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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
mutant-aesthetic
bzangy

always reblog COMMUNIST TREK. <3

rhube

Star Trek is radical in so many ways people often forget.

clevermanka

The future that liberals want

jenniferrpovey

Okay, Star Trek is somewhat inconsistent on this.

But if you apply some worldbuilding you put two things together:

1. Replicators

2. “No money.”

Futurists call this the “replicator economy” and we’re already seeing the start of it.

If I was a little bit richer, I would have bought a 3D printer last year.

When you have a 3D printer, you can download things from the internet and make them yourself for the cost of the raw materials. I have a 3D-printed cosplay prop that I printed on a library printer. They charged me the cost of the raw filament for it…it cost me less than $2 for the actual object. Probably $3-4 by the time I add in the paint. It’s made of a biologically created plastic.

In the works: Creating 3D printer filament out of old plastic shopping bags. (Which cannot be multi-stream recycled, it costs a fortune). This means that it won’t be long before a normal household can make toys and the like out of plastic shopping bags.

A true replicator uses cheap raw materials and waste to make useful things.

Let’s imagine, as an interim step, that somebody creates a clothing replicator. You feed it rags and it creates new clothes, from patterns you download from the internet.

So, you have an old T-shirt. It’s fine, but for a small hole and the pattern having rubbed off. You feed it into your clothing replicator and out comes a new T-shirt with a new design. No, we don’t have this yet, but we can and probably will.

What, at that point, happens to clothing shops? Oh, yes, you might still buy some clothes - and handmade clothing, put together by an actual human, is still going to have a cachet.

But the clothes from your replicator fit you perfectly. You don’t have a size any more. Every X months you stand in a 3D scanner, it takes every measurement, and then sends it to your replicator. If you’re pregnant (assuming we don’t have ectogenesis) you can actually have it adjust your favorite dress to make baby bump room. Just like that. The most comfortable item of clothing I own is my pleather bodysuit. Not coincidentally, it’s the only item of clothing I own that was made to my measurements.

None of what we wear fits.

So…right. What happens to clothing shops? What happens to spending large amounts of money on new clothes while we throw old clothes away or give them to Goodwill?

The economy slowly develops to the point where the means of production really is in the hands of people: As individuals.

Star Trek technology means that if Picard wants a new suit, he just programs a clothing replicator to take his measurements and make him a new suit. Some people like tailors, so Garak gets to stay in business.

And eventually, if all you actually need is raw material and information, you don’t need to buy very much…

…and you end up with a society without money. It’s not “communist” in any way that has ever been tried before because, well, it requires the underpinnings of that technology. (Just don’t think too hard about where the Enterprise’s food replicators get some of their raw material).

You end up with the only valuable thing being information and the only valuable skill being art - but it doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to work for a living any more. TNG reflects the only valuable skill being art in many ways, in fact. Data’s painting. The chamber orchestra. Geordi’s hobby of designing holodeck programs. Everyone makes art, not because it’s the one thing machines can’t do, but because it’s the one thing humans (and others) won’t let the machines take over.

And that’s absolutely a future to work towards.

froborr

You end up with the only valuable thing being information and the only valuable skill being art

Well, and raw materials. And replicators. And energy. And physical space. And a wide variety of non-material goods like club memberships. And health care. And it’ll take longer than you may think to get completely away from growing crops because plants are really fucking efficient at turning sunlight into calories. And non-art valuable skills include everyone you need to run a power plant or a mine (which is probably just people supervising the robots doing the labor, but still), probably everyone you need to run a spaceship because unless we’re really stupid all our mines are on the moon and asteroids, a wide variety of engineers to collaborate with the artists on designing new replicator patterns, replicator repairpeople, park rangers, administrators, doctors, therapists…

jenniferrpovey

Oh, absolutely, but what we see in Star Trek is mature technology, a society that’s already made that transition.

Also, they do still grow crops. Picard’s family has a vineyard, after all.

athelind

Fully Automated Luxury Communism.

#FullyAutomatedLuxuryCommunism

plagueofgripes

Trek’s future is Gene’s idealism, but it breaks apart pretty quickly if you think about it too much. Plenty of jobs still need to be done, but aren’t glamorous, are difficult and include no rewards or commendation from your fellow people. And they pay nothing. In Gene’s future, people still do those jobs simply because of some sense of duty and pride in the future they’re making together. This is to say nothing of people jockeying for the same admiral seat and playing politics to get over a more talented individual. Not to mention that resources are still limited, so if someone wants to replicate themselves a personal spaceship, obviously they wouldn’t have the “money” to do it. Tons of human motivation issues in Trek that are never addressed because everyone is married to Gene’s ideal, like a religion. People who aren’t are villains, or are in prison.

Money exists for a reason. Even in Trek, they run into aliens all the time who aren’t impressed with the Federation’s idealism and still demand actual latinum, dilithium or whatever else. Whether they call it money, credits or FedBucks, people will always need a way to distribute time, people, effort, art, education or locations as a resource. And you can’t do that with the goodness in your heart. You do it with money. I like Trek, but Gene’s ideal future is ridiculous, and breaks apart with the slightest amount of thought about its exact mechanics.

A post-scarcity economy will inevitably be good for everyone, but also be dangerous initially. The contemporary economy will thrive on labor and resources and there won’t be a welfare system large enough to compensate when entire industries and job sectors begin to collapse overnight because someone figured out how to turn hydrogen into houses or hamburgers. In Trek, there has to be millions of people who don’t have a job, who just wake up, consume resources and entertainment, make tons of children out of boredom and then die. Humanity will probably be long since cyberized in some odd way by the time real history hits that point. But either way, it’ll never look like what Gene envisioned.

mutant-aesthetic

I want Nick Land’s Star Trek

mitigatedchaos

…is Trekposting on my dash going to keep up to the point that I have to write a Transhumanist non-Communist-per-se Trek fic?

Source: universalequalityisinevitable
argumate
argumate

for a post-racial society Tumblr sure does get heated about whether Armenians count as white or not.

it’s mercifully one of the few debates that feature the Kardashians and genocide as legitimate talking points.

mitigatedchaos

I thought Tumblr was all about racial awareness, not being post-racial?

I thought that was the new SJ Left thing - racial awareness, racial consciousness, ethnic experiences - just only for those with enough overlapping categories in the Venn Diagram of Oppression.

identity politics race politics
iammyfather

All white people owe poc reparations

ratherbeinspacewithotherstars

This isn’t a debate.
Your guys’ ancestors enslaved us and treated us like property that could be disposed of easily.
Now you continue to mistreat us.
Pay up
You reparations show you are sorry for your ancestors racism and the current racism.
So pay up

anti-sjw-movement

My ancestors didn’t though, in fact most people ancestors didn’t. A tiny percentage of the global populace owned slaves and the majority of that was in Africa where it’s still happening today… do they pay reparations too? By your logic. Yes they do.

sighinastorm

I do think reparations were owed, but the only sound way to do it, that I can
think of, would be for reparations to have taken the form of (at least partially) education and higher vocational training, beginning immediately during Reconstruction.  Even today, I think a program like that could do a lot of good, but with what we’re doing along those lines now, we begin too late.  College is too late.  We need to be assigning scholarships to preschools and grade schools.

“Your guys’ ancestors“, though?  Please. 

anti-sjw-movement

I don’t think reparations is owed at all, for a start the white people today who’s families did indeed own slaves at one point are not at fault for that, they didn’t personally own slaves and they could very well be upstanding members of society who would never do wrong, why should they suffer whether financially or made to sit in a classroom to be told how they’re bad.

Secondly whilst slavery was a disgusting part of human history, it was the social norm and people then were accustom to it, those who weren’t stood against slavery firmly.

Thirdly, many many many white people gave their lives in war to free slaves, no one ever mentions this, acknowledges that these people died to change the world.

All of this and more reasons are why reparations are unjust and unneeded.

sighinastorm

When the slaves were freed and then basically just left to figure out 
what to do for themselves, a self-perpetuating underclass was 
created.  This has left a black mark (no pun intended) on our social 
history, and a brake on our nation’s progress in countless fields.

For the ever-present “race issue“ to not be a thing that exists America, what would that be worth?  For racial division to have never have been such an issue
in justice, imprisonment, crime, poverty, sciences, arts,business, ownership, housing, city settling, finance, what would that be worth to a country?  

Reparations isn’t just some moral absolution for a sin (yours, mine,
or somebody else unrelated’s).  The goal was integration, which,
foolishly, was thought to be obtainable for 40 acres and a mule.

>> why should they suffer whether financially?

A cohesive society benefits all therewithin.

mitigatedchaos

That isn’t what the reparations people actually want, though, and the reparations people will never agree that any sum of money is enough, so the right move for the national government is to never pay any reparations on this matter.

The reintegration of blacks into the broader American culture is Nationalist, would require rejecting Multicultural Diversity as a terminal value, and would mean in some ways result in the dissolution of what has effectively become an ethnic group within the nation.

Can you imagine the enormous left-wing freak-out if they caught on that that was what were doing?  Re-activating the melting pot within the nation on its own groups?  Further transforming “American” into an outright ethnicity?

It would be worth an utterly enormous amount of money, more than it would actually cost, but no one in this country is capable of actually executing it.  The ones that want to do it won’t do it correctly, and the ones that don’t want to do it don’t want to pay for it.

iammyfather

Why is it “ The reintegration of blacks into the broader American culture is Nationalist, would require rejecting Multicultural Diversity “  when it comes to Black people, but integrating everything from Greco-Turkish to Scandinavian, is “Building Multicultural Diversity “.  As for those that say “My ancestors didn’t own slaves”, you are copping out, they still supported a system that enshrined slavery, even if they sat around a table bitching about it.   if your ancestors, like mine came over after slavery was ended, we have still benefited from the way the system was rigged.

mitigatedchaos

You know how the SJ Tumblr Left constantly goes on about White People™ not having a culture? What exactly do you think happened to those European cultures that came over here? How many third generation Italian immigrants do you know that speak Italian?

Melting Pot means creating a new culture from a unifying of other existing ones. In this sense it is a Nationalist enterprise, and because culture is so important, it’s one I support. As it says on my profile here, I am a Nationalist. There are many kinds of Nationalism.  

As for the debt, intergenerational justice does not exist, but it’s still in the interests of the nation and state to solve this matter as it continues to create unnecessary poverty, crime, and breaks in national unity.

comcastkills
afloweroutofstone

If you believe in a massive and active military, militarized borders and restrictive immigration policies, support for law enforcement as they currently exist, traditional family values, and the need to preserve a national culture, you’re not a libertarian. You’re not fooling anyone. You want a highly ordered and hierarchical society enforced by state coercion, just give us all a break and stop pretending like your beliefs about taxes and firearms make you a freedom fighter

collapsedsquid

Way I think this argument is justified by those types is that because we don’t have Freedom where businesses or even towns are allowed to discriminate, the government needs to do it instead.

To me that result has a very different takeaway though.

mitigatedchaos

While OP has a point, there’s also the issue that Libertarianism has to have political support (including within that culture) in order to be maintained, and mass migrations can change the political environment of a territory pretty substantially.

It makes more sense if you assume it’s fragile rather than the default to which all societies will gradually slide.

taxloopholes

Right libertarianism doesn’t have as much support in politics because it’s a contradictory mess of an ideology.

People like the Koch brothers have legit spent millions trying to spread libertarian thought and they still can only get conservative politicians.

If libertarians were so confident in their ideas, they wouldn’t bend over backwards for conservatives like so many do.

mitigatedchaos

I think the ones that are that confident become AnCaps, which I don’t consider to be an improvement.

Source: afloweroutofstone
argumate
argumate

Whenever home maintenance issues crop up I always have this futile wish for designs that are more easily hackable, eg. conduits that can be accessed without cutting holes in things, or even *gasp* plans and blueprints of how everything is laid out that get updated when someone messes with them.

mitigatedchaos

This isn’t the country where all personnel have IQ 130, Owl-kun.  There is no such country.

sighinastorm

All white people owe poc reparations

ratherbeinspacewithotherstars

This isn’t a debate.
Your guys’ ancestors enslaved us and treated us like property that could be disposed of easily.
Now you continue to mistreat us.
Pay up
You reparations show you are sorry for your ancestors racism and the current racism.
So pay up

anti-sjw-movement

My ancestors didn’t though, in fact most people ancestors didn’t. A tiny percentage of the global populace owned slaves and the majority of that was in Africa where it’s still happening today… do they pay reparations too? By your logic. Yes they do.

sighinastorm

I do think reparations were owed, but the only sound way to do it, that I can
think of, would be for reparations to have taken the form of (at least partially) education and higher vocational training, beginning immediately during Reconstruction.  Even today, I think a program like that could do a lot of good, but with what we’re doing along those lines now, we begin too late.  College is too late.  We need to be assigning scholarships to preschools and grade schools.

“Your guys’ ancestors“, though?  Please. 

anti-sjw-movement

I don’t think reparations is owed at all, for a start the white people today who’s families did indeed own slaves at one point are not at fault for that, they didn’t personally own slaves and they could very well be upstanding members of society who would never do wrong, why should they suffer whether financially or made to sit in a classroom to be told how they’re bad.

Secondly whilst slavery was a disgusting part of human history, it was the social norm and people then were accustom to it, those who weren’t stood against slavery firmly.

Thirdly, many many many white people gave their lives in war to free slaves, no one ever mentions this, acknowledges that these people died to change the world.

All of this and more reasons are why reparations are unjust and unneeded.

sighinastorm

When the slaves were freed and then basically just left to figure out 
what to do for themselves, a self-perpetuating underclass was 
created.  This has left a black mark (no pun intended) on our social 
history, and a brake on our nation’s progress in countless fields.

For the ever-present “race issue“ to not be a thing that exists America, what would that be worth?  For racial division to have never have been such an issue
in justice, imprisonment, crime, poverty, sciences, arts,business, ownership, housing, city settling, finance, what would that be worth to a country?  

Reparations isn’t just some moral absolution for a sin (yours, mine,
or somebody else unrelated’s).  The goal was integration, which,
foolishly, was thought to be obtainable for 40 acres and a mule.

>> why should they suffer whether financially?

A cohesive society benefits all therewithin.

mitigatedchaos

That isn’t what the reparations people actually want, though, and the reparations people will never agree that any sum of money is enough, so the right move for the national government is to never pay any reparations on this matter.

The reintegration of blacks into the broader American culture is Nationalist, would require rejecting Multicultural Diversity as a terminal value, and would mean in some ways result in the dissolution of what has effectively become an ethnic group within the nation.

Can you imagine the enormous left-wing freak-out if they caught on that that was what were doing?  Re-activating the melting pot within the nation on its own groups?  Further transforming “American” into an outright ethnicity?

It would be worth an utterly enormous amount of money, more than it would actually cost, but no one in this country is capable of actually executing it.  The ones that want to do it won’t do it correctly, and the ones that don’t want to do it don’t want to pay for it.

identity politics the iron hand fish breathe water
brazenautomaton

Anonymous asked:

OOTS as in order of the stick? What is the comic?

brazenautomaton answered:

order of the stick

the backer comic, “how the paladin got his scar”, is about seeing humanity and value in your enemy and avoiding the needless loss of life and recognizing others have a perspective and wants and needs and fears and all that stuff

except if you’re an MRA or GG or some similar group where the lie “these people hate and are threatening to women” has been told and has been exalted and is more important than the truth; the comic makes it clear that those people are awful and contemptible and are motivated only by malice and hatred of women and everyone should feel contempt for them and they do nothing but lie and should die

and this reminds me that the lie is more important than the truth. people literally cannot stop themselves from believing the lie. they can’t. it’s impossible. no matter how much they want to be virtuous, no matter how much they want to be honest and charitable, the lie is so much more important than the truth they are incapable of not believing it. the lie makes up a fundamental component of how they see reality. they can’t stop. they can look at the lie. they can see it is a lie. they can be told it is a lie and agree “what I am looking at is a lie, and I do not want to believe it”. then they believe that lie anyway, because popularity is invincible and inassailable and will devour all and death is the only escape.

mitigatedchaos

Alternative: They know it’s a lie, but they have to counter-signal so they won’t get purged or so that people won’t immediately turn off their brains and go all “YOU’RE IN LEAGUE WITH THE ENEMY”.  

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