This is for topical issues effecting our fair world... you can quit snickering anytime. Note: It is the desire of the leadership of SFDebris Conglomerate that all posters maintain a civil and polite bearing in this forum, regardless of how you feel about any particular issue. Violators will be turned over to Captain Janeway for experimentation.
clearspira wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:01 pmI fail to see any problem in this thread. We are telling tales of our ideal and obviously fantastical societies. Perhaps it is because you disagree with what our ideal and obviously fantastical societies are? What's yours?
Then you are either not paying attention or the OP's question was far more shallow than it has any right to be. By the standards set by the last couple answer-vomits circles by one person in particular, the OP is sufficiently answered by:
In my ideal society, everyone is happy and nobody is unhappy.
I doubt that was the intention. I highly suspect that the OP was expecting answers like the ones from Worfran, Admiral and Wedgius.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Well, in my ideal society, politically speaking, there's a stronger UN, and more direct democracy. Some countries in the world, there isn't any direct democracy at all, like North Korea and Russia, and I think direct democracy is very important. I'd also abolish most nuclear weapons and put them in control of a singular space agency, run by the UN. In case we need them against incoming space objects - like asteroids, or something.
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
clearspira wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:01 pmI fail to see any problem in this thread. We are telling tales of our ideal and obviously fantastical societies. Perhaps it is because you disagree with what our ideal and obviously fantastical societies are? What's yours?
Then you are either not paying attention or the OP's question was far more shallow than it has any right to be. By the standards set by the last couple answer-vomits circles by one person in particular, the OP is sufficiently answered by:
In my ideal society, everyone is happy and nobody is unhappy.
I doubt that was the intention. I highly suspect that the OP was expecting answers like the ones from Worfran, Admiral and Wedgius.
I fail to see how ''everyone is happy and nobody is unhappy'' applies to my ideal society at all. I think you'll find that MANY people will be unhappy because I'll be torturing them as starving African children and women in oppressed countries to show them exactly what it feels like and thus build empathy. I find it very hard to believe that Saudi Arabia would have reached 2018 and only just granted women the right to drive a car if those same men on mass frequently woke up without those rights either.
Is this an unrealistic fantasy? Yeah, of course. But then so is the idea of workers owning the means of production AKA communism because in a world where corporations have more power, more money and own more land than many world leaders only an armed coup could bring it forth true communism, and only force could keep the old order from staging their own coup to bring the old world back. Otherwise you get capitalism or fascism masking itself as communism such as basically every communist country in world history. In short: there is plenty of unhappiness for all or we just admit that this is an unrealistic fantasy and move on.
I don't know how well it would work but I had thought of a society with property law based around that old idea of 'we borrow it from our children.' Instead of 'taxes' you pay 'rent,' yes it is kinda the same thing but the idea is that you are renting it from the next generation who is just as entitled to it as you are. So you pay rent to the state who is holding it in trust for those who will come after you. You only pay it on the stuff that you did not produce yourself, the land, the air and the water.
One grey area would be extraction of materials like oil or iron. You can drill a hole, pump out oil and turn it into fuel but you did not make the oil that's in the ground. Until you pump it out it does not belong to you...so how is that supposed to work?
In my ideal society, I'd like to see utopian conditions for everyone via machinery performing our labors, free education, medicine, shelter, food, etc. While also being educated and driven enough to try to further improve and discuss things rationally and from different points of view. A modern version of Enlightenment era cafes with polite discussion about all manner of topics, so as to get all points of view, while not letting the conversation getting distracted by flash style delivery, anger, and the sidestepping of an issue due to a side.
And yes, this thread is to try and reach consensus through civilized dialogue. For instance....
I think forced torture of people by experiencing war crimes via the same method as the Voyager episode "Memorial" isn't a good idea, due to the potential of causing psychological harm to people. Whereas a better possibility could be education and cultural analysis through integration, study, and entertainment.
This could allow us to remember the problems of the past while not keeping the cycle of it going.
If y'all see problems with this approach, please state them and we'll hammer it out.
Well, that's going to require making the rich give up their money, and they won't do so willingly. They'll invest in automation, and hoard their money, even as people get so poor they can't buy their products, and eventually that money runs out.
Education and cultural analysis through "integration, study, and entertainment?" Isn't that kind of what we do now? What do you mean? And that doesn't always work. Look at the 2008 war film A Woman in Berlin with its very clear political mindset that led it to fail.
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
Automation will be coming anyway(barring end of civilization), so we'll either be dealing with a society that is taking care of it's people, or the fallout of one that will not that will lead to a society that is taking care of it's people(again, barring end of civilization). If the latter comes, we'll have to deal with it, and try to prevent things going off the deep end.
For education, entertainment, and discussion, such things aren't everywhere and with everyone. Helping with that will help in recognizing different points of view. Increasing standard of living worldwide, as well as creating areas wherein they're allowed to talk things out would help. Nowadays we lack enforcement of facts and truth in such forums, which muddles the issues, and allows the loudest voice to win, as opposed to the sanest or most accurate. Ensuring a proper forum will ensure a proper exchange of ideas, and allow people who disagree to try and agree with each other.
Think a college campus debate academic debate, reliant on evidence and widespread enough so that anyone can engage.
Preventing trolls would be a necessary issue.(both of the lone idiot kind, and the corporate or government factory backed kind)
The big issue I think of is the subdivide of sub-communities, wherein people stick to their corners and don't mingle, creating echo chambers. Which is the major problem with online forums, wherein camps are established and ideas and viewpoints don't cross-pollinate unless in hostile form with each other.
Hence why I'm trying this Hegelian Dialectic idea, of trying to establish commonalities, have civil discussion, and trying to iron out kinks in a civilized manner.
A key to this might be having the anonymity in such discussions restrained, by making Town Halls and civic engagement more popular in the real world as opposed to the online one of forums and Reddit. This will allow people to interact with each other, while moderated, and talk about what they see and what they want fixed.
On the grassroots level, a potential idea is to have cafes do , in addition to poetry slams or other such things, discussion nights. Have people come in, discuss extensively about a topic, and debate it. The problem would be getting people from all areas to come and discuss it.
Maybe it'll fall apart to flaming and insults? Maybe no one would come? But it'd be an interesting experiment.
