The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other oddities.

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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by aubergine »

One thing to bear in mind that in a post-Collapse world, it would be more feasible to reduce scarcity (after rebuilding some important infrastructure). It primarily depends on whether concepts (delusions) such as money are re-introduced or not. If, instead, they moved towards something akin to a resource based economy, which would in many respects make a lot of sense once key resources are secured, resource distribution would be much better managed.
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by zydonk »

Rman Virgil wrote:.

I'm starting to feel I should attempt a straight up, hardcore doctrine based, military fiction. One werein the centerpiece would be a coordinated, multi-vector, velocity, asymmetric battle sequence of scenes that specifically highlights all this integrated command technology of expanded situational awareness in play, along with the rich tactics and counter-tactics it makes possible that are not viable now (direct from the 33 strats of war). Also show just how it all dove tails perfectly with the post collapse world of fundamental scarcity (astride very high-tech) posited in WZ. :hmm:

I'll start mulling over the dramatic possibilities of such a clash between The Project and ManGodAi forces on terrain that includes water, mountain, urban and open desert. In other words illustrating a conflict that deliberately provokes multiple shifting centers of gravity. I'll make a first go at it the end of the month after I return from my off-grid sabbatical in N. AZ. coming up right soon. :3
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Have you read Sam Delany's Triton? Wars are always aimed at a "centre". You can use foot soldiers to get there, horse, tank, jet, or a computer virus.

Thesis: Future wars will cost a fortune in defence and will last a couple of minutes. Notice, for example, how Empires survive for shorter and shorter periods. Roman Empire about 800+ years; British Empire about a week sometime in the 1870s; the US Empire a few minutes in c2000.
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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aubergine wrote:One thing to bear in mind that in a post-Collapse world, it would be more feasible to reduce scarcity (after rebuilding some important infrastructure). It primarily depends on whether concepts (delusions) such as money are re-introduced or not. If, instead, they moved towards something akin to a resource based economy, which would in many respects make a lot of sense once key resources are secured, resource distribution would be much better managed.
Funny you should bring this up.

Started studying the 4 works below last year.

I have not yet come up with a compelling story idea for how to dramatize living within a Project society that is structured along a moneyless economy and is not seeking empire.

Any ideas ?

What Comes After Money?: Essays from Reality Sandwich on Transforming Currency and Community

The End of Money and the Future of Civilization

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by Rman Virgil »

zydonk wrote:
Have you read Sam Delany's Triton? Wars are always aimed at a "centre". You can use foot soldiers to get there, horse, tank, jet, or a computer virus.

Thesis: Future wars will cost a fortune in defence and will last a couple of minutes. Notice, for example, how Empires survive for shorter and shorter periods. Roman Empire about 800+ years; British Empire about a week sometime in the 1870s; the US Empire a few minutes in c2000.
Gosh, I havn't read Sam Delany in ages. Last work of his I read was "Dhalgren".

Never read "Triton". I'll reserve it from the library now and take it with me on my trip to read. Thanks for the recomendation.

I'll tell you the Sci Fi works that are rolling around my head and are likely influencing whats happening in my subconcious.

~ Orson Scott Card's "Ender" novels. These I talked about with WZ's chief software engineer / designer many years ago in the retail bbs.

~ Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle several collaborations like "Lucifer's Hammer", "Oath of Fealty" and Jerry's solo tetralogy begining with - "Falkenberg's Legion".

~ Keith Laumer's "Retief" and "Bolos" stories.

~ Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress"

As far as RL military doctrine my inluences are summarized by these 3 connections:

Network-centric warfare

Asymmetric Warfare

The 33 Strategies of War

=======>

Your thesis for a story is thought provoking. Could be the basis of a satirical SF story. I'm thinking created with more the wit of Oscar Wilde & George B. Shaw in mind (mingled with Philip K. Dick mind-set warping), than emphasizing the prognostication of the H.G. Wells or Jules Verne school of SF.

After this hardcore military fiction, I'd like to see if I can come up with something along these satirical lines.

How about this for a working title:

The Importance of Being Distraught
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by Shadow Wolf TJC »

Rman Virgil wrote:I have not yet come up with a compelling story idea for how to dramatize living within a Project society that is structured along a moneyless economy and is not seeking empire.
To answer that question, perhaps it would be best to 1st analyze WHY we need a concept such as money in the 1st place.

Personally, I believe that the concept of money, or currency, was developed to provide a more fair alternative to bartering for goods or services, which in turn was, alongside the concept of trading as a whole, was developed to allow people to acquire much needed goods and services without having to resort to the use of force, as is typically the case when animals interact.

Regardless, I do believe that, even if we could somehow find a way to transcend the need for a form of currency (even an electronic-based one), there would continue to exist the sin known as greed, which in itself begs the question, where does greed originate? Given that animals are likewise, if not more so, capable of greed (I've heard that many animals, given the opportunity, would continue to eat until they gorged themselves), I believe that greed ultimately just stems from us being insecure, specifically when it comes to having enough resources to survive. With that in mind, I'd imagine that there would be more insecurity with having enough resources, and thus, more greed, and more conflict, if there weren't enough resources for the population as a whole, or in other words, if the region is too overpopulated to be able to sustain all these people. :hmm:

Speaking of, when thinking of an idea for a sequel to Warzone 2100, I had an idea for a backstory to the years leading up to Warzone 2150 that you may wish to take a look at:
"Almost 50 years have passed since whatever remained of humanity was saved when the forces of NEXUS were defeated by the Project. Since that time, the Project began to enter the next phase: namely to establish a stable civilization. Even with this victory, the Project knew that they still had much work to do.

Within the next decade, the Project was able to create a stable post-Collapse nation that spanned throughout most of North America. However, they were forced to implement some harsh policies towards its own populace, such as limiting population growth in order to keep its citizens from overpopulating to unsustainable levels, and brainwashing and conscripting criminals within their armed forces. Still, in these harsh times, desperate times called for desperate measures, though in spite of all this, the nation benefited from a more-or-less representative form of government, and more pre-Collapse artifacts continued to be discovered all across North America, including knowledge on civil engineering, space travel, and medicine.

Yet despite the Project's success at forging and maintaining a stable, united nation of people, some looming problems continued to exist. For one, the diversity of the gene pool from within the nation was very low, not only due to the Collapse itself, but also due to the Project's war against NEXUS, leaving only around 150,000 people left throughout North America by 2100 (though this figure was slowly rising). Moreover, the ecological damage that was wrought throughout the world as a result of the Collapse had left much of the world a scarred wasteland. No doubt a mass-extinction had occurred as a result of the nuclear winter, and no doubt more extinctions would follow in the years to come unless something is done to stabilize the environment.

However, in 2136, Project scientists discovered a pre-Collapse artifact of significant historical importance. The artifact contained information on how to clone living beings, including humans, which was a controversial technology even during the final years of the pre-Collapse era. Now, it might just be the Project's key towards humanity's salvation. In the years to follow, the Project began to mobilize expeditions to begin their next phase: to recover lost artifacts from across the world and restore civilization throughout the world.

By 2050, the Project was ready to deploy several expeditionary teams throughout the world. Among these are teams Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Team Alpha would explore South America, Team Beta would explore Europe, Team Gamma would explore Asia, Team Delta would explore Australia, and Team Epsilon would explore Africa. Project HQ, which is stationed within North America, would continue to manage affairs within the continent, while smaller teams would explore the Pacific islands, The Caribbean islands, and Antarctica. All of the teams' objectives are as follows:

1. to assess the ecological damage that was done throughout the world (and hopefully foresee any disasters that are yet to come).
2. to search for and hopefully establish peaceful contact with any surviving civilizations.
3. to search for any pre-Collapse artifacts.
4. to collect stem cells from any surviving humans and wildlife so as to improve the odds of humanity's survival as a whole.

Since this mission is intended to be relatively peaceful by nature so as to not provoke any unnecessary violence from other surviving civilizations, expedition teams are being given access to limited technology. This technology would only be enough to ward off most scavenger raids, though it'll also serve to limit what technology any hostile civilizations can salvage from Project expeditionary teams."
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by Merowingg »

I have this strange feeling that post here I slightly longer than in other places :)

At least at some places we do not go into ultra abbreviations :3

And referring to the post in the past ;) I knew she was red (to be) earlier :)

I am so willing to see the reapperance of her :)
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by zydonk »

Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:
Rman Virgil wrote:I have not yet come up with a compelling story idea for how to dramatize living within a Project society that is structured along a moneyless economy and is not seeking empire.
To answer that question, perhaps it would be best to 1st analyze WHY we need a concept such as money in the 1st place.

Personally, I believe that the concept of money, or currency, was developed to provide a more fair alternative to bartering for goods or services, which in turn was, alongside the concept of trading as a whole, was developed to allow people to acquire much needed goods and services without having to resort to the use of force, as is typically the case when animals interact.

Regardless, I do believe that, even if we could somehow find a way to transcend the need for a form of currency (even an electronic-based one), there would continue to exist the sin known as greed, which in itself begs the question, where does greed originate? Given that animals are likewise, if not more so, capable of greed (I've heard that many animals, given the opportunity, would continue to eat until they gorged themselves), I believe that greed ultimately just stems from us being insecure, specifically when it comes to having enough resources to survive. With that in mind, I'd imagine that there would be more insecurity with having enough resources, and thus, more greed, and more conflict, if there weren't enough resources for the population as a whole, or in other words, if the region is too overpopulated to be able to sustain all these people. :hmm:

Speaking of, when thinking of an idea for a sequel to Warzone 2100, I had an idea for a backstory to the years leading up to Warzone 2150 that you may wish to take a look at:
"Almost 50 years have passed since whatever remained of humanity was saved when the forces of NEXUS were defeated by the Project. Since that time, the Project began to enter the next phase: namely to establish a stable civilization. Even with this victory, the Project knew that they still had much work to do.

Within the next decade, the Project was able to create a stable post-Collapse nation that spanned throughout most of North America. However, they were forced to implement some harsh policies towards its own populace, such as limiting population growth in order to keep its citizens from overpopulating to unsustainable levels, and brainwashing and conscripting criminals within their armed forces. Still, in these harsh times, desperate times called for desperate measures, though in spite of all this, the nation benefited from a more-or-less representative form of government, and more pre-Collapse artifacts continued to be discovered all across North America, including knowledge on civil engineering, space travel, and medicine.

Yet despite the Project's success at forging and maintaining a stable, united nation of people, some looming problems continued to exist. For one, the diversity of the gene pool from within the nation was very low, not only due to the Collapse itself, but also due to the Project's war against NEXUS, leaving only around 150,000 people left throughout North America by 2100 (though this figure was slowly rising). Moreover, the ecological damage that was wrought throughout the world as a result of the Collapse had left much of the world a scarred wasteland. No doubt a mass-extinction had occurred as a result of the nuclear winter, and no doubt more extinctions would follow in the years to come unless something is done to stabilize the environment.

However, in 2136, Project scientists discovered a pre-Collapse artifact of significant historical importance. The artifact contained information on how to clone living beings, including humans, which was a controversial technology even during the final years of the pre-Collapse era. Now, it might just be the Project's key towards humanity's salvation. In the years to follow, the Project began to mobilize expeditions to begin their next phase: to recover lost artifacts from across the world and restore civilization throughout the world.

By 2050, the Project was ready to deploy several expeditionary teams throughout the world. Among these are teams Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Team Alpha would explore South America, Team Beta would explore Europe, Team Gamma would explore Asia, Team Delta would explore Australia, and Team Epsilon would explore Africa. Project HQ, which is stationed within North America, would continue to manage affairs within the continent, while smaller teams would explore the Pacific islands, The Caribbean islands, and Antarctica. All of the teams' objectives are as follows:

1. to assess the ecological damage that was done throughout the world (and hopefully foresee any disasters that are yet to come).
2. to search for and hopefully establish peaceful contact with any surviving civilizations.
3. to search for any pre-Collapse artifacts.
4. to collect stem cells from any surviving humans and wildlife so as to improve the odds of humanity's survival as a whole.

Since this mission is intended to be relatively peaceful by nature so as to not provoke any unnecessary violence from other surviving civilizations, expedition teams are being given access to limited technology. This technology would only be enough to ward off most scavenger raids, though it'll also serve to limit what technology any hostile civilizations can salvage from Project expeditionary teams."
There should be a distinction between "money" as unit of exchange and "capital" as the source of "profit". Even Karl never got that. You would always need a medium of exchange and perhaps a unit of "value" - to monitor depreciation in use-value, of the instruments of production, for instance. Capital as we know it came into being when the total value of specie in Europe (silver and gold from the Americas) became greater that the total value of land, so that another way had to be found to make the stuff productive. But "profit" by its nature - something for nothing - is the cause of inflation - "money" for nothing - so the history of capitalism is a very irrational struggle to keep one step ahead of inflation. Debt is the preferred way of doing this, but when whole societies are maxed out - as they are now - you just go back to printing money and wait for the whole global economy to fall down around you.

RV: never understood the "poetics" of Dhalgren, but Triton captures the future in a very deft way. O/wise give me anything by Van Vogt (have most anyway) with spice from Reagan-prophet Heinlein and the so-brave Dick. The other thing is that generals fight wars, not soldiers or tanks.
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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zydonk wrote:There should be a distinction between "money" as unit of exchange and "capital" as the source of "profit". Even Karl never got that. You would always need a medium of exchange and perhaps a unit of "value" - to monitor depreciation in use-value, of the instruments of production, for instance. Capital as we know it came into being when the total value of specie in Europe (silver and gold from the Americas) became greater that the total value of land, so that another way had to be found to make the stuff productive. But "profit" by its nature - something for nothing - is the cause of inflation - "money" for nothing - so the history of capitalism is a very irrational struggle to keep one step ahead of inflation. Debt is the preferred way of doing this, but when whole societies are maxed out - as they are now - you just go back to printing money and wait for the whole global economy to fall down around you.
An interesting history lesson, although I do feel that the concept of "profit" may have also been born out of greed, which, as I stated before, I believe was in turn born out of insecurity.

By the way, what exactly do you mean by waiting for the whole global economy to fall down around one who is in debt? I'm guessing that you have to wait for a new equilibrium to emerge, right? I'm personally more of a philosopher and a sociologist than an economist, and you sound like you may have more knowledge on the inner workings of economics than I do.
RV: never understood the "poetics" of Dhalgren, but Triton captures the future in a very deft way. O/wise give me anything by Van Vogt (have most anyway) with spice from Reagan-prophet Heinlein and the so-brave Dick. The other thing is that generals fight wars, not soldiers or tanks.
And what of the soldiers and the tanks? I suppose they're just tools for the generals to use to fight their wars, eh? :hmm:
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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Can't believe I'm goin' down this road with WZ backstory, Pre-Collapse of course. O_o

Before I get to responding to these other intrigueing posts... :3

Here ya go Mero. Hard to say no to ya. ;)

Now how do I rationalize this turn of events and changed appearance ? :hmm:

Ok, let's see. Think I got it.

After visiting Jason Reed in Dr. Reed's Synaptic Inc. International medical facility, Lena is a little down and her cousin from Kyoto decides to cheer her up. But first she has to change it up with her looks. She grabs her luggage from her sports car rental and uses one of the bathrooms in the medical facility to put her red wig on and change into a party outfit. As you can see, she's good to go and determined to perk-up Lena's mood with her infectious upbeat spirit. :)
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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RV: never understood the "poetics" of Dhalgren, but Triton captures the future in a very deft way. O/wise give me anything by Van Vogt (have most anyway) with spice from Reagan-prophet Heinlein and the so-brave Dick. The other thing is that generals fight wars, not soldiers or tanks.
zydonk, I believed Delany a master wordsmith and literary artist of the first rank even when I could barely make heads or tails of what he was up to. Same that I felt of Theodore Sturgeon and Roger Zelazny whom I had a much better understanding of as storytellers. I read "Dhalgren" when I was very young and I remember being baffled by the literary devices and disturbed by many of the scenes. As an adult I look foward to reading "Triton" and I also just ordered his collected short stories - which are few indeed - to get a fuller range of his artistry.

Philip K. Dick... it was a very sad day when I heard he died. Was living in San Fran where over the years got to meet a bunch of the great SF authors that lived in the area or came through for book signings or the World CONs in Berkley. But I never got to meet him. So much of his world wide success came posthumously. He really could of used it when he was alive. Would have lived longer, I think.

Van Vogt.... man that brings back teen memories of when I first read his "Slan", "World of Null-A" and the "Weapon Shops of Isher". I should re-read him. Goes back to the old pulp days of SF zines.


Generals are the brains that dictate the shape & course of battle and in playing a game like WZ we most wanna play that role with the war machine we build our tool kit. That battle experience being the payoff for all the non-fighting microing.
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by Rman Virgil »

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Shadow Wolf, I'm on the same page with all your back story premises and will likely dramatize aspects in forth coming yarns. :)

Still collecting my thoughts on money, greed, alternate economics and the politics of empire. I see a common denominator I'm trying to best articulate. I'll return later in an other post to express it.
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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Thanks Rman :) at the same time I think I have to alter my women talk a little :hmm: hard to say no, very funny ;)

The screen is really cool :) You have surprised me with adding such details like bin next to the bench :) It makes the picture more life like, and not so perfect.

To the rest of the stories I can only listen now :3
“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.” - V

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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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And now the opening comments of The Project historian, Landess Garibaldi, to his tome entitled "Will We Get It Right This Time ?: A history of the last 100 years".

So much to consider, to encompass, to distill to the core, that we may unravel the messy enterprise before us. How will we bootstrap out of the ruins of an entire world laid waste, do so in a few short generations, to reach again for the stars ? This is to broach headlong, and all at once, the overwhelming and the awe inspiring. To know humility is the begining of courage and a different road out of madness on a planetary scale that is our inheritance.

What follows is a brief, fallible, muse that serves as preface to the detailed history of the last 100 years that is the work ahead.

Let me first offer these key terms defined. They frame the matrix of the past and will surely shape what is to come to the extent we understand why we cannot repeat it all again.

Power - the ability to cause or prevent change.

Value - whatever we would strive to attain and hold onto.

_____________________


In the palpable dark, pacing restless side to side, just the other side of the tree line, their eyes glowed, their bellies rumbled, thier maws grined long in tooth and tusk.

Base survival, day and night, especially night, was all consumming.

This primal fear, endured over millenia and countless generations, of being nought but meat ripped to shreds and eaten by the great carnivors, has shaped our journey to the celestial heights of 21st century global civilization and our present fall from grace.

If we could gain a measure of control over uncertainty, over mortality, over the daily risk to life and limb, we could amass the assurances of a long life of comforting leasure, of security, all told the culminating insurance that was fundamental in our collective quest for power.

Whatever would mitigate the sense of powerlessness over our existence, we would possess, more often than not, at any cost to others outside the circle of our blood ties. Over time there came to be an exception to the blood circle. We would mingle with the outsider, the stranger, the lurking threat, if we felt we had the edge, if we got more than we gave up, if we got something for nothing. Both sides held to the same ends. But only one could adscend to dominance over time. It was a zero sum game and there had to be losers to have winners but for an invisible player that neither side acknowledeged even while pilfering, and that player would not forever be ignored. There would always be a rechoning, a just accounting, where there would be no winners, only losers, the playing field leveled and all unsustainable constructs relegated to the scrap heap of lost illusions.

Besides an agreed upon medium of convenience in the exhange of value, money was our most abstracted construct. It created a greater and greater distance from the root cause and effect of the natural, unmediated, world. Inturn, accumulating this construct within the compass of idolotory became an instrument of escalating, self perpetuating, power over others as a means to the greater good of elite individuals.

From nomadic tribes, to villages, to cities, to nations, to empire, to the end of days. It all reverted to power, real and imagined. The carnivors are still in our head. The power within being the difference that could make a difference after the ramparts of metal and the bulwarks of governance crumbled with the monstrous rising tides of our making and undoing, teasing the fires of cosmic creation itself.
=============>


Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments....

Ever wonder what sorta experiments ?

Well, howza about for starters ......

Magnetogenetics

And:

Cyborg flesh that’s half man, half machine

And last, but not least

Epigenetics

================>

Now I bow out for a few weeks to return the end of the month after my off-grid sabbatical in the mountains of N. AZ., hopefully with a renewed spirit and fresh eyes.

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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

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Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:
zydonk wrote:There should be a distinction between "money" as unit of exchange and "capital" as the source of "profit". Even Karl never got that. You would always need a medium of exchange and perhaps a unit of "value" - to monitor depreciation in use-value, of the instruments of production, for instance. Capital as we know it came into being when the total value of specie in Europe (silver and gold from the Americas) became greater that the total value of land, so that another way had to be found to make the stuff productive. But "profit" by its nature - something for nothing - is the cause of inflation - "money" for nothing - so the history of capitalism is a very irrational struggle to keep one step ahead of inflation. Debt is the preferred way of doing this, but when whole societies are maxed out - as they are now - you just go back to printing money and wait for the whole global economy to fall down around you.
An interesting history lesson, although I do feel that the concept of "profit" may have also been born out of greed, which, as I stated before, I believe was in turn born out of insecurity.

By the way, what exactly do you mean by waiting for the whole global economy to fall down around one who is in debt? I'm guessing that you have to wait for a new equilibrium to emerge, right? I'm personally more of a philosopher and a sociologist than an economist, and you sound like you may have more knowledge on the inner workings of economics than I do.
RV: never understood the "poetics" of Dhalgren, but Triton captures the future in a very deft way. O/wise give me anything by Van Vogt (have most anyway) with spice from Reagan-prophet Heinlein and the so-brave Dick. The other thing is that generals fight wars, not soldiers or tanks.
And what of the soldiers and the tanks? I suppose they're just tools for the generals to use to fight their wars, eh? :hmm:
Greed: The rise of the Limited Company meant that individuals could enrich themselves with less risk and it is probably the main motivation for individual players in the finance game. But the overarching concern of the system as a whole still is with keeping one step ahead of inflation.

The rhetorical flourish re global meltdown indicates that capitalism is a fatalistic drive. (If evolutionists can draw upon an unlimited past in order to explain their theories, so the capitalists can draw upon an unlimited future to pay for their profits.) The collapse of capitalism won't be the first ending of a "paradigm": feudalism crashed once kings got to raise professional armies; the Roman paradigm collapsed when it reached the limits of its road-system.

Insecurity is always with us - after all, we all die (sooner or later).

Soldiers: what else? But tools are only as good as the care given to their maintenance.
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Re: The Doc's Bio Lab for Scav Experiments - & other odditie

Post by aubergine »

Shadow Wolf TJC wrote: Personally, I believe that the concept of money, or currency, was developed to provide a more fair alternative to bartering for goods or services, which in turn was, alongside the concept of trading as a whole, was developed to allow people to acquire much needed goods and services without having to resort to the use of force, as is typically the case when animals interact.
Money started out as a "technology" to resolve some common issues with barter. Specifically, people would often want goods but the people with those goods would not want to exchange them for the goods being offered - this led to complex trading where you would need to do several transactions with other people just to get the goods that could be exchanged for what you really wanted.

The fact that barter existed at all indicates that people were aware of the issues associated with using violence to get what they wanted - you could kill the person and steal what they have quite easily, but then you remove that source of goods. Repeat that process a few times and the resource is no longer on the market, so it makes sense to find a more peaceful way of getting it. Sadly, in recent years, this lesson has been overlooked - particularly with respect to oil.

In respect to money / currency / tender / etc - it doesn't really matter what you call it - the outcome will always be the same. A group of people will work tirelessly to subvert it to their needs. This has been happening since money first started replacing barter, and is not generally caused by greed. Instead it's the realm of the sociopath, always looking to enslave those around him (and in rare cases, her). Money manipulation is mentioned in most religious scripts, IIRC the only time Jesus suggests violence is towards money makers, and I believe there is similar intent in other religions. To think that using any form of money / credit / whatever would somehow not result in the same outcome that it has throughout history would be a form of insanity.

Capitalism is just the most recent doctrine to "try the same thing again and hope for different results". One of the driving ideas behind capitalism is the notion that a system can be put in place that makes greed beneficial to mankind. First, this completely overlooks the fact that it's sociopaths, not greed, that causes the problems, and secondly it ignores thousands of years of history that show the same results wherever money is used.

Many will say that "Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternative" (or a very similar phrase - obviously a programmed perspective rather than individual assertion). I tend to disagree with such a statement: Barter systems, despite a few specific issues like the one mentioned earlier, result in a much better form of society.

It depends on how you measure success.

If success is measured by things like GDP, profit, kills and consumption, the score card of a sociopath, then capitalism fits the bill. Debt based money supply is arguably the greatest achievement of the sociopaths. But only a small minority of Earth's population are sociopaths so such a system, despite what we have been programmed to believe, is not in our best interests.

If success, however, is measured in happiness, safety, peace, environmentalism, etc., barter is much closer to the desired form of society. Such metrics are the score card of the vast majority of people on the planet. Since the initiation of the economic collapse back in 2007/8, many countries have been plunged in to extreme poverty. In countries such as Spain, Greece, India, etc., many sections of society returned to barter (particularly in rural communities) while others created their own local currencies. In all such cases, the poverty dissipated - simply by replacing the sociopath score card with a human score card in terms of how success is measured. Things like the internet and cell phones have a radical impact on the effectiveness of barter and local currencies, a fact which should not be overlooked.

When human and environmental needs form the basis of success metrics, very different approaches are possible. Here's some examples from the UK:

* Bristol Pound (local currency): http://bristolpound.org/
* Bank of Dave (a sociopath-free bank): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnley_Savings_and_Loans
* Incredible Edible (free food, grown in public places): http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/

The notion that something akin to capitalism is necessary, or even that money is necessary, is programmed in to us from birth. The truth, however, is that it's more akin to mass hypnosis of people who choose not to think for themselves. For an idea of what a moneyless society would look like, specifically a Resource Based Economy (RBE), I encourage you to investigate (quite extensively) the Venus Project: http://www.thevenusproject.com/ -- this project not only describes how an RBE would operate, but more importantly it describes how to transition from where we are now to an RBE.

A key ideology behind an RBE is the prevention of sociopath tendencies. By removing the perceived scarcity of resources, you remove the incentive to adopt the mindset of a sociopath.
Shadow Wolf TJC wrote: 2. to search for and hopefully establish peaceful contact with any surviving civilizations.
Other than scavengers, most other people that would be encountered would be predominantly military in nature. Most militaries have large underground, underwater or mountain bases. A good recent example is "Site 911" in Israel. Chances of "peaceful" encounters with such forces would tend towards 0%.
Shadow Wolf TJC wrote: 4. to collect stem cells from any surviving humans and wildlife so as to improve the odds of humanity's survival as a whole.
There are many designated sites around the world already in place today for such eventualities:

* http://www.deepstorageproject.com/ -- human & animal DNA
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault -- heirloom seeds
"Dedicated to discovering Warzone artefacts, and sharing them freely for the benefit of the community."
-- https://warzone.atlassian.net/wiki/display/GO
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