Kantok

Kantok

Joined Last seen Member # 2964807
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[quote who="Ekko_Tek" reply="175" id="3425469"] I think this thread is close to jumping the shark...[/quote] Quite possibly. Sorry for my part in it. Happy to get back to economics and globalization.

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="173" id="3425450"] Actually, it does. Caring about yourself and a short list of other people is a short list of other people away from pure evil. The more good you are the more you think about other people and in particular put those other people before yourself and your own loved ones. The people that society unequivocally labels as good have a tendency to share in common the devoting of substantially all of their time and money to helping

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="170" id="3425430"] Quoting Kantok, reply 168Eugenics is a tool is the same way Joseph Mengele was one of Hitler's tools. Evil is evil. Eugenics wasn't needed before, because nature took care of failures But well... I don't like eugenic either. I wear glasses, I'm a genetic mistake too. I'll wait for genetic engineering to fix this ^^ [/quote] What is human progress, if not improv

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="166" id="3425395"] That is why republicans and their "screw the poor" and their "help the corporations" mentalities scare me. [/quote] BTW: This is mindless nonsense. Republicans are no more "screw the poor" than Democrats are "screw the rich". There are nuances to both sides arguments and, in many cases, they have the same end goal with different paths to get there. For example, conservatives believe that fixing

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="166" id="3425395"] Evil and self centered mean the exact same thing. [/quote] No, they don't. Not even close. I'm self centered, or at least self interested, when it comes to my family's safety, financial security and happiness. I care about that more than I do what happens to pretty much anyone else on the planet. That's not evil. It's perfectly normal and it's entirely proper. Anyone

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[quote who="ElanaAhova" reply="164" id="3425358"] And Yes, Kantok, so called 'liberals' have at one time or another attempted to make life better for society by embracing various solutions. That is one aspect of the human experience, exploring, experimenting. [/quote] Experimentation in line with your ideals is of course going to happen on all sides. That's not my point. What's more, you know that's not my point

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[quote who="jecy99" reply="147" id="3424806"] I would say you are under false premises again.. You are talking 8 billion people.. 350 million in the US.... The vast majority of people, and work, are crap jobs, doing things that just cleans up the junk that comes from over crowding.. China has 350 million+ middle class+, and 750m living in poverty.. How would droping those numbers down to half, lessing the drain of resources, be bad?

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[quote who="Turchany" reply="136" id="3424610"] You expect me to be smarter than every economist and philosopher in the world? I don't know what would be better, maybe some kind of Keynesian state controlled capitalism that broke up with this money worshipping and with weaker globalisation?[/quote] There are two things here: First, in regards to Keynes. You know Keynesian just means government controlled, right? The governme

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="wbino49" reply="131" id="3424582"] In the USA. Not gonna happen but...... 1. Raise Minimum wage. 2. Drastically reduce imports. 3. Pro- corporate politicians must be voted out.[/quote] Does nothing positive outside of the short term, because the raised wages will be inflated away. In the short term it helps some people and costs others their jobs. Raising the minimum wages just causes inflation to kill an

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Turchany" reply="133" id="3424592"] But we could have something much better.. [/quote] What's the better system? Tell me? You're offering nothing but complaints and no solutions or suggestions.

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="130" id="3424577"] I see I've read lots of stories on cnbc in recent years, about extremely costly college educations where professors earn millions so that people were not able to study anymore, and that poorer people just didn't have a chance. That must've been just more of that sensasionalist journalistic bullshit then. Thanks for clearing that up.[/quote] It's a topic that is easily sensationalized and i

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[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="128" id="3424572"] Quoting Kantok, reply 127It doesn't matter. Your claim was that the US doesn't spend enough on education. Ok... sorry, the context was about taxes and government not about individuals... In the Netherlands, education is largely paid for by taxes and almost everybody has a chance to go to university. Even transportation is subsidized for students. That means that in the Netherlands, rich people pay large

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="55" id="3424554"] You nailed it! Nice catch![/quote] Wait? I nailed which? I made two comments. Curses! This is just like when I ask my wife is she wants item A or item B and she says "Yes".

58 Replies 175,881 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="126" id="3424550"] That's impressive, but is that government spending or private spending? [/quote] It doesn't matter. Your claim was that the US doesn't spend enough on education. It's spends more as a percentage of GPD or per capita then nearly every other country. The makeup of that spending is irrelevant to your point. The US, as a nation, spends a TON on education.

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Turchany" reply="123" id="3424534"] Do you question that this centrum-periphery duality of capitalism is permanent? I think there will always be rich and poor nations, the rich already have huge advantage. And there weren't many changes in this system, only a few countries could get closer to the developed world (or surpass them, like Japan). I don't think that is so positive to help those poor people by accident or by obligations.. That is not the interest

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="122" id="3424531"] Well they don't. The US government has to borrow a lot of money... like a third of their total budget. On top of that, the US government doesn't spend much on fighting poverty, maintaining roads, having a good education system. I wouldn't call that a fair share... [/quote] You're talking completely out of your ass. For someone who spends so much time quoting numbers and studies when the subject i

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="120" id="3424513"] I think it only works for the better if in combination with a fairly social form of a democratic government. I think that the only really succesful example is formed by Europe. And also the US in the early days when the people still paid their fair share of taxes. Maybe Canada too. The rest of the world still has a long way to go [/quote] Please leave your "fair share -

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Turchany" reply="117" id="3424466"] You don't seem to understand how global economy works. Without poor countries globalisation would end, so it is the interest of developed capitalist countries to keep as many countries poor as possible, while giving the possibility to a few to rise and make more profit for the world, but the route is not open for everyone.. (name as many rich African countries as you can). It is true that capitalism does not profit that much

208 Replies 455,927 Views

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="45" id="3422656"] No Find button in GalCiv III.[/quote] I noticed that. Assumed it was gone because you have that very nice categorized empire tree on the right side of the screen. Another UI question: In the economy shot in the founders' repository, is the dashed line on the economy triangle the revenue break even point for the empire? That's the only thing I can think of. If so, nice touch. More ni

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Looking at the founders' economy screen picture it looks like there is a semi-circular dashed line that (I'm guessing here) shows the boundary for where the your economy goes from positive income to negative. If that's what it is, this is exactly the sort of UI touch that has traditionally been left out (or treated as an after thought) in previous games. I'm curious if that's what it is. If that is what it is, it makes me very excited to see the rest of t

38 Replies 63,297 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="1444" id="3423921"] It's december already ... perhaps it's time to make predictions for the new year! I predict a winter that is warmer than average in the Netherlands Maybe 1 month with some snow and mild frost. I also predict that next summer will be ranked in the top 10 of warmest summers on record. I also predict that the CO2 content of the atmosphere will rise by about 2.5 ppm.<b

2,913 Replies 9,295,194 Views

[quote who="Bellack" reply="92" id="3423804"] I'm all for a RPG remake of BG and am for Multiplayer in GS3.[/quote] Do you mean an actual direct remake of Baldur's Gate? Because that's been done recently. Both 1 and 2 and their expansion packs. http://www.baldursgate.com/

95 Replies 472,414 Views

[quote who="GeomanNL" reply="1415" id="3423282"] Well... what can I say, some people are just playing stubborn. [/quote] Except you, right? You're being emminently reasonable and logical. [quote who="GeomanNL" reply="1419" id="3423303"] Yeah whatever. I think it's up to the next generation, this one is too much in the grip of power money and the desire for luxury. I'm enjoying this life too while I can.

2,913 Replies 9,295,194 Views