Bay 12 Games Forum

That there are people who don't realize they are pregnant for the first month invalidates the test argument by itself, because to go get a test you have to realize you may be pregnant and so go get a test. Unless all sexually active women should be getting mandatory weekly pregnancy tests just-in-case?

I mean, sure you can argue "well they should be more careful/paying more attention", yes and everyone should get straight As at school and go to University and never smoke and get black out drunk and never get addicted and always say please and thank you and finish their dinner before they have dessert and...

Because any country bigger than the UK or composed of federated states isn't a democracy? Or should we also seek to return to the traditional kingdoms of the UK and bring back Mercia and Wessex? Heck, flowing power from Westminister into those state-level regions and making the UK an explicit federation arguably wouldn't be a bad thing.

How is a United States of Europe in itself undemocractic? If the disagreement is how to structure it, that's a different issue. Part of explicitly federating would be deciding where the State vs Federal power lines get drawn afterall. If anything, making it explicitly federated would require drawing those lines into a constitution a lot and so help prevent the flow of more federal power than what constitution specifies away from the member states.

You may dislike that the current structure of the EU puts the Commission as nominated by State Representative's and then confirmed by People's Representatives, who then propose legislation that is then confirmed by People's Representatives, rather than directly from People's Representatives. But to be a member of the EU you have to be a democracy, so it's still People's Representatives via the State, so it's still a democratic system. It just puts nationally elected State above regionally elected People, which is probably a necessity when you're deliberately trying to avoid being an outright federation.

So yeah, I've never got the "EU is not democratic" argument. "I don't like the form of democracy it uses" is a valid one sure, but if anything I think a lot of that comes from them structured to avoid being federated from the start.

If the USA changed so that rather than having a President elected by country-wide election the position was voted on by the chamber of each State, who was decided by majority control of that state, that would still be a democratic system. And if it's not, pull on that thread and it becomes pretty clear the only thing that could be counted as democracy is Direct Democracy in which all citizens can both propose and vote on legislature and...that wouldn't work for populations above a dozen or so.

I mean, long term I think countries should declare "United States of Earth" as an end-goal for the UN. But I reckon as a species we either will form a federated elective from all nations or die in nuclear fire, and I'd like to avoid the latter. But maybe that's for the "unpopular opinions" thread. (That doesn't mean I think we should do it now, just that part of evaluating decisions should be "Does it take us closer to this ideal that we hold?" and if the answer is "no" that's a mark against that course of action that needs to be overcome by both the short-term benefits whilst ensuring future repealability)

In a livable/usable state by realistic modern standards? Because "building still standing" isn't enough for a building to actually be considered fit-for-purpose

You don't think the best -or - let's just say reasonably affordable second best, material and construction methods, all of our collected knowledge could come up with... would easily pass 150 years with minimal maintenance?

That's...really not how things work. Concrete can last a long time, but you trade off in weight (cheap material but can be expensive to build with and just plain ugly, and weight adds a limit on height).  And longer lasting concrete buildings take more time and resources to build, which increases costs. Again, why spend the money to build something to last longer than it's shelf-life will be? And even then, nothing lasts without maintainence.

Or do you think the colleseum look livable-in by modern standards of comfort, even with the maintainence (costing millions to do, btw) done to it to preserve it?

Wood is light but organic so will decay without treatment. Bricks are fairly strong but they are made of particulates will suffer from erosion.

Meanwhile, Technological devices grow more complex over time, and complexity means more interacting parts which means it's more likely to break when one of those parts goes wrong. But also means they can do more stuff faster. So that's the trade-off there.

There's some experimentation with self-healing organic concrete but it's not ready for batch production yet.

What I mean is, I suspect that the most optimistic scenario for the infrastructure being re-decentralized is the only difference is say, to simplify the numbers for explanation, rather than 3 banks going down for a day every 3 years, you'd have 1 bank going down a day every year.

So it's not really a loss, it's just that everyone notices when the 3 banks go down whilst only a 1/3 will notice if one of them goes down.

More likely (sticking with the 3 imaginary banks), those 3 banks probably can offer more services using the third party and you'd probably have 1 bank down for at least two days a year if it was in-house. So you actually gain uptime overall.

The centralized infrastructure is usually more stable than the homegrown stuff, since the businesses can consistently invest time and resources into it and they typically do have SLAs* with their clients wherein they pay fees if they don't meet a certain percentage of uptime. It's also the only way smaller businesses can have access to some things they couldn't reasonably develop/host themselves (e.g SMS messaging services).

* A 99.9% uptime does still mean they can be down for 8h 45m 56s a year before crossing that threshold.

I think the concept you're looking for is 'crass'. Like openly belching in public. Not morally wrong, but maybe not a thing to be done in polite society all-the-same.

Elaborate self-aggrandising celebrations aren't morally wrong, but they are a bit crass

(Unless you are literally setting of explosives that shake buildings or start forest fires or...well, you get the idea. Those things are morally wrong xD)

Playing around in a current playthough using a near-empty galaxy (Marauders, Fallen Empires and Primitives only), Fatherland, Planetary Habitats, Legendary Worlds, Dynamic Political Events, a custom mod that makes outposts cost ~500 influence (but with no distance penalty, and with techs to bring that down to vanilla levels by the midgame), and colonising all of Sol with a Doomsday origin whilst the galaxy gets populated by the Hegiran.

Basically you can't realistically expand in time, so the challenge is to get your habitats built and pops migrated to them before Earth goes kaboomie without running out of all your resources, then you're basically playing as voidborne without the buffs. Then from this seat above the ashes of Earth-that-was, unite the scattered remnants of humanity.

I quite like the feel of expansion being expensive for the first half of the game, means you get to really invest in the areas you have and also encourages smaller vassal-driven empire building and habitats/megastructures over just blobbing out. Plus even by the late game there can still be uncolonised sectors of the galaxy to explore or be threatened from, so the opposite side of the galaxy to you isn't just a mesh of other empires you largely ignore.