types, as Europe has shown this is sufficient to reduce population growth to near zero or maybe even a small reduction quotient on an entirely voluntary basis.

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Now....as a separate issue, is Canada capable of sustaining more people, relative to other parts of the world.......YES

Should it? Certainly, up to a point. Though as a pre-cursor, I would rather see that accrue through a greater SHARE of the global population being based in Canada as opposed to a net population increase globally.

I would suggest, that at current levels of per capita consumption of resources, this could be quite detrimental (as it already is at current levels).

It may amaze some, to realize that several species per year are becoming extinct/extirpated in Canada; and that water in nature in most part of the country (naturally) is barely at swimming standard, let along drinkable! (without treatment)

This is of course, entirely fixable, as it should be. But it should also be fixed BEFORE we seek to take on large numbers of new Canadians.

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One final note of interest.........Right now Canada has an annual target of approximately 300,000 immigrants (new Canadians) per year. For several years there have been fewer applicants than available positions.........

Following up on the above, want to add 2 more thoughts.

One, I would like to see every population concentration (City/Region) on the globe be fully energy, food and water self-sustaining within 100km of its borders. I see this an not only very responsible economically and environmentally, but also from the perspective of national sovereignty and reducing global warfare and the risk thereof.

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As a second note, I do forsee and think it desirable than Canada grow its population in the mid-term and long-term; I would rather see this a as SHARE of global population (through immigration) rather than as a NET growth of global population. I also want to see this done as sustainably as possible. Which I conclude limiits growth to 2% per year maximum....meaning about 65,000,000 by 2045, not 100,000,000 plus in roughly the same time frame.

Northern Light said:

Hmmm....
I would suggest that based on best resource estimates to date of non-renewable resources, that if we desire to have any access to them as a population in 500 years, a pretty small period of time in celestial terms, that we need to have a global population no greater than 3 billion or so.

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And why should we be different from the rest of the world in drying our laundry? Why shouldn't it be mandatory for Canadians too? The only reason that we're running into such big problems is that humanity is hugely wasteful, especially the Western World but now we can see, other places too. If we focused on making the best of what we had, moving away from a consumerist culture back towards a more social culture and psychologically meaningful lifestyles, I believe we could support the 2050 forecasted world population of 9 billion with room to spare. We definitely need to stop growing the human race, and I think over time it would be best for it to level out at maybe 7 billion (current population trends support that.) But the world doesn't need to all be like the US, and in fact it shouldn't. With modern technologies, we could sustainably support everyone for a very long time. Only buy what you need, have a lot of communal services rather than individually owned things, and put the importance on human interaction rather than what you have. I remember reading somewhere (might have been a quote for Altermondialisme) that the sign of salvation for developing countries are smoke stacks. That shouldn't be. It's a rather fine line, and it'll have to take a lot of adaptation. I'm glad that you see just how big a problem there is today, there doesn't seem to be as many people as I would have thought that see how much trouble we're in.

Northern Light said:

ow....as a separate issue, is Canada capable of sustaining more people, relative to other parts of the world.......YES
-le snip-
This is of course, entirely fixable, as it should be. But it should also be fixed BEFORE we seek to take on large numbers of new Canadians.

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My point is that Canada is relatively unique in the developed world in that we're very tolerant, and we seem to have a mindset that says we could accept a "simpler" and more sustainable lifestyle, while most of the developed world would not be able to accept that. I would definitely not endorse this if everything in Canada was to continue ticking along as it currently is, just with an extra 60 million people, no. But, if we were to develop so that our towns raised out of the ground instead of growing out, and people only bought what they needed, living in small spaces and not being wasteful, that's a different story. I think that achieving a population of 100 million could all be done without urban boundaries growing almost at all (probably some boundary growth will be necessary in the prairies and BC,) and without the boundaries of our farmland growing at all either. Houses would be smaller, and our society would be rewired away from consumerist culture so that we consume far less goods. It may seem far off, but it needs to happen somewhere, and I think Canada is the best contender. The government might enforce crop rotation rather than the use of fertilizers, and find sustainable, long-term solutions for the water deficit in the prairies. Mineral exploitation in the North would have to be cleaned up a lot. Fishing would have to be more strictly controlled. But a majority of Canadians are already asking for that as some of the #1 items on their wishlist for the government.

I actually think that it'd be better in total to have a shift of millions of people from, say, China to Canada. China's developing so quickly, I'm sure a lot of Chinese will end up living very similarly to Americans in 50 years. We can very easily see the effects from 300 million people living that kind of lifestyle, what would it be like with 1.3 billion? The world just can't do it. Canada could take those people and shape them into a more sustainable lifestyle, while also shipping that culture abroad as we grow to have more global influence. In the process, we'd still retain all of our little forest preserves in the middle of farmland, and we'd still have a good 8 million square kilometers of basically uninhabited land.

So really, it'd be a global first. High population, high standard of living, but low environmental impact and emphasis on social relations and nature. We certainly have a lot to work on. We're basically second only to the US in terms of living American lifestyles, are one of the highest per capita consumers and GHG producers in the world, and many more social and environmental problems we need to work on. But I think that Canada should and is set to head the global stage in this.

Northern Light said:

One, I would like to see every population concentration (City/Region) on the globe be fully energy, food and water self-sustaining within 100km of its borders. I see this an not only very responsible economically and environmentally, but also from the perspective of national sovereignty and reducing global warfare and the risk thereof.

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As a second note, I do forsee and think it desirable than Canada grow its population in the mid-term and long-term; I would rather see this a as SHARE of global population (through immigration) rather than as a NET growth of global population. I also want to see this done as sustainably as possible. Which I conclude limiits growth to 2% per year maximum....meaning about 65,000,000 by 2045, not 100,000,000 plus in roughly the same time frame.

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The first is certainly very favourable. I don't think it's exactly completely doable, but there's certainly a lot that can be done. Urban farming, for one. Imagine if you could take rainwater, cycle it through humans, and then treat the human waste (including organic garbage,) remove the methane from it, use the methane for cooking and winter heating, then use the solid and liquid waste as fertilizer for greenhouses right upstairs? Well you can, people just aren't doing it.
There's some sense, I think, in having certain regions produce food for others, but it definitely doesn't make sense for the Canadian prairies to be providing food for Europeans. I think I really agree with you in the sense that everything should be self sufficient. You should really check out Alter-Globalization. It's a movement that very distinctly sets itself apart from the Anti-Globalization movement in saying that the world getting smaller and borders shrinking isn't a good thing, just global corporations controlling people's lives and the West telling people how to live. I think that it's great that places in the world are closer than ever, both through physical transportation and telecommunications. However, the global economy is most definitely not healthy.

On that second note, Canada would obviously be getting basically all it's population from immigrants. I don't believe that our current population is self-sustainable, is it? We'd be shrinking without immigrants.
To respond to your unquoted immigration point, that's only because we're picking the very highest fruits for the basket. You basically can't get into Canada unless you have a university degree and can speak English or French. We could use less educated people, and even totally uneducated people to do work on building the tonnes of infrastructure that we'd need. If we got enough immigrants from certain parts of the world, it wouldn't be mandatory for them to speak English or French, as they could just operate in their own communities like they would back home.

Prometheus The Supremo said:

but how much is climate related and how much is lifestyle?

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Lifestyle, which is compounded by climate for us. Our current unsustainability is due to our lifestyle, and we could be quite sustainable in our Canadian climate by just living properly.

spider said:

Not to splash cold water on this project but what would all these new people do for a living? A viable economy presumes a high level of employment producing tangible goods or services that have value on an international scale, not just cutting each others grass.

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It'd mostly be to serve ourselves, though a lot could be accomplished in the economic sense by branching away from the US and looking at partnerships with emerging economies. But you actually highlight there the major problem with our current standard of living. For us to be "living well", we have to be profiting off of someone else, which means that it's impossible for everyone to be living well in the western world. Why doesn't it work if a town of 5000 has maybe 2 small factories, a couple of streets of workshops, and restaurants and grocers? It could export some of the stuff it makes to another town, while it gets ipods from another. The economy isn't an open system: it's very much set in stone by the earth's human population and resources. Therefore, it's quite possible for people to live the same lives as they do today on a local scale, especially in cities. Canada could easily grow with both: having our people still working hard and exporting to the world, but at the same time setting up more locally-minded economies.

However, really the only way I'd want to see this is if a majority of the country's growth went into local economies, doing things like small-scale manufacturing and services. Our GDP per capita might well go down, but the true quality of our life would go up.


BTW (before the TC crew barges in here and accuses me of being a total nutjob and somehow demolishing the credibility of subways,) I have two sides: this radical "everything that we're doing now is wrong" side, and the milder anchored in current reality side. My business in other sections on this forum is a good 95% of the latter This thread is a combination of straight off growing Canada's population traditionally (including discussion of required infrastructure and other systems, of course,) and also on alternatives to traditional growth.

I'd say there is room to increase the rate of immigration to perhaps closer to 500,000 per year, I think aiming for 100 million in 40 years is a bit bonkers. In order to do it, we'd have to raise our population growth rate by ~2.3%, which works out to an additional 700,000 immigrants (or an increase to 1 million/year or so). I'm not sure this is sustainable, and it would likely lead to a lot more sprawl and poorly designed cities, thrown up in a hurry.

Secondly, we should be mindful of the kind of technological change that can occur in 40 years. I'm pretty sure that even most well-informed people are underestimating how much change we will see by 2050. Your grandkids will think you came from the stone age.

I'd also be concerned about what would happen, culturally, to Canada if a large majority of its population were foreign-born. I have a hard time believing there would be much left of Canadian culture. Maybe you don't think it's worth preserving.

afransen said:

I'd say there is room to increase the rate of immigration to perhaps closer to 500,000 per year, I think aiming for 100 million in 40 years is a bit bonkers. In order to do it, we'd have to raise our population growth rate by ~2.3%, which works out to an additional 700,000 immigrants (or an increase to 1 million/year or so). I'm not sure this is sustainable, and it would likely lead to a lot more sprawl and poorly designed cities, thrown up in a hurry.

Secondly, we should be mindful of the kind of technological change that can occur in 40 years. I'm pretty sure that even most well-informed people are underestimating how much change we will see by 2050. Your grandkids will think you came from the stone age.

I'd also be concerned about what would happen, culturally, to Canada if a large majority of its population were foreign-born. I have a hard time believing there would be much left of Canadian culture. Maybe you don't think it's worth preserving.

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It would start with an increase to around 500,000. But then in maybe 10 or 20 years, it'd be upped to 750,000 and then in 10 years, that'd be upped to 1 million, then up to 1.25 (or something like that.) Bigger countries can support higher immigration rates, as seen by the US's some 2 million immigrants each year. When you just think about it like that, yes the sprawl would be huge. But I'd envision this as the government having a huge role in a broader social change, meaning they'd be ensuring that sprawl stops. That's not just sprawl maintaining it's size, making sure it's totally stopped in all our cities.

What do you mean by the kind of technological change?

Old Canadian culture could easily be maintained, imo. "Canadian culture" (remember, that thing that is actually very hard to define,) is really more of an awareness of old traditions and events than actual cultural practices. It's not that there's nothing worth keeping, it's that it's basically learned by learning history. And think about all the new cultures that would develop from a truly multicultural and ethnically diverse country.

All the development and new economies forming would be based on sustainability and the most enriching in a social context.

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I fail to see how doubling our population every 10 years would be

a) sustainable
b) enriching in a social context.

On the contrary, growth at these ludicrous levels is the antithesis of sustainability and will generate some of the largest social disasters that you have not yet seen.

Population growth is about more than just the availability of natural resources. There have to be institutions that support the nurturing and livelihoods of that burgeoning population. Sure, you can have a society that grows like bonkers if the populace is left to fend for itself without any complex social institutions. Sub-Saharan Africa is mostly like this.

Other thoughts:

1. Does your immigration number exceed the number of high-skilled foreign people who would be willing to emigrate? Be aware that at those numbers, most of the people who would come here would be low-skilled asylum seekers that have little to contribute to the formation of your new economy.

2. Are the goods and services that Canada could export really so labour intensive that they require a massive influx of population? And is there exportable demand for the kind of stuff that Canada would produce to justify letting in that many people?

With minimal government intervention into social and economic affairs, the population of the US has basically doubled in the past 50 years, growing by a good 30 million or so per year since the 1950s (mind you, it tripled in population from under 30 million to almost 80 million between 1850 and 1900.) And while the US might be a disaster today (I might guess not by your standards Hipster,) that's to do with the ideology driving the country.

The government would obviously have to take big action in this, probably bigger action than ever before to make sure the country develops in a sustainable and socially stable way. But a big edge that we'd have on sub saharan african countries (if you're using that as a comparison to such growth,) is that there's a very well established economy here, which could support growth and widespread change. I'm really less focused on the growth and more of the social change. The growth would just be an excuse to rationalize such immense changes, for instance, creating entirely new towns and locally-based economies (to support the new growth.) But even if all of our immigrants coming in made zero dollars, our GDP per capita would still be above the international average.

EDIT:
1. Do we need everyone coming in to be super high-skilled workers? If we lowered our expectations slightly (say to all university-educated immigrants,) we'd already see a significant increase in the amount of people coming into the country. However, we'd need a lot of physical labour for infrastructure projects we would be building. We'd need to have more people as manufacturers to start actually manufacturing our own resources instead of having the US do it for us. Not everyone entering the country needs to be the star in university (note: plenty of Canadians born into the country most certainly aren't.)

2. We could make a lot (and that's A LOT) of money by manufacturing our own resources rather than selling unprocessed goods abroad. We could also get foreign money by selling technology and know how, probably in the industry of sustainability, to other countries.
And why do we need to get international money? The US spends a lot of it's time and resources supporting it's own people, and if you think about it, you can't expand that logic in a way that makes sense. What if one country engulfs the entire world? Will our economy crumble because we can't make money off of other countries? Obviously not. There's definitely value in doing business internationally, but we don't need to dominate the market to have a stable economy.
I'd actually like to see a large amount of these (still very theoretical) Canadian immigrants building very local economies, which produces some surplus to sell to other places and gets other goods from other places, and having a lot of people in service. It'd be just like the kind of economic systems going on in towns and city districts in developing nations, just with proper infrastructure, social security, and fair regional/national/international dealings to make sure that they live good (but hopefully much more sustainable and meaningful) lives.

Second_in_pie said:

With minimal government intervention into social and economic affairs, the population of the US has basically doubled in the past 50 years, growing by a good 30 million or so per year since the 1950s (mind you, it tripled in population from under 30 million to almost 80 million between 1850 and 1900.) And while the US might be a disaster today (I might guess not by your standards Hipster,) that's to do with the ideology driving the country.

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Well, the US has fewer obligations to its citizens than almost all other liberal democracies so it can, in theory, afford to grow faster. Even the US has for more institutions providing for its citizens than the developing world countries which are growing at alarming rates - and, by the way, the rate of growth you are suggesting eclipses the rate of every country in the world, developing or not.

From 1850-1930, the US was a developing country in today's contemporary sense of the word.

The government would obviously have to take big action in this, probably bigger action than ever before to make sure the country develops in a sustainable and socially stable way.

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To account for the growth rates you are suggesting and maintain a social net that Canadians are used to, government would have to expand at an incredible rate. Since the people who organize bureaucratic institutions need to have an innate sense of how the country is run and its governance practices, we could only really have other long-established Canadians set up these kinds of institutions. Of course, in a rapidly growing country this becomes a supply issue, which means that government labour resources will be stretched extremely thinly and will never keep pace with the growth in population. The level of accountability that government has in situations like this begins to slide.

Also, I'd like to know what you mean by "sustainability"? That's a word that gets thrown around a lot, but I don't think many people understand what it really means. What do you mean by sustainability, and how can you relate it to a country where the expected level of service cannot be met?

But a big edge that we'd have on sub saharan african countries (if you're using that as a comparison to such growth,) is that there's a very well established economy here, which could support growth and widespread change. I'm really less focused on the growth and more of the social change.

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See above about the erosion of institutions in a rapidly-growing country.

The growth would just be an excuse to rationalize such immense changes, for instance, creating entirely new towns and locally-based economies (to support the new growth.) But even if all of our immigrants coming in made zero dollars, our GDP per capita would still be above the international average.

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Are you certain that there would be the creation of entirely new towns? 10,000 years of history has more or less dictated that massive influxes of people tend to settle in existing cities. This, of course, causes its own social problems. Also, what is your blueprint for creating these local economies? What would they trade and sell?

1. Do we need everyone coming in to be super high-skilled workers? If we lowered our expectations slightly (say to all university-educated immigrants,) we'd already see a significant increase in the amount of people coming into the country. However, we'd need a lot of physical labour for infrastructure projects we would be building. We'd need to have more people as manufacturers to start actually manufacturing our own resources instead of having the US do it for us.


2. We could make a lot (and that's A LOT) of money by manufacturing our own resources rather than selling unprocessed goods abroad. We could also get foreign money by selling technology and know how, probably in the industry of sustainability, to other countries.

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So are you suggesting a protectionist economy? As much as I think that globalization has caused its fair share of problems, how do you suggest that Canada pull out of the entrenched global economy and begin creating import-replacing jobs? Who would we sell our expensive, undifferentiated goods to? Whatever those goods are, we would have to sell a lot of them, because we have 70 million additional mouths to feed (and an extra million each year!)

Again, what is the "industry of sustainability" and why would we need 100 million people to be involved in it?

And why do we need to get international money? The US spends a lot of it's time and resources supporting it's own people, and if you think about it, you can't expand that logic in a way that makes sense.

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That's not true - global economies don't just pull capital out of thin air. The US imports a large proportion of its goods from abroad and exports its goods and services abroad. What it can't make up for - the trade deficit - is ameliorated by selling off things like T-bills or debt. When the demand for that goes down and the trading deficit widens, global economic problems begin to arise.

Also, bear in mind that the existing large economies dictate a lot of the rules that support trade in their favour. It is unlikely that any of the really large economies (US, China, Germany, Japan, etc.) are going to support unilateral moves by Canada to back out of existing trade arrangements to prop up its own economy.

I'd actually like to see a large amount of these (still very theoretical) Canadian immigrants building very local economies, which produces some surplus to sell to other places and gets other goods from other places, and having a lot of people in service.

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From a political-economic perspective, it sounds like you are advocating for the creation of a loose confederation of city-states, rather than one giant, unified country of 100 million. I can't make predictions, but it sounds like this would actually erode the nation state of Canada rather than strengthen it (although this may have certain advantages of its own).

It'd be just like the kind of economic systems going on in towns and city districts in developing nations, just with proper infrastructure, social security, and fair regional/national/international dealings to make sure that they live good (but hopefully much more sustainable and meaningful) lives.

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Second in Pie, you want to set up a protectionist nation of regional, import-replacing industries that's debt financed on the promise of explosive population growth (e.g. we won't worry about paying for a giant infrastructure project, because our 100 million children will inherit the debt in smaller chunks!)...and yet somehow this closed-off economy based on a relatively vague industry will take off and thrive in a global market?