Bay 12 Games Forum

*vague shrug* That's capitalism. If a robot can pump out 5x the productivity of 50 workers for a fraction of the price, that's what the system says do. If the methods to create that robot doesn't exist, capitalism says invent it, because that's the best way to make a profit.

Th'fact of the matter is that automation's has/is going to make it so a fraction of the population can, very easily, supply the material desires/necessities of a much, much, much larger slice of the population. At which point the only jobs left over are service, either via education, maintenance (of machines doing the manufacturing) -- which may phase out even further as we design machines to fix and manufacture machines -- or leisure.

Then comes that feedback loop you talked about and suddenly all that production can't be bought, because those 50 workers (multiplied by all the other industrial job loss brought about by automation) no longer has jobs.

The only reason there's any wide-scale manufacturing jobs in other countries is because they pay their workers shit and treat their workers like shit (as a result of paying them shit), which isn't sustainable -- the exact same thing that happened in the states is going to happen there. Call it a slow growing industry bubble.

Technology has struck the death knell for unskilled labor; it's either mostly dead, comparatively (such as in the states), or going to die in due time (such as in places like china). It remains to be seen whether this will ultimately be a good thing, but it's definitely a bad thing for unskilled labor in pure or near-pure capitalist systems.

... though all that is horrible disjointed. I have no idea what hell overarching point m'trying to make.

Welcome to roguelikes, ahahahahahahaha!

Wendies is a fast food joint, yeah, not just burgers. Their chicken nugget things are among the least offensive of fast food chicken nugget things.

Is there a source on this other than the Daily Mail?  Because I'm pretty sure that was just because "affray" without injuries counts as a violent crime over here.  If you compare well defined crimes such as murder America seems to tend to have a higher rate.

Actually, yeah, here:

Quote from: wikipedia

According to the Home Office, there were around 880,000 "Violence against the person" crimes in England and Wales in 2008–9, equivalent to 16 per thousand people in England and Wales.

From here.

To match numbers, from here, assuming violent crime is equal to violence against the person, in 2009, the UK crime rare was 160 per 100k, the US crime rate ~429 per 100k. Slightly less than 4x.

Homicide rate in 2000-1 was 5.6 vs 1.4 per 100k, again, about 4x.

Wikipedia stuff, but the sources seem legit, though those numbers are for england and wales specifically. The other areas (Scotland/North Ireland) have considerably less reported crimes in general, presumably due to lower population density.

Its due to the population size, if you really look at it, we don't have much of a dent in the 300 million people living here.

Yeah, total numbers, but that doesn't help with things like the homicide rate that are tracked per capita; we're about 4x UK's rate, back in '00 (and our homicide rate was higher back in '00). Less than half of Russia's!

We still have the highest per capita incarceration rate of the first world countries. But our prison system's frakked to hell so whatever, I guess. I'll admit it's pretty bad that th'UK has roughly half our crime numbers but something like a 5th the population. 'course, that's only reported crimes, so who knows how bad the actual situation is.

Understandable, it happens to us all. Regardless, do you think pointless internet debates that just go around in circles are the best way to cap that off?

One of the better cures for a headache I've found~

Also... Britain and Australia with worse crime rates than the states? What? Just going by reported crimes and a cursory search, the US has more than five million more crimes reported than in the UK. Also the highest rate of incarceration of any of the first world countries.

We're not doing too good on the crime front, really, at least compared to some of the other major powers.

Sorry about th'weekend, though.

"Mega-Pipes of Doom"

Dude, please tell me you're intending to record and upload this.

I think a better solution would be two levels of licences, a sporting licence that requires you to keep your firearms disassembled and under lock and key, and a defence licence that allows you to keep and carry a loaded weapon, but requires you to show military proficiency and a level head.

Not entirely sure if I'd go as far as military level proficiency, but sure, that'd be alright. Stuff like that is what most of the sane pro-gun ownership people want -- simply a better vetting system for people dealing with particularly dangerous objects. Like guns, or cars, or whatever. S'like what I helped kick off this whole thing with: A true-false test where all the answers are true is not bloody enough for a concealed weapons permit. Some states don't even require that much for mere purchase -- all Florida requires is a quick background check for criminal record, ferex. Here, check it.

And yeah, high-stress training would be pretty nice if someone could figure out a way to teach it without having parents trying to murder the teacher. Being able to separate yourself from your panic is definitely a useful skill and definitely learnable. Panic once you're done fixing whatever is causing you to panic.

If I hadn't picked up the talent from I don't even know where, I would have been pretty much completely nonfunctional for quite a while -- it took me about two years of semi-regular driving to stop shaking when I got out the car (I was and still am completely conceptually terrified of driving -- gun ain't got shit on the damage a car can do, and with considerably smaller mistakes.). Still get that effect after particularly long or stressful rides. If I wasn't able to separate the panic from the acts, I wouldn't have been able to drive at all.