To answer the original question: no, because I will immediately leave any jurisdiction that attempts this.

My mistake, actually only pentathlon that is switching so far:

Hopefully we'll be mining the moon for Helium 3 in 50 years. None of this moon patrol business

You realize this is satire, yeah?

Sumida, next to the sumo hall

Its a suicide run though, as your escorts should kill him next turn. Then he has exchanged a camel archer for a warship, not a good deal.

I thought this world's map was actually pretty unique compared to some. There are no long skinny north-south continents in our world, and our asia is not just a big rectangle.

Hopefully whichever wins will be able to sell power to the other.

I don't know about you, but I don't know how to make a portal gun. I was assuming I found it or something.

thinking small. you'd never have to work again. just set up your portal on a railroad between say Shanghai and Chicago and just collect your billions. preferably keeping your methods secret so that nobody kills you and takes the portal gun.

HBO being a cable network, there is no such thing as a non-cable customer of HBO

Just for the record, most gun folks have been shaking their heads at this

Kyushu is... not a town.

The "only" solution is horrible authoritarianism? This is a sci fi blog. How about nuclear fusion and asteroid mining?

People need to resort to asymmetrical warfare because of our carriers. If we didn't have a large military people would be perfectly happy to bomb us normally.

That's not a good comparison. Cops arrest people with guns without a shootout all the time. People don't want to die, mostly.

So lets say you want 3 carriers to be operational at all times. One for each ocean the borders the US plus a backup. That means you need 9. 3 in operation, 3 being refitted, and 3 preparing for their next deployment. So if you need 9 aircraft carriers, and they last 50 years, you need to build one... every 5.5 years.

It looks like the view from the Mori Tower to me

It's called "shock"

Why are all their eyes blue?