The point about the wealthy rings home. I occasionally point out that the lower and middle classes have been propagandized by media owned by the wealthy into voting against their own self interest.
As for the other issue.
---
My previous post an unconcious haiku would be amazing
It's not that simple. There is a labor glut right now. Right now, unless you have a Nuke, you are not risking just losing a job but financial ruin.
In 3 to 5 more years it gets interesting but it still won't get as nice as europe. Don't get me wrong, I know there are drawbacks there too-- I've read some german students go for loooong periods without a job- just living on welfare with no prospects to succeed. That has to wear at you after a while. But once you finally get a job, you are apparently set.
What I would like to see is a reduction over 60 years (3 generations) down to about 2 billion people. Which is somehow accomplished with a magical wand that oppresses no one. I think we are on a doomsday track right now.
I'm losing context of my original approach but I see your point on the wealth.
To address your hypothetical: A high population may have high wealth in terms of basic food, medical care, shelter, large social events (concerts and national sports games), easy transportation
and low wealth in terms of free time, green spaces to enjoy that in, and uncrowded beautiful places, luxury food, etc.
A small population may have high wealth in terms of basic and luxury foods, shelter, free time, solitude, and uncrowded beautiful places
and low wealth in terms of medical care and large social activities (like national football games or online MMorgs).
---
My point on wealth above was pointing out that if the population shrinks- at some point, a bank or a family is going to be left holding property that was worth several lifetimes of income and now is worth virtually nothing.
Yes that does suck. And based on our 20x productivity improvements, we should have 20 hour work weeks and 6 weeks vacations. We are screwed and being ripped off.
Not much we can do about it. It used to have other benefits, but we are losing them.
I currently get 22 days holiday. Soon it will be 27 days and that's it for a loooong time. I think in most of europe you get 20 days vacation plus 10 days holidays to start with. It's a sweet deal, especially when combined with good state provided health care and unemployment benefits.
The trade offs are 50%+ tax rates, but my understanding is folks are happy and don't mind that very much. It's more relaxed and less grasping than in the US.
Or it is a way to reward the person that worked nights and weekends and perhaps paid their own money to become an expert in an obscure fields as opposed to the employees who phoned it in and didn't bother with continuing education. So you have a person with unique skills that can make your company a lot of extra money.
---
I don't have an opinion on things being public. Every company I've ever worked at, it has been a termination offense to discuss them. When people did find out other people's salaries, they tended to be unhappy. Even if the pay was similar since people felt they deserved more than joe-bob since they worked harder, had been their longer, had red hair, or whatever.
Feel free to run your company that way tho. It's a real bitch managing "average" performers who expect above average pay.
I've known enough people with talent in my life to believe that motivation only goes so far.
Talent is great. This part you are born with.
Skill is great. This part takes motivation and elbow grease.
Talent + Skill is something entirely different. That's 1% territory.
---
To address the parent's point, Yes you can die walking down the street. But the odds are much higher ski-diving.
I might white water. I won't ski dive or bungee jump. (Tho I did parasail behind a boat on vacation and it was fun, certainly risked death there).
I downhill ski-- there is risk there but I have a lot more control over the risk- even on a double diamond. The risk is tilted towards broken ligament and away from death.
And the full statement above would be "Making one sky diving jump is about as risky as making 400-600 car driving events).
White water rafting is at.80 deaths: 100,000 person days of whitewater rafting on managed K1 rivers.
I'm not an adrenaline junkey tho-- it makes me feel uncomfortable.
These are sold as "sky diving is low risk" but compare... http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/press/0506/facts-about-skiing-and-snowboarding.asp During the past 10 years, about 38 people have died skiing/snowboarding per year on average. (.80 per million skier/snowboarder (multi day) visits). i.e. a 13 minute ski run at high speeds puts you at a lot less risk than one sky diving jump. Also, some of those fatalities were by clear idiots (like the kennedy's playing football while skiing downhill near trees).
The risk of sky diving is lower than I thought (1:5000 jumps) but still high. To be fair, apparently some sky diving fatalities are also related to idiots who are jumping in bad weather conditions.
I'm 6'5". And it's an ungainly 6'5", not a nimble, dexterous 6'5".
I have to be very (extremely) careful not to hurt the ladies and to maneuver around them. I've forced myself through a dozen lessons. I'm "okay" at swing, suck at whip, the polka, and even line dancing (I'm usually a half beat late). Every time I started having fun and stopped paying 100% attention, it ended up unpleasantly. Pretty much, free style dancing at concerts is all I do thse days (and a couple of ladies groped me last time so I'm doing something right).
I'm a natural introvert and a trained extrovert. Being around strangers is naturally uncomfortable unless things are going perfectly.
I get the theory. That's part of why I took so many lessons. I even went out and danced in the war zone a few times.
Every mistake I made dancing felt like a blow straight to my heart. I can't let go of them and they build up over time.
It sucks. It's one of my disadvantages. I'd love to dance, in theory. It was the most fun when I repeated the level 1 lessons because there I actually felt competent. I suppose if I kept it up for another 3 or 4 years, I'd be okay at one kind of dancing in war conditions and i might start having fun at that point.
It's odd since I was a double diamond skier in less than 60 days of skiing. Skiing is much easier than dancing. I can't hurt anyone but me when I'm skiing.
I think you misunderstood. I had 2 weeks plus 1 week. My prior job had 3 weeks and I was more interested in retaining the time off than additional salary. For several years, I was at 4 weeks and then after several reorgs they finally said, "we really think this just meant "3 weeks" and not "+1 week". I didn't sweat it since I had a hard time using all 4 weeks and I get 4 weeks again next year anyway.
That was another reason people can't see your vacation. We've had at least 3 reorgs since i came onboard.
Not really. You start with 10+2 days off and most people take 2-3 days of sick time a year (many take 5-7 days). People are out for jury duty, doctor visits (which don't count as sick time if only a half day).
They also don't track the time off that you share with them (if they are off monday to friday and I'm off thursday and friday, they don't know). The workers who have been there 5 years get 3 weeks and those there for the next break point get 4 weeks.
As long as you are discrete and don't call attention to the time off, it's not an issue.
I supervise a team of folks and the only time I'm aware of how much time off they have taken is when I review the time off reports or my spreadsheet.
Likewise salary, a free company car, a paid move, certain kinds of free travel, or an agreement that you will go to a cool conference in a nice location that costs $12,000 will be missed. Likewise anything that violates the normal company procedures such as extra pension time credit could be hidden.
You really want expert "X" badly so you pay them $150k AND give them 6 weeks vacation to get them but make it a secret to preserve morale of your other workers (making $90k and getting the usual 2 weeks, then 3 at 5 years) and to prevent other desirable employees from requesting the same treatment.
For example, I had a free week of vacation but wasn't to share that information with other employees.
I think there is agreement between our viewpoints to a significant degree. For example, I agree that unless they are willing to become overtly evil, governments can't escalate indefinitely. I agree with your statement, "the more a law depends on force to execute it, the less popular it is, the greater the pressure away".
And in any case, doesn't the basic point still stand? Legal enforcement, and even basic morality (what's "right and wrong") rely on force to back them up. People and nations agree all the time that certain activities are bad and then do them anyway if there is no way to enforce their agreement on them.
If necessary with police who have guns and who are willing to hit you and hurt you until you comply. The only way that Iraq finally fell was that an external, stronger force with guns came and overthrew it.
white water rafting, fun.. cold.. wet.. death a possible side effect.
learn an instrument, hard. and if you lack talent, ultimately pointless.
build a solar car, mildly interesting to some (including me)... this year I'll be looking into solar power for the home. My thinking is "a hobby that will save me money someday".
ride your bike down to the lake, bikes are bloody uncomfortable for me.
make pot brownies, ah... losing your job, going to prison. Sure hope they legalize this someday.
put up some shelves, now that's work.
skydive, fun... to some... friend broke his ankle.. death a possible side effect.
teach a kid how to use Linux, I do not see how this is a fun activity.
study a new language and literature, I've done this... je parle un peu de francaise. but I have desire but lack talent (and a good memory).
go dancing, this was fun and extremely stressful emotionally. very unpleasant compared to other experiences.
meet a girl. this is always tricky. As a comic said, when you don't have a girlfriend you think "oh I want a girlfriend!" and when you get one, you think, "Oh, I remember now". The sex is great, the loss of personal freedom is not. The unhappy times are not. Being in a relationship can be great... it can also be painful to extremely painful. These days (after 30 years), I'd recommend if you develop problems with an SO and they last over four months that you just move on. Life is too short to be in misery for even 1 year of your life. There is nothing sacred about a bad relationship.
---
In line with the author's comment... you could use that new electrical game to shock people when they were hit. But here's the thing... there are always 1% of people who excel at something. So you either target those 1% or you water things down so everybody can have fun. Standing around getting shocked over and over while unable to even hit anyone is not going to be much fun.
When's the last time you tried to eat or drink wealth? How about the last time you wanted to go hiking in 100 miles of untouched wealth without constantly brushing shoulders with other people?
I agree that wealth can be created. In a shrinking population it is destroyed at a high rate as excess housing, cars, production capacity are wasted/lost.
Shrinking from 7 billion to 2 billion would make the earth a paradise where most of these ecological constraints would be unneeded. But it would destroy huge amounts of wealth.
I suspect you are comparing apples to oranges here.
Are you saying that 800,000 jobs requiring at least a bachelor's degree and/or years of highly technical experience were created?
There is a reason that companies exist to teach corporations how to phrase their jobs needed ads so that no one in the united states qualifies (so they can legally import a less expensive worker who will gladly work 60+ hours a week without complaint). These companies wouldn't exist if large corporations didn't save money net of the cost of paying them.
"And yes, surviving in the wilderness, period, is a full time job" This statement is incorrect.
I've read this many times... here is one particular citation
http://www.primitivism.com/future-primitive.htm As Hole and Flannery (1963) summarized: "No group on earth has more leisure time than hunters and gatherers, who spend it primarily on games, conversation and relaxing." They have much more free time, adds Binford (1968), "than do modern industrial or farm workers, or even professors of archaeology."
I've read but don't care to search for another citation that hunter gatherer tribes worked little, socialized a lot.
It isn't until you over-breed an area and exhaust it that life turns hard. When your population is small and territory is large (as with the Navi in the movie), food is a non-issue.
With the 20x increase in productivity since 1950, at least *some* people should be able to live as well as people from the 1950's on 20 hours a week work. I know some of us have gotten bigger houses (tho I didn't and I'm almost paid off 11 years after buying it.)
Yet we still have to work 40 hours a week while the wealthy 1% take 70% of the income and hold 95% of the wealth.
The current 40 hour week + health care system is one of the most elegantly designed systems of slavery invented yet.
> The alien life forms, while ferocious near the base, were presented at quite calm and friendly once the story ventured into the jungle.
I'd missed this but it is a sci fi trope. "The Expendibles" had this.
The Expendables was a wonderful soft "R" scifi series about a group of planet busters who would go to a planet which was uncolonizable for some reason. They would solve the problem. In this story, the settlers were slowly losing against ferocious creatures... which turned out to simply be mirroring the hostility of the settlers. They were quite peaceful only a hundred or so miles away.
On another planet it was seductive, vampiric plants.
Man I'd forgotten about these books for a couple decades now.
"Spaceways" was a similar series only it was hard "R" to "X" rated and a bit more of a "Slaver Pirates in Space".
Cats play with their prey until it is eaten alive or torn to shreds.
Predatory humans prey on weaker humans... sometimes just for fun.
People of good will can work together for a while but even then, they need to be willing to beat up, and if necessary, kill, other humans who disagree with the idea of working together.
And sometimes, people need to use force when other "people of good will" are democratically taking their property and giving it to others unjustly. Majority rule is just majority tyranny at times.
| There is a lot of that. I have a friend who is especially annoyed and critical of the fact that every sci-fi movie places humans as being somehow special. | We always have a quality other aliens lack, even if it's just greater willpower, unwillingness to give up, etc. Kind of insulting to aliens:)
The aliens came to earth, and the humans lacked some special quality the aliens lacked... The aliens killed all human life and took their planet. THE END.
When I got back to my office, a mysterious sultry, blonde was waiting for me. She flashed her lovely long stems and said she needed a detective. Having experienced such sultry blondes before, I said "No". THE END.
The two jedi ambassadors demanded a landing on the main blockade ship. As they landed, they and their ship were reduced to atoms. THE END.
Joe was down to his last 10 bucks, and in a desparate gamble, he put it all on "Wee Willy" at 1,000:1. Wee Willy lost. Joe threw himself off a bridge. THE END.
The universe had existed for 3 billion years, suddenly there was a small spark of life! Then it died and no other life ever arose so the universe ended 17 billion years later essentially unchanged.
This is a bit of a bizarre connection from your comment but what the hell.
If you look at the Bleach universe... the characters are good, bad, in between, arrogant, simpering, strong,... well... complex.
Kinney is a nice guy that wants to fight another (actually probably all) of the other nice guys to the death. The soulreapers in general can be militaristic assholes at times.
Many of the bad guys can be unrelentingly evil, yet seeing them interact with others on their side, they don't come across that way.
Some of the natives should have never ever forgiven the avatar (at least maybe not until he came in on the dragon) because there is alway 5% of the population that is going to spit in your eye even if you try to give them a $20 bill for nothing.
Likewise, there's the one objecting pilot... and all the rest have no problem whatsoever. At least the actor portraying the corporate boss put a sense of guilt into the character (I'm not sure that came from the director).
People who were not nice were not nice. People who were nice, were way too nice too fast. If nothing else the 3 months should have been 9 months (no change in the movie at all... just a much more plausible time frame to learn and master many new skills and a new language.)
If for some reason we couldn't get to the US (say the indians ruthlessly killed anyone one that landed and had a small navy which could destroy the few colony ships)... and then a large genocidal nation arose in europe who chose to kill anyone that wasn't of their race and there was no u.s. economic powerhouse to fight them but just that weak "red skin nation" across the ocean, it's quite possible that wiping out the indians saved a hundred million lives a couple centuries later.
Slashdot Mirror
They did not.
Scattered out over a year, 5 extra days isn't much.
Do you track all of your fellow employees time off? Sick Time? Jury Duty? Time away at training and conferences?
I sure don't.
The point about the wealthy rings home.
I occasionally point out that the lower and middle classes have been propagandized by media owned by the wealthy into voting against their own self interest.
As for the other issue.
---
My previous post
an unconcious haiku
would be amazing
It's not that simple. There is a labor glut right now. Right now, unless you have a Nuke, you are not risking just losing a job but financial ruin.
In 3 to 5 more years it gets interesting but it still won't get as nice as europe. Don't get me wrong, I know there are drawbacks there too-- I've read some german students go for loooong periods without a job- just living on welfare with no prospects to succeed. That has to wear at you after a while. But once you finally get a job, you are apparently set.
One of the companies i worked at had a standard,
Tan pants and
dress shirt or company logo'd shirt.
But it applied to everyone, even the president.
I'd find it a bit demeaning if it was limited to the help desk only.
What I would like to see is a reduction over 60 years (3 generations) down to about 2 billion people. Which is somehow accomplished with a magical wand that oppresses no one. I think we are on a doomsday track right now.
I'm losing context of my original approach but I see your point on the wealth.
To address your hypothetical:
A high population may have high wealth in terms of
basic food,
medical care,
shelter,
large social events (concerts and national sports games),
easy transportation
and low wealth in terms of
free time,
green spaces to enjoy that in,
and uncrowded beautiful places, luxury food, etc.
A small population may have high wealth in terms of
basic and luxury foods,
shelter,
free time,
solitude, and
uncrowded beautiful places
and low wealth in terms of
medical care
and large social activities (like national football games or online MMorgs).
---
My point on wealth above was pointing out that if the population shrinks- at some point, a bank or a family is going to be left holding property that was worth several lifetimes of income and now is worth virtually nothing.
Yes that does suck. And based on our 20x productivity improvements, we should have 20 hour work weeks and 6 weeks vacations. We are screwed and being ripped off.
Not much we can do about it. It used to have other benefits, but we are losing them.
I currently get 22 days holiday. Soon it will be 27 days and that's it for a loooong time. I think in most of europe you get 20 days vacation plus 10 days holidays to start with. It's a sweet deal, especially when combined with good state provided health care and unemployment benefits.
The trade offs are 50%+ tax rates, but my understanding is folks are happy and don't mind that very much. It's more relaxed and less grasping than in the US.
Or it is a way to reward the person that worked nights and weekends and perhaps paid their own money to become an expert in an obscure fields as opposed to the employees who phoned it in and didn't bother with continuing education. So you have a person with unique skills that can make your company a lot of extra money.
---
I don't have an opinion on things being public. Every company I've ever worked at, it has been a termination offense to discuss them. When people did find out other people's salaries, they tended to be unhappy. Even if the pay was similar since people felt they deserved more than joe-bob since they worked harder, had been their longer, had red hair, or whatever.
Feel free to run your company that way tho. It's a real bitch managing "average" performers who expect above average pay.
He said the first... I said the second.
---
I've known enough people with talent in my life to believe that motivation only goes so far.
Talent is great. This part you are born with.
Skill is great. This part takes motivation and elbow grease.
Talent + Skill is something entirely different. That's 1% territory.
---
To address the parent's point,
Yes you can die walking down the street. But the odds are much higher ski-diving.
I might white water. I won't ski dive or bungee jump. (Tho I did parasail behind a boat on vacation and it was fun, certainly risked death there).
I downhill ski-- there is risk there but I have a lot more control over the risk- even on a double diamond. The risk is tilted towards broken ligament and away from death.
To be fair:
http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm
The risk of a ski diving fatality in the U.S. is apparently lower than driving a car.
On the other hand:
http://theblueskyranch.com/sta/tb7.htm
"one skydiving death was recorded for every 903 members." (~32,000 members) (1:100,000 jumps)
And the full statement above would be "Making one sky diving jump is about as risky as making 400-600 car driving events).
White water rafting is at .80 deaths: 100,000 person days of whitewater rafting on managed K1 rivers.
I'm not an adrenaline junkey tho-- it makes me feel uncomfortable.
These are sold as "sky diving is low risk" but compare...
http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/press/0506/facts-about-skiing-and-snowboarding.asp
During the past 10 years, about 38 people have died skiing/snowboarding per year on average. (.80 per million skier/snowboarder (multi day) visits).
i.e. a 13 minute ski run at high speeds puts you at a lot less risk than one sky diving jump.
Also, some of those fatalities were by clear idiots (like the kennedy's playing football while skiing downhill near trees).
The risk of sky diving is lower than I thought (1:5000 jumps) but still high.
To be fair, apparently some sky diving fatalities are also related to idiots who are jumping in bad weather conditions.
Yes.
I'm 6'5". And it's an ungainly 6'5", not a nimble, dexterous 6'5".
I have to be very (extremely) careful not to hurt the ladies and to maneuver around them. I've forced myself through a dozen lessons. I'm "okay" at swing, suck at whip, the polka, and even line dancing (I'm usually a half beat late). Every time I started having fun and stopped paying 100% attention, it ended up unpleasantly. Pretty much, free style dancing at concerts is all I do thse days (and a couple of ladies groped me last time so I'm doing something right).
I'm a natural introvert and a trained extrovert. Being around strangers is naturally uncomfortable unless things are going perfectly.
I get the theory. That's part of why I took so many lessons. I even went out and danced in the war zone a few times.
Every mistake I made dancing felt like a blow straight to my heart. I can't let go of them and they build up over time.
It sucks. It's one of my disadvantages. I'd love to dance, in theory. It was the most fun when I repeated the level 1 lessons because there I actually felt competent. I suppose if I kept it up for another 3 or 4 years, I'd be okay at one kind of dancing in war conditions and i might start having fun at that point.
It's odd since I was a double diamond skier in less than 60 days of skiing. Skiing is much easier than dancing. I can't hurt anyone but me when I'm skiing.
I think you misunderstood. I had 2 weeks plus 1 week. My prior job had 3 weeks and I was more interested in retaining the time off than additional salary. For several years, I was at 4 weeks and then after several reorgs they finally said, "we really think this just meant "3 weeks" and not "+1 week". I didn't sweat it since I had a hard time using all 4 weeks and I get 4 weeks again next year anyway.
That was another reason people can't see your vacation. We've had at least 3 reorgs since i came onboard.
Not really. You start with 10+2 days off and most people take 2-3 days of sick time a year (many take 5-7 days). People are out for jury duty, doctor visits (which don't count as sick time if only a half day).
They also don't track the time off that you share with them (if they are off monday to friday and I'm off thursday and friday, they don't know).
The workers who have been there 5 years get 3 weeks and those there for the next break point get 4 weeks.
As long as you are discrete and don't call attention to the time off, it's not an issue.
I supervise a team of folks and the only time I'm aware of how much time off they have taken is when I review the time off reports or my spreadsheet.
Likewise salary, a free company car, a paid move, certain kinds of free travel, or an agreement that you will go to a cool conference in a nice location that costs $12,000 will be missed. Likewise anything that violates the normal company procedures such as extra pension time credit could be hidden.
You really want expert "X" badly so you pay them $150k AND give them 6 weeks vacation to get them but make it a secret to preserve morale of your other workers (making $90k and getting the usual 2 weeks, then 3 at 5 years) and to prevent other desirable employees from requesting the same treatment.
For example, I had a free week of vacation but wasn't to share that information with other employees.
I think there is agreement between our viewpoints to a significant degree. For example, I agree that unless they are willing to become overtly evil, governments can't escalate indefinitely. I agree with your statement, "the more a law depends on force to execute it, the less popular it is, the greater the pressure away".
And in any case, doesn't the basic point still stand? Legal enforcement, and even basic morality (what's "right and wrong") rely on force to back them up. People and nations agree all the time that certain activities are bad and then do them anyway if there is no way to enforce their agreement on them.
If necessary with police who have guns and who are willing to hit you and hurt you until you comply. The only way that Iraq finally fell was that an external, stronger force with guns came and overthrew it.
white water rafting, fun.. cold.. wet.. death a possible side effect.
learn an instrument, hard. and if you lack talent, ultimately pointless.
build a solar car, mildly interesting to some (including me)... this year I'll be looking into solar power for the home. My thinking is "a hobby that will save me money someday".
ride your bike down to the lake, bikes are bloody uncomfortable for me.
make pot brownies, ah... losing your job, going to prison. Sure hope they legalize this someday.
put up some shelves, now that's work.
skydive, fun... to some... friend broke his ankle.. death a possible side effect.
teach a kid how to use Linux, I do not see how this is a fun activity.
study a new language and literature, I've done this... je parle un peu de francaise. but I have desire but lack talent (and a good memory).
go dancing, this was fun and extremely stressful emotionally. very unpleasant compared to other experiences.
meet a girl. this is always tricky. As a comic said, when you don't have a girlfriend you think "oh I want a girlfriend!" and when you get one, you think, "Oh, I remember now". The sex is great, the loss of personal freedom is not. The unhappy times are not. Being in a relationship can be great... it can also be painful to extremely painful. These days (after 30 years), I'd recommend if you develop problems with an SO and they last over four months that you just move on. Life is too short to be in misery for even 1 year of your life. There is nothing sacred about a bad relationship.
---
In line with the author's comment... you could use that new electrical game to shock people when they were hit. But here's the thing... there are always 1% of people who excel at something. So you either target those 1% or you water things down so everybody can have fun. Standing around getting shocked over and over while unable to even hit anyone is not going to be much fun.
When's the last time you tried to eat or drink wealth?
How about the last time you wanted to go hiking in 100 miles of untouched wealth without constantly brushing shoulders with other people?
I agree that wealth can be created. In a shrinking population it is destroyed at a high rate as excess housing, cars, production capacity are wasted/lost.
Shrinking from 7 billion to 2 billion would make the earth a paradise where most of these ecological constraints would be unneeded. But it would destroy huge amounts of wealth.
I suspect you are comparing apples to oranges here.
Are you saying that 800,000 jobs requiring at least a bachelor's degree and/or years of highly technical experience were created?
There is a reason that companies exist to teach corporations how to phrase their jobs needed ads so that no one in the united states qualifies (so they can legally import a less expensive worker who will gladly work 60+ hours a week without complaint). These companies wouldn't exist if large corporations didn't save money net of the cost of paying them.
"And yes, surviving in the wilderness, period, is a full time job"
This statement is incorrect.
I've read this many times... here is one particular citation
http://www.primitivism.com/future-primitive.htm
As Hole and Flannery (1963) summarized: "No group on earth has more leisure time than hunters and gatherers, who spend it primarily on games, conversation and relaxing." They have much more free time, adds Binford (1968), "than do modern industrial or farm workers, or even professors of archaeology."
I've read but don't care to search for another citation that hunter gatherer tribes worked little, socialized a lot.
It isn't until you over-breed an area and exhaust it that life turns hard. When your population is small and territory is large (as with the Navi in the movie), food is a non-issue.
With the 20x increase in productivity since 1950, at least *some* people should be able to live as well as people from the 1950's on 20 hours a week work. I know some of us have gotten bigger houses (tho I didn't and I'm almost paid off 11 years after buying it.)
Yet we still have to work 40 hours a week while the wealthy 1% take 70% of the income and hold 95% of the wealth.
The current 40 hour week + health care system is one of the most elegantly designed systems of slavery invented yet.
The thing is, you can live in harmony for 200 years and then one generation doesn't follow the rules and you all die.
And generally a population either grows or gets inbred anyway.
If you do not obey the laws, what will happen to you?
If the city decides to take your beach front property and you resist, what will the government (if they have to) do to you?
Just because wars are down does not mean that force is not in play.
If you resist, the government will escalate until you are imprisoned or dead.
> The alien life forms, while ferocious near the base, were presented at quite calm and friendly once the story ventured into the jungle.
I'd missed this but it is a sci fi trope. "The Expendibles" had this.
The Expendables was a wonderful soft "R" scifi series about a group of planet busters who would go to a planet which was uncolonizable for some reason. They would solve the problem. In this story, the settlers were slowly losing against ferocious creatures... which turned out to simply be mirroring the hostility of the settlers. They were quite peaceful only a hundred or so miles away.
On another planet it was seductive, vampiric plants.
Man I'd forgotten about these books for a couple decades now.
"Spaceways" was a similar series only it was hard "R" to "X" rated and a bit more of a "Slaver Pirates in Space".
Man.. what a non-sequitor.
I'm interested in your opinion of the original 300.
How far off the mark was it?
It's just the way of things.
Snakes catch and eat fish and birds.
Cats play with their prey until it is eaten alive or torn to shreds.
Predatory humans prey on weaker humans... sometimes just for fun.
People of good will can work together for a while but even then, they need to be willing to beat up, and if necessary, kill, other humans who disagree with the idea of working together.
And sometimes, people need to use force when other "people of good will" are democratically taking their property and giving it to others unjustly. Majority rule is just majority tyranny at times.
People are not good all the time.
| There is a lot of that. I have a friend who is especially annoyed and critical of the fact that every sci-fi movie places humans as being somehow special. :)
| We always have a quality other aliens lack, even if it's just greater willpower, unwillingness to give up, etc. Kind of insulting to aliens
The aliens came to earth, and the humans lacked some special quality the aliens lacked... The aliens killed all human life and took their planet. THE END.
When I got back to my office, a mysterious sultry, blonde was waiting for me. She flashed her lovely long stems and said she needed a detective. Having experienced such sultry blondes before, I said "No". THE END.
The two jedi ambassadors demanded a landing on the main blockade ship. As they landed, they and their ship were reduced to atoms. THE END.
Joe was down to his last 10 bucks, and in a desparate gamble, he put it all on "Wee Willy" at 1,000:1. Wee Willy lost. Joe threw himself off a bridge. THE END.
The universe had existed for 3 billion years, suddenly there was a small spark of life! Then it died and no other life ever arose so the universe ended 17 billion years later essentially unchanged.
This is a bit of a bizarre connection from your comment but what the hell.
If you look at the Bleach universe... the characters are good, bad, in between, arrogant, simpering, strong,... well... complex.
Kinney is a nice guy that wants to fight another (actually probably all) of the other nice guys to the death. The soulreapers in general can be militaristic assholes at times.
Many of the bad guys can be unrelentingly evil, yet seeing them interact with others on their side, they don't come across that way.
Some of the natives should have never ever forgiven the avatar (at least maybe not until he came in on the dragon) because there is alway 5% of the population that is going to spit in your eye even if you try to give them a $20 bill for nothing.
Likewise, there's the one objecting pilot ... and all the rest have no problem whatsoever. At least the actor portraying the corporate boss put a sense of guilt into the character (I'm not sure that came from the director).
People who were not nice were not nice. People who were nice, were way too nice too fast. If nothing else the 3 months should have been 9 months (no change in the movie at all... just a much more plausible time frame to learn and master many new skills and a new language.)
Actually.. it may have.
If for some reason we couldn't get to the US (say the indians ruthlessly killed anyone one that landed and had a small navy which could destroy the few colony ships)... and then a large genocidal nation arose in europe who chose to kill anyone that wasn't of their race and there was no u.s. economic powerhouse to fight them but just that weak "red skin nation" across the ocean, it's quite possible that wiping out the indians saved a hundred million lives a couple centuries later.