America - The Land of Promises

reply to post by AfterInfinity

One, I wasn't complaining on their behalf. Life isn't fair, and someone will always be sick, poor, wounded, or otherwise getting the shaft while someone else enjoys wine and caviar. It has always been that way, and we won't change it.

True enough, and I wouldn't call you anything other than a realist for making this point. There will always be suffering in the world.

I just believe that if there is any way I can minimize that suffering, it is incumbent upon me to do so. Not because of any laws or moral superiority, but rather because I would want others to do so for me.

Second, my point was that we should attend to our own household before attending to someone else's. I admire the noble sentiments of sacrificing our surplus for their survival, but can we afford it?

Absolutely we must attend to our house before trying to help fix others'. That is self-evident, because if we do not attend to our own house, then we will soon be unable to help others or even in need of help ourselves.

That is the real shame here. You were absolutely right before when you pointed out that, as badly as we have things, there are so many others in worse shape. I don't believe that by making ourselves worse, we in any way help those in need, however. The object is not, IMO, simply to make everyone equal, but to make everyone equally successful. I also realize that this is an unachievable goal, but that does not make it a worthless goal. One of my goals in life is to know everything there is to know... completely unachievable, even to the point of being ridiculous, but it is a goal which propels me to keep learning. The alternative is to say I will never know everything, so why bother learning anything?

I can never hope to wipe poverty from the face of the earth, so why should I even try? Because I can maybe help a few people out, and every person is worthwhile.

I don't think we are that far apart after all, really.

TheRedneck

sentiments such as those in the OP are bound to be wildly popular. after all, you'd have to be a real dum-dum to not understand and agree with the argument. PLUS, there is an implicit 'they' in the argument, and what could be more satisfying than getting all morally righteous about those damned sheeple and/or evil wealthy?

it is a shame that the OP's well-formed argument will easily be made mockery of by those of us that refuse to point that accusatory finger back at ourselves.

they will claim that they agree with you...

... but then pop off to another thread to commit the same crimes they, here in this thread, claim to be against.


at the heart of this is not a lack of honor, nor greed, but a wholesale failure of critical thought.


A CURSE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES. ALL ARE PUNISHED!

reply to post by TheRedneck


Great write up brother....I have all to well for the last decade at least been let down with promises in the video game industry. I used to beta test and alpha test several games when I was accepted. Back then it was free and you tested a game and worked with developers finding issues with the product and then bam out of no where game was cancelled. Now in video gaming they do this sort of prerelease entry where you pay for the game to play during an alpha or beta...of course I do it cause I like helping advance the game but I rarely see someone deliver anything they claimed they would..its not even close..then its shipped out early filled with bugs and errors as if it is "finished'. People then buy the game only to see how crappy it is....they leave while in a way helping developers improve the game. We will be beta testers for all products.

reply to post by cosmicexplorer

I knew that was pretty much standard procedure in software in general, but I wasn't aware it applied to games to that extent. Essentially, it sounds to me like they are expecting people to pay them for the privilege of working for them, and that is just flat out wrong.

I know I have looked into some of the "work at home" schemes, and there is one tip-off that it is a scam that seems to be always accurate: if they have any charge whatsoever to cut a check, they're not legitimate.

TheRedneck

Everything the OP describes is a symptom of the same problem, I recognized the problem awhile ago but still don't have a solution. Basically the problem is that what you're seeing is the failure of capitalism. Capitalism as an economic system works quite well when most or all of the population is required to provide for everyones needs. What happens though when not everyones work is needed? Unemployment happens. We've addressed this in the past with the concept of planned obsolence. This causes goods to need replacing so that there's an ever present stream of new work to be done, it also raises costs to the consumer over time letting corporations profit which is the whole point of Capitalism.

In the past 20 years or so however we've reached a point where productivity is so high that only a fraction of the population is needed to produce the goods for everyone, even though we're already using a massively inefficient method of creating goods in order to create jobs. Right now only about 50% of the workforce is needed to provide for everyone in the US. Thus, the whole system is falling apart. We've tried to make this up by shifting to service sector jobs which have an unending work supply, but people are only able to consume a finite number of these services, we've maxed out.

If we were to switch to producing quality goods that last 10 years, 20 years, or even lifetimes as we have the engineering capability of doing would cause the portion of the population that's needed to provide for everyone to shrink to a mere 15-20% of the labor force.

How can society function if 85% of the population is unemployed because there's no work for them to do? We could all work just 6 hours per week, but the economic transition to that would take time, goods of high quality have to first be produced to lower consumer demand. Certain jobs don't work well on low hour schedules either such as school teachers and politicians. Though I'm not sure making those the best paying jobs in society is an entirely bad thing.

The real problem, is how to create a system that provides incentive for these concepts. Profit leads to repeated purchases which is the theory behind planned obsolence so profit can't be a motivator in such an economic system, but communism has shown without a personal motivator productivity and the innovation to find better ways to do things lag too far behind.

cosmicexplorer
reply to post by TheRedneck

 

Great write up brother....I have all to well for the last decade at least been let down with promises in the video game industry. I used to beta test and alpha test several games when I was accepted. Back then it was free and you tested a game and worked with developers finding issues with the product and then bam out of no where game was cancelled. Now in video gaming they do this sort of prerelease entry where you pay for the game to play during an alpha or beta...of course I do it cause I like helping advance the game but I rarely see someone deliver anything they claimed they would..its not even close..then its shipped out early filled with bugs and errors as if it is "finished'. People then buy the game only to see how crappy it is....they leave while in a way helping developers improve the game. We will be beta testers for all products.

I'm in the game industry myself. Basically what it comes down to is most game companies are poorly run, my opinion of the industry as a whole is very negative. The modern day philosophy behind creating games basically comes down to the same thing as what casinos do. Create a feedback loop where people perform an action and get rewarded. Make the loop more costly or difficult each time one goes through it to create an addiction cycle where one has to work just a little bit harder for each additional hit. Companies like Zynga take this loop and monetize it by charging you to perform the loop additional times each day. Other companies such as those that make console and computer games monetize the loops with DLC that you purchase for the same advancement rush. The whole thing feels very predatory to me.

One of the big reasons games ship unfinished is because the majority of companies don't understand the design-develop-evaluate-test loop, and don't give ample opportunity to perform it. Most companies tend to minimize the skillset of individual designers as well, which creates a lot of slack and wasted time when a designer has to have a vision, then goto a programmer to create that vision, and then an artist to give visual form to that vision, then finally back to their job to put it all together. It causes a company to need 3-5 people to create one persons idea which is hugely inefficient, and drains budgets, leading to the previously mentioned loop not getting enough time. Good designers are multi disciplined so that they can create whatever their game needs themselves. I hold 4 degrees myself in various computer and artistic types of voodoo, along with several classes in other subjects like music theory and psychology which are good things to know. Most game companies don't want this approach however, they instead focus on an assembly line style where each person does a small part which to me is hugely inefficient when a large portion of game design relies on quantifying subjective ideas.

reply to post by TheRedneck


Nice thread Redneck, S+F!

One section of the entertainment industry I have noticed "promises" becoming more and more prevalent is the video games nowadays.

I used to like a good console game. Nowadays most of them are so dumbed down and not a challenge at all, so I stick with PC games mainly, console games are there just for entertainment it seems.

Anyways, nowadays you can't even walk into a gamestop without the folks behind the counter asking you what games you want to "pre-order" (why pre order it? Why not just buy the game when it comes out?) you can even purchase a "scratch warranty" on the disc itself. They even give you a list every time you walk in with all the new games coming out for you to "pre order".

reply to post by Cancerwarrior


Preorder is basically because game creation is getting ridiculously expensive, prohibitively so. By selling preorders the game company can make a few sales early which then funds development to finish the game. 10 years ago it cost $3 million to produce a AAA title. 5 years ago it cost $25 million. Today the average title costs $40 million, and the AAA next gen titles are quickly approaching $200 million.

This also happens to be why you're seeing an explosion of indie games, especially for phones and tablets. Consumers have a much lower aesthetic standard on those devices, which allows them to be produced for considerably less money.

Nice read...

Something that may be mentioned (if it already has, I am sorry) is that there is an obstacle course of laws between the end user and the corporation making the promise. Now we have corporations that are "too big to fail". If someone goes as far as suing, there is nobody that will be held accountable. It is just computed in as cost of doing business. Pharma has been getting away with this for a long time now. Growing up I never seen commercials asking for you to sign onto class action lawsuits,, now they are all the time and though a pharma company (quite possibly knowing) that a new drug causes some pretty serious side effects they can take the hits of a 300 million dollar lawsuit when their poison product has made them a couple of billion.

I seen someone mention that honor has declined. I don't think it has personally. People are people, good and bad and that hasn't changed much over the centuries but what has changed is the tools available to them.

Mveins0
Hey.. .How about the promise of a government, of... for.... and by the people? Oh wait... nevermind.. that was all a lie.

It wasn't a 'Lie'

It was hijacked...


End the Fed.