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[delphonso]

I got banned from the haunted house because when an animatronic skeleton jumped out at me, I tried to kiss it.

[dragdeler]

a

[TamerVirus]

I got banned from the haunted house because when an animatronic skeleton jumped out at me, I tried to kiss it.

Sounds like you had a boner

[Iduno]

Edit: I just learned there are actually 2 places here to get tested for COVID. One is only about 30-45 minutes away, but it's in the Hispanic part of my very segregated city, so the city refuses to give equal services. The other is about an hour to 1.5 hours away depending on traffic, but it's in the white part of town, so I can probably get in and out pretty quickly.

I got banned from the haunted house because when an animatronic skeleton jumped out at me, I tried to kiss it.

Sounds like you had a boner

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Rolan7]

It's fun to play pretend, but mushroom-lord isn't all wrong.
Covid is going to be omnipresent, which means capitalism falls apart, and we're all going to die.

Maybe I'm wrong.
I hope I'm wrong, gods, I hope I'm wrong.  Literally sobbed tonight.

[wierd]

I'm not. A lot of the world's ills could be solved by acknowledging that we cannot externalize costs to make them go away. (Eg, ship it off overseas and forget about it.)

[Rolan7]

I'm not. A lot of the world's ills could be solved by acknowledging that we cannot externalize costs to make them go away. (Eg, ship it off overseas and forget about it.)

Yeah good luck Walden.  Some of us have to live in the real word.

Edit:  That's incredibly unfair seeing as wierd works with elder patients every day, and is on the front lines.  I'm sorry.

But wierd's fantasy of walden-style retirement is still bad.

Edit2: dangit Wierd was agreeing with me.  In my defense, I am literallly in tears.

[wierd]

Omnipresent covid, is quite possibly what we NEEDED to get off the drug of globalism.

Sadly, its such an addictive drug, that the more likely scenario is that the priests of Mammon will throw a kegger with the priests of Nergal, and dance merrily with the masque of the red death.


The end consequence of that outcome though, is that too many people will die to hold up the system for long.  It is that worst-case outcome that I wish to avoid, but I dont see it happening.  I would much rather see the world wise up to the reality that you cannot just ship product and labor around in an endless shell game to externalize costs and internalize profit at everyone's global expense-- and realize that this means you have to deal with your own back yard, and thus not produce the bads to begin with-- and move toward a better future (despite having the covid.)

However, the "Collapse of capitalism" is not something I will cry over.  Its a drug, and we are addicts.  This is like a type 2 diabetic being forced to go off the twinkies. (and eat some fucking leafy greens for a change)

[heydude6]

Edit2: dangit Wierd was agreeing with me.  In my defense, I am literallly in tears.

I just finished watching "Don't look up", so I too am in tears.

@Wierd I don't believe Covid is going to cause the collapse of Capitalism though. It may cause the collapse of several economies, and an unfathomable amount of deaths, but capitalism survived the Spanish flu and that was a more dramatic Pandemic. We had the Great Depression soon afterwards and it survived that as well. Unfortunately, there is no precedent for viruses killing the corrupt systems that spawned them. Monarchy survived the Black Death after all.

In my honest opinion, I believe Capitalism will die when the USA as we know it does. The EU has time and time again shown that it is willing to embrace socially progressive policies, while China has been making moves on the international stage to spread its authoritarian influence. The societies of the future will be one of those two flavors. The USA is beyond saving, and it won't be climate change that kills it, but debt. We all know about the famous 17 trillion figure (now 28 trillion), but the sad truth is that this money is actually paying for some rather important stuff. I don't believe the country is ever going to find a way to cut costs, so eventually people are going to stop throwing money at this thing and the infrastructure will literally collapse from neglect.

The only mystery now is whether Canada will follow it to its grave...

[wierd]

Edit2: dangit Wierd was agreeing with me.  In my defense, I am literallly in tears.

I just finished watching "Don't look up", so I too am in tears.

@Wierd I don't believe Covid is going to cause the collapse of Capitalism though. It may cause the collapse of several economies, and an unfathomable amount of deaths, but capitalism survived the Spanish flu and that was a more dramatic Pandemic. We had the Great Depression soon afterwards and it survived that as well. Unfortunately, there is no precedent for viruses killing the corrupt systems that spawned them. Monarchy survived the Black Death after all.

In my honest opinion, I believe Capitalism will die when the USA as we know it does. The EU has time and time again shown that it is willing to embrace socially progressive policies, while China has been making moves on the international stage to spread its authoritarian influence. The societies of the future will be one of those two flavors. The USA is beyond saving, and it won't be climate change that kills it, but debt. We all know about the famous 17 trillion figure (now 28 trillion), but the sad truth is that this money is actually paying for some rather important stuff. I don't believe the country is ever going to find a way to cut costs, so eventually people are going to stop throwing money at this thing and the infrastructure will literally collapse from neglect.

The only mystery now is whether Canada will follow it to its grave...

While the spanish flu caused substantial damage in 2 years, and the flu has been endemic ever since-- it became significantly less harmful to society, to the point it could be effectively ignored. 

COVID on the other hand, is going to cause fertility problems **FOREVER**.  This is because the receptor it uses to enter cells, is vitally implicated in the proper development of germ-cells in your gonads. (eg, you get covid, it fucks up your baby factory, to some degree or other) which means persistent, long-term changes in baseline fertility-- which is a problem capitalism **CANNOT IGNORE**, because of its multi-generational pyramid-scheme requirements.

Even if covid does not kill as many people, it is going to GLOBALLY depress replacement rate, EVEN (AND ESPECIALLY) in developing countries, which is WHERE THE IMPORTS COME FROM for immigration based replenishment schemes.

There simply wont be enough babies born, anywhere, to sustain the system.

[Starver]

...in that case, I look forward to more of the long, complex and (seemingly) uncut tracking/following-shots as seen in Children Of Men.

[scriver]

Monarchy caused the Black Plague? What in the world?

[wierd]

It wont get THAT bad, hopefully... we can produce germ cells in glassware from skincells and some mRNA soup. Its just not PRACTICAL to do en mass. (And the costs of replacements in the pyramid scheme matters.)

---

The monarchy did not, nor did the church per se. More, a natural alteration of otherwise benign soil bacteria combined with religious an political dogmas, to create a perfect storm (that kept repeating until the combination of human evolution -in the form of mass selection for the CCRY Delta 32 mutation--and social collapse --which crippled feudal power-- righted the ship)

I interpreted the quip more as "capitalism has survived the end of the world numerous times", which is a true statement.

You have the volcanism induced trade implosion of the bronze age, you have the black plague in europe, et al.

My counter, is that both times, society had a reflowering from deadheading the power structure. Hopefully, we as a species will learn from this event as the noose tightens, but again, I am a pessimist for the durability of that flowering.

[Starver]

The thing about the Bronze Age was that it encouraged 'globalism', as copper-producing and tin-producing areas were rarely close together, so one and/or the other resource had to be carried to meet the other (perhaps at a third), and once you were carrying/carting/shipping these materials around you then might as well send/receive other things as there was space on the outgoing (and otherwise empty incoming) methods of carriage.

Ironmaking, however, generally started up in locales with both iron ore and coal (and, for the start of the heavier industry, water-power). This made use of the pre-existing (and now far more advanced) trade-routes, but would probably have not kick-started the same high level of transportation on its own, without the cultural expectations of bronze-making.

(Ok, simplistic, and remarkably absent as a mentioned effect in the various Civilization-series tech trees, but has academic support. Jumping straight to iron would have stymied the ancient world's cultural export system.)

[wierd]

In the modern world, the combination of rich buyers, and poor laborers willing to work for below subsistence wages, is not found together.

Thus, "maximal profits" cannot be realized without the globalism.

Again, this leads to perverse situations where the wealthy consumers export literal poison and filth to the poor nations, by force, rather than stop producing the poisons, or enact actual regulations to curb that production to actually manageable levels. 

Globalism is a drug, the high is maximum profits, and we as a species are suffering both the long term effects of addiction (income disparity, social maladies of all kinds like uigur forced labor, and actual environmental collapse) and from withdrawal (shipping crisis, et al.)

It would be ironic as fuck, should covid be the thing that saves us from great-filtering ourselves with terminal capitalism.