User:Sloublues/Vigoria
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Vigoria was a proto-country in Europe in the third century AD. Due to mismanagement and mishaps, it sank in the Mediterranean with the loss of all hands in about 270 AD.
- maybe a still from Utopia showing Laurel and Hardy as two of the initial investors. (Do I want to go investors route, though?)
Origin[edit | edit source]
- list the people involved, plus some noteworthy backers
- what were their motives?
- better government
- make money
- where did they get the island? made or already there?
- a few quotes would be good here
Initial difficulties[edit | edit source]
- five cents / year operating budget
- not enough money or technology for as big an island as originally envisioned
- fire code meant they had to limit the population to only X, considerably less than the Y they wanted
- too much money spent on a graphic designer for the national flag
- too little money spent on a musician for the national anthem
- saved on weapons -- test audiences tended to commit suicide, so they just bought earmuffs to start with
- would have programmed in Lisp, but tax on parentheses was too high at the time
- personality conflicts and "creative differences" -- set up for later trouble
- People doing the project mostly want a solid, sensible, enjoyable, blah blah nation -- aside from X who wants to put green in everything
- Investors want (conflicting) razzle-dazzle and politics
- The rockets
- "Will you be using that new Norton Anti-Vandal program? I won't put my money into anything that isn't properly defended from Vandals."
Notable investors[edit | edit source]
- Aurelius Theodotus
- Kartir
- Quintus Fabius Clodius Agrippianus Celsinus[1]
- Saint Benignus
- Saint Martial
- Saint Nectarius
- Valerian the Elder
- Virius Lupus[2]
(^ a few actual 200-299 AD people)
- Mark Twain (include a scrap from a letter in which he hopes that this one will make up for his losses on stupid inventions)
Non-notable investors[edit | edit source]
- Alexander the Sub-par contributed in the hopes that he would actually be able to conquer the result.
- Eric the Awful pitched in a few horned bullet-shape helmets, on the grounds that another nation meant more places to pillage.
- Herodotus the Senile
- Pliny the Middle-aged
Early years[edit | edit source]
- beta launch date
- list a few problems
- started population with a contest to win citizenship and be in on the beta
- big advertising blitz -- list a few mags/papers/places ads appeared in
- Kosmospolitan
- up to population so-and-so by year so-and-so
Problems[edit | edit source]
- committee approach
- a few quotes would be good here
Final Disaster[edit | edit source]
- the Kewl Rockets embedded in the island malfunction or are misused, slamming it into another project, Atlantis, and sinking both
- bankruptcy and the terrible things done to bankruptees back then for want of a few cents
Legacy[edit | edit source]
- discouraged similar projects, in several veins. Historian (author of Aristotle's Gun) has said, "If this had been a success, democracy would have become the norm many centuries sooner, and maybe now we would be that much closer to an ideal society. Or maybe I'd be sitting in a teepee in an uncivilized 20th-century North America, explaining to a chieftain why he doesn't have to worry about 'hanging chads' jokes in his lifetime. History is funny like that."
- maybe a proverb about putting rockets in an island
Disputes[edit | edit source]
- some historians claim this is all nonsense