2 Plans to Progress towards CANZUK

CANZUK (https://grampsgrumps.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-canzuk-solution.html) has a lot of support, but is currently stalled. Here are a couple of ideas.

The CANZUK nations already have a theoretically unified head of state. In practice the Governor-Generals (GGs) act independently of the monarchy. In Australia there was a recent event where the GG believed that he should do whatever the PM said. I think if we asked the Australian people they would say that the GG should act as the umpire of politics and shouldn't do anything in secret. Anyway my suggestion here is that the Monarchy plus the 3 GGs should form an official CANZUK Head of State Committee to formalise the roles and keep them consistent. This will also keep the idea of a more significant CANZUK union in the public consciousness.

My 2nd idea is to progress greater cooperation between the UK and Australia. The two countries are complementary. The UK has a lot of people, but limited resources. Australia has resources, but would really like nuclear deterence, nuclear energy and compatibly educated people. A core problem is the distance, but this lends itself to leading the world with a high speed, low carbon shipping industry using nuclear powered ships. It would be great to get Canada involved also: https://grampsgrumps.blogspot.com/2022/08/failsafe-nuclear-shipping-and-canausuk.html.

Failsafe Nuclear Shipping and a CANAUSUK solution

 The NRC approval of a NuScale design is an important milestone for new nuclear power. The design features failsafe capabilities:

• The control rods which stop the chain reaction are not lowered by power. Instead they are held up with power and fall down without power, turning the reactor off.
• The cooling is by immersion in water which cools by convection. The water near the reactor warms and rises, moves to the side where it cools and falls, thus cycling around without the need of power.

For a nuclear powered ship we will use seawater to quickly cool the inner (pure) water, so that not as much is required normally. Power would be used to pump the seawater out, so that the ship doesn't carry more than needed, but when the power is cut the seawater will fill a space so that there is enough to do power-free cooling, as above.

I'm a supporter of CANZUK, in fact I independently invented the acronym before I knew other had beaten me to it (seven years ago: https://grampsgrumps.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-canzuk-solution.html). However we'll leave NZ out of the following because they are so anti-nuclear. Let us consider a CANAUSUK federation of Canada, Australia and the UK. Our united country might well be called The Maritime Kingdom, or Maritimia.

Maritimia is a natural ally of the US, but it is a parlimentary democracy and Kingdom. It is well connected by Internet and air transport, but to move substantial physical stuff around it would be nice if sea transport was faster and carbon-free. The ideal solution is nuclear powered shipping. A nice advantage that Maritimia has, is that it is not opposed to government led commercial activity. Indeed I think public acceptance of nuclear shipping will be enhanced if it was under the direct control of the well-trusted CANAUSUK governments,

Beyond that, the whole world will be well served by nuclear shipping free of carbon and other pollution. The CANAUSUK governments are well respected and I think many places would be comfortable using nuclear shipping from such a confederation government. Shipping is a part of the world's CO2 problem, and this is a way to address it.

Bonobos and sex symmetry and maybe us

Bonobos are the closest species to humans, looking similar to Chimps but with a very different social structure. Humans share many traits with bonobos, perhaps more than we always admit.

If you put a male and female bonobo together in captivity, then the slightly larger male will dominate and have preferential access to food and other resources. However if you put a male in with two females then the females will cooperate and dominate. That's how it was explained, probably in one of Frans de Waal's excellent books. But just recently I had a think about this.

There is a symmetry between the sexes which works like this: If one sex has some characteristic that is advantageous, then the other sex will have a significant reaction to this. Commonly they will want to evaluate how well individuals perform, but also they will adjust their behaviour to fit in.

So I wonder if it is really necessary for the two females to explicitly cooperate to dominate the male. It seems more likely the male has a different response when there are two females, based on the knowledge that they will cooperate.

I suspect humans are like that. If there are two or more women together, then men are inclined to behave themselves. However humans aren't like bonobos:

• Humans pair up to raise babies. Women prefer not to share a good husband if they can find one.
• Humans have mostly solved the problem of safe relations between one man and one woman. The real estate industry says that 90% of real estate decisions are taken by the woman in the relationship. I think this extends to all aspects of family life. In the main women dominate that part of life and most men are happy with that.

Most young men are happy to find a nice partner who will look after family life and tell them what to do. However there is a limited supply of such men. Rather than giving up, I think women should also be open to setting up a family situation with another woman (or even more), and keeping male company to well controlled situations where, in particular, more than one woman is present.

There are many cultures in which the male and female worlds are significantly separated so I think this sort of arrangement is quite compatible with human nature. Indeed I think many young women today bring men in to their bed in their parents' home. This is a safe way to start on adult life, and if babies arrive then grandparents are usually delighted to help with that.