Progress update, poll results and a question · 5:18am May 1st, 2012
Ok...
I'm trying my best to get my story written, you guys know me. I may be slow but I will deliver.
lately, progress has been.. iffy.
Right now I got 1,200 words when I would usally have 3,000 at the very least.
ugg...
It's like I'm being sapped of all my creative juices. I promise I'm still plugging along, I'll see if I can pick up the pace, but school is determined to make that difficult.
We shall see...
I think I might re-release the pinkie incident as a bonus chapter for you guys. so patient.
Now as far as the poll goes it has been resoundingly non-magic oriented, so it's now official. Troy will never wield magic.
now for the big question
well... actually its not really a question what I want is your oppinion on This video.
It's about a society that kind of reminds me of equestria, one that WE could have... What I want to know is what you guys think about it.
I think if any group of people can talk about a social evolution to a better world, it's this one.
So if you have the time, I encourage you to watch the video, it's about 45 minutes long so you might want a good block of time to give it a proper viewing.
so tell me, what does everypony think?
I'm not going to get into politics on the internet, it'll just end with a bunch of us being pissed off at each other...
On another hand, yay progress in the most interesting HiE I've read!
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I can respect that, the reason I put it in my post was because I wasn't quite sure this was political. I wasn't sure I completely wrapped my head around it.
And while I won't say "No political debate! grrr" I will say if anyone want to debate politics that they simply refrain from attacking one another, and fight with logic and be respectful.
A rather short order from this crowd.
It just peaked my interest and wanted to share, seems like a nice idea at the very least.
I honestly don't think I would be comfortable posting this kind of question anywhere else, lest I start a flame war.
It's a nice idea, but not realistic. There will always be poverty, there will always be suffering, there will always be failure, there will always be war. Without these things we wouldn't know riches, healing, success, and peace. It's those trying times in life that teach us who we really are as a person. It's like the darkness without light, if you don't have something to compare it to, then it's impossible to know.
Sounds like Star Trek's social-economic system.
In all honesty, I think that there are some serious flaws with this plan of a resource-driven economy. Prepare for a long post.
1) It assumes that all people have their own initiative and would actively work to improve the world. Many people simply don't find intellectual, scientific, or creative pursuits interesting. This system would remove any place that they would otherwise occupy in our society. It also assumes that everyone has something to contribute to the greater society. Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of these kind of achievements. Not everyone is important to the function of the world, and simply improving education is not going to create a generation of Einsteins, Shakespeares, and MLKs.
2) I doubt that we could maintain the current lifestyle that most of the people on this website live for everybody with the current resources of the Earth. We are never actually presented with concrete information about the needs and lifestyles that this resource-based economy would result in.
3) How about drugs and other things that people see as fun, but are not productive or healthy for a society? Because the initiative plan is not 100% correct, people would still turn to illicit substances that damage this society at large. Would these products be made available for free for everyone? What about the health risks associated with them?
4) However, all of the above concerns are mostly based around the feasibility of the new system, rather than its actual inherit value. I have, personally, a moral rejection of anything that destroys a human culture. I do not believe that anyone has the right to dismantle another culture as an outsider. Internal revolutions and referendums for change are all well and good, but forcing a new system upon a culture and destroying that which it has based itself upon seems very wrong to me, regardless of my own opinions about the culture.
An example: I hate the Israeli system in which the Hasidim are allowed to analyze the Talmud all day on a state pension, not serve in the military, not grow food or otherwise produce goods for the society , spit on women who do not dress in a manner they deem appropriately (almost as covered as a burka), and get elected to the Knesset in place of more qualified individuals. However, I do not think that any nation has the right to tell Israel, "You must dismantle your cultural system because we have a more effective and humane way of doing things," simply because it is their culture, not ours. That changing of other cultures I view as a crime against humanity, and that is my real problem with the resource-based economic system as portrayed in this video.
94810 Heh, you know that first one is true. I sure as hell would rather spend my time daydreaming about ponies and video games rather than actually doing something culturally relevant.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I didn't watch the whole video, but I know about the Venus Project from other places, so I'm going to give my two uneducated cents about it.
Would I like to live in the world proposed by the Venus Project. Abso-fucking-lutely. Do I see it as attainable or realistic in any way? No. Now, off the top of my head I can think of three problems to the Venus Problem regarding its feasibility.
1. The lack of any sort of monetary system. Forgive me for pulling the Communist/Marxist card here, but that's exactly how I see this situation, except for, instead of sharing the wealth, there is no wealth to be had at all. How will you keep the people motivated to continue to support this society, if everything is handed to them and there is nothing to gain other than what's already there. I know it's supposed to be fully automated, but I don't how that can be sustained.
2. This one can go both ways. The apparently lawlessness of the society, or the complete government control over the people. The latter, who directly controls the society. Maybe I'm just missing information here, but there's a startling lack of information on how this society will be regulated. This is a philosophy that relies too heavily on the inherant goodness of human nature. Now, I'm no misanthrope by any means, but this requires every human to be perfect and willing to contribute to society. So, I can think of two scenarios, here. One, the state/government controls all the resources and necessaties distributed to the public, likely in the hands of a small group of people that control everything. Or, conversely, we have total anarchy, where there are no laws whatsoever. People are free to simply do whatever they want. They were wrong about one thing, it's not just our upbringing that influences us. Some nasty things ARE in our genes. Nature vs nurture and all that.
3. Relatively minor one here, but the goal of the Venus Project is the "elimination of scarcity". I'm sorry, but that is an impossibility. You cannot simply eliminate scarcity. Reduce scarcity, yes, but there are some things out there that are just in limited supply.
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and this is why I posted this query here.
A reasonable argument. and actual intelligence. Where else on the internet will you get that.
I was curious about the illicit substance angle as well. thanks for pointing that out.
And I can easily see some nasty things in our genes, we are omnivorous and therefore, to some degree, predators.
Predators are naturally aggressive, territorial and violent. not to hard to see.
94964
Heh, thanks.
Honestly, I'll admit that I don't see the parallels between this society and Equestria. For two reasons. One, they actually HAVE a system of money. And two, their universe is just so EASY to live in. They control the weather, and can probably solve all of life's problems with magic.
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I posted this just a little after watching the video, it just sounded so good.
...Of course every sales pitch sounds good.
While not a sales pitch, he wouldn't do himself any favors by bringing up the problems that you guys did.
After a while it started to smell a little fishy, it's as the old saying goes. "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
95125
Well, a bunch of other people are buying into it easily too. I wouldn't call it a sales pitch, but he's got himself plenty of followers, and unlike you, they don't seem to be addressing the problems, or even asking questions about it.
On the comments of these videos, people sometimes bring up issues similar to what Chalkman and I posted. Followers of this guy shut them down completely, without even addressing the argument. Most of their arguments have something to do with them calling the skeptics "products of the government that have been brainwashed into believing America's educational system". Oh, the irony in that.
>> Fragged42
>> Asterisk
Honestly, I think that this would be a great system if society slowly moved into it, no matter how improbable that is. But the only reasonable way for this system to get off of the ground is for it to control all of the world's resources, which could only be done through a massive military takeover.
I don't think that any movement, small or large, that forces change in a society before there is popular support will work out in the end. There is simply too much backlash by the older generation. (Be warned, I am about to go off-topic! Politics ahead!)
This was a serious problem with the way the abortion movement was handled in America. In the 1960s, abortion was rapidly gaining popular support. But when the pro-choice advocates pushed extremely hard and got Roe v. Wade through the Supreme Court, the growth in the abortion movement reversed, and the pro-life movement came into existence. If the abortion movement had been slower and allowed more popular support to build, then they might have been able to allow later abortions or guarantee abortions as a part of health care. Instead, they forced the issue before the time was right and now we have the half-assed abortion situation that might actually affect the election.
I see alot of parallels between the way abortion was passed into law and the way gay marriage is being pushed right now. I am very afraid that if a national gay marriage bill is passed, we will see an extraordinarily strong backlash that will reverse much of the recent progress made by the gay community in gaining social acceptance. I would much rather see a state-by-state approach that would allow more support to be built before a national-level law would be brought before Congress. I think that this would be a much safer way for the gay community to remove the stigma surrounding it and begin building support in heavily Evangelical areas.
I have no idea how I started talk/ ranting about this. Hope you guys weren't too confused/ offended!