Nobody forces you to fail school and spawn broodlings despite the obvious inability to afford them. The educational system is so laughable pitiful and permissively easy that you have no one to blame but yourself if you fail. And if you can't hold down a full time job? Get used to being homeless, then. Being homeless ain't all that bad. Back when I was young, I lived out of a used jeep. Why? Because houses cost money! There are certainly upsides to a return to the "law of the jungle". Heh. Sucks to be them, eh? I blame this on the fact that they are dumb and spend their money poorly. Considering how much money you actually have to spend to survive, that is, basically, practically none at all, the fact that they have a full-time job, and therefore, a stable income, means that almost all of the money they take in is purely profit and they can eventually afford to upgrade. The fact that they do not a a reflection of their complete failure to manage money. A strong work ethic, and some sense in managing what you have, *CAN* move you from poverty to middle class comfort. But it will not happen overnight, and what many people forget is that in order for there to *BE* a middle class, there has to be people who are poor! This is not fast food, where the smallest Coke you can have is a medium Coke. Health care is a privilege, not a right. You do not *NEED* "adequate" health coverage. This is a luxury. People survived before health care was invented, and will continue to do so in its absence. And, I point out, these people would not be so poor if they had rightly grasped that children are an expensive undertaking and simply DID NOT HAVE THEM. And having undergone this ordeal as children, they stupidly perpetuate the mistakes of their parents by doing it again for themselves. I have no pity for these people. They deserve their fate. The situations you describe do not represent "fiscal prudence". They represent a prodigal LACK of fiscal prudence, wasteful spending on luxuries that they falsely believe are necessary, and a general failure to save their money. For these people with no money, every penny that leaves their hands should represent the twisting of a thousand knives in their gut, as it does for me, and yet they freely waste their money on unnecessary things they neither need nor can afford, like this vaunted "health care" and excess food. Are you aware that these people are often, in spite of their condition, overweight? I tell you this: They sure as hell aren't becoming fat eating rats. These people suffer because of their own poor decisions that they perpetuate across generations. They deserve their fate. They deserve to suffer. Fools. Ambulances don't drive past you because you're in a different company: Ambulances drive past you because they're en-route to some other emergency. Call your own frickin' ambulance. Besides, a broken leg won't kill you. Who's brilliant plan is it to waste all that money calling for a frickin' ambulance? I can patch you a broken leg just fine using some cheap scrap wood or a lead pipe, and duct tape. F'real. I mean, what do you think people did before ambulances were invented, hmm? People are just too dependent on modern conveniences. Health care is a luxury, not a right. You can survive without it. You will be stronger for it. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. If I had gone to a hospital for every wound I've sustained in my life, I'd be as bankrupt at those poor sods you see on the street. Greed is eternal, more constant than the light of the Northern Star, which is currently Polaris, but in a few thousand years, will be Vega. It's as good a basis for a system as anything. I think the most appealing thing about anarchy is the freedom to gruesomely kill people who piss me off, decorate my premises with their severed heads as a warning to others, and wade in their entrails. And not having to hide the bodies. Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. You keep bandying this about, but I ask you, what, exactly, is wrong with poverty? Poverty can be seen as a good thing. As long as you're still at least in poverty, you are managing to avoid starving to death in the street. That's the category that comes BELOW poverty, you know. It *CAN* get worse. Poverty can be seen as a GOOD thing. Honestly, you people are so negative sometimes.
'Anarchy' does not mean there are no rules, it means there are no rulers.Without rules there can be no organisation, and I have discussed the anarchist attitude to organisation. And rules do not imply rulers: they are not necessary, or at least rulers are not necessary beyond people's individual ablility to be rulers of themselves. It is quite possible to organise, according to mutually agreed and fully discussable rules, without power structures and their rulers, as I have argued. So I'm sorry, but anarchy escapes your logical trap .
Anarchists support democracy, but not the kind of democracy crudely described by the current system, where the extent of participation by the mass of the population in the way their lives are governed is a circus every four years in which they decide between two small groups of people with ideologies relatively indistinguishable from each other. This small group then goes on to rule an entire nation of people; it is impossible for them to make any pretense at being representative. This barely qualifies as even representative democracy. (Representative democracy: where a group of people elect a representative to vote on decisions made in a wider forum on behalf of the group; direct democracy: where the group directly votes on decisions for itself). Anarchists propose directly democratic, decentralised groups (as opposed to nation-states). Members of such organisations can create and present their own ideas and suggestions, critically evaluate the proposals and suggestions from their fellows, accept those that they agree with and have the option of leaving the association if they are unhappy with its direction. Hence the influence of individuals and their free interaction determine the nature of the decisions reached, and no one has the right to impose their ideas on another. No function remains fixed and it will not remain permanently and irrevocably attached to one person. Hierarchical order and promotion do not exist. Power is diffused to the collectivity and becomes the true expression of the liberty of everyone. For most anarchists, direct democratic voting on policy decisions within free associations is the political counterpart of free agreement (this is also known as self-management). Organisation can be carried out in a free, non-coercive, consensual manner.
Wow! Hadn't tuned in for a while. All this fervid discussion about life (human, that is) on earth. What are the chances that we humans (all 6 billion, give or take a few million) will ever agree on what's best for us, our pets and our planet? If this thread is any indication, Utopia can never be realized because no one can agree on what exactly it is or even whether they want to live there. A problem with no solution. Really. I'm gonna go play with my dolls.
A problem with an easy solution! - a society in which there is no need for the billions of people on earth to agree on what's best for them! You're right that only very rarely can a large group of people (e.g. a nation-state) agree on how to live. But small groups of people usually can, especially if the principles upon which the group conducts itself are constantly discussed, agreed and disagreed with, and changed, and especially if there are many such groups, all organised differently, with different amounts of people in different places with different needs and skills and interests, and especially if these groups communicate with one another, if their borders are blurred and constantly changing, especially if there are feelings of compassion and understanding between the groups, and especially if there is mutual aid. Not one, all-encompassing Utopia, but lots of small Utopias which change in both their ideological and human content as their members wish, where people who agree with the Utopia can live in it, and people who disagree with it can go and live in another which they agree with, or even establish their own. Of course, these Utopias are not isolated (though they can be), and can exist as sub-Utopias within bigger ones (though they don't have to). The fact that the human race cannot agree on how it wants to live is one of the most wonderful things about it. We are diverse, heterogenous, with myriad beliefs, practices, ideas and wants. Yes it is insolvable, in that all this diversity cannot be reconciled in an ideological melting-pot. But why is that necessary?
So basically, you want things to sort of be how they were ages ago, when all this did, in fact, happen. Sure, there were occasional moments where the groups would kill each other, but this was all done in the name of compassion and understanding! Actually, it *IS* solveable. We CAN make people all agree with each other. This is surprisingly direct in its simplicity: Kill everyone.
Kill people who disagree, JMP? Yikes. What's your playstyle in Sims, anyway? Do you micromanage? Play one family at a time? A whole village? Do you set free will on or off? Just curious. Didn't we sort of try this about thirty years ago? Hippies, flower children, Woodstock. Protesting the war and the "Establishment." It was quite spectacular. Then those of us who weren't drafted and killed in the war had to get jobs. And now I have this marvelous technological wonder for playing games like the Sims! And reading stuff on the bulletin boards that reminds me of those days. Maybe if we'd had these home computers and the WWW for organizing then, things might have been different. Too late for us now. We've gone over to the dark side.
Yes, whole village, off. I've practically never seen Sims make a correct decision on Free Will. I end up overruling everything anyway. Lately, tiring of the micromanagement, I've begun scripting thinguses that do my micromanagement for me, allowing me to simply command macro-tasks. As for killing people who disagree, I'm not going to try pushing the idea that one viewpoint is superior to any other. So to be perfectly fair, I advocate simply killing everyone.
Well that's pretty cool. I've set aside my Legacy family for a little while because I've been so fascinated by the movie making (everybody else's, that is, because I haven't done one.) Anyway, it seems that macro-managing (I guess that means getting them to do multiple tasks in sequence) would be good for movie making. Start the camera rolling and the little critters do everything you've planned for them to do, as in walk when you want them to walk (and not run!), go exactly where you want them to go and talk or argue or sing or whatever. I've built a couple of stage sets and put together a group of actors. Now I have to practice with camera angles and movement and lighting and a hundred other things. It'll take me a year to figure it out and put it together. Have you done movies? I've attached a picture (I think) of my acting family, the MacNairs.
I tend to be the opposite. I have them run, not walk, to their destinations. GO! GO! GO! Much to do, much to do! Busy, busy, busy! I am a total slave-driver, ever seeking more ways to make my sims more efficient. I haven't done movies yet, although I've considered doing some holiday specials if they break the code on animations. I was thinking of a nice Valentine's Day special for next year. Once they have animations, I can go bug Rentech to mesh me a Tommy gun and be good to go.
I haven't played with the movie aspect yet, but I probably will a lot once I get bored of the game. I haven't had a chance to yet because I only get the opportunity to play it about once a week - I can't install it on my computer (too crappy) so I play it on my boyfriend's instead. The hippy movement, and the general atmosphere of revolution of the 1960s, was spectacular and inspiring, but it was also a terrifying demonstration of the power of recuperation - i.e., the process by which the system takes a radical or revolutionary idea and repackages it as a saleable commodity. While the philosophy of the hippy movement is still popular, it has been utterly emasculated by its recuperation. But there is no reason to believe this emasculation must be permenant: the products of the system can be detourned - i.e. subverted so that rather than supporting the status quo, their meaning becomes changed in order to put across an oppositionist message - the Culture Jammers' subvertisements, for example. I don't think it is too late for us now. There is still dissent, and there is still revolution. To say there can and will be no revolution in the future is to posit historical inevitability and to graft a metanarrative (a grand overarching account, or all-encompassing story, which is thought to give order to the historical record). Attempts to construct metanarritives tend to dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe; they ignore the heterogeneity/variety of human existence. The diverse passions of human beings will always make it impossible for them to be marshalled under some theoretical doctrine - this is one of the reasons given for the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. And we in the 21st century have our own revolutionary movements. Look at the 'anti-globalisation' movement, the largest, most hetrogenous, truly global movement ever. Dissent is not dead!
