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WickedHate posted:Reminder that Paul Ryan is a fan of Rage Against the Machine. Paul Ryan loves what you love, kids, and is definitely not an alien.
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Oct 3, 2016 18:58
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dont even fink about it posted:Paul Ryan loves what you love, kids, and is definitely not an alien. Sounds more like Clinton.
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Oct 3, 2016 19:00
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:Easy to explain: Trump is neither conservative nor libertarian. I dunno what Trump's stances on things are because he changes them all the time. I don't think Trump himself even knows this. turn left hillary!! noo posted:I'm Christian and lean conservative, and it's mostly the latter for me, but (and I know this is weird to say on the internet) it's possible to enjoy and engage with fiction containing elements I disagree with. I would have very little from which to select if I only watched/read things that affirm my existing beliefs, and I'd be much poorer for it. It keeps me intellectually honest and helps me understand and respect those who disagree with me. Not to say I don't make snarky comments sometimes, of course. An interesting thing I've noticed is that conservatives seem to be more receptive to fiction with elements they disagree with because most fiction does. On the flip side, if there's anything disagreeable within a work of fiction or if its author holds 'wrong opinions', millennial liberals flip out and cry for blood.
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Oct 3, 2016 19:33
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Gammatron 64 posted:
I think there's that on many political sides
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Oct 3, 2016 19:49
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Gammatron 64 posted:I dunno what Trump's stances on things are because he changes them all the time. I don't think Trump himself even knows this. Yeah this ridiculously progressive author from the 70's was previously deemed a good author, but a private letter he wrote in the 70's recently surfaced that shows him talking about his concern that "there aren't enough oriental characters in science fiction". "ORIENTAL"?! This author is clearly alt-right and anyone who owns any of his books is a crypto trump supporter.
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Oct 3, 2016 19:50
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah this ridiculously progressive author from the 70's was previously deemed a good author, but a private letter he wrote in the 70's recently surfaced that shows him talking about his concern that "there aren't enough oriental characters in science fiction". "ORIENTAL"?! This author is clearly alt-right and anyone who owns any of his books is a crypto trump supporter. I feel like the focus on "millennials" really devalues my generation. It's the immediate next generation that's really poo poo. Just look at the poo poo fourteen year olds raised about Hydra Cap.
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Oct 3, 2016 19:53
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I totally forgot about that. Shame on you for making me remember
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Oct 3, 2016 19:56
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Gammatron 64 posted:
Did you forget about the satanic panic, calling Harry Potter and Pokemon demonic witchcraft, any nerd property that adds minority characters, etc.? You could say that's just a few nutjobs, but then you should just dismiss some random teenagers' blogs too.
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Oct 3, 2016 20:26
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Gammatron 64 posted:I dunno what Trump's stances on things are because he changes them all the time. I don't think Trump himself even knows this. He really isn't ideological at all in the sense of subscribing to an all-encompassing set of beliefs. Without derailing the thread too far, suffice to say that I think his appeal is in the few core beliefs he has that a lot of people identify with, primarily folks who just want to love America. What "loving America" means is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and is pretty muddy in terms of specific plans, but I have to admit it's tempting to just send a wrecking ball to Washington, DC and see what happens.
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Oct 3, 2016 20:34
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Tighclops posted:Better that than locked up in a sanctuary district with the other working poor The sanctuary districts are really depressing because they seem like the kind of lovely half assed, poorly implemented, perpetually under funded thing that our liberals (who want to help the poor) and our conservatives (who want to punish the poor) would "compromise" on Bonus: massive payouts to donors in the form of no bid contracts to maintain the places (poorly, just like private prisons)
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Oct 3, 2016 20:46
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Just to make things clear, I'm an Independent. I have the luxury of being considered both a "bleeding heart liberal" and a "nasty hateful conservative" at the same time. When you're a moderate, everybody hates you. It's nice. I've been all over the place politically but now I'm just disillusioned. They say every cynic is a disappointed idealist and I guess that's me.End boss Of SGaG* posted:Did you forget about the satanic panic, calling Harry Potter and Pokemon demonic witchcraft, any nerd property that adds minority characters, etc.? You could say that's just a few nutjobs, but then you should just dismiss some random teenagers' blogs too. Nah, although all that poo poo was 20 years ago. It's almost like it's flipped. It's really weird. Maybe whatever side is more popular at any given time manages to get away with self-righteous moral panics. turn left hillary!! noo posted:He really isn't ideological at all in the sense of subscribing to an all-encompassing set of beliefs. Without derailing the thread too far, suffice to say that I think his appeal is in the few core beliefs he has that a lot of people identify with, primarily folks who just want to love America. What "loving America" means is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and is pretty muddy in terms of specific plans, but I have to admit it's tempting to just send a wrecking ball to Washington, DC and see what happens. It's tempting, but ultimately I don't have the balls to pull that trigger. At least Hillary is the devil I know, a Trump presidency is impossible to predict. He might start launching the nukes if someone says he has tiny hands. More realistically, he'll probably just alienate all of our allies and make the value of the dollar plummet faster than the British pound. His only concrete stance is that stupid farcical wall that's isn't feasible in any way lol
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Oct 3, 2016 20:50
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In all likelihood, he would get himself impeached within the 1st year of office and Pence would be 'running' the country. In reality, Pence would be a puppet for Republican leaders because Pence likely recognizes he's out of his league needs help.
bull3964 fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 20:56
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Star Trek
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Oct 3, 2016 21:02
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CharlieWhiskey posted:Star Trek Yeah, politics suck. Except for when it's space politics. So, about those trade negotiations on Naboo...
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Oct 3, 2016 21:05
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CharlieWhiskey posted:Star Trek Build the tachyon detection grid! And make the Romulans pay for it!
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Oct 3, 2016 21:08
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Are there any novels that explore what Federation politics are like? I know it's boring and all but there has to be some turbonerd that wrote two hundred pages on the proceedings of the Federation Council.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:17
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RangerAce posted:I'm conservative and like Trek. This may shock you, but most (not all) people who subscribe to conservative philosophy believe in equality of opportunity, but not necessarily equality of result. Many make the mistake of believing that the Federation is not capitalist (even the writers make this mistake.) Instead, it should be noted that the Federation is a reputation-based economy. They don't give a starship to just anyone. Distribution of resources is voluntary. Why does Joseph Sisko run a restaurant? Why do people go there regularly to eat at said restaurant? Because of Joseph Sisko's desire to express himself through cooking and people go there because of his reputation. The same applies all the way up to Star Fleet. Now, that doesn't mean there is anarchy. There has to be a chain of command, etc. etc. Now the bedrock here is likely mass fusion power on most planets combined with abundant access to replicators, either directly (you have one in your residential area) or indirectly (mass replication of goods which go to distribution points). While I doubt that the Federation is "communist" in the sense of adhering to Marxist economics, they do seem to be fundamentally an economy of abundance. If everyone is getting everything they need and people do not need, in the most part, to sell their labor to subsist, I have a difficult time calling it "capitalist." This is in contrast to the Ferengi, who do appear to be classically (comically!) capitalist, if with strong social customs that take some of the edges off. quote:Now, if you (incorrectly) believe conservatism is about greed and inequality and racism, then that is a different problem, but I assure you that most (not all) conservatives desire equality (racial as well as economic). The first is what I guess we could call "political conservatism," which I think in its present electoral form does draw on a lot of what you're saying here. I will spare you D&D postin' about the fine details but I would say that this is the outlook a lot of people have. The values expressed in Star Trek in general appear to be at odds with modern political conservatism. You also have a philosophical sort of conservatism, and you could argue that Picard is a conservative-- from the perspective of being a Starfleet officer of the 24th century. However, his conservatism is comically radical from our perspective in dozens of ways. e: I'll be fair that we do see humans engaging in more traditional commerce, often for the Ferengi blood money in gold chunks; I just watched Q-Less, where Vash was eager to get paid, and who can forget Harry Mudd or that douchebag who was dealing Tribbles. However, this doesn't seem to be the modal reality of Federation citizens. Nessus fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 21:29
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In a reputation based economy, the means of production is owned by society. If everyone likes you, you get the cool property for doing whatever it is that makes you popular. While it's kind of like capitalism where you can get more popularity simply by already being popular, society could just randomly decide you're poor now. If Joe Sisko says "Betazoids are rapists," all of a sudden no one likes his restaurant anymore. No one shows up and someone decides he shouldn't have it anymore since it isn't being utilized properly. Now Joe Sisko is poor and he just lives in whatever federation provided housing he can get. With capitalism, you can say and do whatever you want because no one can take your money away.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:38
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Cojawfee posted:In a reputation based economy, the means of production is owned by society. If everyone likes you, you get the cool property for doing whatever it is that makes you popular. While it's kind of like capitalism where you can get more popularity simply by already being popular, society could just randomly decide you're poor now. If Joe Sisko says "Betazoids are rapists," all of a sudden no one likes his restaurant anymore. No one shows up and someone decides he shouldn't have it anymore since it isn't being utilized properly. Now Joe Sisko is poor and he just lives in whatever federation provided housing he can get. With capitalism, you can say and do whatever you want because no one can take your money away. or the extensive and lengthy list of things which must be purchased with money in order to sustain day to day life, but uh um e: Also, if Joe Sisko starts being hella spacist, that might well kill his business (or help it, if people are into spacism lately) - and at a certain point he would also have to close down the restaurant, unless he was independently wealthy and could run the place indefinitely out of his own pocket.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:40
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I wonder if there's a reputation tax, in order to pay for the basic quality of life for unpopular people. I wonder if it's all based on likes and reviews. I think I remember siskso's dad hounding people not to forget to subscribe and like if they want more of his gumbo.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:41
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How would you tax popularity? You have to publicly say you like someone less popular once a month or something? Edit: You have to lose some of your popularity by endorsing something you or your fans disagree with. At higher popularity tax rates, you have to say "Maybe the Romulans had some good ideas?"
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Oct 3, 2016 21:41
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This article (the site is broken but the text is readable) from libertarian writer Ilya Somin is pretty fun:quote:How much power does the Federation's central government have, and how much is left to the individual planets? Does the central government's Star Fleet have a monopoly of military force, or do Vulcan and other planets have their own local forces? Does the Federation subsidize planetary governments heavily, or are there hard budget constraints? Despite five Star Trek TV series and numerous movies, these questions haven't really been answered.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:42
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Baronjutter posted:I wonder if there's a reputation tax, in order to pay for the basic quality of life for unpopular people. e: Maybe EARTH does things that way but other people don't. Mysterious.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:46
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I think y'all have a critical misunderstanding of what "post-scarcity" means. Wuffie is not money. It's not even a currency. You don't use it to pay for things or taxes or whatever. It's an alternative reason to get out of bed and work for the betterment of humanity. It's inherently unlimited. There's no "welfare state" because welfare implies a distribution of goods based upon merit or lack thereof. At least on the core worlds, we see nothing to indicate that any sort of transaction takes place. People just do what they want because the only limited resource is time.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:02
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Into Darkness was a garbage movie but honestly not nearly as bad as I thought it was
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Oct 3, 2016 22:09
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Zurui posted:I think y'all have a critical misunderstanding of what "post-scarcity" means.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:09
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Asmodai_00 posted:Into Darkness was a garbage movie but honestly not nearly as bad as I thought it was and than you remember it's the writer's 9/11 Truther beliefs and it all gets that bad again.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:13
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Zurui posted:There's no "welfare state" because welfare implies a distribution of goods based upon merit or lack thereof. I feel like I post this every time Star Trek's economy comes up, but characterizing the Federation as "capitalist" or "socialist" or whatever is really silly. It's a post-scarcity society, so the entire justification for any economic system (at least in so far as the resources which are no longer scarce are concerned) goes out the window. It's basically impossible to portray a post-scarcity society that doesn't fully provide for its citizens without making that society look like a bunch of mustache twirling villains. This is in part why the Ferengi always come off as so strange in Star Trek. They're capitalists by ideology, which is just super weird and nonsensical. Either that or the Ferengi are just significantly poorer than the Federation as a society, but they're never really portrayed that way.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:25
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Paradoxish posted:I feel like I post this every time Star Trek's economy comes up, but characterizing the Federation as "capitalist" or "socialist" or whatever is really silly. It's a post-scarcity society, so the entire justification for any economic system (at least in so far as the resources which are no longer scarce are concerned) goes out the window. It's basically impossible to portray a post-scarcity society that doesn't fully provide for its citizens without making that society look like a bunch of mustache twirling villains. I thought the Ferengi were working off of like, an ingrained religious and cultural outlook - like Quark and Rom argue over whether or not they died and went to Ferengi Heaven or Hell and they are both taking it entirely seriously.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:27
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Nessus posted:But if society isn't ruled by mustache-twirling villains constantly making GBS threads everything up just because they can, it's unrealistic! Yeah, there's some bit in I think "Little Green Men" where they talk about how they believe that, when a Ferengi dies, they use the profits they earned in life to bid on admission to Ferengi Heaven, and if they can't afford it, they go to Ferengi Hell.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:39
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Pakled posted:Yeah, there's some bit in I think "Little Green Men" where they talk about how they believe that, when a Ferengi dies, they use the profits they earned in life to bid on admission to Ferengi Heaven, and if they can't afford it, they go to Ferengi Hell.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:42
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Yeah, I phrased that kind of badly. I just mean that the Ferengi are a little off because they're basically capitalists without a cause. It'd be like screaming that the workers should seize the means of production as all the factories are run by robots that replicate what they need and hand out everything you could possibly want for free.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:50
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I dunno, I can kind of see it. They are aliens, after all, with an alien outlook. It's not too different than doing jobs just for the sake of self improvement or whatever. I'm sure they think competitive winner takes all society is a good motivation towards success.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:51
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override367 posted:The sanctuary districts are really depressing because they seem like the kind of lovely half assed, poorly implemented, perpetually under funded thing that our liberals (who want to help the poor) and our conservatives (who want to punish the poor) would "compromise" on I think this was basically the implication from the episodes. The districts were "supposed" to be places for people down on their luck would go to get back on their feet again, but without funding and attention they became ghettos for the underclass. Also Star Trek is not conservative because the people in these shows have empathy. Hell, it's even their superpower in some cases
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Oct 3, 2016 22:51
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Oh god why did I read the "economics" discussion
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Oct 3, 2016 22:57
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Oh god why did I read the "economics" discussion Paradoxish posted:Yeah, I phrased that kind of badly. I just mean that the Ferengi are a little off because they're basically capitalists without a cause. It'd be like screaming that the workers should seize the means of production as all the factories are run by robots that replicate what they need and hand out everything you could possibly want for free.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:02
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The economics of Star Trek are just similar enough to ours so as not to be wholly alien (even though they realistically would be) but far enough advanced to show that humans have for the most part, learned to stop being greedy self interested assholes in the future. Beyond that, the details of how their economy functions don't matter to the story or the setting any more than the intricacies of how anti matter interacts with the dilithium crystals in the warp drive. e: by the 24th century, various libertarian earth colonies were chock full of equality of opportunity ...to get hauled away into the night by rape gangs lol
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Oct 3, 2016 23:05
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WickedHate posted:I dunno, I can kind of see it. They are aliens, after all, with an alien outlook. It's not too different than doing jobs just for the sake of self improvement or whatever. I'm sure they think competitive winner takes all society is a good motivation towards success. I mean, you can explain anything away by saying "well, they're an alien culture," but the point is that the trappings of capitalism (or any economic system) seem odd when you remove its reasons for existing. If you've got three people and enough food to feed two of them, you're obviously going to need to distribute that food somehow. If you've got near infinite food that's effectively free to distribute, there's basically no ethical justification for not just allowing everyone to have some.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:17
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Nessus posted:So share your own thoughts (assume the part where we're all dumb and bad is taken as a given), I am curious The part where someone claimed that you could have reputation based capitalism was a low point
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Oct 3, 2016 23:17
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Paradoxish posted:I feel like I post this every time Star Trek's economy comes up, but characterizing the Federation as "capitalist" or "socialist" or whatever is really silly. It's a post-scarcity society, so the entire justification for any economic system (at least in so far as the resources which are no longer scarce are concerned) goes out the window. It's basically impossible to portray a post-scarcity society that doesn't fully provide for its citizens without making that society look like a bunch of mustache twirling villains. It isn't fully post-scarcity, since there are still things that can't be replicated (like dilithium, the bajoran orbs, or latinum). I could definitely see a ferengi economy that fundamentally is based on 'who owns the spaceships'.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:29
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