Transeŭropa Demokratia Reto

The Transeŭropa Demokratia Reto (English: Trans-European Democratic Network; abbr: TDR or RDP) is a collection of small nation-states with distinct cultural identities that are tightly networked together by unrestricted economic and informational transaction routes and complex corporate contractual interdependencies. The TDR covers most of the continent of Europe and some parts of Western Asia.

History

In the decades from roughly -320 GE until the formation of the TDR, countries in Europe saw both a rapid spike in political radicalization and a flood of new technological developments that directly impacted people's day-to-day lives. Although most people point to the collapse of the United States as the main trigger that sparked the shift toward isolationism and ethnonationalism in many European countries, it is important to note the impact of the invention of the Convolutional Semantic Mapper. While the "Convolv" was not a direct cause of the political shifts in the region, it both facilitated and accellerated them. The universal availability of realtime, context-aware and culturally-adaptive language translation had a side effect of allowing people to create information "silos" that indulged their worst xenophobic fantasies without preventing them from engaging in economic and business transactions across borders. The language and culture of business partners became not only irrelevant, but completely filtered out of professional communications. In the absence of any reason to learn languages or cultures other than their own, and fueled by political paranoia in the wake of the collapse of the United States, both individuals and businesses in Europe fell into a kind of emotionally defensive xenophobia while simultaneously developing stronger economic and information dependencies on the countries around them.
What emerged from this process was a networked system of distinct and independent groups that mutually constrain and direct each other through the control of information flow and the continual formation-and-dissolution of transitory functional alliances for the purpose of accomplishing specific goals. The only alliances that mattered were economic, and all of those were temporary and in the service of fulfilling a specific contract for a project. A collection of the largest multinational conglomerates in the region decided to try to "formalize" this structure in the year -292 GE in order to give it a sense of validity and to ease some of the economic pressure produced by out-of-control paranoia, and the Transeŭropa Demokratia Reto was born.

Structure

In some ways the political structure of the TDR is a traditional confederation. However, its constituent nation-states are not bound together by constitution or treaty, but by economics and technology. The TDR emerged during the same period of upheaval that produced the Cruz and Zhongguo corporate empires. Unlike those regions of the world, nations in Europe strongly resisted any attempts to impose common sets of laws across the European and West Asian region.
Nonetheless, they recognized that major projects in construction, research, and engineering would be impossible without large-scale cooperation of some kind. Communication networks were pervasive throughout the region, making informational, economic, and business interactions almost entirely uncoupled from geography, and in many cases almost entire uncoupled from culture. The result was the TDR: a dense but continually shifting network of temporary contracts and alliances forged in order to further specific shared economic and technological goals.

Culture

The people of the TDR have a strong sense of identity and pride associated with their cultural locale. They will almost never refer to themselves as TDR members, preferring instead to identify as Français, Bayerisch, Nederlander, Napoletano, and so on. The invention of Convolutional Semantic Mapper(ConVolv) removed all linguistic barriers to international business and economic cooperation, allowing the nations-states of the TDR to regress into ethnonationalism. Many completely closed their borders to all immigration, choosing to engage with "outsiders" only informationally and transactionally.

Founded: -292 GE

Nomenclature

Alternative Name(s)

Trans-European Democratic Network
Transeuropäisches demokratisches Netzwerk
Transeuropeiskt demokratiskt nätverk
Réseau démocratique paneuropéen
Rete Democratica Paneuropea

Short Name(s)

TDR (official)
RDP (regional)

Demonym(s)

TDR Member (standard)
Deener (derogatory)

Official Language(s)

(none)

Official Seal

A bronze emblem of the TDR currency symbol circled by the name of the TDR in multiple languages on a circuit board background.

Power Structure

Government System

Corporatocracy

Internal Organization

Confederation

Economic System

Market economy

Capital

none

Notable Properties

Controlled Space Stations

• Ianus Autofactory

Controlled Spaceships

• What Goes Around Comes Around