There are 50K people in the Marshalls. Imagine a rural town in the US decided to do something like this[0]. Wouldn't the strangeness of the arrangement with the

There are 50K people in the Marshalls. Imagine a rural town in the US decided to do something like this[0]. Wouldn't the strangeness of the arrangement with the small size of the city prompt a reporter to ask a random farmer or guy on the street? That would be the first thing I'd imagine. Regardless, I get it, unlike a small town, you can't really just ship your reporter on a road trip there without buying a $3K ticket, I'm just hinting that it's hard to tell whether people on the ground are really aware this is going down from just reading about it. Regarding the politicians it's very possible that the policy makers were sold a one sided perspective on this. People in the pacific just don't have access to information that people elsewhere do. That said, I'm not Marshallese, so I don't know the circumstances of the vote so I'm assuming a lot here. I've just seen a similar script play before in Palau and it usually doesn't turn out well. [0] Of course, cities can't issue their own currency practically, so the analog doesn't really work.