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freckle posted:that's not something capital does FYI social democracy happens if and only if it is profitable. Why else do you think social democratic programs are always marketed as "such and such program saves such and such money & generates such and such revenue".
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Mar 22, 2018 19:36
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incredible, my posts are just conjuring reality now
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Mar 22, 2018 19:39
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Larry Parrish posted:Anyway some guy in my DSA chapter's electoral commission described himself as a 'soft Maoist' but had only just that day finished chapter 1 of volume 1 of Capital. soft maoist is a reference to a facebook post the editor of jacobin made once about the praxis slate of dsa people who want to do serve the people programs and stuff like that. it bears no real relationship to actual mao, it's just a shibboleth for the part of DSA that overall advocates against national having control over smaller chapters and for base building.
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Mar 22, 2018 20:13
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Impermanent posted:soft maoist is a reference to a facebook post the editor of jacobin made once about the praxis slate of dsa people who want to do serve the people programs and stuff like that. it bears no real relationship to actual mao, it's just a shibboleth for the part of DSA that overall advocates against national having control over smaller chapters and for base building. If anything that makes less sense than what i thought it meant (brain damaged rambling from yet another professional graphic designer from an upper middle class family)
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Mar 23, 2018 00:21
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Impermanent posted:soft maoist is a reference to a facebook post the editor of jacobin made once about the praxis slate of dsa people who want to do serve the people programs and stuff like that. it bears no real relationship to actual mao, it's just a shibboleth for the part of DSA that overall advocates against national having control over smaller chapters and for base building. wow a reference to a facebook post, that's so much better
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Mar 23, 2018 02:06
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StashAugustine posted:does he quote rope kid at all He also has a whole section on money and why bottlecaps makes sense as currency in a post-apocalyptic environment.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:26
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:Not sure. He makes me the argument that Caesar's Legion is an analogy for the Soviet Union as the capitalist countries saw it. Did he miss the part about women all being slaves or latifundium house wives? The Soviet Union was also a primary technological and scientific rival to the capitalist world. If he's trying to make this comparison he either doesn't "get" Caesar's Legion, or he's making an extremely tortured argument to wedge in his own ideology.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:29
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Its about perception, not reality, and i kind of get it.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:30
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:he's making an extremely tortured argument to wedge in his own ideology. Jason Unruhe would never do that
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Mar 23, 2018 02:31
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:Did he miss the part about women all being slaves or latifundium house wives? The Soviet Union was also a primary technological and scientific rival to the capitalist world. If he's trying to make this comparison he either doesn't "get" Caesar's Legion, or he's making an extremely tortured argument to wedge in his own ideology. Also bottlecaps are an inflation control mechanism.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:31
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The bottlecaps thing is stupid. Absent an authority backing it, you can't have a fiat currency, more likely you'd get commodity money like gold (again) or maybe particularly valuable medical items or something.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:33
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Hruh. *flips to section on money*
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Mar 23, 2018 02:33
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Scarcity doesn't itself impart value, it has to be useful or socially recognized as valuable, and literal consumer product trash cannot be turned into anything valuable or worth having.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:36
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we will use bitcoin
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Mar 23, 2018 02:37
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:No, I think he gets it. I think? Caesar's Legion is like the Soviet boogeyman in the American imagination. Caesar wants to unite the all the people of the world for instance. It's a tortured metaphor because the central conflict is between modernity and reaction. You can say that Caesar's Legion might fit the imageof a Soviet boogeyman from the perspective of an NCR citizen, but the civilizational conflict isn't between capitalism and communism - which is something Caesar's explicit about. Economically speaking, Caesar's Legion is a slave empire.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:37
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But US cold war propaganda portrayed the soviet union as a slave empire. Its about the space it occupies in the American imagination, not the truth of it on the ground.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:39
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rudatron posted:The bottlecaps thing is stupid. Absent an authority backing it, you can't have a fiat currency, more likely you'd get commodity money like gold (again) or maybe particularly valuable medical items or something. In New Vegas there's a quest that I think the Crimson Caravan sends you on to shut down a bottlecap "counterfeiting" operation where somebody's using a Nuka Cola press to make genuine freshly minted bottlecaps. So there are interests in the wasteland that are trying to control the supply of bottlecaps as a currency. In the original Fallout, the Hub was pretty much controlled by the water merchants, and while it's not explicit they too could have set the conditions for why bottlecaps are an acceptable exchange of value. If everybody trades bottlecaps for water then the water merchants end up controlling the supply of money. This is harder to argue for the east coast Fallout games because central authorities are non-existent for lazy worldbuilding reasons, but the Hub and the NCR are the powers that effectively set the standards for money in the region around California. rudatron posted:But US cold war propaganda portrayed the soviet union as a slave empire. Its about the space it occupies in the American imagination, not the truth of it on the ground. You actually do see the truth on the ground, though. And you have an eyewitness account of Legion territory from Raul. The image of the Legion to the NCR isn't the same as the Legion as it is. Maybe Unruhe makes that point, I dunno, I'm not going to buy his book.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:45
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Okay so he thinks gold would be a better way to back up Fallout currency. But the NCR uses water-backed bottlecaps, presumably because water is more valuable than gold. Bottlecaps are also an inflation-control mechanism because the machinery to create new bottlecaps was destroyed in the war. Using old paper currency wouldn't work because there's simply way too much of it to lubricate commodity exchange. But this will eventually be a problem, Unruhe predicts, as the economy grows and then stagnates, triggering an economic crisis. Also the NCR minted gold coins at one point to trade with Vault City and New Reno, which destroyed the value of the bottlecaps, but the Brotherhood of Steel in 2281 destroyed the NCR's gold reserves. "This lead to an exchange rate of 1 Bottle Cap for 2.5 NCR dollars." Caesar's Legion uses a bimetal system. Gold coins called the Aureus and silver coins called the Denarius. "The exchange rate is 4 bottle caps to 1 Denarius, and 100 bottle caps to 1 Aureus." The Brotherhood issues its own scrips. Chicago uses pull-tabs from soda cans. "All of these currencies have one thing in common; they are all products of labour. If a money is not the product of labour, then it has no value, nor does it have any use as money." Pener Kropoopkin posted:In New Vegas there's a quest that I think the Crimson Caravan sends you on to shut down a bottlecap "counterfeiting" operation where somebody's using a Nuka Cola press to make genuine freshly minted bottlecaps. So there are interests in the wasteland that are trying to control the supply of bottlecaps as a currency. In the original Fallout, the Hub was pretty much controlled by the water merchants, and while it's not explicit they too could have set the conditions for why bottlecaps are an acceptable exchange of value. If everybody trades bottlecaps for water then the water merchants end up controlling the supply of money. Pener Kropoopkin posted:It's a tortured metaphor because the central conflict is between modernity and reaction. You can say that Caesar's Legion might fit the imageof a Soviet boogeyman from the perspective of an NCR citizen, but the civilizational conflict isn't between capitalism and communism - which is something Caesar's explicit about. Economically speaking, Caesar's Legion is a slave empire.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:48
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rudatron posted:But US cold war propaganda portrayed the soviet union as a slave empire. Its about the space it occupies in the American imagination, not the truth of it on the ground. Unless he comes to the conclusion that New Vegas is explicitly meant to be NCR propaganda (which is a take I can appreciate) it's extremely hard to believe the Legion is meant to be the Soviets, especially given that they have an almost Randian ideology.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:49
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:The Brotherhood issues its own scrips. Chicago uses pull-tabs from soda cans. "All of these currencies have one thing in common; they are all products of labour. If a money is not the product of labour, then it has no value, nor does it have any use as money." That's a facile point though, because everything we use is a product of labor which can't be plucked straight from nature.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:52
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In talking about the 'truth on the ground ' wrt to cold war propaganda, not fallout. In the eyes of real world americans, the ussr was a slave empire, and that imaginary representation is presented, in the human-made art/vidya gayme, fallout new vegas. Re bottlecaps: they're used as a currency before the existence of the ncr, and it's still dumb. The reason fallout, a work of art, uses bottlecaps as currency, is because it wants to reference 1950s consumer culture/kitsch, and show, in real terms, that these people are living in a wasteland devoid of life or anything else, other than the stupid trash/remains of pre war society.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:54
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quote:As a side note there's the one nut job Dave who is the president of his own dictatorial polygamous compound which he calls a republic. The "Republic of Dave" as it is formally known cannot be any more than 46 meters. The "country" operates as a family collective entirely devoid of any currency. The President Dave proudly boasts that they are entirely self-sufficient. The family, meaning all residents (except for maybe one republican soldier) is under the suspiciously dictatorial control of President Dave who holds what appears to be mock elections. He received his position originally from his father who was president before him. Insert lame insult against North Korea here.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:56
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Alright this needs its own thread. Let's Read: Jason Unruhe's The Economics of Fallout Society. Follow me on my magical quest. gently caress it I'll just post it here Gonna need to brush up on it either way though considering John Bolton is back in the White House. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Mar 23, 2018 |
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Mar 23, 2018 02:58
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rudatron posted:In talkint about the 'truth on the ground ' wrt to cold war propaganda, not fallout. In the eyes of real world americans, the ussr was a slave empire, and that imaginary representation is presented, in the human-made art/vidya gayme, fallour new vegas. The Legion is also anti-technology and anti-modernity though. They use firearms if they absolutely have to, but the Legion operates according to the primitive methods of warfare that were practiced by its constituent tribes. Caesar built the Legion on the model of ancient Rome because he felt it was a successful empire from a barbaric age that could re-establish civilization in a similar age of savagery. Regardless of how Americans thought of the Soviets being a slave empire, they were also thoroughly modern and an existential terror which was pioneering the space race and possessed the nuclear weapon.
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Mar 23, 2018 02:58
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In the American imagination, the ussr was technologically backwards, and well behind the US. This is a long running assumption of both military and industrial conceptions of the two. The space race was an attempt for the US to save face, after the soviets demonstrated the ability to launch something before they did. It was embarrassing for the US, precisely because it undermined that imaginary representation. You keep thinking about what the Ussr was, and not what the average American thought the ussr was. I'm taking about the latter. rudatron fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Mar 23, 2018 |
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Mar 23, 2018 03:06
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Are you getting the fundamental point, that fallout is a work of art, and therfore plays on and with the assumptions in the social conciousness at the time? Its not actually real, and so doing a comparison between it and a physical, real world thing is pointless - it's entirely about perception and cultural conception.
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Mar 23, 2018 03:09
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rudatron posted:Are you getting the fundamental point, that fallout is a work of art, and therfore plays on and with the assumptions in the social conciousness at the time? Its not actually real, and so doing a comparison between it and a physical, real world thing is pointless - it's entirely about perception and cultural conception. We can get that, but that interpretation of Caesar's Legion doesn't coherently connect with tbe rest of the game, especially when ypu learn more about the Legion itself.
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Mar 23, 2018 03:25
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I love to consume media, but marxistly
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Mar 23, 2018 03:36
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rudatron posted:In the American imagination, the ussr was technologically backwards, and well behind the US. This is a long running assumption of both military and industrial conceptions of the two. The space race was an attempt for the US to save face, after the soviets demonstrated the ability to launch something before they did. It was embarrassing for the US, precisely because it undermined that imaginary representation. Alright, but if Fallout is built around a retro-futuristic pastiche that parodies the optimism and cultural values of 1950s America, then it would also emulate the Sputnik scare and the need to technologically compete with the USSR. They weren't just saving face, the US and USSR were competing over visions of the future. The Legion isn't future oriented, it's static. It wants a secure world free of alien threats, and you get a vision of what that kind of security looks like from Raul. They aren't innovating or improving upon the world, they just want to control it. The NCR is, simililarly, experiencing the same kind of problem. Instead of mirroring the cold war of the 1950s when the US & USSR competed to control the future, the NCR and Legion are competing to control the present. The NCR also seeks a reactionary outcome, but it's a reaction that attempts to restore modernity. After realizing the recreation of the modern state and capitalism, they're also facing a crisis of stagnation - and to resolve that crisis they're seeking to expand physically in order to grow their markets. The NCR and Legion are effectively two sides of the same coin, and while the game's criticism of capitalist modernity isn't as pronounced as its criticism of traditionalist reaction it's still there if you look for it. The House and No Gods No Masters paths exist as alternatives to that present-oriented state of the world as it is.
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Mar 23, 2018 03:44
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What were Unrhue's thoughts on Mr. House, on the surface he is a Randian superman but his overall goal is to centrally plan human development out of the shithole the world finds itself in and onto space exploration. I could certainly see arguments that he's basically Elon Musk in Fallout but I'm wondering if there is anything more to it than that.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:10
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AnEdgelord posted:What were Unrhue's thoughts on Mr. House, on the surface he is a Randian superman but his overall goal is to centrally plan human development out of the shithole the world finds itself in and onto space exploration. I could certainly see arguments that he's basically Elon Musk in Fallout but I'm wondering if there is anything more to it than that. quote:The national bourgeoisie is a class with a dual character. On the one hand, it is oppressed by Imperialism and fettered by feudalism and consequently is in contradiction with both of them. In this respect it constitutes one of the revolutionary forces. ...But on the other hand, it lacks the courage to oppose imperialism and feudalism thoroughly because it is economically and politically flabby and still has economic ties with imperialism and feudalism. ... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/national_bourgeoisie Unruhe mentions Mr. House's mainframes but I don't think he puts stock in technology per se. It's more who owns the tech and who doesn't, and Mr. House's primary interest is in protecting his property. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Mar 23, 2018 |
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Mar 23, 2018 04:31
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I'm guessing Jason picked the Yes Man ending.
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Mar 23, 2018 04:45
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So did I
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Mar 23, 2018 04:48
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:I'm guessing Jason picked the Yes Man ending. 
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Mar 23, 2018 05:18
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Everyone who didn't pick Yes Man first playthrough deserves Gulag.
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Mar 23, 2018 05:22
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:Okay so he thinks gold would be a better way to back up Fallout currency. But the NCR uses water-backed bottlecaps, presumably because water is more valuable than gold. Bottlecaps are also an inflation-control mechanism because the machinery to create new bottlecaps was destroyed in the war. Using old paper currency wouldn't work because there's simply way too much of it to lubricate commodity exchange. But this will eventually be a problem, Unruhe predicts, as the economy grows and then stagnates, triggering an economic crisis. reeeee the bottle cap was introduced by semi-independent merchants based in the Hub after the brotherhood destroyed the ncrs gold reserves and they started debasing their currency to pay off war debts, its not an official ncr currency
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Mar 23, 2018 05:31
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If we wouldn’t care about Mr. Unruhe’s thoughts on world affairs why on earth would we be curious about his take on the much more consequential Fallout video game series?
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Mar 23, 2018 06:04
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:If we wouldn’t care about Mr. Unruhe’s thoughts on world affairs why on earth would we be curious about his take on the much more consequential Fallout video game series? StashAugustine posted:reeeee the bottle cap was introduced by semi-independent merchants based in the Hub after the brotherhood destroyed the ncrs gold reserves and they started debasing their currency to pay off war debts, its not an official ncr currency
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Mar 23, 2018 06:13
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:If we wouldn’t care about Mr. Unruhe’s thoughts on world affairs why on earth would we be curious about his take on the much more consequential Fallout video game series? It's way more fun to see how a moron interprets media we enjoy than to entertain his opinions on real life and death matters. BrutalistMcDonalds posted:Oh you're right. I'm wrong. Jason says the NCR first minted gold coins and then issued gold-backed notes, the value of which were then destroyed by the Brotherhood. The thing about that is the NCR easily had the power to establish a central bank and issue fiat currency backed by its own credit, but it's also more than plausible that the NCR is controlled by goldbugs with mining interests. Pener Kropoopkin fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 23, 2018 |
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Mar 23, 2018 06:56
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I haven't played a single Bethesda game
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