Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 3572 3573 [3574] 3575 3576 ... 3591

Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 4419841 times)

Eschar

  • Bay Watcher
  • hello
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53595 on: October 11, 2024, 09:00:44 am »


This is not an acceptable or sustainable thing.
Sure it is! Depending upon your politics, either get the food-insecure to eat some of the food-secure (thus moving them out of insecurity) or get the food-secure to eat the food-insecure (not much meat on 'em, maybe, but at least permanently removes people for the non-secure sections). Solved!

It might depend upon who wins in November as to which proposal you get to pursue, but I modestly submit both logical directions!

Modestly, eh?
Logged

McTraveller

  • Bay Watcher
  • This text isn't very personal.
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53596 on: October 11, 2024, 09:32:43 am »

Quote
...proposal....modestly

Quote
Modestly, eh?

Whoosh? (Courtesy Jonathan Swift, of course)

More seriously: I don't know how to legislate "people always have enough to live."

I don't know how to make policies to change culture from every economic participant always wanting to get more for doing less. Especially since eventually if everyone gets more for doing less (which is true progress and true productivity increase, incidentally), then eventually "everyone" is the rich... so at what point do you reach "oh we need to take from that rich person, but not from me?"  Remember, you are already "the rich" compared to someone else.  It's humbling.

Ultimately the question isn't "how much should we make other people give up, to give to others" but the question is "how much should I give up, to give to others?" Otherwise you end up being the "other people" that someone is asking to give something up...
Logged
This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, reproductive harm, and other health issues.

None

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forgotten, but not gone
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53597 on: October 11, 2024, 10:37:19 am »

if wealth disparity condenses to a point where the average american might get 'eaten' as the rich, then we no longer have wealth disparity and nobody is hungry.

we're already giving something up for others. if you've picked up the dinner bill for a friend because you know you make a much more comfortable wage than them, or ran them a box of groceries because they were deciding between lunch and the internet bill, or helped someone pay rent so they don't go homeless- you are not in the wealth bracket to be getting eaten and you are doing more proportionately than the people that forks are being sharpened for

if you're paying your taxes - you are not in the wealth bracket to be getting eaten; this is reserved for people with enough money to hire lawyers to get tax writeoffs on donations made to shell companies to keep that money

you and i, as average fuckers whose life savings could get obliterated in one medical emergency - we are not rich. we will not get rich. true progress and true productivity increase does not exist, because some fucker with more money than the state of New Mexico is going to perpetuate their own money at the expense of the people who can't pay their way out of exploitation, or who have to give up everything and everyone they know and love to get out

you can go ahead and feel humbled about your pixel of wealth on the chart of wealth inequality, or you can get mad about the Titanic-sized outliers that still want more of your pixel of wealth and will bend heaven, earth, and the law itself to get it from you

one of these emotions is more useful
Logged

Folly

  • Bay Watcher
  • Steam Profile: 76561197996956175
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53598 on: October 11, 2024, 12:35:32 pm »

More seriously: I don't know how to legislate "people always have enough to live."
I don't know how to make policies to change culture from every economic participant always wanting to get more for doing less. Especially since eventually if everyone gets more for doing less (which is true progress and true productivity increase, incidentally), then eventually "everyone" is the rich... so at what point do you reach "oh we need to take from that rich person, but not from me?"  Remember, you are already "the rich" compared to someone else.  It's humbling.
Ultimately the question isn't "how much should we make other people give up, to give to others" but the question is "how much should I give up, to give to others?" Otherwise you end up being the "other people" that someone is asking to give something up...

People deserve a share of the wealth available proportionate to the effort they have invested relative to the effort required to produce said wealth, minus the costs of societal overhead. I really don't understand why this is so hard for you to grasp.
Logged

wobbly

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53599 on: October 11, 2024, 12:43:17 pm »

More seriously: I don't know how to legislate "people always have enough to live."

It's actually simpler than it seems, as long as you don't ask for perfection. You can find countries doing it if you look around, and look at different time periods.

You don't get some perfect "everyone had enough" but you can get much better than what we have now.

When I was growing up, if you needed to see a doctor you just walked in and didn't pay a cent. It's still actually half true, I just have to travel further and go to a place, where they try and shuffle me out the door quicker. My 1st rental was $50, these days I'd be lucky to find under $400. Life was not perfect, poverty existed and people starved, but I do remember a time where certain basics were assured. It's not that it's hard to have a functional society with a minimal social standard (again we are not aiming for perfection!). It's just very hard if we accept an economic dogma, like the current one....

I'm of 2 minds on current economic theory, all their modelling suggests most people are better off. As far as I can tell that's from looking at things from median all the time, I suspect below that median, a lot of people are worse off, and I more than suspect it. I live it
Logged

Maximum Spin

  • Bay Watcher
  • [OPPOSED_TO_LIFE] [GOES_TO_ELEVEN]
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53600 on: October 11, 2024, 03:06:02 pm »

People deserve a share of the wealth available proportionate to the effort they have invested relative to the effort required to produce said wealth, minus the costs of societal overhead. I really don't understand why this is so hard for you to grasp.
What about the wealth they invest to produce said (additional) wealth? Does that count as effort?
Logged

McTraveller

  • Bay Watcher
  • This text isn't very personal.
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53601 on: October 11, 2024, 03:11:31 pm »

Other related questions are: How do you measure effort? How do you define/measure "societal overhead"?  It sounds good but seems to have implementation challenges.
Logged
This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, reproductive harm, and other health issues.

Folly

  • Bay Watcher
  • Steam Profile: 76561197996956175
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53602 on: October 11, 2024, 03:36:11 pm »

What about the wealth they invest to produce said (additional) wealth? Does that count as effort?

Certainly investment of wealth counts as effort, and when that effort produces additional wealth then the investors should be compensated proportionately.

The problem arises when those investors deliberately keep a representative portion of the potential workforce unemployed with the goal of keeping the active workforce so scared of said unemployment that they will actively fight for their right to continue letting the investors skim 99% of the profits, far exceeding a share proportionate to their investment.
Logged

McTraveller

  • Bay Watcher
  • This text isn't very personal.
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53603 on: October 11, 2024, 04:20:25 pm »

Proportional to what, though? Can you give an example?

Like say a company is started with $1M of capital.  Employees get paid $500k of that as salary/wage, and the remaining $500k pays for buildings, raw materials, etc.  Say the company earns $2M of revenue.  How would you split the revenue between whoever sourced the $1M, the employees, and taxes (the general public)?

What if the numbers were bigger? $10M invested, $5M in salary/wage, $5M in other expenses, $20M in revenue?  What about $100M/$50M/$50M/$200M?

Now the bonus question: what if that startup capital didn't come out of someone's bank account, but was instead a loan of "new" money, created by fiat (or by minting a new coin, or whatever); that is - nobody 'had' that money in the first place?

Thinking this is "simple" strikes me as naive...
Logged
This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, reproductive harm, and other health issues.

Robot Parade Leader

  • Bay Watcher
  • Well, go on ... parade!
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53604 on: October 12, 2024, 09:52:53 am »

Proportional to what, though? Can you give an example?

Like say a company is started with $1M of capital.  Employees get paid $500k of that as salary/wage, and the remaining $500k pays for buildings, raw materials, etc.  Say the company earns $2M of revenue.  How would you split the revenue between whoever sourced the $1M, the employees, and taxes (the general public)?

What if the numbers were bigger? $10M invested, $5M in salary/wage, $5M in other expenses, $20M in revenue?  What about $100M/$50M/$50M/$200M?

Now the bonus question: what if that startup capital didn't come out of someone's bank account, but was instead a loan of "new" money, created by fiat (or by minting a new coin, or whatever); that is - nobody 'had' that money in the first place?

Thinking this is "simple" strikes me as naive...

Proportional to what, though? Can you give an example?

Gold. Silver. Precious metals. This was the traditional way of doing things for centuries. You pick an objective thing and compare everything else to it.

If you don't like that then a basket of goods It could be a set combination of things required to keep a human being alive or any other consistent grouping.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/basket_of_goods.asp
It could include some measure of labor or anything else as long as it is consistent.

You can base it off just about anything and it is currently based on nothing or Fait "Faith." The bank doesn't have your money that you put in it and for every 10 dollars they loan out they have to actually have like 1 dollar in actual cash or whatever the reserve requirement is https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm . They literally can and do create money out of just about nothing.

We aren't naive. We're justifiably upset at the ultra rich people who have abused the system to the point it is breaking and if they don't stop it, then we'll eventually replace it with something else to save whatever we do have.

Parts of it are incredibly simple. Society is a machine. If parts of the machine are not maintained, then those parts and the machine will fail. You can't have 10 or 13% of society not having enough food while the top 1% hoards everything. This will eventually collapse, because people can't have kids or survive. We're already seeing it with more people "choosing" not to have kids, because they can't afford it. People are being forced out of the American Dream because the ultra rich want to be richer for no reason.

Two terrible things we are dealing with are:
1.) the idea that the super rich are somehow gods or have superhuman abilities. They aren't and they don't.
2.) The idea that bigger numbers are always better. It isn't about how much money you have. It's about how valuable it is based on what you can buy with it. Inflation has reminded everyone about this lately. The rich won't care as long as they come out on top by making more than inflation and pushing that problem on to the rest of us. If the rest of us starve they think we deserve it. Society does not have to have its benefits concentrated at the 1%.




"Like say a company is started with $1M of capital."

Let's not. Why does "private ownership equity" exist in the first place? It shouldn't. (This example isn't real but if we want to speculate) If people want to invest, they should get a government bond. The bond isn't taxed and gives you an interest rate return on investment. The bonds can be generalized or specific to a government created, owned and operated enterprise. You get a return on your investment ranging from 2% to 5% depending on how much the government wants to attract investment. The only say you have in the government enterprise is your vote. You have the right to sell or be repaid for your bond's purchase price. The interest is not taxed (and that is huge and more or less effectively raises the rate of interest you are getting), and the bond cannot default unless the whole country defaults because it is backed by the government. An private equity should not be ownership but licensed through the government for a large fee for the privilege of depriving society of government control of that market share. Say you can do it better than the government? Prove it by making enough to pay that licensing fee and make your profit.

The government creates the privilege of investment opportunities on government owned land, buildings and all that with government owned equipment (eminent domain). The projects create a certain number of products per year that must meet quality standards and achieve direct goals.

It can be done with enough labor. Goals for completed projects would include providing housing for a residents at a certain quality level, production of electrical power, water filtration, water desalinization, raising of livestock, raising of plants and food crops, production of goods, demonstrated tourism and natural preservation (e.g. the Grand Canyon), 

Citizens are graded on testing for academic knowledge and demonstration of skills. They get ranked based upon how good their skills are. Those skill ranks + a base rate of universal basic income determines your pay. That goes for the managers too. Additional pay can be justified through extraordinary deeds or advances including competitive prizes. Just being able to compete at a competitive level gets you more money but actually winning gets you more. Once there you are assigned a reasonable amount of work product using your skill ranks. These would include various tasks in a profession like different types of welding, different types of surgeries or medical procedures.

Example: You are a level 10 welder who has been tested and demonstrated certified tested ability of welding techniques on a certain set of metals using methods like arc welding. You have demonstrated you can weld in difficult to reach places and high places, but not underwater. The government produces a list of tasks it requires with specifics such as quality of work, time frame, safety requirements, final product, and working conditions. You see one of these tasks requires welding on a bridge underwater and you can't take that one because you are not certified in underwater welding. There is another welding task above water level on the bridge and you can take that one. You are required to either take a certain number of these tasks per year, or to show that you made an effort to look for these tasks but none were available. When/if the government sees unused labor (because no tasks are available, a government manager is notified and made aware that this capacity is available but unused. (e.g. Hey, there's a perfectly good welder we are not using that is available to us. We need to find something for that welder to do. Surely there is something that needs maintaining or constructing. Or we can offer this welder an incentive payment to travel to an area with a current shortage of welders to either work as a welder or teach a class in welding. They could only teach the class in welding if they had the teaching level required or if they did it as a demonstration under a teacher with the required level teacher who would use their demonstration in the teacher's lesson plan.Alternatively, the person can take additional classes to get their underwater welding skill or another skill like cement work, plumbing, carpentry, management, disaster rescue, firefighting, engineering design, landscape flood control, agriculture, power generation and storage, precision machining operation, hospitality or recreational worker {hotel or proven tourism} accounting,customer service representative, tester [to be the person giving the aptitude tests]  or a range of others. This end result is a highly skilled and versatile workforce that can respond to whatever comes up.). Some of these would be to be available to do the job and reserve a talented individual for a term of time like a year or longer. Testing happens along with performance reviews as verified by both the manger and independent outside testers who give the aptitude tests who are not allowed contact with the managers. An outside third party has the final say based on the inputs from managers and testers. Another option is to provide for yourself self sufficiently and to provide for others as a bonus income for you. This can be done through the task system but instead of a job it is production of resources like growing x amount of food, or taking x amount of food and producing y amount of finished meals. The end result is providing a quantity of support for human life at a given quality level. Farmer Mr. A grows X amount of crops and is paid based on this by the government, which provides them as raw material to Cook Ms. B, and she uses those raw materials to feed Z number of people. Might be a difficult but not impossible and when we have how many kids not being fed, how many old people not being fed and how many homeless veterans, yeah. It's better than just letting people rot and charging them with a crime for sleeping on the streets. Then you just have to pay to jail them and that doesn't solve anything anyhow. Same thing with building materials and housing. The people inside get basic universal income (either that or we let them starve and that's not cool) and they can participate in the same task program as the welder but probably without those skills unless they can learn them. They might be able to be tested into initially lower level skills (if they are coming from not having enough food) and get education to rank up those skills. This of course creates education tasks and presumably recreation tasks to provide it for those who are well behaved and not getting into jails for doing bad things. Is it perfect, no? Is it better than letting people starve, I would say something is better than nothing. Plus it's just an internet message board and nobody cares anyhow.

But let's go with your example, even though we don't have to.

The government tells you how to do the taxes through tax law. If it allows a write off of the initial investment against the revenue because that money had to be spent to make the revenue then fine. Otherwise, you pay whatever the corporate tax rate is on whatever amount is properly declared as income.
If you mean do I get to set the tax rate, then you know my personal answer, but we're not going there in this example.

Whoever "sourced the capital" didn't just give that to the business. Again, there's some kind of arrangement. It is either a loan or a bond where they get a certain interest rate, or they get "private equity" in the company and get a stock ownership vote as shareholders. So whatever is left of that $2,000,000 in revenue after taxes and whatever other expenses I guess is currently declared "profit," and given to the shareholders either as the stock price going up or dividends https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-dividend/ The idea is supposed to be that the private equity owners have risk and share in the ups and downs. So, if the company makes money, they get money and if it loses then they lose. This is in my opinion a stupid capitalist casino and it doesn't have to be this way.

Other options currently available under the system as it exists today would be to keep the money in the company's bank account or to pay off the company's debts. This would save them interest payments and make the company more financially stable with a cushion of cash in case crap happened. That doesn't happen most of the time though, because the investors just take everything they can. There are tons of things that could be done with that cash.

As for the employees, your model probably assumes that the $500K going to them as salary/wage is fair compensation. We don't know how many there are or what type of skills they have or anything so the only possible outcome in your example is to say they get their salaries/wages and not much else. If some of these assumptions are broken down, then it is possible to split some of the $2M in revenue with the employees, but under the current system this is unlikely.

The "bonus question" you had gives a loan as an example. That almost certainly has interest. If it is "new" money "created by fiat (or minting a new coin, or whatever)" then you have my answer on that, but it would depend on how it was created and if it has to be paid back or if it is a deduction on taxes.

*****
I get what you're trying to say and what you are saying isn't evil or anything. You're trying to show details and that it isn't as simple as the usual slogans that get thrown out there. That's true no matter what you decide, it is not easy. There are parts of it that are simple. For example, we can't have more than 10% of society without enough food, because eventually things will fall apart. We can't have what was the number from wikipedia? 8% of kids with food insecurity issues, and we can't have senior citizens not having enough food or deciding if they want to be hungry or not take their medication. Yes parts of it are complicated but that doesn't mean the only answer is the one we currently have, because the answer we are currently doing is deeply flawed. I don't think what you are saying is "wrong" but it could be improved upon a lot.

Jesus, let's try something simple like the idea of a business having cash reserves. Let's say the stock price is multiplied by a certain number depending on how large the cash reserves are and what its income to debt ratio is with the best rating being for a business that was fully paid off. All it a "stability modifier," or whatever. So the stock price x 1.1, or 1.2. or 1.3. This would make things more stable and reward companies that were less risky and actually had a way to deal with it when crap hits the fan.


In other news: More nutty right wing hurricane "weather control" conspiracy theories from  Marjorie Taylor Greene sitting congressowman

MTG as a sitting congresswoman is continuing her "they control the weather and hurricanes" garbage and the sane republicans are saying Congresswoman Green is nuts and has been told by sane republicans to knock it off but she just will not. The nuttier conspiracy theory republicans are saying Biden is to blame for people not getting hurricane relief along with everything else under the sun. This isn't true. We can't control the weather. How is this a thing? The federal government is providing hurricane relief and only Trump has done things like deny disaster relief unless the leaders of the people suffering suck up to him.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/07/marjorie-taylor-greene-hurricane-helene

https://imgur.com/gallery/biden-ignoring-hurricane-victims-right-5247t8c

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-not-controlling-the-weather/

https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-hurricane-helene-conspiracy-theory-1966255

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/03/helene-trump-politics-natural-disaster-00182419

We have flat earthers, people who think the government is incompetent but also controls the weather and just I don't know because who can keep track of the insane conspiracy theories anymore. None of what some of the weird and wacky parts of the right wing is saying makes any sense. I mean "weather control?" I just really?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2024, 10:36:00 am by Robot Parade Leader »
Logged

McTraveller

  • Bay Watcher
  • This text isn't very personal.
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53605 on: October 12, 2024, 10:35:46 am »

I think you took my question for more than it was. I don't care if that initial $1M was private capital or anything else. The exercise was - how do you distribute the profits from any economic activity to the participants in that economic activity, using simple terms.

Maybe consider it this way: you have enough food stored to feed 10 people for a year. You have 9 of those people work in the field to make more food, and 1 person develop a plow or something, so you have a harvest big enough to feed 20 people for a year.  How much of that new food do you give to the 9 people working in the field? How much do you give to the person making the plow? All the extra produce could be attributed to the plow, so should that person get 11 units of food and then the laborers get their usual 1 unit each? Or do you split it evenly and everyone gets 2 units of food? What is "fair" here? What is moral? What happens if one worker broke their leg and can't work? What happens if one worker isn't injured but just wanders around and does nothing?

The other stuff - well gold and precious metals are no less arbitrary than any other type of currency; they are just in fact the first "proof of work" coin.  It's also unrelated to the question about distributing the physical, real profits from economic activity.  The ultra rich you mentioned: taxing them more won't, without some kind of crazy massive changes to society, give more resources to those currently with minimum wage.

You are right on the ultra wealthy though; that stuff is absurd and problematic. Well not so much Bezos*, he mostly just buys yachts. The more dangerous are Musk and Zuckerberg types, because they are trying to "change the world" which means controlling people. I'd rather have the rich just buy yachts or mansions or whatever, not try to control people.


*Yes I know he owns some media, but it does not appear that he uses it as egregiously as the other two. Maybe he's just better at being subtle?
Logged
This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, reproductive harm, and other health issues.

Maximum Spin

  • Bay Watcher
  • [OPPOSED_TO_LIFE] [GOES_TO_ELEVEN]
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53606 on: October 12, 2024, 10:47:23 am »

The other stuff - well gold and precious metals are no less arbitrary than any other type of currency; they are just in fact the first "proof of work" coin.  It's also unrelated to the question about distributing the physical, real profits from economic activity.  The ultra rich you mentioned: taxing them more won't, without some kind of crazy massive changes to society, give more resources to those currently with minimum wage.
I think this is the fundamental disconnect for most people - understanding that money is not wealth, and, in fact, real wealth tends to flow in the opposite direction of money.

ETA: For example, an important question you left out of your farm example - the biggest real wealth in that scenario is the plow. Who gets to decide how the plow is used?
Logged

Robot Parade Leader

  • Bay Watcher
  • Well, go on ... parade!
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53607 on: October 12, 2024, 10:57:34 am »

I think you took my question for more than it was. I don't care if that initial $1M was private capital or anything else. The exercise was - how do you distribute the profits from any economic activity to the participants in that economic activity, using simple terms.

Maybe consider it this way: you have enough food stored to feed 10 people for a year. You have 9 of those people work in the field to make more food, and 1 person develop a plow or something, so you have a harvest big enough to feed 20 people for a year.  How much of that new food do you give to the 9 people working in the field? How much do you give to the person making the plow? All the extra produce could be attributed to the plow, so should that person get 11 units of food and then the laborers get their usual 1 unit each? Or do you split it evenly and everyone gets 2 units of food? What is "fair" here? What is moral? What happens if one worker broke their leg and can't work? What happens if one worker isn't injured but just wanders around and does nothing?

The other stuff - well gold and precious metals are no less arbitrary than any other type of currency; they are just in fact the first "proof of work" coin.  It's also unrelated to the question about distributing the physical, real profits from economic activity.  The ultra rich you mentioned: taxing them more won't, without some kind of crazy massive changes to society, give more resources to those currently with minimum wage.

You are right on the ultra wealthy though; that stuff is absurd and problematic. Well not so much Bezos*, he mostly just buys yachts. The more dangerous are Musk and Zuckerberg types, because they are trying to "change the world" which means controlling people. I'd rather have the rich just buy yachts or mansions or whatever, not try to control people.


*Yes I know he owns some media, but it does not appear that he uses it as egregiously as the other two. Maybe he's just better at being subtle?

well gold and precious metals are no less arbitrary than any other type of currency;

I disagree but your opinion is more mainstream with today's fiat currency. The US has been off the gold standard since the 1970s? You asked "Proportional to what, though? Can you give an example?" There's an example. The money for the work was directly comparable to a certain amount of gold in the past. Now it is basically "faith in the economy" with the whole fiat thing. It doesn't have to be necessarily.

Your second example is better in my opinion, because all the other stuff is simplified out, although there are still unavoidable assumptions that can be worked with.

My view? Each person gets 1 unit of the 20 food produced, because that is what they need. This leaves 10 remaining units.
Smart answer: Store and preserve the 10 remaining units for winter or some other problem like a drought or crap hitting the fan.
The one who broke their legs gets food. It isn't their fault. The others won't be scared to work if they see they won't be left to die.
The one wandering around doing nothing is a problem in a situation where we have survival and food problems. They need to work or they will reduce our food availability and from your example they have no excuse. If they have some excuse that's different. This is a huge issue why isn't this guy working? Something is wrong and we need to figure it out.

Question: are there more than 10 people we can deal with? Are there other groups or potential members who may have skills we can trade with?

Each remaining unit of food allows us to keep one person alive and have them working on something else. This could be housing, clothing, being a doctor to deal with that one who broke their leg and recreational just for starters. The point is that it looks like the work of the farmers will produce food in 1 unit that is needed to keep a person alive. You are assuming the productivity rate is a little more than 1 farmer for 2 food based upon 10 people with 9 working for the food.

Savings: Preserve the food for bad times as an insurance policy.
Allocate: Use the food to support the diet of someone working on something besides food.
Trade: Trade the units of food to someone somewhere else to get something you can't produce (basically allocate to external source for trade).

Question: is there more food producing land available to farm or whatever to make more of it? and are we able to allow some of our other people to specialize in other areas?

Do we have the ability to have some of our other people stop being farmers and start being something else? This is important if we are the only 10 people and we have no one else to trade with. Can we have one of our farmers become a mason and make us bigger houses and additional buildings or a doctor? Is this even an option.

The whole thing goes to what we do with the surplus remaining units of food. Can person #7 or whatever decide not to farm and become some other profession like I don't know a miner or stone producer?

Question: is there a winter or other risk we might not be able to grow as much in the future

This matters, because if we can save that crop for later then planning for the future is directly important to what we do with those 10 remaining units. It doesn't have to be winter, but just how stable is this crop we got of 20 units? Can we count on this next crop to be the same or is there a dry season/drought or anything where crap hits the fan.


In this example, we have everyone fed. Sadly, this isn't the case in the real world and those graphs in the posts up there show well over 10% of the US has issues and up to 13.5%. Some of the people above those 13.5% aren't doing so great. So at what point does it boil over? 15%? It's close to that now. 20% If crap keeps going downhill it could get there. At some level something has to be done somehow before crap hits the fan. No society in history is going to be ok if things go to like 20% of the population with food issues or above.

The issue is what is going to happen in the second harvest season or year. Time Period 2.

First Scenario: So let's say we saved all 10 units of remaining food for time period 2
Either
* Things go bad and we are ok because we have our insurance policy of food to fall back on, or
* Things don't go bad and we are still ok and we still have our insurance policy of food to fall back on.

and
We keep producing the same amount of food and we can now explore other options safe with the knowledge we can worry about things other that immediate food needs.

Second Scenario: Let's say we saved a certain amount but not enough
*Things go bad and we are not ok. Someone ends up hungry and we have problems we can't solve.
* Things don't go bad and we lucked out this time but we do not have adequate insurance policy of food to fall back on.

How do we produce more plows or do we even need to? Is the plow made out of wood or something we can provide ourselves to the point everyone has one? Do we need to have someone stop farming to make the plows or is the 10th person (the other 9 were the farmers) cool for that? Can our population expand through birth or attracting other members from elsewhere?

Thank you for acknowledging the problems with the ultra rich. Musk bragged that if someone could give him a viable plan to solve world hunger he would do it. He thought no one could manage it, but the UN created exactly this plan. Musk has not followed through on his promise and refused to provide the money he said he would.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/tech/elon-musk-world-hunger-wfp-donation/index.html

Musk was never serious about providing this money but wanted to look like he was. If there were any issues with the plan, then Musk could have worked out the kinks in the hose and straightened it out. It isn't like there wouldn't be enough management to provide solutions in any of his companies or in the UN or tons of other different sources. It was potentially solvable and Musk said he would provide the funding. Instead he just basically didn't. If he had, we would have held him up as a savior but once again he made a bunch of talk and promises but didn't deliver because he really didn't want to and that's a shame. This was one of the chances he had to really prove himself to be the God above humanity he basically presents himself to be. He backed out and was all talk.

Promises made. Promises broken. Musk is one of the few people who could actually do something because he has the resources. Can you imagine if he actually cured world hunger? Can you imagine we would rise him up beyond even the heights he has now. If he could prove he had the ability to do that, money would be thrown at him like you wouldn't believe, because that would be a display of skill beyond what anyone else has shown can happen. Do you realize what would happen if he made a decent little profit and made affordable housing. He could do it while making money. Instead, he's just buying twitter and doing all the less than great things  that's becoming because someone sued him and forced him to keep the promise of buying that. Now Twitter has issues and no solutions. Why? Why is he in charge of Twitter? He basically made a boast and then tried to back out of it, but couldn't. So now he's stuck with it. That can't be efficient anything.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitter-x-fidelity/index.html

O look "Elon Musk’s X is worth nearly 80% less than when he bought it, Fidelity estimates."

" X no longer trades publicly after Musk shelled out $44 billion to take it private in October 2022.

However, Fidelity discloses what it believes is the value of its shares of X, and those estimates serve as a closely watched barometer for the overall health of the company.

As of the end of August, those shares were worth just $4.2 million, according to a Sunday filing by Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund. "


Really? That story is like 10 days old. Jesus $40 Billion lost. Why? Even if they're only half right and it is somehow $20 Billion lost who cares, that's too much. If you or I messed up our jobs by 80% we'd be fired. How is he helping? I don't get it.

The whole "end world hunger thing" was only $6 Billion compared to the $40 Billion loss. So even if the "end world hunger thing" cost $12 Billion he could have done it 3 times over with money to spare instead of losing it on Twitter. Efficient?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2024, 11:41:20 am by Robot Parade Leader »
Logged

Maximum Spin

  • Bay Watcher
  • [OPPOSED_TO_LIFE] [GOES_TO_ELEVEN]
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53608 on: October 12, 2024, 12:37:21 pm »

Really? That story is like 10 days old. Jesus $40 Billion lost. Why? Even if they're only half right and it is somehow $20 Billion lost who cares, that's too much. If you or I messed up our jobs by 80% we'd be fired. How is he helping? I don't get it.

The whole "end world hunger thing" was only $6 Billion compared to the $40 Billion loss. So even if the "end world hunger thing" cost $12 Billion he could have done it 3 times over with money to spare instead of losing it on Twitter. Efficient?
Yeah, this goes to what I said about the difference between money and wealth before.

There was no $40 billion loss. Forty billion pictures of George Washington didn't just suddenly evaporate. There is exactly as much Twitter as there was before. Those numbers are purely imaginary.
Logged

Great Order

  • Bay Watcher
  • [SCREAMS_INTERNALLY]
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #53609 on: October 12, 2024, 12:47:06 pm »

If we're going in the way of "end world hunger" it's not just a matter of chucking money at the problem - A lot of the issues stem from poor infrastructure and corruption.
Logged
Quote
I may have wasted all those years
They're not worth their time in tears
I may have spent too long in darkness
In the warmth of my fears
Pages: 1 ... 3572 3573 [3574] 3575 3576 ... 3591