Vilageidiotx

Age of Iron - Reboot Edition

If I am stepping on toes, move my shit to the other peninsula along the way. Location isn't hella important really, so long as I am not far as fuck from the action.

Age of Iron - Reboot Edition

Name: Kingdom of the Celand

Location:


Background:

It has been over a thousand years since the Celii tribe overran their neighbors and established a kingdom. All that is left from that time is fragments, ancient legends, and the names of enemies who mean nothing outside of the stories. In the time since, the Cels have solidified and civilized, have ruled over most of the surrounding peninsulas, and then lost that hegemony over centuries of bad luck and cultural decadence. The slide into failure is better recorded, but not completely understood, by the Cels.

In recent years, this trouble has been in part due to the increase in raids from the north. The Cels do not recognize the tribal distinctions of their northern neighbors. For them, the people of the north are all simply the "Ice-People", but despite Celish pretension, Ice People raids have had the painful effect of decapitating the rural population from their city dwelling elite. Raiders pierce the countryside and the nobility hide in their walled cities until the threat has passed. This has caused an increase in the authority of local strong-arms and officials, who can provide a measure of protection that the King and his court are either unable or unwilling to provide.

In older times, Kings were able to provide sincere protection for their people. Armies could be paid and kept to defend against threats. In modern times, brave men are rarely kept on the payroll of the monarchy, and the will toward violence is driven into inter-family feuding and street brawls that gain nothing for the Kingdom as a whole.

The capitol is Celund, a sprawling city of personal mansions built like castles, of multiple markets, temples, and universities, where families long descended from ancient warriors compete over the revenue streams of their dying Kingdom. Their technology is well up to the task of handling the tribal Ice-People that threaten them, but their cultural malaise off-sets this advantage and puts them in competition with peoples they would never dream of inviting to dinner.

I need ideas

@Vilageidiotx Give me my own shed outside, and then I periodically come inside and start arguments with people, then laugh and go back to my shack.

@Buddha

It's settled then.

@Cynder, get on that.

I need ideas

@Cynder Try to recreate what you think the RPG house would look like, and probably put some of the more known RPGers in there.

See what happens.

@Buddha

I call top bunk!

Writing mental disorders

One possible way of going about it would be to read up. Get books both about the subject (like this), and fiction books written from the perspective of antisocial characters (like this)

Which of these 'popular' lablels do you associate with?

At the end of the day, I would bet Sleepy Ben is smarter than any one of us in this conversation due in part to a combination of his years of wisdom, experience, and learning. If you think he's stupid because he's a devout Christian then you have to first realize that you're below the bar you're about to set.

@j8cob

You can be really smart in one area and a complete mess in another. We all know things that Ben doesn't know, for instance. And I am not just talking about what your mom looks like naked. I'd suspect most people in this thread have skills that Ben would take a while to master, for the same reason he has skills that took him (and would take us) decades to master.

Which is to say just because a person is accomplished doesn't mean you can't question their competence in other fields. And since we are talking about people running for public office, it's almost our duty to question them. I have more than once been persuaded not to vote for someone because their religious devotion caused me to question their judgement.

The Unpopular Opinions Thread.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

Casual reminder that China has been modernizing and enforcing labor laws. There will be no such thing as "cheap Chinese slave labor" in fifteen years and manufacturing our goods in China will become unsustainable for us.

@j8cob

2030 is looking to be a shitty year. All the shaky predictions (automation of transportation industry, the moment the US outpaces pre-revolutionary France in wealth inequality, and now I guess China catching up to the west) seems to pick that date. Which makes me wonder, is that just the most comfortable date for people to use for prediction because it is far enough in the future, is 2030 really the year/decade western capitalism boils over?

Though it should be said there is a whole lot more developing world out there just waiting to become the next China. I feel like Africa might do some interesting shit before the century is over, especially now that parts of West Africa are urbanizing and growing a middle class. Time will tell I suppose.

The Unpopular Opinions Thread.

People with decent paying jobs shop and Walmart too. It's not a 1:1 ratio.

@Jotunn Draugr

Oh yes of course, but they aren't going to start consuming more because people who are no longer in the country cease to consume. I'm not saying that Wal-Mart will fold without illegal immigrants, just saying that there will be a drop in consumption equal to the jobs opened up. This isn't an argument for or against illegal immigration (since, on the other hand, an increase in consumption via immigrants comes with an equal increase in new competitors for labor). All I am saying is this consumption gap negates the jobs created by chasing out illegal immigrants.

What's wrong with stopping cheap goods from being imported from China? I shouldn't have to remind you that there was a time when such products were all made in America, and the economy was doing just fine.

Again it's a negation thing. American access to manufacturing would increase, but because manufacturing would then need to pay American wages instead of Chinese slave wages, the cost of living would increase. So long as investors require a certain cut, Americans workers are going to have to make up the difference.

And don't get me wrong, I love the idea of making shit in the US. I'm not exactly financially stable, but when I can do it, I love trying to stick to local shit. Keeping my own community up seems ideal. And, you know, gives me and my people access to employment But there are problems that come from legally mandated protectionism. Aside from the cost of living rise, we'd also lose equal access to foreign markets for our exports, since they'd all have to compensate with their own protectionist measures to protect their own markets, which would slow the global economy in turn.

Well if there are any academic-level economic books on the subject, that you've personally read, you're welcome to cite them, and I'll give them a look.

I've been vague here because economics is such a broad subject and there are so many directions you could go in. I personally liked Capital in the 21st century (I mean liked the theory, it's a fucking dull read), but that one is controversial. He puts the blame for our economic woes on wealth disparity, and though his solution is lackluster, his description of the economy just meshes more with how I have experienced it.

Regarding this discussion, really, Wealth of Nations is still relevant 200 years later. I think it is because of that book that most economists still scoff at protectionism, because that is the subject of his argument.

I'm sure you're likewise aware that protectionism comes with tariffs on imported goods, meaning a Mexican thrown out of Tulsa, won't "steal another job in manufacturing", as there won't be any American manufacturing south of the border.

We can't really gunboat our way out of the tariff problem liked we could in the 19th century. Back then we could get away with forcing people to buy our goods against their will so we could keep our tariffs high without our industry suffering as a result.

But since the modern world makes that difficult to do, what would happen is those foreign markets would close themselves to our goods, so that the economy would dip from a loss of sales just as the cost of living starts to rise. Mexico would suffer the same result, as would anybody else involved, which would certainly destabilize Latin America. They'd have to respond to our tariff with a tariff though, to protect their own industry.

Now doing this with Mexico would yield small results for the same reason I think illegal immigration is a small potato in our economic woes. But if we did that with China, especially if done awkwardly? That is downright dangerous. As in, worst case scenario @Keyguyperson gets his proletarian revolution dangerous.

I think you lost me a couple times. One was at the Chihuahua comment. If you don't mind, could you explain how exactly they're going to continue occupying American jobs when they're thrown out of the country? Likewise, what does "Latin America getting their shit together" have to do with this?

Taking jobs producing for American companies via NAFTA.

Also, Latin America getting its shit together would fix the illegal immigration problem from the other direction. Latin America hemorrhages people now because Latin America is a mess that people want to flee from. Hell, fixing Northern Mexico might be enough, since they border us and are producing the lions share of the immigrants.

Which of these 'popular' lablels do you associate with?

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>

Often, they're much smarter than a good portion of humanity. I would consider them the smartest of all in this whole conversation.

Humans: Philosophical babble.

Wolf: Eat the deer, see the world, and never have to worry with religious/philosophical/otherwise human-created nonsense.

@ArenaSnow

I eat deer, see the world, and also get to have some babble too.

The Unpopular Opinions Thread.

Yah, you could go with the carrot method, and bribe them into doing it. Or you could use the stick, and say "you must attend and pass these classes, or you will not be granted citizenship/residence/landed-status/etc, and you will have to continue hoping your visa can be renewed on time". Of course, this would necessitate enforcement. The United States already has laws and punishments for visa overstays, but they're not regularly enforced. To quote Ann Coulter, "We already have an immigration task-force, JUST LET I.C.E. DO THEIR JOB".

@Jotunn Draugr

I think I brought up before that the "They just need to be allowed to do their jobs" is a political line and describes more or less paying a few people to look for needles in haystacks. Case in point, Ann Coulter said it. She's as trustworthy a figure as quoting, like, Bill Maher or something. Political pundits are not sources.

Hold the phone. Why don't you need illegal immigrants to keep Walmart wages poor? Surely, if you vastly reduce the supply of low-skill workers, and the demand is still there (Walmart being America's biggest sole employer), they'll have to do something to entice people to come work for them. When there's a limited supply of workers, and an excess of employers, the employers have to start offering more to beat out their competition, or risk being understaffed and going out of business.
How did agriculture, and other low-skill labour ever function, before you were able to bring in cheap Mexicans to do it? Oh yah! It used to be that teenagers and young adults would do it, which is coincidentally the most under-employed group in the country now, more so than ever in American history (possibly excluding the great depression).

Low-skill workers are also Wal-Marts base. Limiting the amount of employees doesn't work because it limits the amount of patrons by the same number. This I think is where I really disagree with Trumps economic policies; It's smoke and mirrors, to hide the fact that the conditions the working class are faced with are naturally dictated by the nature of capitalism. This is pure economic snake oil. It's a good position because it's a problem that cannot be fixed (short of Latin America getting its shit together) and therefore can always be there to be blamed on the liberals.

As for agriculture, this is where illegal immigrant and just immigrant gets mixed together. The migrant agricultural workers, generally legal, have been part of the Western economic culture since, like, there was white people out there owning farms. It exists because the work is seasonal, low paying, not enough to sustain non-migrant populations, and because Americans generally don't like migratory work. Even if Trump manages to somehow get rid of all the illegal immigrants in the United States, Hispanic migrant workers would still be there. Which is good, because getting rid of them would be highly disruptive. You aren't going to be able to empty a bunch of Idaho bedroom communities to get your potatoes picked.

If you want to handle the exploitation, first start enforcing the law. There are entire cities, occupied exclusively by tens of thousands of illegal immigrants each (if not more). These cities are known to the police, but nothing is done. When a local company needs new workers, they can just swing by one of these "sanctuary cities", and pick up two dozen willing workers. Step one is build the wall, to shut off the flow of immigrants. Step two is send the illegals back over the wall, creating a vacuum of low-skill employees. Step three is shutting down the guest-worker program, increasing the vacuum. Step four is simply waiting for the illegal immigrants that are already employed to integrate into society. Before you know it, there aren't any more easily exploitable non-English-speaking foreign workers, and their wages will start rising already, as more and more employers find themselves short on cheap labour, and are forced to pay more to bring them over.

That sounds so easy on paper, but it's a lazy dream of a plan. Okay, so you build the wall. The coyotes get clever, illegal immigration becomes a professional deal, and we have a big cement mess on our border for people to bitch about. You drag a few abuellas out of their sanctuary cities, make a few ugly headlines, and what you get out of it is a population stealing industrial jobs from Chihuahua because as it turns out you cannot get rid of them as economic units even if you throw them across the border. You shut down the guest worker program and western agriculture has a fit (probably won't be shut down because of this. Agriculture is a hell of a lobbyist). And what you get is... well, like I said, you've just moved economic units around. If we take a protectionist stance against Mexico and China, our access to cheap products dwindles equal to our cheap labor so that the purchasing power of the average American either stays the same or dwindles.

Protectionism doesn't work. This is, like, economics 101 from every modern economic theory still in practice. It's populist but it's impractical because it always requires making decisions on half of the information. A competing worker lost is a customer lost, a foreign competitor quelled is a foreign market closed. It sounds good because it allows people to imagine that there is just this one tiny thing in their way, but it's not the way the real world works.

I guarantee you, grab some modern economic books, the heady academic shit and not the silly pundit to-be-sold-in-grocery-stores stuff, and you'll find immigrants on the backburner to real, and much more complicated, problems.

When we're talking about rising poverty levels, record unemployment, income inequality, human exploitation with conditions akin to slavery, I couldn't give a shit about your ability to get a tasty novelty food category, and no one else who takes this situation seriously should either. If the livelihood of your fellow man, and the suffering of your neighbour to the south, is worth less than a good burrito... Well I just hope you're in the minority.

Calm down. Take a deep breath.

I mention Hillary Clinton, because the pro-immigration/amnesty side of this discussion always brings up food as the example of "cultural enrichment", as though this doesn't pale in comparison to real issues. It's such a privileged position to speak from, where your life and livelihood is secure enough that your only concern is getting more food variety.

Always? I've done this plenty of times and never saw food come up as a serious argument. It seemed a bit tone deaf that you took it so seriously.

Yes yes, I'm not saying they're going to do a good job. I'm just noting that the concept of a border wall is far from unprecedented (Israel is another great example), and that it's a bit ironic that Mexicans are complaining about a wall, when they themselves are building a wall.

I guarantee you I don't base my ideas on what the Mexican government thinks. They're to blame for a lot of this. That they'd chase a childish policy like building a border wall is par for the course as far as their poor method of government is concerned.

Yes, crime springs up from poverty, even in our own culture, but America isn't doing itself any favours by importing millions of dirt-poor people, with no education or prospects, who's culture (language included, of course) conflicts with the local culture.

I'd like to note that the influx of Mexican labour driving the wages down, and sucking welfare money out of the system, sure isn't doing the poor any favours, and may even be contributing to the conditions that result in white ghettos. Also, where are these locals getting their hard drugs from in the first place? Ten bucks says it's from Mexico.

Of course, everything is a matter of scales and degrees, but the more socio-economical-cultural division we have, the more likely we are to get these unlivable, inhospitable sections of our own country.

The drug problem is incidentally where I come to agree with you here. Whereas the economic argument might be diversionary at best, the drug problem is something we should really be focusing on. A big part of Mexico's problem, and really our problem as well, is the cartel empire in the north pushing drugs over the border. There is nothing good coming out of that. Now, I don't think a wall will fix that issue, but moving resources currently committed to chasing abuellas, or cracking down on drug-users or the production of soft drugs, to deal with the hard drug problem, that seems like it would be good policy.

But the rest of it is weak. The world economy as it stands now is global. A Mexican stealing an American job in Tulsa, if sent back over the border, will steal another job in manufacturing. If we went back to the high tariff system, Mexico (or China or whoever) would reciprocate and our access to cheap goods would diminish. You can't really find the 'Golden Capitalism' or whatever, what you see is what you get.

Illegal immigration is as it stands a cheap populist issue the right likes to use because they know it can't go away, and because they have maneuvered themselves into a place where they can always blame liberals on it. It's like a pinata with an endless supply of candy (or whatever a Trump regime would rename it. A Freedom Beating-doll?). Hell, I'm not even particularly offended at the idea he may try, because whereas I think he's chasing unicorns, It's not like anybody is suggesting anything growed up yet. Because really, the thing that annoys me about it is that we'd waste so much resources chasing such a stupid fix, taking away energy from any real fixes. But for that to be a problem there would have to be somebody trying to get a real fix in place, and we aren't really spending the energy to do so yet.

It's like we are biding our time until the whole system blows up or something. What do we do in the mean time, watch Trump pollute a few news cycles beating up field workers, or watch Hillary basically do nothing and tell us everything is fine? Neither does much of anything that'll have a good effect, so we are basically just choosing how we are going to fuck up.