Kiroen

August 28, 2015

4. That post came after yours anyway.

Understand that I'm going to be legitimately pissed off If you accuse me of being the one who started the off-topic, when everything I said in my first post was directly meant to answer OPs questions, while your very next one's only purpose is to discuss the off-topic. SPECIALLY If you proceed to give a warning for following your example, even before that I had the opportunity to reply; ONLY to keep discussing the off-topic after you have called it to an end, and finishing it with a "You started first".

August 28, 2015

Take the multiple studies over decades that stretch into today. I won't argue the "mental" side of the spectrum, but not everything is truly "mind-over-matter." Studies show that men generally have faster reaction times than women do. (remember, this is based on decades worth of studies.) - and it doesn't take long to notice that men and women are built differently. That doesn't make the genders unequal and it doesn't mean one gender can't do what the other cant vise versa, and even all inclusive - but there is no myth that biologically - men and women are different and as such different attributes trend greater or less than the other gender accordingly.

I was talking about the roles society attributes to each gender. Are you implying that the biological, genetic differences justify the contemporary gender differences in roles? Which ones, then?

You'll have to forgive my interjection into your regularly scheduled programming, but as a complementarian myself, I don't think gender roles are as large of a looming issue so much as personal gratification is in that scenario.

The male seeks his own personal pleasure in athletics and alcohol. As a woman I happen to enjoy athletics and alcohol. People don't watch sports and drink because it's a "boys or girls only" social club. They do it because it's personally gratifying.

I don't see where's the contradiction? The fact that it's satisfying for a lot of people doesn't mean that it isn't promoted by the society's culture.

They do it because it's personally gratifying. Women and shopping? That's just a stereotypical hobby.

There are men who also enjoy going to the mall. None of those things in that scenario have anything to do with roles so much as they are largely stereotypical attributes. Stereotypes are in most cases offensive - and an often determined personal choice to uphold or abolish. Not merely gender conformity.

If they are mere stereotypes, and not statistical trends, companies are doing something terribly wrong with their advertising. Or I have missed several years of TV where men's cosmetics and clothing commercials boomed to the point of jumping out of it and obnoxiously sinking in the soup.

Edit:

Everyone. SHUT IT.

As a conservative, I would very much like to fill you in on the satirical intricacies of the right - but this is not the thread for it. In fact - we may need to start being wary of a impending /endthread should further unrelated discourse continue.

Hadn't read this when I started the post. But maybe you should check again who started the off-topic.

August 27, 2015

It's amazing to see that I'm terribly late to the thread, even though it was started today

There's something that has been said several times, but maybe summing it up in a short phrase will help: Don't look for potential lovers; look for potential friends. Even If it may sound contradictory, that mindset makes the process faster. By meeting more people, it becomes more likely that you find someone with whom a relationship may work (pure statistic); in the other hand, If you look for a potential lover, you'll be more likely to fall in love* with someone that wouldn't go out with you - thus getting you stuck in a non-relationship dynamic for some time.

(*I mean the "falling in love at first sight" way, which is usually unrealistic and impractical, since your mind fills the gaps that you don't know about the other person with an idealistic, but fake view).

As for the gender roles: while we, progressive, free-thinking individuals (so cliche) know that they suck and we'd be better without them, being a guy and being too shy or not being confident closes you a lot of doors (...not having self confidence is terrible in a lot of ways whatever sexuality you have, too, but back to the point).

On the another hand, a lot of hetero-normative couples don't work because they fall so deep in our societies' gender roles ( footballgetdrunkbeisbolmotorbikesgitdrunksportssportssportsgtednruk / suchfashionbuyclothesbeautymoreclothes ) that they eventually find out that they have nothing in common; they started going out because it was normal according to their society's myths, it worked because they liked sex, and once their jobs' stress takes that away, they find themselves stuck in a marriage with someone they don't really like that much, but the divorce means economic difficulties and problems for their children (If you think this is too cliche, you're lucky. My uncle (who is around his fifties) has very few childhood friends that haven't gone through this process already).

My conclusion on the matter is that it's unavoidable to go through some roles (unless you're lucky enough to find a really open-minded / intelligent / progressive partner), but basing your whole relationship on them is signing its own death sentence.

As to the idea that women are less intelligent, it's being proved wrong as time goes by. I can't find the source, but the following experiment was conducted: Group A and B have both male and female students. Both groups have to pass a test of mathematical and logical problems, but before the test, the Group A is told <<Women are statistically worse than men at math and science>>; while the Group B is told <<It is proven that women are statistically as good as men in math and science>>. In the results of Group A, male students got 10 out of 100 points than female students in average, while in the results of the group B, female students got 0,5 out of 100 points more than male students in average. It's a very small example of how the society's myths changes what people ends up being. Yes, you will find more successful male scientists and engineers, but the numbers will be balanced to perfect equality as soon as we start banishing these myths.

August 23, 2015

August 21, 2015

Mankind suddenly becomes intelligent enough for Reality TV shows not being profitable anymore - however your sister is displeased, and now dedicates her free time to spy you, in order to satisfy her need of gossips.

I wish I liked lemonade again so these lemonade bottles don't go to waste.

August 21, 2015

Banned for being a video game character from the 80s

August 21, 2015

Well, i was born with Ashpergers Syndrome which basically destroyed all hopes of me having a social life cause each time i try to say something to another person that aint my mother, or people a lot older than me, i have this blocky feeling blocking me from saying anything, i also react to negative things a lot more, if someone shouts at me or does anything to provoke negative feelings, like a friend of mine ignoring me, or someone saying negative things to me for no reason(IRL), my feelings react to it a lot more than a normal person.

I seem to be fine on the internet though, friends not dealing with me anymore or saying negative things to me still applies to the internet though, thats why i tend to keep my friends away a certain distance and not give them a reason to hate me.

I am happy that i have it though, it allowed me to be different to other people, it allowed me to have an easier life at school cause i didnt need to study the bs school teaches at all, i had no homework, could go outside whenever i wanted, etc...

It allowed me to discover the joys of gaming and anime/manga/visual novels, which are what keep me afloat to this day.

And apperently, from what ive heard, having that thing makes you smarter than normal, i am not sure how true this is however.

Like Nhadala, I have Asperger's Syndrome.

I have esoteric knowledge on a number of subjects. My filter is patchy at best, and nonexistent at worst. The result: all the teachers at my school are aware that if I sound snarky, I'm usually just being brutally honest. I suck at expressing my emotions. I get stressed out over tiny details. When I joined my current school, I didn't speak to anyone in my class for two whole months. Thankfully, it didn't lead to bullying at my school, and I have good friends, so I have a social life of sorts.

ASD comes with a ton of sensory weirdness. I have migraines, prosopagnosia, Irlen and synaesthesia. I assume that you all know what migraines are. Prosopagnosia is face-blindness, so I can't recognise people out of context at all, or if I haven't seen them for a few months (when school starts again, awkwardness ensues). My Irlen Syndrome means that my vision is slightly distorted unless I'm wearing my glasses. My synaesthesia is probably the only one of those that isn't annoying, and is the one redeeming thing about my senses. Sounds are colourful, so listening to music is usually an enjoyable experience. It also makes it easier to recognise people due to vocal differences.

I am glad that I have it though. It meant that I could be weird and awkward. I'm also highly intelligent, so I didn't study much for the exams and I still aced them.

Add me to the list - even though it's not saying much. Asperger's is, sadly, just that: a syndrome, a stupidly huge group of symptoms that psychologists put together because there were statistics that pointed towards the possibility that they could be related, up to the point that both a borderline autistic and someone who's had almost not a single meaningful problem in his or her life (because of the symptoms) fall under the same category, even though their characteristics may be caused by different physiological reasons. Why is it sad? Because it's an impractical, useless categorization when it comes to find solutions to the problems that the symptoms may cause.

In my case, I was unaware of double meanings, certain jokes, subtle social interactions in general that I didn't care about until some point at high school. That led to bullying at some points (and its consequences: lower self esteem, social seclusion, and other bs that it's not cool to talk about), until I finally decided that, If I was to find interesting people at some point of my life, it would be for the best that my social skills didn't suck, so I started paying attention to other people's gestures, tones, reactions; and later analyzing and practicing myself in front of a mirror. Like If I was researching the subject of "how to be socially successful among all of these morons". The process was really slow, and it would take ~3-4 years to culminate.

When I was starting, I was aiming for a state grant to join international Baccalaureate, so I joined the high school in which I could take it one year later. The first confrontations of the ideal life I was imagining for myself with reality was, as it should be expected, disappointing. I lost interest for it before it even started, I didn't have any interest in meeting people, and, at the first new signs of bullying, I turtled myself - but at least it didn't go too wrong. Instead of getting into an abusive dynamic, this time I was fast to reply back to "jokes" (If you can call something with such terrible intentions a "joke") and I developed a fame of being an honest, but prepotent asshole. That, united to the fact that I frequently engaged in discussions with the teachers, simply because I hated the idea of having an authority figure giving diffusion to their dumb opinions (why hello there philosophy teacher), earned me some kind of respect. I didn't get in other people's lives, they didn't get in mine. After the first delusion, that was all that I ended up wishing for. In my disinterest for most things, I was happy.

Somehow, I had ended up making friends, and even though I had stopped studying and getting good grades, I received the grant for IB. The next year, however, several adversities found me at the very same time. The collapse of romantic delusions and other false expectations, a love rejection stupidly prolonged in time (precisely wasting the only months of my life in which I had been rejecting girls myself), the pressure of having a tight schedule in which I had to dedicate too much time to study stuff I didn't care about, while the subjects I was interested in was advancing way too slow... I quit High School. I got in depression, quit High School against my friends, family, classmates and teachers recommendations, and three months later, after I had got more perspective, I regretted it and came back, but it was too late. Not paying attention in class and catching up with your classmates' notes later is one thing, but completely leaving HS during a trimester, only to come back some time before the final exams... I failed completely the first one, realized the situation, and didn't attend to any other test. I had to repeat the grade - this time in regular High School (logically, they wouldn't give another grant to someone at my situation), got distanced from my friends and fell, again, further in depression. Drama.

I suspect I've got deviated from the main topic, so back to it. A couple of years after that, after I had gotten new friends and stuff, they all agreed in that I was charismatic.... !?!?!?¿¡!? To my surprise, I hadn't realized that, even though I had been going through so much bullshit, I had finally developed social skills up to the point that I didn't have to consciously act to express my feelings or thoughts. My whole perspective of life might have crashed and all, but hey, at least I excelled at overcoming my social awkwardness. (Yay.)

My other big symptom associated with Asperger is obsessions. Once I take a particular interest in something, my mind enters in a train route that forces me to keep thinking about it. This has both positive and negatives consequences: I can easily spend hours and hours learning about something (be it learning click optimization or tactics in AoE or something more useful, such as programming), but I can't easily choose what my next obsession will be, so it can get really troublesome some times ("You have had a fight with your girlfriend and didn't solve it yet? FUCK YOU, you are not going to sleep tonight" my mind, making a worryingly accurate prediction). I haven't been as successful with this, and it's getting increasingly annoying lately. In any case, there's as much intelligent and stupid people with Asperger as there are without it, so I'd gladly get rid of it If I could.

Edit: Several typos corrected.

August 20, 2015

Can't scrutinize the judge for giving an alternative sentence to a 15 days in prison sentence that completely acceptable. The bigger idiot in this scenario was the defendant.

The guy was like "...can I call my job to let them know I'm going to be in jail?"

Judge: "Nope..."

I don't know how things work over there, but in Spain, missing to go to work for a few days immediately means that you lose your job (unless you have a very valid reason AND a very good relation with the owner of the business), which can easily escalate into being evicted and socially excluded in a couple of months.

Thus,

Secondly, a marriage that was a CHOICE is not coerced. As a few of us have noted in this thread, the "fiancee" made the dumb decision to marry over the jail-time.

If he had been in a social or economic position that meant either taking the alternative penalty or falling further into poverty, he would have been indeed coerced. Had there been any kind of economic pressure, his girlfriend would have also been coerced, either by emotional or financial reasons.

With regard to the Bible verses issue, I fail to see how that would be a violation of anyone elses right ot religion if the sentence is simply "Copy these sentences". AGAIN, AGAIN, A-GAIN - There was no expectation for the defendant to convert to Christianity- and there is not another religion out there that prohibits interaction with "other scripture" that I am aware of... The only requirement was that sentences be copied and presented for the requirement to be checked off. With this in mind, the only argument you can posit is Separation, and that's made null simply by picking the sentence that was constitutionally ironclad -AND- offered to you.

1) The judge was giving his own religious beliefs enough value as to allow someone to avoid jail time If he writes them over and over in hand, as If he was a kid. He's perfectly free to give them such a value in his free time, but not when he's representing the state.

2) If he wanted the condemned to copy over and over on paper an ethical dogma (such as the bible verses), he could have made him copy parts of text of the criminal code - specifically the ones for which he was condemned guilty. It wouldn't have put any system of beliefs (or the lack of any) over another, the judge wouldn't have cleaned his balls using the Constitution, and the condemned would have learnt some criminal law. And it wouldn't have been a dogma the judge himself chose to believe in, but a pact of the society which could be changed If the society uses the required means to do so.

"However, the Court has not always interpreted the constitutional principle as absolute, and the proper extent of separation between government and religion in the U.S. remains an ongoing subject of impassioned debate."

- that page of yours Mike

Him and a certain highest court of the land...

Which totally kills the reason to be for a Constitution, which is to prevent the State (and its representatives) from making abuse of power.

TL:DR? That was some idiocy across the entire courtroom - starting with the defendant.

TL;DR: Calling the condemned an idiot when you don't know his personal circumstances nor why he took the choices he did is deeply disrespectful, specially If, by doing so, you shift the focus of the criticism from a representative of the State who is making abuse of power, doesn't respect the condemned's Constitutional rights and ignores the separation between Church and State, SPECIALLY when we are talking about a JUDGE, who is required to have studied all of this in order to get his position.

August 19, 2015

Purely from the player character's perspective I'd still much rather encounter Fern than, say, Sirius/Solaris/El/[pick your poison].

I mean, say what you want about how much of a jerk he is, at least he hasn't killed anybody yet.

I don't understand why people keep saying that Fern is "just" a jerk.

If we can excuse the cultists and the Meteors and allies like Saphira and Titania from their actions, why not Fern?

Do we know why he's behaving the way he does? Let's take a look

- has an older sister who, through something that happened in her youth (which Fern was probably witness to/knows something about) decided that ridding herself of emotion is the best solution (that didn't work out very well for Cyrus, Rini)

- is constantly overshadowed by said sister, "merely" the reserve leader

- once he starts doing the League challenge, he just can't seem to prove himself better than you either (you keep beating him and he's only margially faster at obtaining badges)

- as of E16, still can't beat you, and has to listen to his Boss praising you while his sister points out how hard he's failed

- as of E16, during the little "Fern's a hostage" fake, has to listen to Florinia basically saying that it doesn't matter if he's her brother, she's not gonna save his ass (regardless of her own obvious loss of composure during the whole scene, that must be bad to hear)

Is Fern a jerk? Yes. Does he say really cruel things about people? Yes.

But at least he hasn't tried killing me with my back turned yet. Thanks a lot, Solaris.

Neither does he go into a blind killing spree of everything that's in his way. Really, what's with Saphira and Tania?

Neither is he continuing to allow an organization like Meteor to keep using his invention to destroy cities and kill people, even after the blackmail that started it no longer works. Following a desperate pipe dream there, Eve.

Neither has he attempted to brainwash his own daughter because she's got different beliefs. El please.

His reasoning for siding with the Meteors? He wants his rightful place. He said that he doesn't give much of a damn about anything else they believe in or do. He wants to be "where he belongs", on the top.

Sounds to me like he's really desperate for recognition/attention that he probably never got.

And yes, he's a jerk. But I hate him less than Sirius \o/ ~~jk jk Sirius is also a cool character. But y'know, not the nicest of the bunch.~~

All of that is true, but it only makes it worse. Solaris is murdering people and causing disasters because he wants to change the world for the better (even If we could prove, without a chance of being mistaken, that his posture is incoherent or irrational), Fern supports such a group and everything they're doing because he's an attention whore, because he's a spoiled brat, maybe even without any considerations at all of the grand scheme.

Having said this, I loved the "Fern was here. MC is a loser." graffiti - ...And obviously, Blake is worse.

August 19, 2015

I keep reading "bad guys" this and "bad guys" that, and even If it's a bit off-topic, I wanted to mention that both Team Meteor and the Arceus' ~~crazy freaks~~ zealots have systems of beliefs that lead them to think that THEY are the good guys. Good and evil are relative, they think they are doing greater good to the world (or, at least, the new world) that is far beyond their crimes they have to commit for it - and, of course, they have no reason to treat their Pokemon in a bad way.

The exception to all of this is Fern. Fern is just a jerk. Keep hating him.

August 19, 2015

Persona 4. I was enjoying it at first like a regular game, but the character of Naoto touched me in a personal way. Spoilers incoming.

Comparing it with other people's impressions, I think I was more settled that other people at the role of "Seeker of Truth", maybe driven by how I liked Naoto and rushed her social link ("How can't you see yet that someone dear to you made this game, so you could share your passion with someone else? You piece of... a... sleuth."), precisely when the "discover the plot" part of the game starts going in crescendo and the main story gets shaken by some major events. Nanako's death and Teddy's disappearance are there to touch you precisely when you have to make some major, important choices, and yet with tears getting piled up behind my eyes I reloaded several times until I got the right choices to kept the ******** of Namatame alive, because once I had got into the sleuth's skin, I couldn't accept an event that meant not ever getting to know the truth.

When Nanako and Teddy came back, it felt cheap, I felt fooled, but I was still enjoying the plot and kept on playing. When I finished the game and discovered on the net that Nanako could have died, had I made other choices, I suddenly took a completely different perspective and FEELINGS attacked me again. I guess I had the grace of the Atlus' Pantheon for playing the game right.

August 18, 2015

Thanks to everyone for the responses, it seems like a really solid base to put my feet on.

August 18, 2015

I'll boost you to gold if you'll buy me Red Faction Armageddon on Steam :^)

I meant some normal games, I already proved everything I wanted to proof to myself in ranked last year and it isn't a experience I'm eager to repeat.

August 17, 2015

Well, I finally decided to give it another try to the game. Anyone in EUW willing to carry someone who hasn't played in almost a year?

August 17, 2015

I finally have enough 3DS games in my wishlist to justify the purchase, but MONEY ISSUES happen.

I have been thinking in buying a secondhand console and games online, but I have never done anything similar, so I was expecting someone of you could share experiences with what sites are trustworthy, what guarantees I will have about the items being in a good condition, etc.

August 17, 2015

Steam ID: Kiroen

There are other 2 who share that nickname, but only I have this guy as avatar:

I play on Emperor, and sometimes immortal, but I can always drag Huggyboo to an absolutely not illogical M.A.D. ~~to have tons of fun~~ so everyone has a chance

August 9, 2015

August 9, 2015

Saved in bookmarks from back when I still played HS: https://imgur.com/a/czNzP#eU6y7Je

August 9, 2015

It's nice to see your interest in the debate, this is going to be absorbing

[Disparity between regions, worldwide hunger]

Kiroen, ask yourself if you care as much about a starving child thousands of miles away, as about a friend.
The answer is no, and for good reason (read: don't feel too bad about it). Our empathy has bounds (if it didn't, our minds would explode pretty much, or make us incredibly depressive). If you keep that in mind, it's easy to understand why, for example, so many people are dying due to preventable conditions. It's too far away from us, so we don't care as much.* It doesn't justify the situation, but to blame such situation fully on our economic system is a flawed argument. The disparity would still be there mainly due to our nature, no matter what system you're in (even if it conflicts with that system itself. 'Animal Farm' gives a good example for the communist system).
you don't even have to look that far to see such problems. For example, if you're not part of a certain minority, chances are it's woes are too far off your own life to really care that much.

The fact that we're unable to feel enough empathy towards hundreds of millions of people explains why we aren't rioting for world hunger, but that has nothing to do with the fact that those conditions are perpetuated because we live under a globalized capitalist system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_theory

Trying to sum it up with an example: African children and their mothers mine and sell coltan; due to the vast amount of uneducated workers in Africa and the lack of need for other jobs, illiterate work has a low trade value (workers compete between themselves); Apple buys the coltan at a very low price to make tablets at USA ~~or China~~ and they make a ton of money. The coltan mines may be owned by a local oligarch, and it may turn out that coltan is scarce and the local oligarch actually receives a ton of money from Apple too, but instead of using the acquired capital in improving the workers' conditions he becomes an Apple's shareholder, because If his region's workers actually had access to education, the jobs market at SadFacesColtanMine^TM's region would provoke that the people working at the mine would demand higher salaries, because If they didn't receive it, they'd happen to have an alternative.

Going a step further away that the Dependency theory goes, it also turns that African governments are specially weak, and by deciding to take social (or at the very least, patriotic) policies and raising the minimum wage by decree (or actually creating a minimum wage), it may turn out that a bunch of these local oligarchs make calcs and decide that buying weapons from American or Russian private armament companies and giving them to a bunch of fanatics that put the government in check, is actually worth the risk. And we couldn't pretend that our countries would be free or responsibility, because from the very moment that we allow weapon companies to become a financial product in stock markets, we are actually allowing people from our countries to gamble in favor of new wars breaking. Higher investment in weapon companies -> more supply -> less expensive weapons -> cheaper to start new wars.

[Advertising, consumerism]

You then proceed to describe the inherent increase of wealth disparity, which I can get behind, to then making it out to be a propaganda/slavery producer, which I can't.
You state that every person follows this logic (things you don't need, etc, etc), or is unable to think that well for themselves what they need.
One, that's not the case. People can be quite aware of what they need.
Two, a (little) bit of luxury isn't always bad, although you technically 'don't need it'. I admit, what you describe happens frequently, but not in general.
Three, advertising isn't evil, but necessary for companies to exist. You describe that it is used to make people believe that they need things they don't need, but they also inform people of stuff they do need. Example: you have a really bad case of dandruff, and you see advertising for stuff that gets rid of it. Advertising shortens the time you need to find products, whether you need it or not is left to you to decide.
The consumer behaviour you describe mostly hinges on how a person is raised. First, if someone learns how to value things properly when growing up, they will be better at judging these things. Secondly, critical thought is required for nearly everything (except religion, perhaps), so you need that skill in order to judge information better. So when you see an Axe body spray commercial, you don't (instantly) believe that spraying yourself with the expensive stench (personal opinion) causes women to flock on your pelvis.
However: parenting isn't easy. You're (almost) bound to do something wrong. Sometimes you give misguided advice to your children (example: you have to do this, that...to live happily, even though not all these things are required to live a fulfilling life). Other times you might give them too much/little. And those are just two of the myriad of small things you might accidentally do wrong.
Added to that, critical thought is something that you should be learnt in school, but takes a long time to master. If your education system is flawed on that aspect, you will notice the consequences.
The thing is, few of this is caused by capitalism itself, but rather by the people living in the system. You can argue that commercials are sometimes/often misleading, but to be mislead without critical thought is also for some part to blame on the people.

I'll start by inviting you to reread my previous post, because communication failed at some point.

In today's world, money is power: money allows you to buy a person's life in terms of hours worked, and this has created huge empires of propaganda: every single person in the first world countries has been convinced, at some moment of his lives, that they need to earn money to buy something that they don't need or don't even want, and some people even want to conquer that material wealth to impress people they don't know or don't even like.

I'll have to use more measured expressions, for the sake of the debate. I didn't mean that every person has been convinced forever, but that everyone ends up experimenting it (usually before reaching adult age). Further than that, there are huge differences between people. There is people (according to my experience, few) who has no problem in having an austere life, carefully considering what luxuries will bring them a better quality of life and even happiness, without little influence of advertising; but believing that it's within everyone's reach to easily achieve that is simply naive.

An example a bit alien to us men, is how women are expected to continuously renew their dressing. Encouraged by seasonal advertising campaigns, it's obvious that the media is able to promote (with a lot of success) consumerism, up to the point that not precisely few women suffer stress If they think their image isn't good enough for their circle's standards. An ex girlfriend of mine had similar concerns with consumerism, she often complained about how women were usually seen as less valuable basing on their looks, EVEN by fellow women, she didn't understand why she had to worry about how people she didn't care about saw her, and yet she suffered because of it; simply because of social pressure. A social pressure that advertising companies actively promote and exploit.

One thing are tools that allow people to easily find products and services that may improve their lives, and a very different one is the advertising bombardment we live under. For further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

You also got some of the workings of businesses wrong. You completely left out innovation or specifying to better appease a certain niche (it's really a kind of Darwinism, Darvan nails it with that term). All of those can lead to the growth sought. On the other hand, the wrong mutation can end unsuccesfully if it doesn't fit the environment it is in. For example: if the environment is people who demand their clothes being made under humane and fair conditions, a lot of clothing brands are going to be in trouble in that said environment. (I also would recommend to be nicer to the Chinese in general, things work quite different there. I understand your worries on that, though.)

Maybe the fact that I'm tired has something to do with this, but I don't get what you're referring to. As for the Chinese, in case it wasn't obvious, I don't have any problem with Chinese people, but with Chinese international companies (and you can actually change 'Chinese' by many other nationalities depending on the region and historical time).

[Political parties and their financing, private pressure on government]

Yes, some companies/people are more powerful than some governments with their affluence (cough*Philip Morris*cough*), and they can cripple those(*same cough*). However: 1. those actions can actually hurt those companies more than the countries they target if things backfire. 2. If governments would act rationally and fair (also non-corrupt or unbiased), their power would be way less. 3. An international approach would stop it dead in their tracks, even though such a thing happening is very unlikely. Still, I think it could be technically possible to gain similar effect without international support. (more about that later)
How parties/candidates geit money for their campaigns is different for most countries, but banks are very rarely involved like you state. It's too much money with a high risk of not getting their money back, so banks generally have no interest themselves in such an investment. Rather, lobbying groups (made up by numerous people of interest and companies) are prime investors. How it does work varies to rather fair to rather perverted.
In my country, parties get money from the state depending on their size plus membership fees. This makes them little to not dependent on sponsorship, reducing the influence of (affluent) people or companies on the parties themselves (our government in general, however, has some problems with that due to some very unique laws), and keeping campaigns fair in relative sizes.
In America, things work a little bit different, especially presidency campaigns. A clear explanation of the voting system and its problems can be found on CGP Grey's channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS9mM8Xbbw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k, in that order).
As you said, presidential candidates rely on sponsors to fund their 100s of millions dollar campaigns, in exchange for favours to their sponsors when they are elected (this is not for all of the sponsors, but those still expect to profit from their supportes candidate being elected). Not only is this unfair to all other parties besides the two almost everyone knows (because they can't even dream of raising that much money for campaigns), but it makes those presidents less effective, not proposing certain necessary laws due to promises to their sponsors. This funding problem isn't only present in presidency, sadly.
Again, the problems aren't caused by capitalism, but they are exploited by it. The actual problem are the humans themselves. If you can cast away the problems caused by us, the grasp of bodies in the system slips away.

Maybe I was too enthusiastic in presenting the issue in a very systematical way: how parties make their finances varies greatly from country to country, to the point that your statement ["but banks are very rarely involved like you state. It's too much money with a high risk of not getting their money back, so banks generally have no interest themselves in such an investment."] is 100% false in my country, Spain*; while it may be really accurate for yours (*it's well known around here that Spanish banks forgive debts to the parties that legislate in favor of their interests). However, was it THAT different taking your example into account? If private fortunes can't directly bribe the party or candidate in question, they recur to the advertising of ideas that benefits them (be it by giving better positions to opinion makers with aligned interests in the mass media or by promoting lobbies that influence powerful individuals).

Oh, and then there's the extreme but not so uncommon case of rich people presenting themselves to elections and winning them, usually making use of their accumulated capital for it. Have you heard of Cañete? He is the Commissioner of Energy and Climate Action in the European Union, from Spain. Thankfully, several activists convoked demonstrations to make known the fact that he had important shares in oil companies (wolf watching the sheeps? Hello?), which is illegal according to the laws of the EU... So he sold those shares to his brother in law.

I don't quite understand how capitalism isn't related to this.

By
xXNasDavXx

Okay, as a history major I can say that I wasn't talking about the death and destruction that Hitler and Stalin did cause, I was more talking about how they both were able to take control of their respective countries. Stalin systematically destroyed all of his opponents and replaced them with his allies and supporters, whilst Hitler had the Night of the Long Knives where he killed his friends and foe alike and burned down the Reichstag. Part two of this, I am not to opposed to having a leader like Hitler, hear me out, the man was able to inspire Germans and was a very good speaker, however this is all lost because all anyone thinks about when you say Hitler is the Holocaust, it's very disappointing know that one bad can outweigh all the good that a person had possibly done before hand.

I could have very easily included Mao ZeDong as well but seeing as I was rushed for time I really didn't want to type it out, but society will never be able to achieve a system that is good enough for everyone, as I saw earlier human nature is the flaw if every politicalism, it's true fear and greed keep us from changing our political system. Hell I can't even say anything remotly close to communism without being told to shut up and that I'm a stupid Commie. It's all just a play and everyone right now is a willing actor/actress.

Blaming it on the human's nature seems like the easiest way to deal with it, but I don't think that will make the world a place any better when I'm retired and want to live the rest of my days without being concerned about my grandchildren having any kind of future. That is, If I have any kind of good future myself. It may be disgusting to fight against it, but If the play's curtain isn't tore out by the people who knows that it's rigged, it won't be revealed as what it is until it's too late.

And @Jericho: No hurries, I understand that this takes a lot of time and we don't always have it.

August 8, 2015

(...)

Raising taxes on the top 1% greatly hurts small businesses and in turn many Jobs are lost.

I have a thought that did just cross my mind. Raise taxes on the very wealthy, however if the individual in question makes the majority of their earnings from a business they own, they'd have lower tax rates than say a hired CEO, or anyone else who is making in the big bucks without actually being the grandmaster. There would obviously have to be more in depth examination and ways to close loop holes, but this seems like a pretty good starting point in my opinion.

Realistically the top 1% is vilified, but it breaks down even further. The top .1% or .01% could be seen as those who are most inclined to have just ludicrous amounts of money. The line for the top 1% is only $400,000 annually for a household. If you're looking at growing small businesses who would hire more people to expand their business, raising taxes on them puts a hurting on a huge portion of the small business jobs.

(...)

There is a big fallacy in there, allow me to explain. A) Under capitalism, products/services are provided to those who have money; B ) Under capitalism, there are bigger concentrations of wealth under fewer hands as time goes on (as explained earlier); C) As one person accumulates exponential amounts of wealth, he spends a lesser percentage of his income in luxuries/needs (at the very least, statistically); D) Progressive taxes and certain spending or investments by the state allow redistribution of wealth.

Now, If there is an increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands, and these people will be less likely to buy products/services; there will actually be less incentives to create productive companies, because they will simply not have as high perspectives of making business. This actually provokes a really inefficient use of the capital, where it becomes accumulated without purpose to the point that there is nothing more productive to invest it in than stock-market gambling. However, redistribution of wealth solves the problem.

Shit. There really is no "perfect" system. What Marx thought would be great Jeri is if there were no gaping differences in wealth. If Communism had any draw to it, it most likely would have been that the rich would be pried from their riches, leaving them as equal as everyone else, and eliminate at least one thing to discriminate about. Meaning the "99%" would become "100%", because there's always gonna be those who have and those who have not. You could also look at Communism as effective, because the government usually knows what to do better than one person, because what if YOU were by some astronomically improbable reason pulled to rule as the leader of your country. Shiet, you wouldn't know what to do exactly.

Communism/Socialism are "better" than Capitalism in a way, because their purpose is to ensure no monopolies by making sure there is no competition. Ensuring the equality of the people by working for one cause. Not five.

The bold characters statement was one of the reasons why the USSR collapsed. While an ample group of technicians (whether they work for the state or for a company) are able to plan a country's industrialization far better than any random "entrepreneur", If any closed group of technicians pretend to plan the whole economy, many bright or simply useful ideas that any random entrepreneur may have will find no way to be implemented. There are just sectors that are more efficient when planned (such as the roads infrastructures) or are simply natural monopolies (it's ridiculous to allow competence in water pipes, for example); and there are other sectors of the economy that are less efficient when planned by a Leningrad's bureaucrat.

However, one thing is the state vs entrepreneur debate, and a very different one is the question of who owns the capital: individuals or society (be it administrated by a centralist state or by cooperatives/public banks/municipal funds/etc.etc.etc..

There are flaws with every system as you said. Communism's main one is there's ZERO motivation to achieve anything other than the bare minimum. No incentives. Hence progression comes to a huge crawl.

If you want my honest opinion. What would be best overall would probably be a pendulum swaying back and forth between Socialism and Capitalism so it could be rebalanced whenever it gets too out of swing. However none of these systems are ever good if the people are struggling and we're going into massive debt simultaneously. Spending needs to be cut across the board except Education, but even that needs to be re-evaluated and done more efficiently.

I don't want to sound bold or aggressive, but this is just propaganda. Every single economic system we have seen until today has had positions where there were high and low meritocratic incentives. What incentive is there to work for a rich individual who can live from his rents? What incentive is there to work harder for a waitress exploited by her boss, being paid a miserable salary?

No one has put in question the need of having meritocratic incentives, and there actually were many of these in the USSR (which I'm not proposing as a model).

(Before actually proposing any short or long term alternative, I'm going to wait for Jericho's response on the first quote)

August 7, 2015

Did you have Pokesnacks in the bag?

August 7, 2015

really? what were they exactly? i did hear about a 3rd ending...

"It's nice to own you" during the obedience run, or some other bold line.

and yes, some people don't get that emotionally invested in such a short game. but some people do. it's strange when you think about it. I don’t understand how they perceived the game.

It's quite simple. Those who have related experiences are just more likely to remember them, and the emotions attached to them. Also, depending on a person's empathy, some may be able to understand the subtle hints to a deeper grade, such as the constant insults turning the world into a weird, abstract set of squares, probably portraying the victim's sinking to madness/emotional instability.

August 7, 2015

In case that anyone is interested, I made an Immortal Earth map LP series that got a lot of success at its day in the Civ subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/34nkek/a_thousand_and_one_turns_immortal_arabia_tsl/

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/34yqqf/one_thousand_and_one_turns_immortal_arabia_tsl/

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/353iji/one_thousand_and_one_turns_immortal_arabia_tsl/

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/35efhz/one_thousand_and_one_turns_immortal_arabia_tsl/

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/35qm8z/one_thousand_and_one_turns_immortal_arabia_tsl/

If you want a tip, try to be very selective with the content you end up putting in the album. Long entries usually scare people, as they don't know If it will be worth their time and they'll be more likely to not to start reading it at all. I usually took about 100 screenshots per chapter, but they ended up having between 15 and 25 after planning how I would tell an interesting story.

August 7, 2015

But by the end, the game is much easier if you simply obey. and instead of insults, you get praise. the world is more clear and detailed. and at the ending (if you choose obey them), the narrator again asks if you're a boy or a girl

Boy: "No, you're a man"

Girl: "No you're a woman"

"I loved you, always."

There are probably several endings. I played twice (always disobeying on the first run, always obeying on the second one) and the narrator closed with lines different that yours.

As Cepheus said, it's hard to get too emotionally involved in such a short game (unless you have been close to similar situations irl), but the effort is appreciated. I think our societies could easily change for the better If at least 1 out of 10 AAA games would put effort in introducing people in today's world problems - it's a real shame how we aren't exploiting video games educational possibilities...

August 7, 2015

Capitalism is an inherently flawed system, but it's probably the best we're ever going to get, to be honest.

Human nature is the biggest flaw of any system. If there is a way to exploit a system, then somebody will abuse it.

So even if Capitalism somehow gets replaced by a "better" system, we would most likely end up in a similar situation to this further down the line, or the economy would collapse on top of itself. Whichever comes first.

This is a really dangerous argument, not only because it leads us to a very conservative approach to the possibility of changing things ("things are actually really fucked up" but "it could be worse" -> "better leave them be than try to change for the better"), but because from an historical perspective, it's easy to see that no system (be it political or economical) has an undefined useful lifetime. Feudalism thrived for over a thousand years, but it finally died to mercantilism, which died to laissez faire, which died to interventionism, which died to neoliberalism. A prestigious scientist and aristocrat had the opinion that we had reached the pinnacle of science and progress; it was a really propagated idea - yet short years later mankind saw flight be born and Einstein started to shake the classical physics foundations. A hundred years ago, those who had power spread the idea that paid holidays or finishing child labor would provoke the system to collapse - yet today those are basic rights defended by the majority.

to answer the first question, Capitalism tries to create a strong global economy, and tbh it's failed it's job horribly.

To answer the second, well most people say that we should remove capitalism, but what do we replace it with? The normal answer is uhhh and it's because nobody really knows how to live without capitalism

Anarchy would rule until somebody pulls a Stalin/Hitler and forcibly takes control either with speech or force.

it's a lose lose

It's funny how so many people recur to the images of Hitler or Stalin when someone presents the idea of an alternative to capitalism - yet so few see that capitalism is killing way more people than anyone ever accused communism of killing, today. According to the UN, 24.000 persons die each day from hunger. If an economic system's purpose is to provide people with their basic needs, and once these are satisfied, provide luxuries too, why isn't there a strong speech that denounces the victims of capitalism? We have the capital, the physical resources to provide everyone in the world with food, yet 100 million people die from hunger in the world each ~15 years. Take the worst communist dystopia any propagandist could have ever imagined: we live in it. Capitalism rules the vast majority of the world, yet with its huge power it isn't solving any of the big problems the mankind has.

And taking a more practical approach to your concern: I haven't proposed in any moment to violently overthrow capitalism - not even any legal system. Such formulas don't provide any guarantee of success. And please, let's not ridicule proposals of change with vague threats of a terrible, dystopian society, because hundreds of millions of people already live under ours.

Replace capitalism with... a tamed version of capitalism. Much higher taxes on the very rich and all that. Place extremely strict limitations on those who try to use any form of threats/bribery to influence politics and similar things.

Of course, the above is very vague and there would certainly be a lot of loopholes to work through. There's also a lot of insidious conditioning that goes on, at least in the US. We'll need to get to the point where so many people view being a "non-capitalist" as something to be looked down on.

Everything Jericho says it about as true as it gets. Capitalism is essentially economical Darwinism. It's the best system for healthy competition in the markets that human-kind has created so far. If you think capitalism in America (or any other country for that matter), you oughta read about all the crap about 100 years ago with the government getting smart and trust busting and breaking monopolies that constricted the marketplace. It's pretty filthy now, but it was grimy and grease ridden back then

I agree that intervened capitalism has created the most prosperous societies mankind has ever seen until today, but we have to ask ourselves: why have we been moving backwards during the last decades? Among social scientists (If there is such a thing such as "social science") there's a theory gaining weight every year: capitalism could be tamed during most of 20th century because the richest individuals and collectives were afraid. After WWII, many Western European countries began nationalizations of big companies - specially those whose owners had been collaborating with fascism; they started coining money in huge amounts to organize the efforts of rebuilding the countries - yet no big proprietaries complained. After WWII, the French and Italian Communist parties were close to their max height, simply because millions of people in those countries believed that there was an alternative to capitalism. When the USSR economy began to stagnate and Western Berlin had became the biggest showcase of capitalism, it started the neoliberal cycle: it was the age of Thatcher and Reagan, the age when even the new social democrat parties in Europe (those of Spain, Portugal and Greece) were born under the ideological banner of capitalism without regulations - because regulations did no longer seem necessary to capitalism's survival [Note: notice that I haven't actually defended the Eastern Bloc at any line, what it matters to this theory is only the people's perception to it during each period].

If this isn't true, you are going to need to bring another theory that explains why capitalism can't be tamed today, why the vast majority of European parties actually tolerate capitalism's excesses in practice (the speech matters little when their actions show the opposite).

The question is where do we define the very rich? I'm all for low taxes on people who are actively providing more and more jobs. It's a different story if people are just making money by manipulating money. Does the individual or business in question provide a good or service that ultimately benefits the economy as a whole by promoting greater flow of money? Or are they instead just manipulating the system to their advantage?

What portion of the business is being put forward to create more jobs or better quality good or services?

https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf

Small businesses comprise what share of the U.S. economy?

Small businesses make up: 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms

64 percent of net new private-sector jobs

49.2 percent of private-sector employment

42.9 percent of private-sector payroll

46 percent of private-sector output

43 percent of high-tech employment

98 percent of firms exporting goods

33 percent of exporting value.

Raising taxes on the top 1% greatly hurts small businesses and in turn many Jobs are lost.

I have a thought that did just cross my mind. Raise taxes on the very wealthy, however if the individual in question makes the majority of their earnings from a business they own, they'd have lower tax rates than say a hired CEO, or anyone else who is making in the big bucks without actually being the grandmaster. There would obviously have to be more in depth examination and ways to close loop holes, but this seems like a pretty good starting point in my opinion.

Realistically the top 1% is vilified, but it breaks down even further. The top .1% or .01% could be seen as those who are most inclined to have just ludicrous amounts of money. The line for the top 1% is only $400,000 annually for a household. If you're looking at growing small businesses who would hire more people to expand their business, raising taxes on them puts a hurting on a huge portion of the small business jobs.

I think we need to take it back to the roots. We need to provide better education for more people in order to give better opportunities for more to succeed. Even modest estimates have 100% funded post high school education at about $70 Billion per year. Now look at how much we're spending on the military annually. The US Military budget comes out to over $580 Billion. Why do we need so much there?

Oh and the following are 100% absolutely our allies.

>UK

>France

>Japan

>Germany

>South Korea

>Italy

>Israel

>Australia

There's also a slew of other programs run by the government that are completely inefficient, corrupt, and mistreated that could stand to be cut to put funds to better use. Many of which are under the radar.

We need to educate the masses first, and not punish those that are actively creating jobs and goods or services. If there's a way we can increase tax rates without harming the potential for jobs then I'm all for it.

There's no doubt that many defense ministries are black holes of corruption for money. I have the intuition that, If people actually learnt a bit of geopolitics in high school, we'd be able to avoid several of today's wars, as people would be more aware of the use of violence for the mere profit of certain companies (it doesn't take too much work to trace the financing of international relations lobbies by energy corporations). I mean - it's so obvious for anyone who studies the issue that I don't understand how there aren't big national debates about it.

I'll eventually propose practical solutions , but I think that there are some issues that should be discussed first.

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