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[Criptfeind]

No. That was not a metaphor. I meant literal wolves.

Edit: Literal farmers too well I am at it.

[Vertigon]

And if everyone's a farmer, people would see an opportunity to become figurative wolves.

[Strife26]

I'd just like to say, that living in a third world country, claiming that America is anywhere close is really really wrong. People pick through garbage as a living. The "nice" houses around here have three walls made of mud, a roof of an old blanket, and two old tarps to bed a family of ten.



I suppose that I'll mumble something about production economy vs service economy and shuffle off.

[Siquo]

Strangely, you're absolutely correct and probably didn't even know it.

Highly unlikely. Usually I know I am correct even if I'm not.

However, your nuance and history I did not know about, thanks. I'm all for revoking the entire concept of "Legal personality" (if that is the correct english term), I did not know it was prohibited for certain sectors until recently.

On utopias: Cript nails it. If we're all happypeppyhippies, there'd be no cultural immune system to stop the metaphorical wolves.

[Criptfeind]

What the hell are you guys talking about with 'human behavior' and 'utopias', I am just saying if we spend all of our energy growing food, we wont have enough spears to fend off the wolfs come winter.

[Siquo]

And if we take your literal texts as metaphorical, you seem smarter, so why are you complaining?

[Criptfeind]

Cause then I know you will take my metaphorical texts as literal.

On a more serious note. Because I try not to to use metaphors. (I fail like a red socks fan between 1918-2004)

[SalmonGod]

On utopias: Cript nails it. If we're all happypeppyhippies, there'd be no cultural immune system to stop the metaphorical wolves.

But if you need to breed wolves in order to fight them, then the argument doesn't even matter.  It's arguing that a guaranteed bad thing is better than a potential bad thing.

[Criptfeind]

How come that can not be true?

I mean, for instance, that is the whole theory behind insurance.

[Siquo]

It's arguing that a guaranteed bad thing is better than a potential bad thing.

No it's more... Back when I was younger, a world where everyone was nice to each other seemed perfect to me. I also did not understand persian carpets. I've since learned that certain levels of imperfection are not just "acceptable" but necessary. Always, in everything.

[Truean]

Just so you know, the main reason why growth is so rampant in the software industry is because it is an industry which encourages bottom-up control. By the numbers, only 50% of game developers work for those major corporations you hear so much about. The other 50% are indie developers and those who started a small business selling their software, who then may or may not have expanded into larger organizations. Outsourcing doesn't do sh*t when half the industry is essentially self-employed. Those small indie games you are talking about are exactly that: self-employed app developers doing it for a hobby, or just for a few extra bucks. You see, game development isn't just Starcraft 2; it's all of them. As a Game Design & Development major, my curriculum consists of courses to enable us to not only develop games of any budget on any system, but also to do web design and development, app development, database work, ect. You mentioned Zynga? Their company representatives come to our program to recruit developers. As do Microsoft, Blizzard, and other big names.

Specifically:
"By the numbers, only 50% of game developers work for those major corporations you hear so much about. The other 50% are indie developers and those who started a small business selling their software, who then may or may not have expanded into larger organizations."

"Outsourcing doesn't do sh*t when half the industry is essentially self-employed."

Huh? Wait wait wait, this does not mesh. If I take what you're saying as true and HALF the industry is self employed, then that means THE OTHER HALF ISN'T self employed. Right? And a half is a half....

I get what you're saying, I really do. You're saying that half of these people being self employed is a hedge against outsourcing but for the half that ISN'T self employed.... Do I even have to finish that sentence? Certainly you can't write off something that may matter for 50% of this can you? Because clearly only HALF are subject to it? Thus we can ignore it?

I will fully concede that it is a good sign when company reps are trying to recruit you. I offer to you what happened in the legal industry. We used to also have that at law school. Firm reps would come and try to get you to work for them. They had fairs for it with tons of them. Now... they don't. These things just up and vanished and simply don't happen anymore after the real estate crash. It can change

You are misinterpreting what is meant in this case by 'innovation.' Innovation does not mean new tech or shiny pretties on screen. Innovation means figuring out how to take the essence of what people consider 'fun' and turn it into numbers, while also keeping in mind that doing the same thing someone else did is not considered 'fun.' Take Minecraft for example. It sold over 2.5 million copies at about 10 euros each. It wasn't the first game to use that style of destructible voxel terrain, nor was it the first to do much of anything; except of course make its creator a multimillionaire. And here's why: the game was fun enough for 2.5 million people to buy it. Game developers' most important duty is not to know the latest and greatest tech; it is to know how to make their game fun. THAT is the innovation. It isn't an equation which can be taught in school, nor an article or two which can be found on tech sites, but more of an art form which requires an intimate knowledge of as diverse an array of topics as possible.

Ok, let's go with your definition then. We also don't have a monopoly on that either. You're telling me an Indian person can't, "take the essence of what people consider 'fun' and turn it into numbers." I don't understand how this refutes my point of "white collar jobs can be outsourced too." Do we have some competitive advantage over other countries? Are we somehow able to figure this out faster or cheaper than they do? If not, then I'm not seeing your point, which might be the case, but I don't get where you're going with this. If it can be "taught in school" or not doesn't seem to enter into it. Is there some reason we can do this better than someone else in a different country that prevents it from being outsourced?

Another thing: sales figure changes in the game industry are questionable at best. They take into account things like retail sales and some other prominent sources, but much of it is heading towards venues which are untracked by these sales figures. Many of these sales figures for the industry, do not take into account digital download revenue from most sources; Steam doesn't even release its sales figures to the public, and it along with other digital distributors make up over 50% of the market. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/21/valve-keeping-steam-sales-data-private-out-of-aggregated-charts/

In fairness, I can't really comment on this but am willing to consider that numbers are tracked poorly as seems to be the trend (and given that it takes effort to track things and frankly, meh... who wants to spend that?).

Your core argument seems to be 'not everyone can be well off and still do what they want.' Of course that is true; it always has been, and always will be so long as we live in a capitalist society. What you have yet to do is even show so much as an example of a career field in which the prospects went from boom to bust in under the time it takes to train for such a job in which college education is required, the bust could not have been easily predicted in the years prior, and in which the trained workers would not have any sort of fallback positions available based on their training. A career in which those entering did not have the ability to foresee the problems which would arise later on.

Law. As in "going to law school and becoming a lawyer."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I'm talking from personal experience here. The whole industry is in a tailspin like it never has been before in the thousands of years it has been a profession. This is because "the powers that be" over invested the vast majority of large firm assets into real estate. Guess how that's doing?

http://abovethelaw.com/
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/nationaljurist1010/#/0 (The oct 2010 "National Jurist")
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=law+school+scam&cp=14&pf=p&sclient=psy&source=hp&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=law+school+sca&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=5ee24c012758f1c1&biw=1024&bih=574

We were told, in lovely shiny brochures that 90% of us would be employed 6 months after graduation at $100,000 a year. Hehehe.... No. This is consumer fraud under just about every state law code. Sure, people can lie to you in sales, it's called "sales talk" or "puffery," because the statements are based upon opinion and not verifiable facts. Stating a number like 90%, and a wage like $100,000/year is not puffery and so if you make that kind of verifiable statement it better be true.

There will never be a lawsuit about this because ... suing an entire school full of lawyers, indeed entire SCHOOLS full of lawyers, yeah that's easy. Also professional suicide.... The ABA is now beginning to take steps to force law schools to report their employment numbers more accurately, but it's too little too late.

I've actually been told I "made a bad career choice." Bullshit. A.) I'm good at what I do. B.) What the hell else was I supposed to be? C.) How the hell can anyone look me in the eye and tell me that being a lawyer is a bad idea? It never was traditionally a bad idea, ever.... D.) Totally unforeseeable that the legal market would nosedive in a (and here's the keyword) "unprecedented" manner. E.) Don't tell me "people have been saying there are too many lawyers for a long time." Yeah? And that never stopped new lawyers from getting rich before now did it?

I love doing my god damn job because I'm good at it. Shit it's not like I enjoy arguing huh? I just wish people would be able to pay me for it....

That's not my argument at all. Trust me, you're dealing with the grittiest of practical pragmatists when you're talking to me. No no, a thousand times no. You're so far off point you can't see it.

My argument is that people don't have to be "well off" or even necessarily able to do what they want, (an economy of cowboys, astronaunts, movie stars and ballerinas? No.) but they should be able to LIVE. If you don't get that this is a problem, then let me show you a few things like millions of Americans going hungry! This is a problem. Yes there will always be rich and poor and there isn't shit to to about it, but the poor or comparatively poor should be able to get by....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html

You love stats so much? One (1) in Seven (7) Americans are on food stamps
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/05/03/about-1-in-7-americans-receive-food-stamps/

41.8 Million! This is a problem.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-05/food-stamp-recipients-at-record-41-8-million-americans-in-july-u-s-says.html

No no, I have no idea where you got the idea that I thought there shouldn't be rich and poor. I hope to be one of the rich, you know because I'm smart enough to be a good lawyer and sacrificed 8 years of my life after high school and six figures going to law school. I've earned it. Also, I won't be a bastard about it. Shit, I currently do more charity work than most people....

Even so, we can't have  14.29% of the damn country starving! (1/7 * x/100, x = 14.29).
Shit doesn't work when this happens. 41.8 Million people? Yeah, we'll just write them all off.... "If they're going to die then they had better do it and reduce the surplus population!"

That's enough Dickens for one day....

And those are just the people actually on food stamps. It isn't a straight jump from "food stamps" to "doing A OK." The bottom half of this country's economy, is hurting like hell and like never before, since the great depression.

"It's working for me so it must be alright, Herp Derp!"

41.8 Million hungry people in the U.S.. <----- This, is what we're talking about when saying we're approaching a 3rd world country status economically. Who cares if it's nicer, these people are still starving, but at least they're starving in the best country ever! This shit cannot continue and may actually make the country fall if it does and I mean that. 41.8 Million hungry men, women and children. That can easily reach critical mass. The best part, asshole republicans are bitching about having to continue to pay food and unemployment assistance.... What do you think is gonna happen when hungry people look at each other and realize we're A OK with letting them starve and be homeless while insulting them and saying they're lazy? The good scenario is that they vote in someone who forces us to address the situation, the bad scenario is they do it themselves with a brick through your window to get at the food so their kid doesn't starve....

1 in 7 people in the U.S. are on the verge of starving and most people don't know, or care....

[mainiac]

I'd just like to say, that living in a third world country, claiming that America is anywhere close is really really wrong. People pick through garbage as a living. The "nice" houses around here have three walls made of mud, a roof of an old blanket, and two old tarps to bed a family of ten.



I suppose that I'll mumble something about production economy vs service economy and shuffle off.

I think people lose fact of the fact that we can sustain such a huge, lumbering service economy because the production economy is way, way more efficient then it used to be.  If you waved a magic wand tomorrow and made it so the world didn't need anymore waiters and taxi drivers and filing clerks but we couldn't get any of our cheap plastic junk in china anymore, we would totally be able to manage the shift.  Our society got rich then got lazy and "parasitic" not vice versa.

I think it's interesting to think that in theory communism would work better at running an advanced economy because it wouldn't force people into wage slave service sector jobs just to trickle down the wealth.  But in practice communism seems to be pretty good at the initial industrialization of an economy and pretty dismal at running an economy once industrialized.

[Truean]

Strangely, you're absolutely correct and probably didn't even know it.

Highly unlikely. Usually I know I am correct even if I'm not.

However, your nuance and history I did not know about, thanks. I'm all for revoking the entire concept of "Legal personality" (if that is the correct english term), I did not know it was prohibited for certain sectors until recently.

On utopias: Cript nails it. If we're all happypeppyhippies, there'd be no cultural immune system to stop the metaphorical wolves.

O and that's where I respectfully disagree. Corporations are a good thing, when used correctly. It's a tool like anything else. It's how you use it:

A hammer, a tool, can build a house (good), I can also bash your head in with it (bad). If I do bash your head in with it, is the hammer bad or am I? Simply replace the word "hammer" with "corporation." (Yes the activities would be criminal and or something you could sue over if a corporation bashed your head in. That's the point).

[Siquo]

O and that's where I respectfully disagree.

And I knew you would

As for bad metaphor: Try it with "Landmine". The benefits of it are far outweighed by it's downsides.

It'd be a fair world, where every mans' actions and mandates are HIS responsibility.

[Truean]

O and that's where I respectfully disagree.

And I knew you would

As for bad metaphor: Try it with "Landmine". The benefits of it are far outweighed by it's downsides.

It'd be a fair world, where every mans' actions and mandates are HIS responsibility.

Meh I don't disagree with everyone.... Granted I have a history of doing so with lots of people including SalmonGod, Aqizzar (whom I imagine has the voice of Brock Samson from Venture Brothers), Fenix, Aqizzar again, Siquo...  [Just insert the rest of the form here and save us all time really...].

I tend to like Deon, Vector and Petrix.

As for landmines, also a tool, the problem is that they are an indiscriminate tool and they inevitably WILL have entirely unintended victims. What we need are starcraft's spider mines....http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Spider_mine that can be shut off or self destructed after conflict is over. Ideally there wouldn't be a conflict at all, but who are we kidding? 

"It'd be a fair world, where every mans' actions and mandates are HIS responsibility."

Agreed, assuming simplicity and direct ability to trace back to the source.

However, corporations have good sides too. They can regulate and define relationships between people in constructive ways to allow careful cooperation between parties to accomplish more than otherwise could've been achieved or afforded.

Alone I cannot afford to create a factory to manufacture goods and employ people while (hopefully) making a profit. I have, thus, two options to secure the needed finances: 1.) a loan. 2.) a corporation.

A loan leaves me entirely on the hook in exchange for giving me all the profits. All the loan creditor gets is repaid and interest at a predefined amount. If the business goes down, I and I alone am screwed in the highest degree.

A corporation allows others to invest and pool resources and share risks. That way all the investors share in the profit or losses. Problems include "Principal /Agent" where there inevitably has to be some sort of manager making decisions (or else we'd just argue all day and nothing'd get done). However, it isn't his money (or at least not all his money) so he doesn't get the full return on his labors (the investors get the rest of it). However, he wouldn't be able to perform those labors without the investor's support..... catch 22.

For corporations to work effectively, there has to be reasoned decision making and accountability of actions, both of which are currently lacking given government bailouts and every other crazy thing going on lately....