Us? This last paragraph says it all. I hate to break this to you, but people who bully others at school are not necessarily stupid. Nor are intelligent people necessarily unpopular.
If you surround people with "experts" and they tell you that in low-earth orbit there is gravity, then unless you have a good education and faith in it, then wont you believe them? After all, there's gravity on Earth and it doesn't just stop when you leave the ground... it just gets less and less, so if you're close enough to the Earth then you'll still feel gravity wont you? You'll fall you say? Well, get a weight on a string and twirl it around. If you get it going fast enough then it can overcome gravity by not falling, yes? So because the ship is going round the Earth really fast, it doesn't fall, right?
Now I can see the flaws in that, but then I have a basic knowledge of physics and I'm not being corrected by older engineers and scientists who laugh at me when I try to tell them that I thought gravity would stop in space.
I have two problems with this show. The first is that few people seem to think about how they would handle a long-lasting and professionally funded and staged hoax. The second is that I find it sad that people get pleasure out of picking on those less able than themselves. Given your rant about bullies at school you once felt the same about that.
I think the whole idea of this program is sick. The gist of it is to laugh at people who think something great is going to happen to them, so that the audience can go "Ha ha" when it turns out they've been had.
On the one side you've got the fact that the physics and economics doesn't work.
On the other side, you have a television companies resources and experience, professional actors, a peer group that all believe what's happening, a sustained attempt to fool these people, a poor education on their part, and the faint glimmer of hope (soon to be extinguished) that something wonderful might actually happen to them.
Shame on the TV company that has rooted out people who didn't get a decent education so that they can pick on them. Shame on the audience who get off on that.
Why the Hell would somebody in the future be so desperate to get hold of some boring old trainers from some random year in the past? This happened at the very start and was outstandingly obvious. Pretty much destroyed any benefit of the doubt I'd managed to cling onto before seeing the film.
Don't forget the Audi product placement too. I hope the director got a nice cut of the bribe for that to compensate him for his loss of self-respect. The film might as well have been a very long advert. This is the director who did Dark City, too. Shame on you Alex Proyas! SHAME ON YOU! What excuse do you have for this?
When I lived in the USA (British native for reference), I found your TV unbearable. Adverts popped up at random timings and without any kind of warning. Here in the UK, you can actually plan aroud the commercial breaks - it's a half-hour program, you get a few minutes after quarter of an hour. Just right to nip to the loo or make some tea.
I'm hoping that it doesn't spread like trailers on DVDs is starting to. I bought a DVD recently and up came trailers for other DVDs the company marketing people thought I might like. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for which company releases the next film I might be tempted to buy. Same applies to the two-minute piracy warning - I paid for the DVD. I am NOT their target audience.
Not to mention the fact that CS Lewis is one of the foremost Christian writers of our time - so we can be pretty sure it wasn't about Buddhism or other religious concepts . ..
Well, regardless of the artist, what can we tell from the work itself? Many writers are religious, but that doesn't mean that their work is given over to promoting it. I haven't seen the film. As the parent poster points out - if it's just the death and rebirth it could be anything from Odin to Corn Kings. I'm genuinely interested to know what really makes this so obviously Christian. And I'm ignoring what is said about the author because I'm interested in how the work itself is, not intent.
Despite the fact that the film is brilliant, the book is far far better. Also, there is much more in it that adults will appreciate. If you get the same version that I do, though. Skip the long foreward by Goldman.
Another rare adaption from classic to film that really worked was Catch-22. Much was cut out, but it still very much captures the book.
Now how do we know that you yourself don't have an interest in the people you are recommending here? (No offense - this is an exercise in theory).
It seems we need some sort of web of trust for business reputations. Something like how Bittorrent handles bad peers. Hmmmmm... could we do the same for politicians?
Give it a rest. Anyone who is interested enough to be reading through this thread has now seen your Rothbard link four times (at the time of posting).
I was pointing out that the way you are talking (calling government issuing of money 'counterfeit fraud') is misleading people into thinking that inflation is optional. It can be controlled, certainly, but it is built into the system from the start. Deflation is a an economic terror under our current system.
My point about the economic system not making sense is that it actually doesn't make sense, not that my understanding is weak thankyouverymuch.
Money is issued in the form of loans to various banks, enabling them to release it into the economy in the form of more loans, etc. But their original loans from the central bank (e.g. Federal Reserve in the USA) have to be paid back with interest. How can more money be paid back than was borrowed initially? Why by getting more loans from the central bank, of course.;)
It's like a cartoon character running off a cliff. We're fine so long as we keep running. But the moment we stop, look down and realize there's no ground beneath our feet...*bang* The essential element of the current pervasive economic system is "I spend therefore I am." Stop spending and the system falls over. Episodically this happens and is inevitable. It also enforces a productivity model on a society that prevents anything other than mass-consumption.
Re-read my post. I was being informative - not requesting [another] link to your Rothbard author because I didn't understand it.
Money is released into a country's economy by the central bank (the Federal Reserve for you folks), in the form of loans. These loans must be paid back and naturally they must be paid back with interest. Where does the money to pay this back come from? It comes from more loans from the central bank. Inflation (or devaluation as you called it), is built into the system from the start. You didn't contradict this, but you make it sound as though it can be avoided.
There are non-inflationary economic systems, but what you have at the moment isn't one of them.
And if the above doesn't sound like it makes sense, well it doesn't really. I never understood economics until I stopped trying, and then everything suddenly became clear. I guess it's a Zen thing.
They bloody should do. Who knows what is in there and whether it is secure. On principle, any person in the country should be able to have a look at how the voting process works, if they care to. Or more likely, get opinions from those who are able to look at it closely.
Besides - these are machines to count how many times a candidate is selected and print out a paper receipt. Do they really need an OS as complicated and bulky as Windows to implement this. Depending on how you implemented this, you barely need a filesystem!
Actually, it can be quite refreshing to be the sort of person who would dare to look and dress the way your character does in a game. Perhaps the equivalent for many men is being able to go out and beat people up a la Grand Theft Auto. Boys might like to pretend they're super-tough. Girls might like to pretend they're super-sexy.
Shock news - girls like to be fantasized about. It just depends who is doing the fantasizing.
Be very careful not to make sweeping statements about what "women" like. Take another look at the thread title you're posting under if you want a reminder how many people you're referring to.
if every game featured only guys in very tight suits or loin cloths such that you could always see the carefully animated wobbles of his apparently massive penis... a whole lot of deliberate hip grinding, crotch grabbing and such like
Urgh! *shudder*. No offense, but I think you've just confirmed your status as a man with that spectacular lack of insight into what women find sexually attractive. Now, I caveat that I am not speaking for every woman - a really fit guy in a loin cloth could be attractive in context... but crotch grabbing and wobbling penises? That would just be funny at best and threatening at worst. You can't just translate behaviour from one gender to another and have it work. Men find sexual behaviour and dress in a woman attractive because it indicates availability. Women don't need a man to demonstrate availability however - it's a given. A man is attractive based on whether he appears a suitable partner, not on whether he is feeling horny or not. So in that sense, dressing nice and appearing friendly and confident is more interesting than pleasegodno wearing a snug loincloth.
Other women may like that - in the right context. But on the whole, I wouldn't recommend it to you as a way of getting a woman in the mood.
It's a fantasy setting. The male characters are as crazily out of proportion as the female characters. There are plenty of girls who are happy to play a super-endowed, super-athletic character in a game. Wouldn't want to be that top-heavy or dress like that in real-life, but that's why it's a game.
If some women have a problem with women being portrayed like that in a game, it's more likely irritation with men who ogle a three inch computer game character than with anything else.
But see previous comment about number of women on the planet. Any comment that talks about how "women" feel about something is going to be wrong to the tune of at least hundred million or so.
I wouldn't call your attitude "racist". You may or may not be, I don't know you, but nothing in what you've said indicates that you think people of different races are inferior. Besides, the people of the USA are comprised of many different races so if you were anything, you would be nationalist. It's perfectly reasonable to want to keep production local and if you would respect other nations' right to do the same, then that would seem fair.
Of course the best way to achieve what you want, and gain trading partners, is to help the rest of the world achieve equality with the USA. Perhaps through education programs or carefully invested aid.
And this differentiates the air force from the army or navy--how? I think the original point was that there's no clear reason for this to be an air force mission. If anything, the army has more computing resources than the air force.
True, but within that industry in the US hilariously called "Defense" there are many factions and people who compete for the gravy... ah, funding. On seeing a new frontier opening up, these factions will each try to make a land-grab and claim it as their responsibility; thus securing research grants, personnel budgets, etc., etc.
There is no reason for this to be more Air Force than Army or Navy. But it looks like the Air Force is marking its territory.
Bah! Organised religion is a means to get people riled up so they'll go and fight for your profit, not theirs. Show me a "religious" war that doesn't have an economic motive preceding the violence. The rhetoric and denouncements come after the opportunity for wealth.
Note to those who might get upset at the notion that religion is merely a means of controlling people. In this instance, I'm referring to organised relgious rhetoric, not anyone's individual faith. I don't think anyone should let someone else tell them what God wants them to do.
THANK YOU! I think people are so primed and ready to argue with some stereotype that they dislike, that they see it where it isn't. So far I've been accused of being both anti-capitalist and a social elitist. Heck of a combination for someone who was proposing that adult education should be a growth industry!
Maybe I didn't put it as clearly as you did, though. I think of your predicted outcomes, the stealthy coup of the bureaucratic glue people is the one that's currently coming true. Certainly in the sector I work in (the UK's National Health Service), there seem to be more and more people appearing whose sole function is to either fill in forms or demand forms, none of which are needed.
I think the way the UK is heading, there will ultimately be three sectors of society. Those who create forms, those who fill in forms, and one person whose job is to press a button every morning to make the machines work.
You're absolutely right. I was struggling to find a way to sum-up the value system of the OP and settled for productivity and manufacturing. What I should have said was: outcompeting other societies / countries economically.
I would at least like criticism to be directed to what I said, rather than what you thought I said. I'll go through your points quickly:
Why would you guess his reference to efficiency was measured purely by the GDP?
The OP said that eliminating society's less intelligent people would increase its efficiency. I think my interpretation of his statement was a reasonable guess. My first point was that talk of efficiency without a stated goal was an invitation to question the underlying assumptions the poster was making. And I accepted.
Your gloom and doom scenario of "dumbing down" society having a catastrophic effect is flawed.
I didn't project a "dumbing down" of society. At all! If you read my post, you'll find I'm addressing the problems caused by an increasing capability on the part of mankind.
These "slower" people don't just go away, and by ignoring them and their needs you are creating social problems.
What part of "adult education should be the biggest growth industry" did you not understand. I am not creating social problems. I'm saying that reducing the need for work to get by creates a social problem.
I'm sure you're frustrated that you have to work 40 hours a week because some guy with a GED needs something to do to keep him off the street - but the original poster's argument wasn't addressing GDP
No, I'm not. Spending on benefits here in the UK is a tiny part of the overall distribution of public spending. And I actually enjoy my work. It is socially useful and I'm relatively proud of it. You seem to have fixed on some stereotype of who you're arguing against and as a result you are addressing things I've never raised.
And this business about the "pressure to be brilliant" sounds like elitist nonsense.
What I said that as technology enables necessary work to be done by fewer and fewer people (automation, computation, transportation, telecommunication), in order to find work, we require ever greater levels of ability (education and dedication) which translates into pressure to be brilliant. What is elitist in that? It applies to all of us. What is nonsensical in that? The logic seems clear enough to me?
Children are rarely aware of these social issues in their developmental years, and that's where brilliance emerges - not suddenly in the workplace somewhere in their 20s.
Now that sounds like nonsense if anything does. Many scientists and artists only begin to show their brilliance after university years. I'm one of them. And depending on your definition of children, many are very aware of social issues. If you grew up in a family dependent on benefits, or in a third-world country, or in Eastern Europe, you would be from an early age too.
It's insulting to make assumptions about people you don't know. And you have made several assumptions about me in your post that are contradicted by an actual reading of what I said.
All this talk of efficiency and none about what the goal is? Seems hard to calculate the "efficiency" of society without being able to measure our achieval.
But I can make an educated guess that when you talk about efficiency, you're referring to productivity and GDP etc. Is that our whole aim as a species? To manufacture more and more goods? Because you need someone to sell them to and people buy to improve their lives. The greatest possible satisfaction for the largest possible number is the real goal of society in my book - and working in a frenzy to get by isn't it. Face it - ever since the invention of modern farming techniques, most of mankind has been facing a losing battle to make himself useful. We have the necessities of life (in the developed world), with modern transport, telecommunications, medicine, broadcasting, printing ad infinitem. By this point we should be working four days a week maximum and the rest of the time can be adapted to leisure, study, pursuit of all those things you really want to do.
Improving the efficiency of society by weeding out the unproductive? Don't you know that the level of ability needed to be productive is rising and rising? Your idea leads to either fewer and fewer people under more and more pressure to be brilliant, or else a halt to technological development.
Higher education ought to be the biggest growth industry in the developed world right now. Why isn't it?
I doubt anyone else is still reading this article after all this time, so it's probably just you and me. You don't see GMO as nonsense, and that's fine with me - it wasn't my choice of words. I'm always much more specific in indentifying problems. However, for the reasons I outlined above, I think GMO crops in this context (commercial growing by African farmers) is a very bad idea. I stand by all that I said previously, but I will clarify my reasons in relation to your comments:
civil strife and monoculture are bad, but I don't [think] planting non-GMOs will overthrow warlords or prevent giant fields of the same crop from being planted.
I'm not attempting to prove that they will, but I am saying that GMO crops wont help to lessen the effects of these problems. It doesn't matter whether it's GMO crops or non-GMO crops that have been stolen from your farm really, does it? Solve the violence and corruption and poverty in Africa and the nation can quite easily feed itself. GMO offers nothing to Africa that would help.
Secondly however, planting non-GMO crops will prevent "giant fields of the same crop being planted." Compared to mass-produced, genetically identical crops, even a few fields of a single variety of corn contain an array of variations. And multiply that across a country like Kenya or Uganda. Can you imagine a susceptibility to a disease creep ing into one year's batch of GMO corn? I can. Can you imagine what would happen if most of a continent used that strain?
GMO are (or should be) just an option, and more options are usually a good thing.
Options are a good thing. But introducing GMO crops reduces the options available. Non-GMO crops provide seeds for next years planting. This is how third-world farmers work. Drop a crop for a year or three and it's going to be a slow process building back up to where you were. For a subsistence farmer, perhaps too expensive and difficult. You can't intermingle the crops either, because GMO crops spread and you will be made to pay for any field in which any patented plants are found. This further makes it very difficult to keep options open. Once you've taken up GMO crops, you'll have a Hell of a time going back.
Second most things work that way, you pay for gas to get to work, buy equipment for your small business, or pay property taxes on your farm, right?
With GMO crops, a farmer must pay a fee to an American corporation for the privelege of working to feed himself / make money. Using non-GMO crops, he does not have to do this. This suggests to me that non-GMO crops have an advantage there. I think you can see the logic in that.
As for cash and the global economic system, that's more anti-capitalist than anti-GMO, so I'll save that for a different thread.
I can only assume that you're referring to my statement about third-world farmers not being able to negotiate for a fair price. In the same sentance, I explain that this is because GMO crops cannot be got rid of once planted and that there is no choice of other vendors for them. In other words - a monopoly on an essential good. Re-read your Adam Smith. Monopoly = Break Down of Capitalism.
I think I've said everything I can on the subject of GMO crops now. Hope you see my point of view.
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This show avenges us...
Us? This last paragraph says it all. I hate to break this to you, but people who bully others at school are not necessarily stupid. Nor are intelligent people necessarily unpopular.
If you surround people with "experts" and they tell you that in low-earth orbit there is gravity, then unless you have a good education and faith in it, then wont you believe them? After all, there's gravity on Earth and it doesn't just stop when you leave the ground... it just gets less and less, so if you're close enough to the Earth then you'll still feel gravity wont you? You'll fall you say? Well, get a weight on a string and twirl it around. If you get it going fast enough then it can overcome gravity by not falling, yes? So because the ship is going round the Earth really fast, it doesn't fall, right?
Now I can see the flaws in that, but then I have a basic knowledge of physics and I'm not being corrected by older engineers and scientists who laugh at me when I try to tell them that I thought gravity would stop in space.
I have two problems with this show. The first is that few people seem to think about how they would handle a long-lasting and professionally funded and staged hoax. The second is that I find it sad that people get pleasure out of picking on those less able than themselves. Given your rant about bullies at school you once felt the same about that.
I think the whole idea of this program is sick. The gist of it is to laugh at people who think something great is going to happen to them, so that the audience can go "Ha ha" when it turns out they've been had.
On the one side you've got the fact that the physics and economics doesn't work.
On the other side, you have a television companies resources and experience, professional actors, a peer group that all believe what's happening, a sustained attempt to fool these people, a poor education on their part, and the faint glimmer of hope (soon to be extinguished) that something wonderful might actually happen to them.
Shame on the TV company that has rooted out people who didn't get a decent education so that they can pick on them. Shame on the audience who get off on that.
IMHO.
Why the Hell would somebody in the future be so desperate to get hold of some boring old trainers from some random year in the past? This happened at the very start and was outstandingly obvious. Pretty much destroyed any benefit of the doubt I'd managed to cling onto before seeing the film.
Don't forget the Audi product placement too. I hope the director got a nice cut of the bribe for that to compensate him for his loss of self-respect. The film might as well have been a very long advert. This is the director who did Dark City, too. Shame on you Alex Proyas! SHAME ON YOU! What excuse do you have for this?
When I lived in the USA (British native for reference), I found your TV unbearable. Adverts popped up at random timings and without any kind of warning. Here in the UK, you can actually plan aroud the commercial breaks - it's a half-hour program, you get a few minutes after quarter of an hour. Just right to nip to the loo or make some tea.
I'm hoping that it doesn't spread like trailers on DVDs is starting to. I bought a DVD recently and up came trailers for other DVDs the company marketing people thought I might like. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for which company releases the next film I might be tempted to buy. Same applies to the two-minute piracy warning - I paid for the DVD. I am NOT their target audience.
Not to mention the fact that CS Lewis is one of the foremost Christian writers of our time - so we can be pretty sure it wasn't about Buddhism or other religious concepts . .
Well, regardless of the artist, what can we tell from the work itself? Many writers are religious, but that doesn't mean that their work is given over to promoting it. I haven't seen the film. As the parent poster points out - if it's just the death and rebirth it could be anything from Odin to Corn Kings. I'm genuinely interested to know what really makes this so obviously Christian. And I'm ignoring what is said about the author because I'm interested in how the work itself is, not intent.
Despite the fact that the film is brilliant, the book is far far better. Also, there is much more in it that adults will appreciate. If you get the same version that I do, though. Skip the long foreward by Goldman.
Another rare adaption from classic to film that really worked was Catch-22. Much was cut out, but it still very much captures the book.
Now how do we know that you yourself don't have an interest in the people you are recommending here? (No offense - this is an exercise in theory).
It seems we need some sort of web of trust for business reputations. Something like how Bittorrent handles bad peers. Hmmmmm... could we do the same for politicians?
Give it a rest. Anyone who is interested enough to be reading through this thread has now seen your Rothbard link four times (at the time of posting).
I was pointing out that the way you are talking (calling government issuing of money 'counterfeit fraud') is misleading people into thinking that inflation is optional. It can be controlled, certainly, but it is built into the system from the start. Deflation is a an economic terror under our current system.
My point about the economic system not making sense is that it actually doesn't make sense, not that my understanding is weak thankyouverymuch.
Money is issued in the form of loans to various banks, enabling them to release it into the economy in the form of more loans, etc. But their original loans from the central bank (e.g. Federal Reserve in the USA) have to be paid back with interest. How can more money be paid back than was borrowed initially? Why by getting more loans from the central bank, of course.
It's like a cartoon character running off a cliff. We're fine so long as we keep running. But the moment we stop, look down and realize there's no ground beneath our feet...*bang* The essential element of the current pervasive economic system is "I spend therefore I am." Stop spending and the system falls over. Episodically this happens and is inevitable. It also enforces a productivity model on a society that prevents anything other than mass-consumption.
Re-read my post. I was being informative - not requesting [another] link to your Rothbard author because I didn't understand it.
Money is released into a country's economy by the central bank (the Federal Reserve for you folks), in the form of loans. These loans must be paid back and naturally they must be paid back with interest. Where does the money to pay this back come from? It comes from more loans from the central bank. Inflation (or devaluation as you called it), is built into the system from the start. You didn't contradict this, but you make it sound as though it can be avoided.
There are non-inflationary economic systems, but what you have at the moment isn't one of them.
And if the above doesn't sound like it makes sense, well it doesn't really. I never understood economics until I stopped trying, and then everything suddenly became clear. I guess it's a Zen thing.
No, they don't need to escrow Microsoft Windows
They bloody should do. Who knows what is in there and whether it is secure. On principle, any person in the country should be able to have a look at how the voting process works, if they care to. Or more likely, get opinions from those who are able to look at it closely.
Besides - these are machines to count how many times a candidate is selected and print out a paper receipt. Do they really need an OS as complicated and bulky as Windows to implement this. Depending on how you implemented this, you barely need a filesystem!
Wow! Aren't you sweet.
Pft. Maybe on your monitor.
Compensating, much?
Actually, it can be quite refreshing to be the sort of person who would dare to look and dress the way your character does in a game. Perhaps the equivalent for many men is being able to go out and beat people up a la Grand Theft Auto. Boys might like to pretend they're super-tough. Girls might like to pretend they're super-sexy.
Shock news - girls like to be fantasized about. It just depends who is doing the fantasizing.
Be very careful not to make sweeping statements about what "women" like. Take another look at the thread title you're posting under if you want a reminder how many people you're referring to.
if every game featured only guys in very tight suits or loin cloths such that you could always see the carefully animated wobbles of his apparently massive penis
Urgh! *shudder*. No offense, but I think you've just confirmed your status as a man with that spectacular lack of insight into what women find sexually attractive. Now, I caveat that I am not speaking for every woman - a really fit guy in a loin cloth could be attractive in context... but crotch grabbing and wobbling penises? That would just be funny at best and threatening at worst. You can't just translate behaviour from one gender to another and have it work. Men find sexual behaviour and dress in a woman attractive because it indicates availability. Women don't need a man to demonstrate availability however - it's a given. A man is attractive based on whether he appears a suitable partner, not on whether he is feeling horny or not. So in that sense, dressing nice and appearing friendly and confident is more interesting than pleasegodno wearing a snug loincloth.
Other women may like that - in the right context. But on the whole, I wouldn't recommend it to you as a way of getting a woman in the mood.
It's a fantasy setting. The male characters are as crazily out of proportion as the female characters. There are plenty of girls who are happy to play a super-endowed, super-athletic character in a game. Wouldn't want to be that top-heavy or dress like that in real-life, but that's why it's a game.
If some women have a problem with women being portrayed like that in a game, it's more likely irritation with men who ogle a three inch computer game character than with anything else.
But see previous comment about number of women on the planet. Any comment that talks about how "women" feel about something is going to be wrong to the tune of at least hundred million or so.
Yes - they tell them that they're playing a game... but those unmanned drones are getting more and more sophisticated you know.
I wouldn't call your attitude "racist". You may or may not be, I don't know you, but nothing in what you've said indicates that you think people of different races are inferior. Besides, the people of the USA are comprised of many different races so if you were anything, you would be nationalist. It's perfectly reasonable to want to keep production local and if you would respect other nations' right to do the same, then that would seem fair.
Of course the best way to achieve what you want, and gain trading partners, is to help the rest of the world achieve equality with the USA. Perhaps through education programs or carefully invested aid.
And this differentiates the air force from the army or navy--how? I think the original point was that there's no clear reason for this to be an air force mission. If anything, the army has more computing resources than the air force.
True, but within that industry in the US hilariously called "Defense" there are many factions and people who compete for the gravy... ah, funding. On seeing a new frontier opening up, these factions will each try to make a land-grab and claim it as their responsibility; thus securing research grants, personnel budgets, etc., etc.
There is no reason for this to be more Air Force than Army or Navy. But it looks like the Air Force is marking its territory.
Except for those based on religion.
Bah! Organised religion is a means to get people riled up so they'll go and fight for your profit, not theirs. Show me a "religious" war that doesn't have an economic motive preceding the violence. The rhetoric and denouncements come after the opportunity for wealth.
Note to those who might get upset at the notion that religion is merely a means of controlling people. In this instance, I'm referring to organised relgious rhetoric, not anyone's individual faith. I don't think anyone should let someone else tell them what God wants them to do.
THANK YOU! I think people are so primed and ready to argue with some stereotype that they dislike, that they see it where it isn't. So far I've been accused of being both anti-capitalist and a social elitist. Heck of a combination for someone who was proposing that adult education should be a growth industry!
Maybe I didn't put it as clearly as you did, though. I think of your predicted outcomes, the stealthy coup of the bureaucratic glue people is the one that's currently coming true. Certainly in the sector I work in (the UK's National Health Service), there seem to be more and more people appearing whose sole function is to either fill in forms or demand forms, none of which are needed.
I think the way the UK is heading, there will ultimately be three sectors of society. Those who create forms, those who fill in forms, and one person whose job is to press a button every morning to make the machines work.
You're absolutely right. I was struggling to find a way to sum-up the value system of the OP and settled for productivity and manufacturing. What I should have said was: outcompeting other societies / countries economically.
But it's
I would at least like criticism to be directed to what I said, rather than what you thought I said. I'll go through your points quickly:
Why would you guess his reference to efficiency was measured purely by the GDP?
The OP said that eliminating society's less intelligent people would increase its efficiency. I think my interpretation of his statement was a reasonable guess. My first point was that talk of efficiency without a stated goal was an invitation to question the underlying assumptions the poster was making. And I accepted.
Your gloom and doom scenario of "dumbing down" society having a catastrophic effect is flawed. I didn't project a "dumbing down" of society. At all! If you read my post, you'll find I'm addressing the problems caused by an increasing capability on the part of mankind.
These "slower" people don't just go away, and by ignoring them and their needs you are creating social problems.
What part of "adult education should be the biggest growth industry" did you not understand. I am not creating social problems. I'm saying that reducing the need for work to get by creates a social problem.
I'm sure you're frustrated that you have to work 40 hours a week because some guy with a GED needs something to do to keep him off the street - but the original poster's argument wasn't addressing GDP
No, I'm not. Spending on benefits here in the UK is a tiny part of the overall distribution of public spending. And I actually enjoy my work. It is socially useful and I'm relatively proud of it. You seem to have fixed on some stereotype of who you're arguing against and as a result you are addressing things I've never raised.
And this business about the "pressure to be brilliant" sounds like elitist nonsense.
What I said that as technology enables necessary work to be done by fewer and fewer people (automation, computation, transportation, telecommunication), in order to find work, we require ever greater levels of ability (education and dedication) which translates into pressure to be brilliant. What is elitist in that? It applies to all of us. What is nonsensical in that? The logic seems clear enough to me?
Children are rarely aware of these social issues in their developmental years, and that's where brilliance emerges - not suddenly in the workplace somewhere in their 20s.
Now that sounds like nonsense if anything does. Many scientists and artists only begin to show their brilliance after university years. I'm one of them. And depending on your definition of children, many are very aware of social issues. If you grew up in a family dependent on benefits, or in a third-world country, or in Eastern Europe, you would be from an early age too.
It's insulting to make assumptions about people you don't know. And you have made several assumptions about me in your post that are contradicted by an actual reading of what I said.
All this talk of efficiency and none about what the goal is? Seems hard to calculate the "efficiency" of society without being able to measure our achieval.
But I can make an educated guess that when you talk about efficiency, you're referring to productivity and GDP etc. Is that our whole aim as a species? To manufacture more and more goods? Because you need someone to sell them to and people buy to improve their lives. The greatest possible satisfaction for the largest possible number is the real goal of society in my book - and working in a frenzy to get by isn't it. Face it - ever since the invention of modern farming techniques, most of mankind has been facing a losing battle to make himself useful. We have the necessities of life (in the developed world), with modern transport, telecommunications, medicine, broadcasting, printing ad infinitem. By this point we should be working four days a week maximum and the rest of the time can be adapted to leisure, study, pursuit of all those things you really want to do.
Improving the efficiency of society by weeding out the unproductive? Don't you know that the level of ability needed to be productive is rising and rising? Your idea leads to either fewer and fewer people under more and more pressure to be brilliant, or else a halt to technological development.
Higher education ought to be the biggest growth industry in the developed world right now. Why isn't it?
I doubt anyone else is still reading this article after all this time, so it's probably just you and me. You don't see GMO as nonsense, and that's fine with me - it wasn't my choice of words. I'm always much more specific in indentifying problems. However, for the reasons I outlined above, I think GMO crops in this context (commercial growing by African farmers) is a very bad idea. I stand by all that I said previously, but I will clarify my reasons in relation to your comments:
civil strife and monoculture are bad, but I don't [think] planting non-GMOs will overthrow warlords or prevent giant fields of the same crop from being planted.
I'm not attempting to prove that they will, but I am saying that GMO crops wont help to lessen the effects of these problems. It doesn't matter whether it's GMO crops or non-GMO crops that have been stolen from your farm really, does it? Solve the violence and corruption and poverty in Africa and the nation can quite easily feed itself. GMO offers nothing to Africa that would help.
Secondly however, planting non-GMO crops will prevent "giant fields of the same crop being planted." Compared to mass-produced, genetically identical crops, even a few fields of a single variety of corn contain an array of variations. And multiply that across a country like Kenya or Uganda. Can you imagine a susceptibility to a disease creep ing into one year's batch of GMO corn? I can. Can you imagine what would happen if most of a continent used that strain?
GMO are (or should be) just an option, and more options are usually a good thing.
Options are a good thing. But introducing GMO crops reduces the options available. Non-GMO crops provide seeds for next years planting. This is how third-world farmers work. Drop a crop for a year or three and it's going to be a slow process building back up to where you were. For a subsistence farmer, perhaps too expensive and difficult. You can't intermingle the crops either, because GMO crops spread and you will be made to pay for any field in which any patented plants are found. This further makes it very difficult to keep options open. Once you've taken up GMO crops, you'll have a Hell of a time going back.
Second most things work that way, you pay for gas to get to work, buy equipment for your small business, or pay property taxes on your farm, right?
With GMO crops, a farmer must pay a fee to an American corporation for the privelege of working to feed himself / make money. Using non-GMO crops, he does not have to do this. This suggests to me that non-GMO crops have an advantage there. I think you can see the logic in that.
As for cash and the global economic system, that's more anti-capitalist than anti-GMO, so I'll save that for a different thread.
I can only assume that you're referring to my statement about third-world farmers not being able to negotiate for a fair price. In the same sentance, I explain that this is because GMO crops cannot be got rid of once planted and that there is no choice of other vendors for them. In other words - a monopoly on an essential good. Re-read your Adam Smith. Monopoly = Break Down of Capitalism.
I think I've said everything I can on the subject of GMO crops now. Hope you see my point of view.
Regards,
-H.