TheRPGSite

All this past week, SJWs on D&D Twitter have been DEMANDING that they must be paid a "living wage", presumably paid by YOU, for their making games no one likes or videos no one watches or just tweeting 'diversity'.

There IS a way to make a living wage with RPGs... but probably not for SJWs.




[video=youtube_share;W5rFJ9WiwA8]https://youtu.be/W5rFJ9WiwA8[/youtube]

LOL. This "living wage" bullshit is hysterical.

Here's my response: Coffee is for closers!!!

When you choose to "eat what you hunt" for a living, aka any job based on commission sales (like art, game design, food trucks, freelance whatever, etc), you MUST accept the risk vs. reward OR you get a regular salary job and accept that situation. And that risk level is x10 harder when you want to sell entertainment, aka unnecessary luxuries.

BTW, "coffee is for closers" is a real thing, not a movie meme. I've worked sales boiler rooms where everything from leads to snacks to pens were dealt out based on your weekly sales success. Those were crazy places, but if you're a cash driven nutter, they can be kinda fun and very lucrative.

This has been around a while now and designers in board games have been pushing for a "pey per word" fee and then throw a fit when we point out that you are expected to produce less words. Not more when submitting a design.

Or artists wanting "pay per hour"... hah-hah! You funny kid. No.

Or designers wanting Pro level royalties for an unknown. And of course they throw a fit when we point out those people getting better pay or royalties had to work and build up their reputation to get that.

And so on ad nausium. This is nothing new.

Well the usual way to demand higher wages is to go on strike.  They should try that.  :D

Now that FFG has closed their RPG department, is there any RPG company left, other than WOTC, that has a staff of full time RPG writers?

Why is it the people who do the least useful work are the ones who complain the most about a "livable wage"? I can replace a cashier with a kiosk and a robot can flip hamburgers; writing new RPGs doesn't even approach the level of usefulness of either of those tasks. Not to mention, none of those people actually want to work, anyway, which is the main point of your video. They just want to do a $500k Kickstarter based on something they MIGHT do, then expect everyone to buy fifty copies of it with zero marketing.

What's really funny is how hard Gygax busted his ass to make D&D. Publishing a boxed set in 1974 was probably 10x harder than today, and that dude had a full-time job and a family to support.

Well said!

Quote from: Brad;1120931Why is it the people who do the least useful work are the ones who complain the most about a "livable wage"? I can replace a cashier with a kiosk and a robot can flip hamburgers; writing new RPGs doesn't even approach the level of usefulness of either of those tasks. Not to mention, none of those people actually want to work, anyway, which is the main point of your video. They just want to do a $500k Kickstarter based on something they MIGHT do, then expect everyone to buy fifty copies of it with zero marketing.

What's really funny is how hard Gygax busted his ass to make D&D. Publishing a boxed set in 1974 was probably 10x harder than today, and that dude had a full-time job and a family to support.

They like to conflate 'work' with the person.

A person, in my opinion, has a variable worth, but save for the most atrocious wastes of space, can be net-valued at 'priceless' (yeah, I'm an optimist...).

But the work is another matter entirely. In other words, if your dog food is garbage, dogs will not eat it (and dog owners won't buy it), no matter how pretty the packaging and how neat the ad jingle is.

More to the point: the energy you expend via labor is only worth what someone else values it for. If I dig a series of holes, preparatory to putting in fence posts, then yes, I am generating income (assuming someone is paying me for this) or increasing value (assuming it's my land instead). If I dig a hole, fill it back up, dig it again, ad nauseum for 8 hours, what have I done of value?

And this is why we need to start teaching basic economics again.

I mean no sarcasm when I ask what do they mean by a "living wage"? If your job isn't satisfying your fiscal needs, do something else. You get paid what you think you're worth.

I suggest that they move to a country with the best combination they can find of low standard of living but viable communication channels.  Bingo, they'll still be paid what their work is worth, but now they'll be able to afford food, shelter, etc.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1120943I mean no sarcasm when I ask what do they mean by a "living wage"? If your job isn't satisfying your fiscal needs, do something else. You get paid what you think you're worth.

If you actually try to understand what they're saying, it boils down to the notion that they should be able to pursue whatever career they wish, but still gain the same financial standing as people who choose more lucrative careers. For instance, if I decide to be an artist and make sculptures, I should be paid the same amount as a doctor or engineer because we shouldn't have to give up our dreams for money. It's the most asinine thing I've ever heard in my life, and an outgrowth of morons who don't understand the real implications of socialism. Using their logic, there is zero point to do anything other than sit in a basement and play videogames all day because if it's whatever you want to do, you should be paid to do it. Like why am I even bothering busting my ass to get more education and spend countless hours in class, at work, taking care of my kids, etc., when I should just be goofing off and getting paid the same as a neurosurgeon? The end result, of course, is that there will no longer be neurosurgeons, and everyone will just be jacked into the matrix engaging in hedonistic fantasies, which I assume is the goal...easier to control people that way.

Quote from: Brad;1120949If you actually try to understand what they're saying, it boils down to the notion that they should be able to pursue whatever career they wish, but still gain the same financial standing as people who choose more lucrative careers. For instance, if I decide to be an artist and make sculptures, I should be paid the same amount as a doctor or engineer because we shouldn't have to give up our dreams for money. It's the most asinine thing I've ever heard in my life, and an outgrowth of morons who don't understand the real implications of socialism. Using their logic, there is zero point to do anything other than sit in a basement and play videogames all day because if it's whatever you want to do, you should be paid to do it. Like why am I even bothering busting my ass to get more education and spend countless hours in class, at work, taking care of my kids, etc., when I should just be goofing off and getting paid the same as a neurosurgeon? The end result, of course, is that there will no longer be neurosurgeons, and everyone will just be jacked into the matrix engaging in hedonistic fantasies, which I assume is the goal...easier to control people that way.

I have nothing to add other than "Bravo!".

Quote from: Brad;1120949If you actually try to understand what they're saying, it boils down to the notion that they should be able to pursue whatever career they wish, but still gain the same financial standing as people who choose more lucrative careers. For instance, if I decide to be an artist and make sculptures, I should be paid the same amount as a doctor or engineer because we shouldn't have to give up our dreams for money. It's the most asinine thing I've ever heard in my life, and an outgrowth of morons who don't understand the real implications of socialism. Using their logic, there is zero point to do anything other than sit in a basement and play videogames all day because if it's whatever you want to do, you should be paid to do it. Like why am I even bothering busting my ass to get more education and spend countless hours in class, at work, taking care of my kids, etc., when I should just be goofing off and getting paid the same as a neurosurgeon? The end result, of course, is that there will no longer be neurosurgeons, and everyone will just be jacked into the matrix engaging in hedonistic fantasies, which I assume is the goal...easier to control people that way.

Yes. Hedonism is the end goal.

I remember seeing a post from one of them once that literally said "Just because I'm working a "Dream Job" doesn't mean I'm not entitled to a living wage."

RPG's are a niche cottage market.. but honestly right now? This is the best, most open time you can ever get into the industry. Self publishing is easier than ever, and multiple companies have ways you can write for them, design your own products under their rule system, and put it up on Drive thru rpg for Sale.

This is the time where you can write RPG's as a labor of love and get some supplemental income to your day job. But you don't quit your Day Job.

For those of us not on Twitter, is there any screen caps or links to where this is being discussed?

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1120943I mean no sarcasm when I ask what do they mean by a "living wage"? If your job isn't satisfying your fiscal needs, do something else. You get paid what you think you're worth.

Generally a "living wage" is enough money to meet your necessary physical living expenses (food, rent, utilities) with at least a little money left over for leisure activity, a certain minimum amount of time left over to enjoy that leisure, and the ability to save enough to build up a reserve against future lack of income.

It is certainly true that there are still quite a few jobs where the pay rate is too low to meet these criteria, i.e. if you keep your time worked within healthy limits, you don't have enough money, and if you work enough hours to achieve your minimum income, you don't have enough time left in the week to enjoy it or even recover properly. But as any polity which has ever passed minimum-wage laws has found out, if you force an employer to pay more for a job than the job is worth in labour, the employer will either find a way to do without the job being done or will ultimately go out of business.

Living Wage Social Justice Warriors?

They don't have a clue.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120963But as any polity which has ever passed minimum-wage laws has found out, if you force an employer to pay more for a job than the job is worth in labour, the employer will either find a way to do without the job being done or will ultimately go out of business.

Yes.  Very special case of that here.  "We demand you pay us what we want for our product or the product can't exist."  "OK, the product won't exist."  

From that perspective, it's a win-win for everyone.  :)

Somehow, these are never the people who make something in (real or latent) demand, like Kevin Crawford, but the people who want to write mini-games based on deconstructing capitalism in the context of Lacan and Foucault. Their position on games that actually get played is that those should go away, because they are sexist, racist, and all kinds of problematic.

BTW, Pundit, did you base the example in your video on this ZineQuest pitch? (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fencedforest/dish-pit-witches) Because there is an uncanny resemblance. :D

QuoteDish Pit Witches
a small RPG zine about gay witches who work in a restaurant, based on the Tunnel Goons system.

(https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/027/843/458/cf5ae30935ecb625e327dac0d1ffe0a0_original.png)

Hi, I'm Blake Stone! (He/him or they/them, please.) I'm a queer witch who's spent years working in food service, and who also makes tabletop RPGs. It seems pretty natural that I should make an RPG about being a queer witch working in food service, right?

This game is the second, expanded & updated version of the game originally available on itch.io. It borrows many of its systems from the Tunnel Goons system by Nate Treme.

Dish Pit Witches is designed to be played with 2-5 players and a GM. Players need only 2d6, a pencil, and paper. It is a narrative-heavy, combat-free game that follows the lives of employees in a restaurant setting. You aren't playing as the chefs or the waiters -- no, that'd be much too glamorous. Perhaps you'll be an exhausted busser, a perpetually-drenched dishwasher, a harried host, or a long-suffering sommelier. The game tracks time in a way that allows for short, modular play sessions (one session = one in-game day), with downtime taking place at the end of each session.

(https://66.media.tumblr.com/abf604d05666ab78424ee2e92c9e8281/148ed0c5cfdbefbb-5c/s1280x1920/805f2c4796164f2e410beb465dd9a0f65a9940d4.png)

Quote from: Melan;1120971Somehow, these are never the people who make something in (real or latent) demand, like Kevin Crawford, but the people who want to write mini-games based on deconstructing capitalism in the context of Lacan and Foucault. Their position on games that actually get played is that those should go away, because they are sexist, racist, and all kinds of problematic.

BTW, Pundit, did you base the example in your video on this ZineQuest pitch? (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fencedforest/dish-pit-witches) Because there is an uncanny resemblance. :D

Does this clown realize capitalism is the vehicle that allows his creation to exist?

Also...gay witch cooks. If that isn't the most niche of the niche, I have no idea what is.

[video=youtube;xK3jI8Z6eo8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK3jI8Z6eo8[/youtube]

Quote from: Melan;1120971BTW, Pundit, did you base the example in your video on this ZineQuest pitch? (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fencedforest/dish-pit-witches) Because there is an uncanny resemblance. :D

Oh goodness. OK, bizarre premise aside (and from the introduction, I can't see how being gay or a witch factors into anything aside from the author themselves), just what is it exactly one is supposed to *do* in this game? And why would I want to play a game about being an oppressed restaurant worker? What's next, "in this game you play as oppressed pansexual otherkin hitmen from Jupiter picking orders from their Amazon cages"?

Edit: Hell, I could use a few hundred bucks. Maybe I'll stick it to Da Man and write it myself!

Yeah, the same thing occurred to me while reading that pitch. 'I am flaming GAY' is a backstory (or a character quirk), not, you know, something you can base a viable RPG around. But he had to make "a narrative-heavy, combat-free game that follows the lives of employees in a restaurant setting", the least interesting game idea after Bus Driver: The Bussening.

Quote from: Haffrung;1120962For those of us not on Twitter, is there any screen caps or links to where this is being discussed?

The tweet that started it all. The important thing to realize is that she isn't talking about writing game material like rules or adventures, she's talking about making D&D livestreams. That's why she's using terms like "creators" and is talking about D&D as a "medium".

https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1219793872844292098

Quote from: Orphan81;1120957I remember seeing a post from one of them once that literally said "Just because I'm working a "Dream Job" doesn't mean I'm not entitled to a living wage."

'Entitled" along with "deserve" are two words that should be stricken from the language, as they seem to have strayed so far from their original definitions that they have lost all meaning

And Brad, you are on a roll :) I like what I'm reading.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120979The tweet that started it all. The important thing to realize is that she isn't talking about writing game material like rules or adventures, she's talking about making D&D livestreams. That's why she's using terms like "creators" and is talking about D&D as a "medium".

https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1219793872844292098

:rolleyes: Pathetic.

Quote from: Melan;1120978Yeah, the same thing occurred to me while reading that pitch. 'I am flaming GAY' is a backstory (or a character quirk), not, you know, something you can base a viable RPG around. But he had to make "a narrative-heavy, combat-free game that follows the lives of employees in a restaurant setting", the least interesting game idea after Bus Driver: The Bussening.

But that's the thing...you COULD make an interesting RPG out of any of that stuff if you just went full-blast. Sure, you're a gay witch cook, you work in a regular diner, and some mob bosses roll in and want some cannellonis but of course you don't have any fresh pasta or the means to make it, so now you have to cast a spell to create the dish. Of course you fail and make a really bad ravioli then the mobsters start tearing the place up and you have to fight them using your magical spells or some crap. Just go Wendy's-style, with slick art and a 100% commitment to the theme.

I imagine that's not what's going on here, though. It's probably just a "game" created so this dude can bitch about his life, and where's the fun in that?

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120979The tweet that started it all. The important thing to realize is that she isn't talking about writing game material like rules or adventures, she's talking about making D&D livestreams. That's why she's using terms like "creators" and is talking about D&D as a "medium".

https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1219793872844292098

"Creator." That's the same bullshit as "influencer." Some of those morons on Instagram get paid astronomical sums to pose with shitty energy drinks, and some get zero. Should they all get the same amount, regardless? That's essentially the argument here. But as someone in the comments points out, you can maybe have I dunno, five ridiculously paid Instahoes, and thousands of others get bupkis. The same goes with these "creators." I don't think the RPG hobby can support more than a couple of the Critical Role-type shows, but it WILL reward you if you have a superior product and you can possibly replace Critical Role if you're good enough. They're not good enough.

Because of automation there will come a day that the labor of individual can feed 100,000 people. The labor of another individual can clothe a 100,000, the labor of another still provide the minor household goods for 100,000.

Hand and hand with that it will be trivial for an individual to setup the equipment to produce and distribute the above for a smaller group say around 1,000.

That day has already arrived for the book publishing industry and slowly creeping through the video/film industry and the electronics industry.

None of the economic theories of the past century are equipped to deal with that level of abundance or an absurd level of productivity. However the side effects are starting to be felt. if you don't need the labor to produce the necessities or luxuries what then? And it will be a hodgepodge with somethings still scarce like trying to live in a desired location, or possessing a one of a kind item.

I do know that living wages doesn't address this issue especially now in when it still very much developing. Whatever is done, the stupidly low barriers of entry will allow individuals to undercut any large movement oriented around some form of control which living wages represents.

Quote from: Brad;1120982"Creator." That's the same bullshit as "influencer." Some of those morons on Instagram get paid astronomical sums to pose with shitty energy drinks, and some get zero. Should they all get the same amount, regardless? That's essentially the argument here. But as someone in the comments points out, you can maybe have I dunno, five ridiculously paid Instahoes, and thousands of others get bupkis. The same goes with these "creators." I don't think the RPG hobby can support more than a couple of the Critical Role-type shows, but it WILL reward you if you have a superior product and you can possibly replace Critical Role if you're good enough. They're not good enough.

Maybe she can start selling some Gamer Girl Bathwater (TM) to shore up her accounts while she figures out how to "fix" the RPG "Creator" industry and can eventually earn what she is owed and deserves.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120963Generally a "living wage" is enough money to meet your necessary physical living expenses (food, rent, utilities) with at least a little money left over for leisure activity, a certain minimum amount of time left over to enjoy that leisure, and the ability to save enough to build up a reserve against future lack of income.

It's like the word assault rifle. A buzzword to mask what they want. "Living Wage" means fucking NOTHING. Living in a box with nutrient paste and a rat for entertainment is a living wage.

In practice, it just translates too "More Money".

Fuck I make some RPG stuff as a hobby and am happy to bring joy to many people and get a small payment on the side.

Quote from: estar;1120983Because of automation there will come a day that the labor of individual can feed 100,000 people. The labor of another individual can clothe a 100,000, the labor of another still provide the minor household goods for 100,000.

So people will be fatter and more entitled. Human desire is limitless without other values.

I guess I just see RPGs, Xboxes and Frappucinos as having nothing to do with a living wage. Income enough to not die? That's a living wage.

Aren't these some of the same people that have told sections of the gamer community that they "literally don't want your money? "

They seem to think we're in TNG Federation's utopia Earth,  but the real world is more like Ferenginar (except the women are clothed unless they choose not to be).

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120985"Living Wage" means fucking NOTHING. Living in a box with nutrient paste and a rat for entertainment is a living wage.

Quote from: Alderaan CrumbsI guess I just see RPGs, Xboxes and Frappucinos as having nothing to do with a living wage. Income enough to not die? That's a living wage.

Well, you're neither of you wrong, but there's raw survival and then there's living. Every major philosophy has recognized that even the absolute minimum requirements for human psychological health go beyond pure technical physical survival; the whole point of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is that while the hierarchy dictates which needs are more urgent, by definition they're all needs and missing any of them is a genuine problem.

That said, while all the needs may be important, the desire to meet both an economic need and a psychological one through the same action is not something anybody else is obliged to fulfill for you. It's a bonus if what we do to make a living and what we love to do are the same action, but nobody else can bring that about -- although, fortunately, most humans are actually quite good at learning to like doing what they find they can profit by, or to find ways to profit by what they like doing. They simply have to be willing to adapt and put in the work.

Quote from: Brad;1120931Why is it the people who do the least useful work are the ones who complain the most about a "livable wage"? I can replace a cashier with a kiosk and a robot can flip hamburgers; writing new RPGs doesn't even approach the level of usefulness of either of those tasks. Not to mention, none of those people actually want to work, anyway, which is the main point of your video. They just want to do a $500k Kickstarter based on something they MIGHT do, then expect everyone to buy fifty copies of it with zero marketing.

What's really funny is how hard Gygax busted his ass to make D&D. Publishing a boxed set in 1974 was probably 10x harder than today, and that dude had a full-time job and a family to support.

Because they're weak of ethical and moral character and view the world through their own infantile bubble of self-loathing narcissism which demands the world cater to them.

Edit: I work my ass off at my day job. I'd RATHER be doing full-time writing and game-design to feed my family, put my children through college, and pay off my mortgage. But you know... *REALITY* is a motherfucker. Welcome to it, children.

Quote from: tenbones;1120992Because they're weak of ethical and moral character and view the world through their own infantile bubble of self-loathing narcissism which demands the world cater to them.

Edit: I work my ass off at my day job. I'd RATHER be doing full-time writing and game-design to feed my family, put my children through college, and pay off my mortgage. But you know... *REALITY* is a motherfucker. Welcome to it, children.

Ding-ding-ding!

I honestly hate this attitude. I see it a lot in self-publishing fiction circles too - the "why can't people see that I'm so much better than author XYZ" and "the average reader is too shallow to understand my work" complaints make it hard to try to socialize or network with a lot of people trying to break into writing, as does the aforementioned "why can't people just pay me to create" whine we're seeing from so-called Creators here. I have no illusions about my own body of work - that's why I still have a full-time job as a technical writer and appreciate the small amount my creative side ventures have brought me in the brief windows my life/work are calm enough to hammer out fiction on the side - nobody should subsidize my life just because my ego says I tell a good story. If I can't go out there and make people believe it (and I'm pretty awful about self promotion), then "don't quite your day job" is the reality I have to live by, and so do they whether they believe it or not.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120990Well, you're neither of you wrong, but there's raw survival and then there's living. Every major philosophy has recognized that even the absolute minimum requirements for human psychological health go beyond pure technical physical survival; the whole point of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is that while the hierarchy dictates which needs are more urgent, by definition they're all needs and missing any of them is a genuine problem.

I believe even Maslow doesn't really recognize that heirarchy as the be all end all of mental examination. This doesn't undo the fact that "Living Wage" is just a buzzword of bullshit.

Quote from: tenbones;1120992Because they're weak of ethical and moral character and view the world through their own infantile bubble of self-loathing narcissism which demands the world cater to them.

Edit: I work my ass off at my day job. I'd RATHER be doing full-time writing and game-design to feed my family, put my children through college, and pay off my mortgage. But you know... *REALITY* is a motherfucker. Welcome to it, children.

My question was rhetorical, but expected this answer.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120979The tweet that started it all. The important thing to realize is that she isn't talking about writing game material like rules or adventures, she's talking about making D&D livestreams. That's why she's using terms like "creators" and is talking about D&D as a "medium".

https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1219793872844292098

Ah, okay. I thought the people working on livestreams were aspiring actors using the gig for their portfolio. They really think they're going to earn a living from this? Yet another dumb belief Critical Role has to answer for.

If you are making 30K a year making RPGs, that is a living wage in the Midwest and your parents can co-sign on that mortgage (cash in on that privileged you are so guilty about) and you can rent out rooms to local friends, then you could live very comfortably.

I don't think you are entitled to move away from family to Seattle or some other big city and expect your location-independent career to take off. (I think you could argue that people do have a right to have gainful employment where all there friends and family grew up, rather than breaking up communities by expecting everyone to move and see relatives once a year).

The self-described "communicator" Talien at ENWorld wrote a typically mindless diatribe arguing for this living wage nonsense for RPGers a couple of years ago. As expected, it enjoying a lot of popular support.

Karl Marx must be so happy that his perverted and oft-discredited labour theory of value still finds adherents even after a century where that theory helped murder more than 100 million people.

Quote from: Mishihari;1120921Well the usual way to demand higher wages is to go on strike.  They should try that.  :D

LOL. Awesome!

Quote from: Brad;1120931What's really funny is how hard Gygax busted his ass to make D&D. Publishing a boxed set in 1974 was probably 10x harder than today, and that dude had a full-time job and a family to support.

THIS is absolutely true.

And it was FAR easier to do in 1974 than 1954 or 1934.

Quote from: Brad;1120949For instance, if I decide to be an artist and make sculptures, I should be paid the same amount as a doctor or engineer because we shouldn't have to give up our dreams for money.

Here's the joke though.

As a sculptor, you could earn equal or more than a doctor or engineer.

Or somewhat less. Or not even a pittance.

That's the crapshoot of being an entrepreneur selling luxury goods. And if you're just the sculptor who never gets involved with sales and only crafts your dreams, you have made your financial road harder, but still not impossible if you have an audience with open wallets.

Quote from: Brad;1120974Does this clown realize capitalism is the vehicle that allows his creation to exist?

I blame the school system. I have no idea how we've allowed multiple generations to not understand how everything they have is entirely provided by capitalism, and if they want more, that's only coming through more capitalism.

Quote from: Mishihari;1120921Well the usual way to demand higher wages is to go on strike.  They should try that.  :D

If they can do it and make it stick then they deserve higher rates. However, there isn't that much money sloshing around the rpg industry so this may have strange and unexpected side effects.

Quote from: Haffrung;1120962For those of us not on Twitter, is there any screen caps or links to where this is being discussed?

Its all over. About every few months either an artist or designer posts a bitch rant over there about how they should be payed sight unseen the same fees and royalties as a veteran designer. Or they should be payed more and more because "dat mean ol' greedy publisher is a taken alla muh munny!!!" wah way ad fucking idiocracy.

And of course blow up in a rage when you explain to them the logistics of game publishing.

"Well the players should just have to pay more!" is sometimes their response.

Alot of this tends to stem from pure ignorance of game development costs. This tend to be the really hard lesson designers learn the hard way when they hie off to Kickstarted with visions of dollar signs in their eyes and then POW!!! "Jesus Christ this costs so much to produce and it takes so much planning and oraganization and connections and more cost and retailer cuts and arrrrgh!!!"

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121037I blame the school system. I have no idea how we've allowed multiple generations to not understand how everything they have is entirely provided by capitalism, and if they want more, that's only coming through more capitalism.

That's an easy one.  Many of the people instructing each new generation have gone straight from being educated themselves to educating others without any personal experience about how the world really works in between.  So we get regurgitated notions from the past and new nonsense these folks come up with based purely on theory without any benefit of experience.  I believe that I find a lot less of this in my two professions (engineering and business) only because the people doing the instruction have to to have real world experience.

Quote from: Mishihari;1121100That's an easy one.  Many of the people instructing each new generation have gone straight from being educated themselves to educating others without any personal experience about how the world really works in between.  So we get regurgitated notions from the past and new nonsense these folks come up with based purely on theory without any benefit of experience.  I believe that I find a lot less of this in my two professions (engineering and business) only because the people doing the instruction have to to have real world experience.

Or you work in a large company and realize wealth is accumulating at the top by no virtue than simply having a lot of money in the first place.

I'm only on capitalism's side when it promotes innovation and I am rapidly being convinced that the search for quarter by quarter profits are leading to less and less innovation. (Also people can't afford to buy cool new stuff if rich people have all the money).

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121121Or you work in a large company and realize wealth is accumulating at the top by no virtue than simply having a lot of money in the first place.

It's more the case that universal historical tendencies of mankind are blamed at capitalism.
Power accumulating to the top has been the case for as long as humans could comprehend hierarchy enough to make Teepees.

Capitalism has done more to reduce that gap than anything else in history. Left people with enough time to get super bitter and angry and demand for systems that don't work and will leave them starving so they don't have the time to whine anymore.

However, Capitalism is just a magical buzzword with no context meant to whine at whatever the people dislike that day.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121121Or you work in a large company and realize wealth is accumulating at the top by no virtue than simply having a lot of money in the first place.

I'm only on capitalism's side when it promotes innovation and I am rapidly being convinced that the search for quarter by quarter profits are leading to less and less innovation. (Also people can't afford to buy cool new stuff if rich people have all the money).

And having created said company and having all the risks while the employees have almost none. Said job would not exist had it not been for the evul capitalist that created the RPG publisher in the first time, at his expense and risk, and now comes some asshole to demand to make just as much money as the company owners.

Easy solution, quit, create your own RPG company and by competition drive the evul capitalist out of business, after all without you he has no business and no way to accumulate more money right?

People seriously need to get a few lessons on economics and how does wealth get created.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121121Or you work in a large company and realize wealth is accumulating at the top by no virtue than simply having a lot of money in the first place.

I'm only on capitalism's side when it promotes innovation and I am rapidly being convinced that the search for quarter by quarter profits are leading to less and less innovation. (Also people can't afford to buy cool new stuff if rich people have all the money).

Rich people pay for innovation and therefore promote innovation by definition.  For example the first people to buy automobiles were rich people.  There would not be a market for automobiles if there were not rich people spending money to buy automobiles.  Then further innovation and automation was able to lower the price to where everyone can buy a automobile if they want one.

If you are poor and struggling to survive day to day how much band width do you have available to innovate? You can blame rich people and capitalism for a lot of things but stifling innovation?  No, thats not one.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121136And having created said company and having all the risks while the employees have almost none. Said job would not exist had it not been for the evul capitalist that created the RPG publisher in the first time, at his expense and risk, and now comes some asshole to demand to make just as much money as the company owners.

Easy solution, quit, create your own RPG company and by competition drive the evul capitalist out of business, after all without you he has no business and no way to accumulate more money right?

People seriously need to get a few lessons on economics and how does wealth get created.

Hahaha you think I am talking about you. Feel attacked after you start making a billion a year in revenue.

You are, at best, middle class.

Quote from: Shasarak;1121146Rich people pay for innovation and therefore promote innovation by definition.  For example the first people to buy automobiles were rich people.  There would not be a market for automobiles if there were not rich people spending money to buy automobiles.  Then further innovation and automation was able to lower the price to where everyone can buy a automobile if they want one.

If you are poor and struggling to survive day to day how much band width do you have available to innovate? You can blame rich people and capitalism for a lot of things but stifling innovation?  No, thats not one.

Rich people don't pay for shit, it's why they are Rich. Ford payed his workers enough to buy his cars and that was better marketing for them than a couple Rich people owning them.
Now at a big company innovation is "buying smaller companies" and I know that from first hand experience. The suits couldn't even consider starting their own R&D it's too risky.

Me, I don't struggle. I do see the problem though. These large corporation need broken up/nationalized and the billionaires need be taxed down to only a billion dollars. The free market is a useful tool if you keep it working. Letting vast resources coalesce at the top and letting the economy die as most of us can barely afford anything is not the free market working to benefit of society. Innovation is risky and there are plenty of ways to buy more money that are much lower risks.

This is a tangent, Hasbro is a big business while WotC is not nor is any other RPG company. People are just flabbergasted why more and more young people are leaning socialist and think it's those damn hippy teachers not shitty jobs, low wages, and any decent form of healthcare being called socialist.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121157Letting vast resources coalesce at the top and letting the economy die as most of us can barely afford anything is not the free market working to benefit of society.

"Barely afford anything"???

Black Friday in 2019 was record breaking. And that's just one bullshit sales day.  
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/11/30/record-black-friday-sales-14-growth-to-72b-in-digital-revenue/#3e64f7106aff

The problem is the working and middle class were sold the myth of being non-stop consumers. Got an iPhone 8? Oh noes, better get that iPhone 11! See that new thing on IG? Gotta have it now! Prime 2 day is too slow, pay for 2 hour delivery!! Can't play that old Xbox anymore! Gotta get the new one! Can't eat at home when all those hot restaurants are opening! Can't have mom make sandwiches for lunch because we gotta have branded paleo-bento boxes! Gotta get a new car for the fam! Can't buy a used one or fix what we have! What would the neighbors think???

The economy is in overdrive and it's not a couple evil billionaires buying up everything. It's the working and middle class buying, buying, buying in a desperate drive to fill their empty souls.

And thankfully, the masses will keep buying!!!

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121157This is a tangent, Hasbro is a big business while WotC is not nor is any other RPG company. People are just flabbergasted why more and more young people are leaning socialist and think it's those damn hippy teachers not shitty jobs, low wages, and any decent form of healthcare being called socialist.

Jobs have always been shitty. That's why its called "going to work" and not "having a fun time." If anything, jobs are less shitty today because our workplaces are safer than ever and few people do actual back breaking labor.

Wages aren't low. Minimum wage is absurdly high. Flunkies who can barely function now make $20k or more and still qualify for government goodies. As for college grads, their wages depend on their industry. A gender studies major won't make the same as an engineer, or even an electrician.

If someone isn't happy with their wage, there has NEVER been a better time to start your own company, even just a side business out of your garage for beer money. Although, its true housing costs in some areas have outpaced wages. The answer is there are 48 states beyond New York and California, and there's cheap areas in those states too.

Healthcare is expensive, but more technology and information exists than ever before so people can monitor and enhance their own health. But if you buy good insurance, you get excellent care with medical tech that didn't exist two decades ago. Also, much of health depends on diet and exercise, and anyone with a basic job can eat smartly and get their ass outside for a walk.

Our dumbshit youth begging for communism's barren kiss had better pray they never get what they wish for. If the USA adopts "socialism", the result will be rampant poverty, unemployment and crime these little bitches have never imagined.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121163Healthcare is expensive, but more technology and information exists than ever before so people can monitor and enhance their own health. But if you buy good insurance, you get excellent care with medical tech that didn't exist two decades ago. Also, much of health depends on diet and exercise, and anyone with a basic job can eat smartly and get their ass outside for a walk.

I'll leave most of that as "up for debate" or "actually agree with you". This is bullshit though. You can't buy good insurance. As in good insurance tends to cost more than it ever could cover because our system is stupid. Our pro athletes go to Europe to get fixed up because American healthcare is both more expensive and worse with way more people dying on waiting lists in America than in all those "socialist countries".

Good old diet and exercise is great! It's not a healthcare system.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121168I'll leave most of that as "up for debate" or "actually agree with you". This is bullshit though. You can't buy good insurance. As in good insurance tends to cost more than it ever could cover because our system is stupid. Our pro athletes go to Europe to get fixed up because American healthcare is both more expensive and worse with way more people dying on waiting lists in America than in all those "socialist countries".

Good old diet and exercise is great! It's not a healthcare system.

Citation needed.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121157Hahaha you think I am talking about you. Feel attacked after you start making a billion a year in revenue.

And then the commissar aproached me with a smile on his face. He wiped the tears out of my eyes and said:
"You have nothing to fear. We will shoot you last"

I know many small buisness owners that had to shutter down or sell because of constant beurocracy or minimum wage laws. And people like you don't give a shit.

Im sorry but with that kind of logic there is a strong reason why people fear commies and socialists. Commies motivated by indignation, anger, bitterness, hatred and envy. Very few are motivated by any genuine empathy.
Very few commies put any intelectual legwork in, and generally refuse to start with themselves. The rest of the world must bend and they don't ever have to do it. Like how bernie sanders blamed "Millionaires and Billionaires" until he became a millionaire and then suddenly it was only exclusively billionaires after that point.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121168You can't buy good insurance.

I most certainly can buy good insurance!

If I threw more money at it, I could easily have both great insurance AND medical concierge services to boot. As with everything, you get what you pay for and an ounce of prevention costs 1/100th of that pound of cure. That's why smart insurance companies incentivize proactive involvement in your own health.

If the socialist shitholes are so amazing, let's hope more Americans move there and never return to darken our soil with their shadows.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121157Rich people don't pay for shit, it's why they are Rich. Ford payed his workers enough to buy his cars and that was better marketing for them than a couple Rich people owning them.
Now at a big company innovation is "buying smaller companies" and I know that from first hand experience. The suits couldn't even consider starting their own R&D it's too risky.

Me, I don't struggle. I do see the problem though. These large corporation need broken up/nationalized and the billionaires need be taxed down to only a billion dollars. The free market is a useful tool if you keep it working. Letting vast resources coalesce at the top and letting the economy die as most of us can barely afford anything is not the free market working to benefit of society. Innovation is risky and there are plenty of ways to buy more money that are much lower risks.

This is a tangent, Hasbro is a big business while WotC is not nor is any other RPG company. People are just flabbergasted why more and more young people are leaning socialist and think it's those damn hippy teachers not shitty jobs, low wages, and any decent form of healthcare being called socialist.

So if Capitalism is so bad for Innovation then what is your solution?  Get the Government to produce the one official RPG that everyone must play with adventures produced by governmental drones paid by the stolen billionaire wealth?  Finally we will get the living RPG wage we have always dreamed of.

With all its flaws, no system has created more innovation and invention than capitalism.

Don't even look at America. Look at every country devastated by WW2 and compare the wealth of those who became capitalist versus those who did not. The disparity in wealth and standard of living is incredible.

No government, regardless of how well meaning or even how well run, can compare to the power of greed in driving innovation and invention. Humans are greedy bastards and capitalism unleashes that negative emotion in sweeping, massive positive ways.

It's too bad the USA doesn't do a massive prisoner swap with China. We'll take all the pro-America kids in Hong Kong and China can have all our college kids who hate capitalism and yearn for that sweet, sweet socialism China will most assuredly provide them.

And then we can buy their organs at 1/2 price! No more long waiting lists for transplants! Win-win!

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121173I most certainly can buy good insurance!

If I threw more money at it, I could easily have both great insurance AND medical concierge services to boot. As with everything, you get what you pay for and an ounce of prevention costs 1/100th of that pound of cure. That's why smart insurance companies incentivize proactive involvement in your own health.

If the socialist shitholes are so amazing, let's hope more Americans move there and never return to darken our soil with their shadows.

We could organize an exchange! Capitalistic hard working Mexicans to the USA in exchange for the socialistic gringos! win-win, México gets rid of those filthy capitalistic pigs like me and USA gets rid of the stupid socialistic/communistic idiots.

I think the flaw in our so called capitalism that we defend so ardently is corporate welfare and government sponsored monopolies.  Proper captialism lets the big guys die out instead of bailing them out every time they stumble.  What we call capitalism in these parts is often down right anti competitive and broken.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121157Hahaha you think I am talking about you. Feel attacked after you start making a billion a year in revenue.

You are, at best, middle class.


Rich people don't pay for shit, it's why they are Rich. Ford payed his workers enough to buy his cars and that was better marketing for them than a couple Rich people owning them.
Now at a big company innovation is "buying smaller companies" and I know that from first hand experience. The suits couldn't even consider starting their own R&D it's too risky.

Me, I don't struggle. I do see the problem though. These large corporation need broken up/nationalized and the billionaires need be taxed down to only a billion dollars. The free market is a useful tool if you keep it working. Letting vast resources coalesce at the top and letting the economy die as most of us can barely afford anything is not the free market working to benefit of society. Innovation is risky and there are plenty of ways to buy more money that are much lower risks.

This is a tangent, Hasbro is a big business while WotC is not nor is any other RPG company. People are just flabbergasted why more and more young people are leaning socialist and think it's those damn hippy teachers not shitty jobs, low wages, and any decent form of healthcare being called socialist.

That's not how economics works in the real world.

The main reason why Hitler lost WW2, and why he felt compelled to start it in the first place, is because he was fundamentally ignorant about economics and believed essentially the same thing.

He was right about everything vis-a-vis the Soviet Union -- right about the invasion, going south, dividing his forces in the south believing that the Soviet Union was beaten, and so on. There was however one critical factor about which he was wrong, and could not have anticipated due to his ignorance, and that was the power of the United States. While they denied it publicly, both Stalin (according to Khrushchev in a taped interview) and his marshal Zhukov (in a bugged conversation from 1963, released 30 years later) are on record as saying that without America's lend-lease program that the USSR could not have continued the war. The USSR won because they were zipping around in 363,080 American-made trucks, eating 782,973 tons of American SPAM, and communicating using 956,688 miles of telephone wire and 380,135 field telephones provided by America. In 1942, 63.2% of all military supplies came from America [H.D. Hall, North American Supply (London 1955), p. 430; M Harrison, Soviet Planning in War and Peace 1938-1942 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 258-9; H. van Tuyll, Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union 1942-1945 (New York, 1989), pp. 1956-61)].

You'd think that some of these people would crack open a book and read about the epic failures of history so as not to repeat them, or at least learn basic economics, but apparently not.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121179We could organize an exchange! Capitalistic hard working Mexicans to the USA in exchange for the socialistic gringos! win-win, México gets rid of those filthy capitalistic pigs like me and USA gets rid of the stupid socialistic/communistic idiots.

Done! I'm all good for that exchange!

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121172And then the commissar aproached me with a smile on his face. He wiped the tears out of my eyes and said:
"You have nothing to fear. We will shoot you last"

I know many small buisness owners that had to shutter down or sell because of constant beurocracy or minimum wage laws. And people like you don't give a shit.

Im sorry but with that kind of logic there is a strong reason why people fear commies and socialists. Commies motivated by indignation, anger, bitterness, hatred and envy. Very few are motivated by any genuine empathy.
Very few commies put any intelectual legwork in, and generally refuse to start with themselves. The rest of the world must bend and they don't ever have to do it. Like how bernie sanders blamed "Millionaires and Billionaires" until he became a millionaire and then suddenly it was only exclusively billionaires after that point.

If a company closes down because it can't afford to pay people properly then it had no business being in business. Likewise bureaucracy, meeting employee health and safety standards, paying maternity leave and so forth aren't bad things.

Quote from: David Johansen;1121183I think the flaw in our so called capitalism that we defend so ardently is corporate welfare and government sponsored monopolies.  Proper captialism lets the big guys die out instead of bailing them out every time they stumble.  What we call capitalism in these parts is often down right anti competitive and broken.

There's the elephant in this particular room. For all the chest-thumping about muh capitalism among its ideologues, there is a conspicuous silence about how "free competition" has become rigged by oligopolists and bought regulators, or how the resulting system chokes small enterprise while delivering gross untaxed profits to those who can operate out of tax havens, and bend laws to their will. Jeff Bezos, the Google creeps, all the rest of the techie Peeping Toms and their ilk are not honest businessmen - they are oligarchs who own major media outlets, and a large swathe of the political class. They are the people Adam Smith was talking about when he mentioned the inevitable conspiracy of potters and tailors wherever they were allowed to self-regulate, ending up dividing the market, killing off competition, and defrauding the customer. Their immense weight allows them to buy off state agents, and bully smaller competitors. As the case of Gab proves, they can just conspire to drive them out of business, and get away with it.

Coincidentally, US voters (and not a few European ones) are wising up to this game, and they are reacting to it. This is why Trump, a de facto third party candidate with a populist agenda, beat the Republican Party first, and the Democrats second. It is also why the Democrats are imploding right now along globalist/populist lines. The jig is up. Of course, the future US will remain a successful capitalist state according to its tested traditions. It will just return to the legacy of the two Roosevelts; Trust-busting Teddy for the Republicans, and FDR for the Democrats. In some respects, it will be closer to the idea of free competition once the tech monopolies, Amazon, and the like are broken up and replaced by a healthier ecosystem of smaller, competing companies. The customer and employee will win, and the rich will continue to be rich. Just not Jeff Bezos rich or John D. Rockefeller rich.

Quote from: Melan;1121193There's the elephant in this particular room. For all the chest-thumping about muh capitalism among its ideologues, there is a conspicuous silence about how "free competition" has become rigged by oligopolists and bought regulators, or how the resulting system chokes small enterprise while delivering gross untaxed profits to those who can operate out of tax havens, and bend laws to their will. Jeff Bezos, the Google creeps, all the rest of the techie Peeping Toms and their ilk are not honest businessmen - they are oligarchs who own major media outlets, and a large swathe of the political class. They are the people Adam Smith was talking about when he mentioned the inevitable conspiracy of potters and tailors wherever they were allowed to self-regulate, ending up dividing the market, killing off competition, and defrauding the customer. Their immense weight allows them to buy off state agents, and bully smaller competitors. As the case of Gab proves, they can just conspire to drive them out of business, and get away with it.

Coincidentally, US voters (and not a few European ones) are wising up to this game, and they are reacting to it. This is why Trump, a de facto third party candidate with a populist agenda, beat the Republican Party first, and the Democrats second. It is also why the Democrats are imploding right now along globalist/populist lines. The jig is up. Of course, the future US will remain a successful capitalist state according to its tested traditions. It will just return to the legacy of the two Roosevelts; Trust-busting Teddy for the Republicans, and FDR for the Democrats. In some respects, it will be closer to the idea of free competition once the tech monopolies, Amazon, and the like are broken up and replaced by a healthier ecosystem of smaller, competing companies. The customer and employee will win, and the rich will continue to be rich. Just not Jeff Bezos rich or John D. Rockefeller rich.

Agreed. It's not just corrupt, shitty government that allows "bad capitalism" to fester, it's the people who spend. It's us. I roll my eyes whenever, for example, people bitch about Amazon but watch Jack Ryan and then order stuff through Prime.

Yep - it's a fact that unrestricted capitalism is bad (robber barons, et Al), but badly-regulated capitalism is just as bad. As Melan pointed out, when the corporate bigwigs can bribe the politicians into tax-breaks or monopolies to line their own pockets at the expense not only of the consumers, but also of their competitors (and it's always the smaller ones who fall first), the system ends up failing those at the bottom. There are  no decent jobs and it's very hard to get the capital to fund your own company, whilst those at the very top just get richer and richer.

No one "deserves" a living wage, they must earn it in the market. However, if the market seems broken (whether by communism or plutocracy) people who can see that there are others earning far more than them for (apparently) no good reason are going to become discontent and point out that something is wrong. Trump is one of the results of this discontent, but I don't see him doing anything to help the situation. I fear he'll just make it worse.  
 
Of course, most people are far better off today than (say) the 1930s, but that's almost 100 years ago. People's expectations (in the 1950's - 1990s) were that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. Since then, in the developed world a least,  things have slowly seemed to get worse. Yes, you can have your shiny new iPhone or smart TV or Nikes, but you can't afford a house, or health insurance or a decent job that won't get outsourced in the next 10 years.

Globalism started off with good intentions (in general trade wars and tariffs help very few people and tend to shrink economies), but uncontrolled free trade means that richer countries will haemorrhage jobs to poorer countries. Good for the poorer countries GDP, not so good for the people who lost their job. Arbitrage works in many ways, not just on the stock market.

How to fix it? No idea. And I fear that no politician does either. Every time you try to put rules on capitalism you end up with disaster (communism), an unsustainable tax burden/expectation of services (European socialism) or corporate kleptocracy (the US in ~10-15 years). Even Japan is being rocked by corporate scandals these days. I'm not as hopeful as Melan that America will sort itself out. There are other countries out there who might become big enough to affect the US economy in bad ways. China already owns most of America's debt. If it saw an opportunity to help itself whilst harming the US, it might just take it.

Quote from: Shasarak;1121174So if Capitalism is so bad for Innovation then what is your solution?  Get the Government to produce the one official RPG that everyone must play with adventures produced by governmental drones paid by the stolen billionaire wealth?  Finally we will get the living RPG wage we have always dreamed of.

I'm against worshipping Capitalism. I still see capitalistic economy with a strong government being the more ideal option.

When people think single payer healthcare and raising the minimum wage is "Communist", all I see is Rich person media outlets doing their job well.

Once again though, complete tangent, as RPGs are just too small to be effected by any government thing I might want (except maybe UBI, but that's just a good way to get the economy moving fast).

Yeah, they raised the minimum wage here in Alberta a bunch.  Talk to all the people who's hours have been cut to the bone, all the kids who can't get a job out of high school, all the small businesses that it pushed over the edge, all the people who saw their food costs double.  Raising the minimum wage isn't the answer.  We've also got government health care here.  It's great, but it's inefficient and the workers in the various public service unions keep demanding raises while everyone else here is a couple hundred bucks away from insolvency.  (I sure hope that statistic I heard the other day is wrong.  Man 50% is a big number)  Our teachers and health unions are about as entitled and corrupt as you can get.

Quote from: David Johansen;1121201Yeah, they raised the minimum wage here in Alberta a bunch.  Talk to all the people who's hours have been cut to the bone, all the kids who can't get a job out of high school, all the small businesses that it pushed over the edge, all the people who saw their food costs double.  Raising the minimum wage isn't the answer.  We've also got government health care here.  It's great, but it's inefficient and the workers in the various public service unions keep demanding raises while everyone else here is a couple hundred bucks away from insolvency.  (I sure hope that statistic I heard the other day is wrong.  Man 50% is a big number)  Our teachers and health unions are about as entitled and corrupt as you can get.

Turns out raising minimum wage isn't as effective at getting rich people money than taxes.

Quote from: Melan;1121193For all the chest-thumping about "muh capitalism" among its ideologues, there is a conspicuous silence about how "free competition" has become rigged by oligopolists and bought regulators, or how the resulting system chokes small enterprise while delivering gross untaxed profits to those who can operate out of tax havens, and bend laws to their will.

So the problem isn't with the game, it's with the rules-lawyers who've most successfully exploited the loopholes. :D

More seriously, the basic problem is that no system is immune to the human tendency to game it for self-benefit, or to the tendency of those who prosper best under a system to use that prosperity to influence that system's rules for the sake of protecting their status once achieved. There are systems which incentivize productive cooperation better than others, however, and capitalism is by far the best of them.

What capitalism can't do -- because no system in the world can do this -- is guarantee a match between opportunity, demand, interest and ability. Or put simply, the problem isn't that I demand a living wage; it's when I demand a living wage at my choice of activity, rather than the activities someone's willing to pay me to do.

Quote from: Altheus;1121192If a company closes down because it can't afford to pay people properly then it had no business being in business. Likewise bureaucracy, meeting employee health and safety standards, paying maternity leave and so forth aren't bad things.

Again this is why I fear commies. Such compassion.
"I would rather everybody starve equally then somebody be paid more".

Quote from: Brad;1120949If you actually try to understand what they're saying, it boils down to the notion that they should be able to pursue whatever career they wish, but still gain the same financial standing as people who choose more lucrative careers. For instance, if I decide to be an artist and make sculptures, I should be paid the same amount as a doctor or engineer because we shouldn't have to give up our dreams for money. It's the most asinine thing I've ever heard in my life, and an outgrowth of morons who don't understand the real implications of socialism. Using their logic, there is zero point to do anything other than sit in a basement and play videogames all day because if it's whatever you want to do, you should be paid to do it. Like why am I even bothering busting my ass to get more education and spend countless hours in class, at work, taking care of my kids, etc., when I should just be goofing off and getting paid the same as a neurosurgeon? The end result, of course, is that there will no longer be neurosurgeons, and everyone will just be jacked into the matrix engaging in hedonistic fantasies, which I assume is the goal...easier to control people that way.

It is truly odd that people who think they are left-wing feel this way. Back when I thought I was left-wing and was making a living playing poker (private games, no casino poker in Ohio) and backgammon, my leftist friends all told me that under socialism, I would have to do something "socially useful."

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121209Again this is why I fear commies. Such compassion.
"I would rather everybody starve equally then somebody be paid more".

Healthy working conditions and minimum compensation requirements is not communism. It's not pure capitalism either, but I see few people advocating for megacorp dystopia or more sweat shops with suicide nets in their country.

If you can't afford to pay people, then you don't deserve employees and need to just run your business yourself. Much like how these twitter hacks don't deserve money when no-one wants to buy their RPG stuff. A social safety net allows for riskier behaviors without one failed venture causing someone to starve to death.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121216A social safety net allows for riskier behaviors without one failed venture causing someone to starve to death.

Explain Andrew Carnegie.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121216Healthy working conditions and minimum compensation requirements is not communism. It's not pure capitalism either, but I see few people advocating for megacorp dystopia or more sweat shops with suicide nets in their country.

No. But I do seem to see a lot of people advocating for a Government controlled dystopia where the State makes demands that are unsustainable for non-mega corps to provide what is being demanded. Market forces largely decide the value of a product. Not because someone "feels" they're owed by fiat.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121216If you can't afford to pay people, then you don't deserve employees and need to just run your business yourself. Much like how these twitter hacks don't deserve money when no-one wants to buy their RPG stuff. A social safety net allows for riskier behaviors without one failed venture causing someone to starve to death.

If you can't afford to pay people *what* precisely? What they demand? Or what you can afford? Who is making the only decision here? No one is forced to do anything they don't choose to do. This is precisely why you don't need minimum-wage laws. Businesses that may otherwise have a market - however small the margin - might not be able to get off the ground and build that momentum in the first place, because an individual may need help, that they can't afford at $15/hr but might at $10/hr.

Or whatever both parties find acceptable. But hey - some Big Corp can buy that cottage industry idea and market the fuck out of it and pay crap money for the a sub-standard version of your product.

Yeah that's not how it's supposed to be.

Quote from: tenbones;1121220No. But I do seem to see a lot of people advocating for a Government controlled dystopia where the State makes demands that are unsustainable for non-mega corps to provide what is being demanded. Market forces largely decide the value of a product. Not because someone "feels" they're owed by fiat.

Oh yeah, like how companies really shouldn't have to provide health insurance because that kind of product is better with more people in the same risk pool. So forcing companies to do it is both fiscally irresponsible and gives everyone a worse product..

Quote from: tenbones;1121220If you can't afford to pay people *what* precisely? What they demand? Or what you can afford? Who is making the only decision here? No one is forced to do anything they don't choose to do. This is precisely why you don't need minimum-wage laws. Businesses that may otherwise have a market - however small the margin - might not be able to get off the ground and build that momentum in the first place, because an individual may need help, that they can't afford at $15/hr but might at $10/hr.

Or whatever both parties find acceptable. But hey - some Big Corp can buy that cottage industry idea and market the fuck out of it and pay crap money for the a sub-standard version of your product.

Yeah that's not how it's supposed to be.

Hey maybe these RPG twitter people only need people to buy their first few books before they can start making things people want and get some momentum going? Tough shit though. Minimum wage laws are a bad compromise but I doubt people are actually ready to severely tax wealth and redistribute it as Universal Basic Income. Can't take money from Rich people and large corps because they need that money to lobby congress and stifle competing innovation. It's not like UBI and universal healthcare wouldn't make starting a small business infinity easier at the cost of some rich people losing vast amounts of money and only having more than they could ever spend in ten lifetimes.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121216Healthy working conditions and minimum compensation requirements is not communism.

True, I do tend to throw it around as a derogative. I should stop doing so in order to stop muddying the water.
However, I do find your attitude repugnant. You are saying that options that don't meet your arbitrary standards should not even exist. That you would rather have unemployed people then people paid less.

With that kind of utterly warped and sick perspective, I don't have much to add.

Quote from: spon;1121196Yep - it's a fact that unrestricted capitalism is bad (robber barons, et Al), but badly-regulated capitalism is just as bad. As Melan pointed out, when the corporate bigwigs can bribe the politicians into tax-breaks or monopolies to line their own pockets at the expense not only of the consumers, but also of their competitors (and it's always the smaller ones who fall first), the system ends up failing those at the bottom. There are  no decent jobs and it's very hard to get the capital to fund your own company, whilst those at the very top just get richer and richer.

How can people complain about Amazon from one side of their mouth and complain about the system failing those at the bottom from the other side of their mouth?

No single company has done more for those at the bottom then Amazon and yet Amazon is so bad.

So make up your mind, do you want to help those at the bottom or not?

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121226Oh yeah, like how companies really shouldn't have to provide health insurance because that kind of product is better with more people in the same risk pool. So forcing companies to do it is both fiscally irresponsible and gives everyone a worse product..



 Hey maybe these RPG twitter people only need people to buy their first few books before they can start making things people want and get some momentum going? Tough shit though. Minimum wage laws are a bad compromise but I doubt people are actually ready to severely tax wealth and redistribute it as Universal Basic Income. Can't take money from Rich people and large corps because they need that money to lobby congress and stifle competing innovation. It's not like UBI and universal healthcare wouldn't make starting a small business infinity easier at the cost of some rich people losing vast amounts of money and only having more than they could ever spend in ten lifetimes.

How do you propose those shitty RPG writers get people to buy their shitty products? by force?

Choosing to work for 10 instead of 15 is a free choice, just as it's a free choice not to buy shitty RPGs, so the first company is getting the employee that's willing to work for 10 by a free choice of both. You can't make those shitty writers to have bigger sales while respecting the free choice of people.

But like all commies you abhor freedom.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121209Again this is why I fear commies. Such compassion.
"I would rather everybody starve equally then somebody be paid more".

Not that someone would be paid more but that someone would work 40 hours a week and not have enough money to live on. That's the principle of minimum wage, if you don't have that then its only a matter of time before you're working for two meals a day.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121229But like all commies you abhor freedom.

In this case it's a "The world isn't perfect so I would rather everybody die than live in the imperfect world!"

Utopian thinking. Also extreme assumptions on the thoughts and feelings of others:

"I would not like to work for 10 instead of 15 so EVERYBODY would rather work for 10 and not 15, and those that do are bad people"

Lastly its complete economic illiteracy.

"All jobs can afford to pay 15 and if they can't they must be evil".

Quote from: Altheus;1121231Not that someone would be paid more but that someone would work 40 hours a week and not have enough money to live on.

Work with what and generate WHAT. Work Put in =/= resources put out.

Labour =/= value.

That principle is one of the cornerstones of Marxist economics.

I understand your working off sympathy and empathy, but neither are good foundations of economics because Feelings always falter to reality.

Greetings!

There is no need to *take* money from anyone. There is no need to *redistribute* income from wealthy people. Let them be rich, and be successful. Good for them. As for starting a small business, there is no need for UBI or universal healthcare for that to happen either. It's called being frugal and responsible with your finances. Working hard, maybe even working two jobs, or more, saving and building up financial capital. Then, you start your own business.

Run your business. Compete in the marketplace. Work hard. Provide various products or services. More work. Cultivate networks, friends, and associates. Get involved with the local business community, as well as specialized organizations and related groups involved in your industry or area of interest. Reach out to friends and acquaintances, and get the word out that you are a new business, and offering whatever products and services. Make it known that you are interested in learning and collaborating with other industry professionals, and other entrepreneurs that work in your line of business, or just similar businesses. Always more work. Stay focused, stay committed, and make progress.

That's how it is done.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121226Oh yeah, like how companies really shouldn't have to provide health insurance because that kind of product is better with more people in the same risk pool. So forcing companies to do it is both fiscally irresponsible and gives everyone a worse product..

Ideally they SHOULDN'T. You should be able to buy healthcare insurance like car-insurance. And medical costs should be/could be cheap enough pay out of pocket for incidental care - like your car - and insurance can cover catastrophic care. Healthcare providers should be able to quote prices and negotiate directly with their patients.

The *REASONS* why this isn't happening is because of cronyism between Insurance companies and politicians. I could go for pages and pages on this. It's possible - our elected officials and their corrupt practices are why it's not happening and they keep trying to foist bullshit non-sustainable ideas like "Medicare for All" slogans on the ignorant public. I'd be happy to discuss this at length (probably better for Pundit's forum) as I work in government healthcare finance/patient informatics for my "normie-job".

The problem you're asserting is an appeal to this notion that NO SOLUTION is ever going to meet the criteria you're suggesting except government control. As someone that is currently 10-miles deep in this for a living - that has rolled out "Obamacare" and the grotesqueness of that frankenstein... I will *happily* dissuade anyone that believes Medicare for All, and the elimination of privatized insurance - at scale - will do anything but cause mortality rates to rise to unprecedented levels.

Companies are at the mercy of Insurance Corporations. It's not "companies" fault. For the same reason YOU and most people reading this have ZERO idea how the Chargemaster works and could quote me a price at your local hospital for a hernia surgery. Much less something more life-threatening. Go to a privately funded surgical clinic - and you bet your ass they can.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121226Hey maybe these RPG twitter people only need people to buy their first few books before they can start making things people want and get some momentum going? Tough shit though. Minimum wage laws are a bad compromise but I doubt people are actually ready to severely tax wealth and redistribute it as Universal Basic Income. Can't take money from Rich people and large corps because they need that money to lobby congress and stifle competing innovation. It's not like UBI and universal healthcare wouldn't make starting a small business infinity easier at the cost of some rich people losing vast amounts of money and only having more than they could ever spend in ten lifetimes.

Scale. UBI doesn't work at scale. You can tax "the rich" at 100% and it wouldn't solve ANYTHING. It's a fallacy of assuming infinite resources when they aren't. UBI money doesn't come from "nowhere". The problem is the spending our government is doing and the Fed printing money non-stop to keep the carnival of failure going - further exacerbates both this illusion you're operating from that money is endless, which further ignores the growing problem that at some point the devaluation of that currency *will* bottom out. It's the metaphorical "putting out the fire with gasoline" problem.

Which might actually be the real agenda here - revenge against the "rich" (which might be anyone that makes "more" than a "living wage"?) seems to be the real motive in these circles.

Why should someone that creates deserve to be paid where that sum is some nebulous standard that changes depends on where one stands on the geographic point of this sphere we call Earth? And why should anyone outside of that equation be married to that scenario BY FORCE?

To what degree is ANYONE beholden to another person's financial well-being? I'm interested to hear your opinion.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121227True, I do tend to throw it around as a derogative. I should stop doing so in order to stop muddying the water.
However, I do find your attitude repugnant. You are saying that options that don't meet your arbitrary standards should not even exist. That you would rather have unemployed people then people paid less.

With that kind of utterly warped and sick perspective, I don't have much to add.

I wasn't going to point out that the other extreme is children getting maimed in factories and sweatshops with suicide nets where the workers put in 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Yes, the government has to prevent things like that because "muh free market" doesn't. That's not the same thing as being a communist.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121229How do you propose those shitty RPG writers get people to buy their shitty products? by force?

Choosing to work for 10 instead of 15 is a free choice, just as it's a free choice not to buy shitty RPGs, so the first company is getting the employee that's willing to work for 10 by a free choice of both. You can't make those shitty writers to have bigger sales while respecting the free choice of people.

But like all commies you abhor freedom.

Who are you arguing with??

I propose that no one buys shitty RPGs written by shitty RPG writers.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121229How do you propose those shitty RPG writers get people to buy their shitty products? by force?

Choosing to work for 10 instead of 15 is a free choice, just as it's a free choice not to buy shitty RPGs, so the first company is getting the employee that's willing to work for 10 by a free choice of both. You can't make those shitty writers to have bigger sales while respecting the free choice of people.

But like all commies you abhor freedom.

The problem with me is - people like you say what I'm saying more directly and efficiently.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121236I wasn't going to point out that the other extreme is children getting maimed in factories and sweatshops with suicide nets where the workers put in 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Yes, the government has to prevent things like that because "muh free market" doesn't. That's not the same thing as being a communist.

Is that what's happening in these RPG writing factories that are spread out all over America and Europe? I'm stunned at this news.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121236I wasn't going to point out that the other extreme is children getting maimed in factories and sweatshops with suicide nets where the workers put in 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Yes, the government has to prevent things like that because "muh free market" doesn't. That's not the same thing as being a communist.


Who are you arguing with??

I propose that no one buys shitty RPGs written by shitty RPG writers.

LOL, citing shit happening in China and linking that to "free market".

Quote from: tenbones;1121235Ideally they SHOULDN'T. You should be able to buy healthcare insurance like car-insurance. And medical costs should be/could be cheap enough pay out of pocket for incidental care - like your car - and insurance can cover catastrophic care. Healthcare providers should be able to quote prices and negotiate directly with their patients.

The *REASONS* why this isn't happening is because of cronyism between Insurance companies and politicians. I could go for pages and pages on this. It's possible - our elected officials and their corrupt practices are why it's not happening and they keep trying to foist bullshit non-sustainable ideas like "Medicare for All" slogans on the ignorant public. I'd be happy to discuss this at length (probably better for Pundit's forum) as I work in government healthcare finance/patient informatics for my "normie-job".

The problem you're asserting is an appeal to this notion that NO SOLUTION is ever going to meet the criteria you're suggesting except government control. As someone that is currently 10-miles deep in this for a living - that has rolled out "Obamacare" and the grotesqueness of that frankenstein... I will *happily* dissuade anyone that believes Medicare for All, and the elimination of privatized insurance - at scale - will do anything but cause mortality rates to rise to unprecedented levels.

Companies are at the mercy of Insurance Corporations. It's not "companies" fault. For the same reason YOU and most people reading this have ZERO idea how the Chargemaster works and could quote me a price at your local hospital for a hernia surgery. Much less something more life-threatening. Go to a privately funded surgical clinic - and you bet your ass they can.

Oh I agree with you, government controlled insurance is going to be a shit-show. What I'm trying to illuminate here is that private insurance is also a shit-show. Big companies are just as dumb as the government (once you start making billions of revenue, no one really knows what is going on anymore). It's a shit-show either way, but if everyone is in the same risk pool, then health insurance is cheaper. Problems like these are why utilities exist. Sometimes a bunch of people trying to do the same essential function is just needless inefficient.

Quote from: tenbones;1121235Scale. UBI doesn't work at scale. You can tax "the rich" at 100% and it wouldn't solve ANYTHING. It's a fallacy of assuming infinite resources when they aren't. UBI money doesn't come from "nowhere". The problem is the spending our government is doing and the Fed printing money non-stop to keep the carnival of failure going - further exacerbates both this illusion you're operating from that money is endless, which further ignores the growing problem that at some point the devaluation of that currency *will* bottom out. It's the metaphorical "putting out the fire with gasoline" problem.

Which might actually be the real agenda here - revenge against the "rich" (which might be anyone that makes "more" than a "living wage"?) seems to be the real motive in these circles.

Oh I don't need it to work. I just like the idea of this money getting freed up and spent. And it really doesn't hurt anyone you should take it from (though democrats will still go after the upper-poor because they are just as bought as everyone else). I like the idea of a wealth tax of 100% after a billion. No one needs a billion dollars and no one really earned a billion dollars (they took it). But they definitely don't nee more than a billion.

Quote from: tenbones;1121235Why should someone that creates deserve to be paid where that sum is some nebulous standard that changes depends on where one stands on the geographic point of this sphere we call Earth? And why should anyone outside of that equation be married to that scenario BY FORCE?

To what degree is ANYONE beholden to another person's financial well-being? I'm interested to hear your opinion.

They shouldn't. This tangent started because some people are confused why not-capitalism is becoming so popular. My own confidence in the the system without serious regulation was lost when I worked for a large company and made good money doing nothing useful.

Ethically we are beholden to everyone's financial well-being. Poor can be a death sentence and our moral outrage at that notion is why social programs exist. It's also why people are interested in the economy doing well. People prefer if the economy is fair and that effort*talent translates into tangible awards. I don't like seeing talented people slave away and get no-where while the suits live in their own little world where their connections are better than anyone else's competence. But none of that has anything to do with RPGs. People still have enough money to buy the one's that are good and probably always will.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121226Oh yeah, like how companies really shouldn't have to provide health insurance because that kind of product is better with more people in the same risk pool. So forcing companies to do it is both fiscally irresponsible and gives everyone a worse product..



 Hey maybe these RPG twitter people only need people to buy their first few books before they can start making things people want and get some momentum going? Tough shit though. Minimum wage laws are a bad compromise but I doubt people are actually ready to severely tax wealth and redistribute it as Universal Basic Income. Can't take money from Rich people and large corps because they need that money to lobby congress and stifle competing innovation. It's not like UBI and universal healthcare wouldn't make starting a small business infinity easier at the cost of some rich people losing vast amounts of money and only having more than they could ever spend in ten lifetimes.

Define "rich".

Also...

Quote from: SHARK;1121234Greetings!

There is no need to *take* money from anyone. There is no need to *redistribute* income from wealthy people. Let them be rich, and be successful. Good for them. As for starting a small business, there is no need for UBI or universal healthcare for that to happen either. It's called being frugal and responsible with your finances. Working hard, maybe even working two jobs, or more, saving and building up financial capital. Then, you start your own business.

Run your business. Compete in the marketplace. Work hard. Provide various products or services. More work. Cultivate networks, friends, and associates. Get involved with the local business community, as well as specialized organizations and related groups involved in your industry or area of interest. Reach out to friends and acquaintances, and get the word out that you are a new business, and offering whatever products and services. Make it known that you are interested in learning and collaborating with other industry professionals, and other entrepreneurs that work in your line of business, or just similar businesses. Always more work. Stay focused, stay committed, and make progress.

That's how it is done.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Very well put.

Quote from: tenbones;1121237The problem with me is - people like you say what I'm saying more directly and efficiently.

The problem with me is - people like you say what I'm saying without sounding like an antagonizing asshole.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121233In this case it's a "The world isn't perfect so I would rather everybody die than live in the imperfect world!"

Utopian thinking. Also extreme assumptions on the thoughts and feelings of others:

"I would not like to work for 10 instead of 15 so EVERYBODY would rather work for 10 and not 15, and those that do are bad people"

Lastly its complete economic illiteracy.

"All jobs can afford to pay 15 and if they can't they must be evil".



Work with what and generate WHAT. Work Put in =/= resources put out.

Labour =/= value.

That principle is one of the cornerstones of Marxist economics.

I understand your working off sympathy and empathy, but neither are good foundations of economics because Feelings always falter to reality.

I acknowledge that work has no intrinsic value, and I'm really no kind of marxist, I just believe in the principle of a fair days' work for a fair days' pay. Of course, that relies on your definition of fair.

Quote from: Altheus;1121244I acknowledge that work has no intrinsic value, and I'm really no kind of marxist, I just believe in the principle of a fair days' work for a fair days' pay. Of course, that relies on your definition of fair.

I've done a lot of work through staffing services "temp agencies", where you deal with what they offer, because the alternative is to simply not work in the field anymore.
The agencies are used to keep from giving out raises and competitive benefits for good work, when they flush the current batch of temps down the toilet and hire new bodies to fill slots.

While I'm no Marxist myself, I do recognize that "the market" does have the danger of grinding people up in it's cogs, and we should be aware of that danger.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1121242Define "rich".

I'm going to say rich maybe starts at 4 million in assets (individual). That's enough to live comfortably indefinitely (assuming 2.5% dividends in blue-chip stock and reinvesting half of that, you then have 50K to play with and it would only go up every year)

But I don't see why anyone should be allowed to have more than a billion dollars.

It's all about extremes. You ask any reasonable person if spoons should be banned as a dangerous weapon, they would say no. If you ask them if people should be able to privately own ICBMs, they also say no. Everyone is somewhere in the middle. Should one person be allowed to own all the money on Earth? I feel like most people would say no. I draw my line at a billion.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121247But I don't see why anyone should be allowed to have more than a billion dollars.

"Allowed"

How kind of you!

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1121242Define "rich".

Also...



Very well put.

Greetings!

Thank you, Alderaan Crumbs!

It always boggles me at how whiny, sniveling, and helpless so many people are nowadays. ?We are victims! Oh my god! Life is so unfair! Life is so hard! We can't succeed! We can only prosper if we have money taken from others, and given to us!"

It all sounds so pathetic, and weak. What happened to being self-reliant, strong, and independent? What happened with being driven, and working hard? Working harder and longer than you ever have before in your life? Sometimes we do need help. That's fine. What's wrong with asking other entrepreneurs, other business professionals, and just other people in the community? There's Patreon, and many *vehicles* online in which a person can start their own business. Kickstarter, donations, patronage. Whatever. Make it work, you know? There are local churches, local credit unions and banks, local businesses, local business groups, local veterans groups. I don't hear many people pursuing these things for help and support, nor do they talk about their own need to work smarter, work harder, work longer. Get tough. Stay focused, and dig. Dig, dig, dig.

Instead, it's "I'm helpless. I'm a victim! The only way is to take money from others, and give more power and control to the government."

NO. I say DIG! DIG! DIG! Chase success with passion, and all your strength!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: spon;1121196How to fix it? No idea. And I fear that no politician does either. Every time you try to put rules on capitalism you end up with disaster (communism), an unsustainable tax burden/expectation of services (European socialism) or corporate kleptocracy (the US in ~10-15 years). Even Japan is being rocked by corporate scandals these days. I'm not as hopeful as Melan that America will sort itself out. There are other countries out there who might become big enough to affect the US economy in bad ways. China already owns most of America's debt. If it saw an opportunity to help itself whilst harming the US, it might just take it.

As an onlooker, I am fairly optimistic about the USA's long-term outlook. It has a solid system which has been able to fix itself again and again. This self-correcting ability is what has allowed the country to defuse social unrest, and eventually bring the discontented on board. Of course, that always required actually doing the work on hand. There is no magic formula that will fix things without an effort, just a good framework and set of values.

I don't believe in China until it changes fundamentally (which it might, over a generation or two of peaceful development). Today, it is no longer the totalitarian hellhole it used to be, but it is still pretty damn bad. Without accountability, there are no safeguards stopping its leaders from driving it against the wall in pursuit of their personal power. They may be wise enough not to... but the risk is there, and Chairman Xi is extra suspect.

But this is veering mighty offtopic, so I will stop here.

Quote from: Altheus;1121244I acknowledge that work has no intrinsic value, and I'm really no kind of marxist, I just believe in the principle of a fair days' work for a fair days' pay. Of course, that relies on your definition of fair.

Fairness isn't real. Argo I find your argument based on nothing.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121236I wasn't going to point out that the other extreme is children getting maimed in factories and sweatshops with suicide nets where the workers put in 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Yes, the government has to prevent things like that because "muh free market" doesn't. That's not the same thing as being a communist.

Historically children worked with their parents getting maimed and injured along the way. Avoiding child labor is a LUXURY. What you're essentially suggesting is forcing cultures to buy into luxuries they can't afford because they sound nice.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121247I'm....maybe...I don't see...reasonable...I feel like most people... I draw my line

Notice the "I feels" "I thinks" and "I want" all emotional gut appeals.
The world starts at what you want and then has to go from there yes?

The reason I called you a commie is that communist "I feel, I want, I think, Reasonable"-isms killed millions. Its the same kind of warped logics. Starting at feelings and running from there.

In an attempt to bring the thread a little back towards topic, it's certainly true that in previous decades, some people (if not many) did work for game publishers and make a living wage at it; the rise in complaint volume seems to indicate that this is much harder or rarer now. Do people think this is actually true, or is it just a mistaken perspective -- people used to the desktop revolution don't properly understand the effort and ROI risk of the process, or people more used to communicating with designers directly in real time don't realize exactly how few economically successful designers and companies there always have been?  If it is true, what's changed?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121261The reason I called you a commie is that communist "I feel, I want, I think, Reasonable"-isms killed millions. Its the same kind of warped logics. Starting at feelings and running from there.

It's fine, people like you inspire actual communism in the youth by calling any sort of rules on the free market socialism. I can be aggressively moderate all day pissing off extreme conservatives and actual communist while the social pendulum waves back and forth until good sense wins out. Extremist don't change their opinion, they spout off different perspectives even when their view becomes unpopular, which is how the pendulum swings the other way.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1121262In an attempt to bring the thread a little back towards topic, it's certainly true that in previous decades, some people (if not many) did work for game publishers and make a living wage at it; the rise in complaint volume seems to indicate that this is much harder or rarer now. Do people think this is actually true, or is it just a mistaken perspective -- people used to the desktop revolution don't properly understand the effort and ROI risk of the process, or people more used to communicating with designers directly in real time don't realize exactly how few economically successful designers and companies there always have been?  If it is true, what's changed?

As far as I know, yes way less people work full time as RPG writers. I point to three possible reasons.

1. There are a ton of RPGs and many of these RPGs will never "go out of date" or be unavailable.

2. RPG players don't need to go to brick and mortar stores which means RPGs companies don't need to stock them. The barrier to entry is low and the ability to buy what you want is high.

3. The appetite for endless amounts of books for the same game has dried up which means a full-time RPG writer needs to be making brilliant new games all the time.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121261Historically children worked with their parents getting maimed and injured along the way. Avoiding child labor is a LUXURY. What you're essentially suggesting is forcing cultures to buy into luxuries they can't afford because they sound nice.

Historically, slavery was legal. Doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1121273Historically, slavery was legal. Doesn't mean it's a good idea.

If you look at the continuum, it is better then the alternative unless your motto is "Live Free or Die" I guess.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121241Oh I don't need it to work. I just like the idea of this money getting freed up and spent. And it really doesn't hurt anyone you should take it from (though democrats will still go after the upper-poor because they are just as bought as everyone else). I like the idea of a wealth tax of 100% after a billion. No one needs a billion dollars and no one really earned a billion dollars (they took it). But they definitely don't nee more than a billion.

If you look at Government then I would agree.  They literally force you at threat of death or imprisonment to give them your money.  If you do not agree with me then try not paying your taxes and see how well that works out for you.

However if we look at business how exactly did someone like Jeff Bezos take a Billion dollars?  I mean he never forced me to give him money.  When I choose not to buy anything from Amazon no comes to my house with threats of what is going to happen to me if I dont send Jeff Bezos more money.
It just seems to me like a dumb talking point that everyone can hear and nod along with, 'no one earns a billion dollars', but no one ever really thinks about it.

If we want to introduce a "fairness model" of living then I suggest we should cap the number of sports titles and medals that our sports people can win.  I mean people like Michael Phelps dont earn 23 Gold Medals - they take them from other swimmers that have put in all that time and effort into their training for nothing.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1121273Historically, slavery was legal. Doesn't mean it's a good idea.

To make it clear: I don't like people being slaves.
But the past is a different universe. I find judging the past based on the present to be very misguided. In the past, the alternative to slavery was mostly just death. You could say that slavery was very progressive at the time :p

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121275To make it clear: I don't like people being slaves.
But the past is a different universe. I find judging the past based on the present to be very misguided. In the past, the alternative to slavery was mostly just death. You could say that slavery was very progressive at the time :p

I would agree. And I also think that child labor is no longer a necessary evil in the modernized west.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1121195I roll my eyes whenever, for example, people bitch about Amazon but watch Jack Ryan and then order stuff through Prime.

How dare you? Next you'll be disparaging those valiant protestors carrying their Starbucks and iPhones?

Quote from: spon;1121196Trump is one of the results of this discontent, but I don't see him doing anything to help the situation. I fear he'll just make it worse.  

Google Trump Opportunity Zones. You'll find it interesting. Hopefully the program expands as promised.
 
 

Quote from: spon;1121196People's expectations (in the 1950's - 1990s) were that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. Since then, in the developed world a least,  things have slowly seemed to get worse.

"A Better Tomorrow" was always a horrible lie. It poisoned our society and made people believe they were entitled to never-ending good days. It's a sick mentality that rots the soul because it has ZERO reality in the history of the world. What we do know for sure is "Life is Uncertain" and "Shit Happens." We can (and should) strive to make tomorrow better, but we must always be prepared to deal with the roughness of Reality.

Because Reality is a ruthless and hideous muthafucker.

Quote from: spon;1121196Yes, you can have your shiny new iPhone or smart TV or Nikes, but you can't afford a house, or health insurance or a decent job that won't get outsourced in the next 10 years.

My mom's friends are Vietnamese boat people who became janitors. They own their homes in the Bay Area and put their kids through college. Now their two doctor kids send their parents on luxury vacations and force them to drive a Mercedes. Yes, force them. It was pretty funny.

Quote from: spon;1121196China already owns most of America's debt. If it saw an opportunity to help itself whilst harming the US, it might just take it.

When you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you.
But when you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank.

The USA could default on its debt and China knows it.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121209Again this is why I fear commies. Such compassion.
"I would rather everybody starve equally then somebody be paid more".

If we stay free, it will be because the 2nd Amendment backs up the 1st.  

Quote from: Brad;1121219Explain Andrew Carnegie.

Daddy Carnegie loved Mommy Carnegie very much and they had Baby Andrew!

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121226Minimum wage laws are a bad compromise but I doubt people are actually ready to severely tax wealth and redistribute it as Universal Basic Income.

60M patriots with 400M guns and 50B rounds says communism ain't coming to the USA.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1121242Define "rich".

Anyone with more money than me!!!

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121275You could say that slavery was very progressive at the time :p

There's an anthropology theory that agriculture brought forth slavery.

Because before agriculture, captured foes were eaten. Nom nom.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1121262In an attempt to bring the thread a little back towards topic, it's certainly true that in previous decades, some people (if not many) did work for game publishers and make a living wage at it; the rise in complaint volume seems to indicate that this is much harder or rarer now. Do people think this is actually true, or is it just a mistaken perspective -- people used to the desktop revolution don't properly understand the effort and ROI risk of the process, or people more used to communicating with designers directly in real time don't realize exactly how few economically successful designers and companies there always have been?  If it is true, what's changed?

It's ALWAYS hard to make a living selling non-essential products!

Non-essentials are paid for with disposable income. AKA, the smallest part of everyone's income.

As leisure time increased, the options for our leisure activities have radically increased. Take a moment and imagine how many things you could do on your next day off with $100 burning in your pocket. Any mid-size town offers dozens of restaurants, movie theaters, concerts, luxury good stores, sex shops, bars, nightclubs, and the list goes on and on. All competing for your disposable income. Or you could stay home order food delivery, buy crap online and binge on downloaded entertainment. So today the brick and mortar must compete with the digital so even more competition for that $100 in your pocket.

I have friends who are "successful" game designers. AKA, its their day job. They work very hard because according to them, FIVE new games come out every day...yeah, over 2000 new games each year. It's insane. And every designer has to find a way to get on top of that pile to maximize their sales.

Unless I was independently wealthy, I'd never go into any hobby business full time because you heavily risk turning your favorite fun hobby into work and misery. Selling game stuff might be fun gig for beer money, but I wouldn't want my next meal dependent on a RPG.

So it's, "My pronouns are 'Boss and Sir'. STFU and get my coffee."

These people and their adjacent entitlement is insane. Doing it their way, everyone EXCEPT white males profit, regardless of work ethic.

They have zero understanding of or tolerance for Capitalism. It's like they grew up in a Disney film.

Which is the problem.

Quote from: Brad;1121249"Allowed"

How kind of you!

Yeah, people with that mindset wonder why so many who love freedom also love guns... :p

To be fair, I did ask and while I VEHEMENTLY disagree, that’s their opinion. It’s when such ideas are acted upon that I begin to think less civilly.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1121277I would agree. And I also think that child labor is no longer a necessary evil in the modernized west.

Child labor isn't an evil at all. Kids working making money is fine.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1121262In an attempt to bring the thread a little back towards topic, it's certainly true that in previous decades, some people (if not many) did work for game publishers and make a living wage at it; the rise in complaint volume seems to indicate that this is much harder or rarer now. Do people think this is actually true, or is it just a mistaken perspective -- people used to the desktop revolution don't properly understand the effort and ROI risk of the process, or people more used to communicating with designers directly in real time don't realize exactly how few economically successful designers and companies there always have been?  If it is true, what's changed?

I'll put on my MBA hat here for a minute.  I used to think it would be awesome to support myself as a game designer.  My first semester of business strategy disabused me of that notion.  This stuff has been studied to death and there are several reasons why game design isn't profitable.  The main one (IMO) is low barriers to entry.  The easier it is to enter a market, the more people enter, increasing competition until eventually the profit gets competed down to zero. The only way to avoid this is to have something others can't easily copy.  It's hard to copy a brand like D&D or maybe White Wolf, brand meaning such things as name recognition, trust, consumer awareness, etc.  Copyright law prevents copying of IP like Star Wars without permission, so those games can keep a bit of a profit margin.  If you can build a community around your product you might be able to maintain some profit.  Without these things you are out of luck.  

With digital publishing, it's gotten easier and easier to enter the market.  It's really hard to make a profit doing something when there's a thousand guys out there with a product like yours, and many of them are willing to give it away for free.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121311Child labor isn't an evil at all. Kids working making money is fine.

I suppose using child soldiers isn't an evil act either. Kids working to protect their nation are fine too, right?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1121314I suppose using child soldiers isn't an evil act either. Kids working to protect their nation are fine too, right?

It's not the same thing. You know it's not. Stop.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1121314I suppose using child soldiers isn't an evil act either. Kids working to protect their nation are fine too, right?

Shrieking Banshee can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he meant things like "mow lawns/chop and sell wood/rake leaves/knitting sweaters to sell at the local fair/delivering newspapers/etc." (as many of us have done) rather than children working in sweatshops, machine shops and other dangerous and exploitative work. Child soldiers certainly falls under "exploitative" in my book. Delivering newspapers weekly for a fair wage does not and I don't see the two as equivalent; "child labor," despite the negative connotations associated with the term, does not necessarily entail exploitation or abuse.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1121324Shrieking Banshee can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he meant things like "mow lawns/chop and sell wood/rake leaves/knitting sweaters to sell at the local fair/delivering newspapers/etc." (as many of us have done) rather than children working in sweatshops, machine shops and other dangerous and exploitative work. Child soldiers certainly falls under "exploitative" in my book. Delivering newspapers weekly for a fair wage does not and I don't see the two as equivalent; "child labor," despite the negative connotations associated with the term, does not necessarily entail exploitation or abuse.

Pretty much. I mean nowadays a kid can't legally setup a lemonaid stand. Getting to work at a yoing age is in no way inherently bad.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1121324Shrieking Banshee can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he meant things like "mow lawns/chop and sell wood/rake leaves/knitting sweaters to sell at the local fair/delivering newspapers/etc." (as many of us have done) rather than children working in sweatshops, machine shops and other dangerous and exploitative work. Child soldiers certainly falls under "exploitative" in my book. Delivering newspapers weekly for a fair wage does not and I don't see the two as equivalent; "child labor," despite the negative connotations associated with the term, does not necessarily entail exploitation or abuse.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121325Pretty much. I mean nowadays a kid can't legally setup a lemonaid stand. Getting to work at a yoing age is in no way inherently bad.

I mowed yards, sold candy, fixed computers, worked in a firework stand, and did countless other things before I was old enough to get a job working as a cashier (16). Willingly. Because I wanted to buy RPGs and comic books. I guess that's just out of style now...

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121325Pretty much. I mean nowadays a kid can't legally setup a lemonaid stand. Getting to work at a yoing age is in no way inherently bad.

Which is a fucking tragedy because through tightening the leash on this type of activity, a vital cornerstone of development and education is being removed as an opportunity for young people. If I hadn't busted my ass for years running all those little "side gigs" as a kid I wouldn't have half the appreciation or respect for hard work, general understanding of the working world, personal success and pride for accomplishment that I do now. I honestly consider it more valuable to me as far as practical life experience than the majority of school, particularly early on.

Quote from: Brad;1121328I mowed yards, sold candy, fixed computers, worked in a firework stand, and did countless other things before I was old enough to get a job working as a cashier (16). Willingly. Because I wanted to buy RPGs and comic books. I guess that's just out of style now...

Same, I never would have owned any RPGs or many of the novels or magazines (Heavy Metal was my bag) as a kid had I not been willing to get my hands dirty. It's a damned shame. Oh well. I guess playing Fortnight on Twitch for donations is the new kid money-making thing now. I wonder how that will turn out over the long haul.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121311Child labor isn't an evil at all. Kids working making money is fine.

Context.

Quotethe other extreme is children getting maimed in factories and sweatshops with suicide nets where the workers put in 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

I will clarify, running a lemonade stand and mowing lawns is fine. I don't think working 12 hour shifts for 30 cents an hour in a dangerous factory is a very good idea for kids.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1121336I will clarify, running a lemonade stand and mowing lawns is fine. I don't think working 12 hour shifts for 30 cents an hour in a dangerous factory is a very good idea for kids.

Which generally happens in locations where the alternative is working 16 hour shifts for 10 cents on a farm is the alternative.
It reminds me of the ObamaCare fiasco. It would be NICE for everybody to have life insurance, but its a luxury. You're not making their lives better by FORCING people to buy luxuries they cannot afford.

The world is a harsh and unforgiving place, and through lots of mangled limbs, some of its places have been made to be somewhat nicer through human effort. Our world is BUILT on mangled limbs, corpses and suffering.

Doesn't matter what a good or bad idea it is thats the TRUTH. I hate economic and political arguments that stem from "Well life should be fair". Because in some way it will always be unfair. Your just picking what you think should and shouldn't be fair.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121337Which generally happens in locations where the alternative is working 16 hour shifts for 10 cents on a farm is the alternative.

What locations are you talking about? Is this in America or Europe? Factories full of toddlers working metal lathes?

QuoteIt reminds me of the ObamaCare fiasco. It would be NICE for everybody to have life insurance, but its a luxury. You're not making their lives better by FORCING people to buy luxuries they cannot afford.

The world is a harsh and unforgiving place, and through lots of mangled limbs, some of its places have been made to be somewhat nicer through human effort. Our world is BUILT on mangled limbs, corpses and suffering.

Doesn't matter what a good or bad idea it is thats the TRUTH. I hate economic and political arguments that stem from "Well life should be fair". Because in some way it will always be unfair. Your just picking what you think should and shouldn't be fair.

Life isn't fair, but that's not an excuse to throw up our hands, toss all the laws away, and start eating each other in an orgy of survival of the fittest.

I was a beneficiary of Obamacare. I had a hernia I couldn't afford to get fixed. Went two years with my intestine just hanging out of my body. Nothing I could do about it, because the surgery was to expensive... It also limited the type of work I could do.

When Affordable Health care act was passed, I qualified for it. Went in, got my Hernia fixed. A year later I was able to go to work for the Department of Corrections and become a functional member of society who was completely self sufficient. I would not have been able to do that without the help I received.

Quote from: Orphan81;1121343I was a beneficiary of Obamacare. I had a hernia I couldn't afford to get fixed. Went two years with my intestine just hanging out of my body. Nothing I could do about it, because the surgery was to expensive... It also limited the type of work I could do.

When Affordable Health care act was passed, I qualified for it. Went in, got my Hernia fixed. A year later I was able to go to work for the Department of Corrections and become a functional member of society who was completely self sufficient. I would not have been able to do that without the help I received.

I couldn't afford Obamacare, and so I opted out, despite opting out being a contentious decision. (I never had to pay the "penalty tax")
I still don't have health insurance. I have other bills I choose to prioritize to get myself in a financial position where I could potentially afford a healthcare plan.

My brother has a medical condition (Chron's Disease, for the record) where Obamacare helped pay for his medications and procedures.

Obamacare is, IMO, a mixed bag. Beneficial but flawed. Mostly, I wonder if we're approaching the idea of paying for health care in an effective manner. Instead of shoveling money at the problem, how can we make health care cheaper to provide, not just cheaper for the recipient to pay for.

Coming from a country (NZ) where we have national healthcare for everyone, I can tell you that it is not 2020 cutting edge healthcare and on the otherhand we dont let people walk around with their intestines hanging out either.

But honestly paying for RPGs is a luxury compared to healthcare.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1121270As far as I know, yes way less people work full time as RPG writers. I point to three possible reasons.

1. There are a ton of RPGs and many of these RPGs will never "go out of date" or be unavailable.

2. RPG players don't need to go to brick and mortar stores which means RPGs companies don't need to stock them. The barrier to entry is low and the ability to buy what you want is high.

3. The appetite for endless amounts of books for the same game has dried up which means a full-time RPG writer needs to be making brilliant new games all the time.

Some thoughts on your points...

1) Agreed.
2) Agreed.
3) Disagree. In fact I think outside of D&D this is reversed. Non-D&D players *want* more books for their gamelines depending on if they're GM's and likely their age. At my age - I have a lot of disposable income so I will devour gamelines that I find useful. As for D&D - I suspect people WANT more books, but at scale, perhaps WotC isn't willing to put them out because of diminishing returns? Who knows. I stopped wondering about their business practices after 3.x

BUT - I don't think any of these are the direct reasons why way less people work as full-time RPG writers. The real reasons are as follows:

1) Most RPG companies are small affairs. It takes a lot of thought and work to develop and idea and bring it to market. The people willing to do that are few and far between.

2) The margins on RPG sales is tiny. Sure there are exceptions - but they're outliers. But it takes a lot of effort to have a day-job to finance the creation of a product and bring it to market. People that just "write" RPG's and demand to get paid a "living wage" whatever that is, without consideration of their skill or talent or the factors that demand higher pay for quality - is absurd on its face, and simply not practical generally speaking. Most RPG studio owner wear like half-a-dozen hats that might otherwise be nearly full-time jobs in other businesses. Paying a work-for-hire more than you're probably making doesn't seem worth hiring that person unless they're some luminary like Hite or Pondsmith.

3) The ability to get a work-for-hire job in RPG's is *not* hard. You have to simply prove you can write, and produce salable ideas. But people that can actually DO that... is a pretty small pool. As the graveyard of RPG games will attest for varying reasons beyond the obvious.

You can't squeeze water out of a rock. But you can stack rocks and make a dam. The question is how much effort are you willing to put into it?

Quote from: Shasarak;1121349Coming from a country (NZ) where we have national healthcare for everyone, I can tell you that it is not 2020 cutting edge healthcare and on the otherhand we dont let people walk around with their intestines hanging out either.

But honestly paying for RPGs is a luxury compared to healthcare.

Pretty much, as someone whose views skew more and more towards Libertarnism, I'd be a hypocrite if I said I don't believe in any kind of medical care program for the poor. I benefited from it, I got lucky my state was willing to take the subsidies so I could get my operation. I know there were a lot of states that didn't, and if I'd been in one of those, I would have been screwed. Now having my own insurance, it's better than what I had with Obamacare, but I also pay for it.

I'd like to think there's some happy middle we can reach where if you're dirt poor like I was, you can still get basic healthcare so you can become a productive member of society... but also keep your better healthcare when you have a Job and you're able to pay for it. I really don't want there to be an "All or nothing" kind of thing.... But that's the great riddle of Healthcare in the U.S. right now sadly.

Quote from: tenbones;1121351Some thoughts on your points...

1) Agreed.
2) Agreed.
3) Disagree. In fact I think outside of D&D this is reversed. Non-D&D players *want* more books for their gamelines depending on if they're GM's and likely their age. At my age - I have a lot of disposable income so I will devour gamelines that I find useful. As for D&D - I suspect people WANT more books, but at scale, perhaps WotC isn't willing to put them out because of diminishing returns? Who knows. I stopped wondering about their business practices after 3.x

BUT - I don't think any of these are the direct reasons why way less people work as full-time RPG writers. The real reasons are as follows:

1) Most RPG companies are small affairs. It takes a lot of thought and work to develop and idea and bring it to market. The people willing to do that are few and far between.

2) The margins on RPG sales is tiny. Sure there are exceptions - but they're outliers. But it takes a lot of effort to have a day-job to finance the creation of a product and bring it to market. People that just "write" RPG's and demand to get paid a "living wage" whatever that is, without consideration of their skill or talent or the factors that demand higher pay for quality - is absurd on its face, and simply not practical generally speaking. Most RPG studio owner wear like half-a-dozen hats that might otherwise be nearly full-time jobs in other businesses. Paying a work-for-hire more than you're probably making doesn't seem worth hiring that person unless they're some luminary like Hite or Pondsmith.

3) The ability to get a work-for-hire job in RPG's is *not* hard. You have to simply prove you can write, and produce salable ideas. But people that can actually DO that... is a pretty small pool. As the graveyard of RPG games will attest for varying reasons beyond the obvious.

You can't squeeze water out of a rock. But you can stack rocks and make a dam. The question is how much effort are you willing to put into it?

Greetings!

*laughs* Indeed, my friend! You make some excellent points. You know, it has been my observation over the years that there are many, many people that *believe* they are talented, brilliant writers.

Sad to say, though, the vast majority of them suck terribly. It is important to note as well that there are some different skill-sets involved. There is fiction writing, travelogue-esque vivid, colourful, fluid writing, all that good stuff. Then there is your uber technical editors and layout and organization people. Sometimes the skill sets overlap to some degree, but often they are separate. Both sets of skills are meaningful and worthwhile. However, many people have highly inflated views of their actual skills, in either regard. They just aren't that special.

Beyond that, there is basic work ethics, basic organization ability, capability in meeting deadlines, improvising, compromising, and making a product thorough, and complete, and finishing it. Many people fail entirely at these essential skills all the time.

Everyone seems to think they can be a writer. Just like many people believe they can be an entrepreneur, and run their own business. The harsh truth is, most people simply don't have the talent for any of this, nor do they have the work ethic and determination to make up for any lack of writing skills and blast through with organization and getting projects done in an efficient and workable manner. It is a relatively small pool of talented people that can actually write reasonably well, and people that possess the basic work ethic and skills to produce and get things done.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1121345how can we make health care cheaper to provide, not just cheaper for the recipient to pay for.

1) Create legislation that allows citizens to purchase insurance *across* state lines. This immediately puts all insurance companies in direct competition with one another.

2) Roll back legislation that prevents free-association plans to create pools for insurance companies to cater to. This will benefit small-businesses and individuals. These pools can negotiate in *bulk*. This will also allow people with chronic and pre-existing conditions to leverage their own significant numbers for their own benefit without dragging young healthy people through the wringer (as well as everyone else).

3) Emphasis on catastrophic healthcare insurance over insurance claims for everything.

4) Remove government/insurance company control over the Chargemaster billing. This is what dictates what the government will reimburse providers for using Medicaid - or the cost the insurance company will negotiate with the providers for reimbursement. It incentivizes providers to work fast and dirty, and churn through patients because those reimbursements aren't matching the rising costs of everything else - especially #5. This would allow healthcare providers to deal directly with their patients - this is especially important for those with low-income.

5) Tort reform to reduce costs on providers spending UNGODLY amounts of time, effort and money doing extra work (unnecessary lab tests, and procedures) JUST to justify themselves to avoid potential malpractice lawsuits. This also costs healthcare providers a tremendous amount of their own income and de-incentivises more and more people from being healthcare professionals.

6) Personal responsibility. Needs to be said. Live a healthy lifestyle. Be pro-active about your own health.


You'll see healthcare costs drops significantly. Some U.S. healthcare providers are ALREADY doing some of these things by setting up shop outside the country.

Edit: "Cheaper to provide" Given that America does *by far* the most medical research in the world... this would be addressed on a case by case basis. You trade off "cheaper to provide" - by living in Canada, Australia, NZ, and the UK, for instance with instant availability here. And the quality of healthcare for the really big diseases are the best in the world.

Quote from: SHARK;1121353Greetings!

*laughs* Indeed, my friend! You make some excellent points. You know, it has been my observation over the years that there are many, many people that *believe* they are talented, brilliant writers.

Sad to say, though, the vast majority of them suck terribly. It is important to note as well that there are some different skill-sets involved. There is fiction writing, travelogue-esque vivid, colourful, fluid writing, all that good stuff. Then there is your uber technical editors and layout and organization people. Sometimes the skill sets overlap to some degree, but often they are separate. Both sets of skills are meaningful and worthwhile. However, many people have highly inflated views of their actual skills, in either regard. They just aren't that special.

Beyond that, there is basic work ethics, basic organization ability, capability in meeting deadlines, improvising, compromising, and making a product thorough, and complete, and finishing it. Many people fail entirely at these essential skills all the time.

Everyone seems to think they can be a writer. Just like many people believe they can be an entrepreneur, and run their own business. The harsh truth is, most people simply don't have the talent for any of this, nor do they have the work ethic and determination to make up for any lack of writing skills and blast through with organization and getting projects done in an efficient and workable manner. It is a relatively small pool of talented people that can actually write reasonably well, and people that possess the basic work ethic and skills to produce and get things done.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Writing well is a skill that can be developed. It takes discipline to do *anything* well. If you have raw talent it can take you far, but without discipline you won't sustain yourself. If you have both - then you can potentially be great.

As someone that does work-for-hire stuff in this industry, I can unequivocally say that getting such gigs is *not hard*. But I'm a realist. I do it now, because I love the hobby and I want to only work on stuff I want to work on. My day job pays me *radically* more than I'd ever make simply writing RPG material. I'm saying that because what I do for a living is something that I never intended but I have this job purely because of my discipline and technical acumen. But again - I never got into this by intent. Familial obligations (having children will do that) drove me here.

Most of these people that are demanding "a living wage" have all the hallmarks of burger-flippers that likewise demand a "living wage". To what degree are they serving anyone other than themselves? The market decides these things when it comes to Work-For-Hire.

Otherwise don't take the job? Better - put yourself in the arena and create your own game, produce it, distribute it, and sell it. Then see for yourself how much you think your writers deserve of your own efforts because of the same entitled attitude. But that will likely never happen because it takes discipline to do that. Something in short supply for folks making these demands.

I would simply ban insurance and let people die and doctors starve until their prices became reasonable again, and they would have to or docs would have to find other jobs. My father was born in 43 in a wood shack insulated by cardboard and was delivered by a slaughterhouse butcher, not a doc, for a little cash a little shine and some potatoes. This pampered world needs an enema.

Quote from: tenbones;1121360Writing well is a skill that can be developed. It takes discipline to do *anything* well. If you have raw talent it can take you far, but without discipline you won't sustain yourself. If you have both - then you can potentially be great.

As someone that does work-for-hire stuff in this industry, I can unequivocally say that getting such gigs is *not hard*. But I'm a realist. I do it now, because I love the hobby and I want to only work on stuff I want to work on. My day job pays me *radically* more than I'd ever make simply writing RPG material. I'm saying that because what I do for a living is something that I never intended but I have this job purely because of my discipline and technical acumen. But again - I never got into this by intent. Familial obligations (having children will do that) drove me here.

Most of these people that are demanding "a living wage" have all the hallmarks of burger-flippers that likewise demand a "living wage". To what degree are they serving anyone other than themselves? The market decides these things when it comes to Work-For-Hire.

Otherwise don't take the job? Better - put yourself in the arena and create your own game, produce it, distribute it, and sell it. Then see for yourself how much you think your writers deserve of your own efforts because of the same entitled attitude. But that will likely never happen because it takes discipline to do that. Something in short supply for folks making these demands.

Greetings!

Good stuff, my friend! Yep, all about the discipline! You know, I think a pretty good example of someone we know is Venger. I think I heard him remark that he's really not that good of a writer, but goddamn, his work ethic is off the charts! Whatever talents Venger may have started with, he has over time improved constantly, struggled, and worked hard. I would say he is quite happy and very successful, even inspiring. I know I admire his tenacity, his work ethic, and his crazy sense of fun, and his gracious, cool nature.

All these wanna-be writers crying about "living wages". Geesus. I'm sorry if they only have the ability to shovel French fries or be a barista at Starbucks. Get some real education, get some real discipline and skill, and learn to DIG, you know?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1121362Greetings!

Good stuff, my friend! Yep, all about the discipline! You know, I think a pretty good example of someone we know is Venger. I think I heard him remark that he's really not that good of a writer, but goddamn, his work ethic is off the charts! Whatever talents Venger may have started with, he has over time improved constantly, struggled, and worked hard. I would say he is quite happy and very successful, even inspiring. I know I admire his tenacity, his work ethic, and his crazy sense of fun, and his gracious, cool nature.

All these wanna-be writers crying about "living wages". Geesus. I'm sorry if they only have the ability to shovel French fries or be a barista at Starbucks. Get some real education, get some real discipline and skill, and learn to DIG, you know?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

My wife's business to edit novels and get people who want to write fiction into the game and take their work seriously. I help consult with her writers on their ideas and story-structure etc. We sometimes get people relatively new to the writing process and if they're young, and in their 20's... and they all think they have the goods, they think they're the next J.K. Rowling, or King, or Abercrombie or whatever...

And they hand in a manuscript that is dogshit. But my job is to explain WHY their manuscript is dogshit and *it's OKAY* that it's dogshit because most first-drafts are dogshit.

But a lot of these millennial writers are *stunned* when I start pointing out plotholes, weak weak weak character development, dead-end plot-threads and the usual oral ass-dribblings new writers think will make them billionaires. They're super-stunned when they get redlined and have to /gasp re-write their whole manuscript. Then they usually break when they find out there IS no saleable story, and they've essentially wrote a long open-ended anecdote. Or they realize that... wow... you have to meet re-write editorial deadlines??? Because they think that they fart out a bunch of words on the screen whenever they choose, and magical-editors have been putting their entire lives on hold, waiting for the golden-rewrite to arrive.

They realize it's WORK. And I have to tell them - this isn't some salary job, dummy. This is WORK. And you're trying to create something to SELL. This is not your heartbreaking Great Sci-Fi epic that's going to catapult your name up there next to Asimov - in all likelihood Asimov will be torn down from the constellation of Sci-Fi luminaries next week for not being diverse-enough, and you don't get to choose what the market decides it likes this week. You only get to craft your story and do it well then let that sucker go free.

You're a word-salesman. And you'll be paid accordingly. No one owes you anything. Those that stick it out, learn a lot about themselves. Those that don't... well they apparently go online and make excuses for their lack of skill (which is due to their lack of discipline, which is why they're not professionals).

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121311Child labor isn't an evil at all. Kids working making money is fine.

True. Lots of kids enjoy those little jobs they get or even go out on their own seeking them. Delivering papers, mowing lawn, etc.

The problems creep in when you get things like parents essentially using their kid as a work animal rented out so they can collect the kits pay. This used to be, and unfortunately on rare occasions still is, a problem in acting.  Very different from just being the kids agent and money manager till they are old enough to handle it themselves.

But thats true of any venue and age isnt really a factor as anyone can end up in such situations somehow. Even in gaming. Some publishers have some pretty dirty contracts.

A couple years ago, I read an article by a parent who found a GREAT workaround for the lack of teen jobs. I wish I could remember where I found it. Essentially, the parents wanted their kids to understand the value of work and earning their own cash, BUT nobody was hiring teens. Atop of that, the parents didn't believe that minimum wage crap jobs were that useful as learning tools. I could argue for or against that, but here's their solution. The father told the kids they had to start their own business when they turned 13.

The kids were initially confused, but kid creativity kicked in swiftly. Their daughter sold custom gift baskets and personalized teen girl bracelets. Their son told his dad that he'd make money off playing video games. The father didn't believe it, but the son made cash by teaching adults how to play video games. Yeah, so these adults could compete with their own kids. The teen became a "video game tutor"! LOL.

Did the kids earn a "living wage" from their side-gigs? Maybe not. The article didn't go into their sales numbers.

Did the kids learn invaluable lessons from starting their own business? Hell yeah.

Quote from: tenbones;11213541) Create legislation that allows citizens to purchase insurance *across* state lines. This immediately puts all insurance companies in direct competition with one another.

2) Roll back legislation that prevents free-association plans to create pools for insurance companies to cater to. This will benefit small-businesses and individuals. These pools can negotiate in *bulk*. This will also allow people with chronic and pre-existing conditions to leverage their own significant numbers for their own benefit without dragging young healthy people through the wringer (as well as everyone else).

3) Emphasis on catastrophic healthcare insurance over insurance claims for everything.

4) Remove government/insurance company control over the Chargemaster billing. This is what dictates what the government will reimburse providers for using Medicaid - or the cost the insurance company will negotiate with the providers for reimbursement. It incentivizes providers to work fast and dirty, and churn through patients because those reimbursements aren't matching the rising costs of everything else - especially #5. This would allow healthcare providers to deal directly with their patients - this is especially important for those with low-income.

5) Tort reform to reduce costs on providers spending UNGODLY amounts of time, effort and money doing extra work (unnecessary lab tests, and procedures) JUST to justify themselves to avoid potential malpractice lawsuits. This also costs healthcare providers a tremendous amount of their own income and de-incentivises more and more people from being healthcare professionals.

6) Personal responsibility. Needs to be said. Live a healthy lifestyle. Be pro-active about your own health.


You'll see healthcare costs drops significantly. Some U.S. healthcare providers are ALREADY doing some of these things by setting up shop outside the country.

Edit: "Cheaper to provide" Given that America does *by far* the most medical research in the world... this would be addressed on a case by case basis. You trade off "cheaper to provide" - by living in Canada, Australia, NZ, and the UK, for instance with instant availability here. And the quality of healthcare for the really big diseases are the best in the world.

A lot of great information I didn't know. I would place #6 first, however.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120929Now that FFG has closed their RPG department, is there any RPG company left, other than WOTC, that has a staff of full time RPG writers?

Good question. Paizo?

All the others may actually just be owner-run ops plus hiring freelancers on a job-to-job basis.

Quote from: Melan;1120971Somehow, these are never the people who make something in (real or latent) demand, like Kevin Crawford, but the people who want to write mini-games based on deconstructing capitalism in the context of Lacan and Foucault. Their position on games that actually get played is that those should go away, because they are sexist, racist, and all kinds of problematic.

BTW, Pundit, did you base the example in your video on this ZineQuest pitch? (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fencedforest/dish-pit-witches) Because there is an uncanny resemblance. :D

Nope. I just thought of the sort of thing they'd write, and went with it. I'm not surprised; like I've said, they're indistinguishable from parody these days.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120979The tweet that started it all. The important thing to realize is that she isn't talking about writing game material like rules or adventures, she's talking about making D&D livestreams. That's why she's using terms like "creators" and is talking about D&D as a "medium".

https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1219793872844292098

Yes, that's where it started but from there it went on to have other would be game-designers chiming in with the same nonsense.

Let's keep discussions about a living wage on the topic of RPGs, please, not the larger economy.

Harlan Ellison wrote a very good piece called "Pay the Writer" which he explained in an interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

I highly recommend watching it, but briefly, he talks about the importance of getting paid for ones work.  I have always thought that was 100% correct, I believe it fully.

But I don't believe someone "deserves" to get paid vast amounts for a niche work.

I started off drafting this really verbose and tedious post about how our tiny niche hobby had thrown up this brilliant case study of socialism in action, but decided nobody really needed to read it. So, instead I'll say I came across a video once of Milton Friedman being interviewed back in the 1970s. The interviewer asked him about how unfair the market was and wasn't it better for the state to step in and help people. Friedman's reply was along the lines of, why do you think people will act any more benevolently in a political process than they do in a market? In fact isn't the opposite more usually the case (Soviet commissars vs your average corporate CEO)? An unexpected bonus was how the interviewer was obviously floored. You could almost see the thought process in his head - he just KNEW he was right, because everyone he'd known since college thought the same way as he did, but here was this nasty man with his logic and his facts that couldn't immediately be dismissed.

Let me hurriedly drag that vaguely back on topic by saying the same logic applies to the RPG industry.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1121767Harlan Ellison wrote a very good piece called "Pay the Writer" which he explained in an interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

I highly recommend watching it, but briefly, he talks about the importance of getting paid for ones work.  I have always thought that was 100% correct, I believe it fully.

But I don't believe someone "deserves" to get paid vast amounts for a niche work.

That's all in the context of working for someone else. You want to create and sell it to someone? Welcome to the cesspool of the free market. There's really no difference though. It doesn't matter if you are creating and selling it someone else or if you are working for someone else. Market forces will drive the cost down to the lowest it can be. There's an overabundance of people willing to work/sell for close for nothing and no one cares about quality.

Just do your own thing and release it for free as a hobby. One day, maybe, you can make some beer money off of it.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1121767Harlan Ellison wrote a very good piece called "Pay the Writer" which he explained in an interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

I highly recommend watching it, but briefly, he talks about the importance of getting paid for ones work.  I have always thought that was 100% correct, I believe it fully.

But I don't believe someone "deserves" to get paid vast amounts for a niche work.

It's a good video, I remember that interview.

It's spot on. You have to be responsible for what you think your work is worth. But the corollary of that maxim is: Just because you believe it's worth something doesn't mean the rest of the world believes that.

Writers have bring their product to market. The market *has* to exist, OR you have to grow it. These "writers" complaining about not making a "living wage" are amateurs and/or they're panning for water in a desert - if the goal is to make a "living wage". So either make stuff and market it - bring people to your product. Or go be a writer where the markets will bear your demands and put out work that generates demand, dummies.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;1121801That's all in the context of working for someone else. You want to create and sell it to someone? Welcome to the cesspool of the free market. There's really no difference though. It doesn't matter if you are creating and selling it someone else or if you are working for someone else. Market forces will drive the cost down to the lowest it can be. There's an overabundance of people willing to work/sell for close for nothing and no one cares about quality.

Just do your own thing and release it for free as a hobby. One day, maybe, you can make some beer money off of it.

Here is the important aspect about all this. market forces really don't drive down the costs to the lowest it can be, if it did, then there wouldn't be luxury products at all. It's really more an issue of supply, and demand, and this is true whether quality exists in a product, or not. I'll give you a specific example of this supply and demand aspect in action with low quality products. Lowe's, and Walmart that are both home improvement chains in the United States. When I was living in Fort Lauderdale, I lived on the beach. Just three blocks from the ocean, about two hundred yards or so. I could go to Lowe's or Walmart and get sandbags and lumber cheap, very inexpensive, like $1 a sandbag, that was full of sand. Or I could get lumber, a 4'x8' sheet of plywood for like $10 (good for making gaming tables also by the way....).

Now, along comes September, and a Hurricane is suddenly bearing down on South Florida. Didn't happen every year of course, so Walmart, and Lowe's never upped their order of lumber and sandbags just because Hurricane Season started. We get a mandatory evacuation notice. For people like me, who was a hotel night manager, we couldn't evacuate. We had to stay and protect our hotel, from the hurricane, and from looters, because often the looters refused a mandatory evacuation order and simply hid. and we had to protect the hotel from and from everything else as well... So a trip to Lowe's was in order. Usually by the time I got there them $1 sandbags, if any were even left, were like $10 or $15 ...each. The sheets of plywood we would custom cut and fit over our windows to keep flying debris from shattering the windows during the storm were no longer $10, they were like $60 or $80 dollars, apiece. Same deal for water, canned goods, etc. Very common low quality items outrageously marked up, with last minute buyers being gouged because of a temporary supply and demand situation.

My first year with a hurricane, I was soooo surprised. People were brawling at Walmart and Lowe's literally fighting each other for a case or two of water, or for a few sheets of plywood. ...and then the store ran out, and people got angry at the managers and riotous and surly like becuase the stores didn't have what they needed. I was blown away, but not by the hurricane, by the stupidity and greed of the shoppers, and by the ignorance of the store management (really, they could stock a little extra survival supplies during hurricane season), yah?

The higher the quality or perceived quality of the of the item, the more the markup. In gaming, that would be the white D&D book set, which once sold for $10. Now you are lucky to find one for less than $400, and the brown boxed D&D set, any printing... like $5,000 now. So yeah, ...don't release your gaming stuff for free. If anything charge more for it because it is rare, and much less common. Or find a new product with a high perceived value, in RPG gaming, or in another Industry, and sell that instead.

Or you can wait for the Hurricane to mark up your prices, but uh, Hurricanes really aren't all as common as people perceive. If there is an overabundance of people working on something, work on something where there is not an overabundance of competition, and viola, income and livelihood problem solved!

What I learned from my first few hurricane seasons in Florida... was to plan ahead. We would buy the lumber and sandbags at the normal inexpensive prices when it wasn't hurricane season, and then stored that on the hotel property, and then used it if we got hit with a hurricane warning / evac notice.

So the poor SJW rpg writer cannot make "a living wage" with their "art". Cry me a river!Here is my solution to the problem get a real job and make your "art" a side gig.

Quote from: tenbones;1121809You have to be responsible for what you think your work is worth. But the corollary of that maxim is: Just because you believe it's worth something doesn't mean the rest of the world believes that.

Which is part of why advertising, and the ability to reach audiences, is so critical. Even before convincing people of the worth of your product, you have to be able to let them know about it, and make them remember it, and the more competitors you have the louder the metaphorical noise you have to be heard over.

Which in turn is one reason why RPGs that can pick up the license for an existing, branded IP have a head start right out of the gate, and even the best possible "serial numbers filed off" expy has an uphill fight ahead of it.  Not every game can do what Zweihander did and spend two years in publicly visible amateur development first.

But once advertising becomes a critical part of the process, so does spin.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1121760Good question. Paizo?

All the others may actually just be owner-run ops plus hiring freelancers on a job-to-job basis.

Doesnt SJG have a tiny little stable of writers? What about White Wolf? Are they now just all freelancers?

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1121829Which is part of why advertising, and the ability to reach audiences, is so critical. Even before convincing people of the worth of your product, you have to be able to let them know about it, and make them remember it, and the more competitors you have the louder the metaphorical noise you have to be heard over.

Which in turn is one reason why RPGs that can pick up the license for an existing, branded IP have a head start right out of the gate, and even the best possible "serial numbers filed off" expy has an uphill fight ahead of it.  Not every game can do what Zweihander did and spend two years in publicly visible amateur development first.

But once advertising becomes a critical part of the process, so does spin.

Absolutely! I think Zweihander is a bit of an anomoly. Marketing and finding/creating that audience can't be underscored enough. It's the difference between creating a new product with all the bells and whistles, and trying to convince people to come play... and creating the right product, for an established game with its own fanbase, with a fanbase of your own - and pull off a seven-figure Kickstarter like Colville did (kudos to him).

Quote from: tenbones;1121907Absolutely! I think Zweihander is a bit of an anomoly.

Zwei thought touted itself as "liberating" the WHFRP system and just filing the serial numbers off.

paying for art to the degree that the artist gets a living wage would not leave room for writers and editors and layout people to also get a living wage unless the product is highly priced or very popular, in fact, even if you did the whole thing as a one man show there is likely not enough for even one person to rake in living wage i'd bet

Quote from: Omega;1121916Zwei thought touted itself as "liberating" the WHFRP system and just filing the serial numbers off.

And you literally couldn't go into anything vaguely related to 'fantasy RPG' without the guy or one of his many alt-accounts chain shilling.

Quote from: Snark Knight;1121927And you literally couldn't go into anything vaguely related to 'fantasy RPG' without the guy or one of his many alt-accounts chain shilling.

... and yet it worked apparently. I was interested in his game... but *he* put me off from buying it because of his online antics. But I guess I was in the minority. Oh well.

Quote from: Slipshot762;1121917paying for art to the degree that the artist gets a living wage would not leave room for writers and editors and layout people to also get a living wage unless the product is highly priced or very popular, in fact, even if you did the whole thing as a one man show there is likely not enough for even one person to rake in living wage i'd bet

This is why CCGs are the most costly games to make. I can tell you flat out that some artists made quite a bit of money during the boom period. But any CCG that failed had a high risk of potentially sinking the parent company. This is also the problem with the push for colour art in RPGs. Its costly and it jams up the price of the book. But actually does nothing to boost sales.

Quote from: tenbones;1121968... and yet it worked apparently. I was interested in his game... but *he* put me off from buying it because of his online antics. But I guess I was in the minority. Oh well.

Normally grifters like that fail as it just annoys people. But Zwei played every card possible.

Quote from: Omega;1121916Zwei thought touted itself as "liberating" the WHFRP system and just filing the serial numbers off.

Oddly enough I've been taking a stab at that myself just lately.  When he filed off the serial numbers he also padded it out way too much for my tastes.

I believe Pinnacle, creators of Deadlands and Savage Worlds has a very tiny full time staff, and a stable of quite regular freelancers.

Quote from: tenbones;1121968... and yet it worked apparently. I was interested in his game... but *he* put me off from buying it because of his online antics. But I guess I was in the minority. Oh well.

I was the same. But I guess it worked on account of him just firing so many bullets that eventually he was going to hit enough. I mean the guy must genuinely have been dedicated to spamming about the game on a hundred different places as his full time job because it was relentless, no matter how many places banned him.

Then again there was talk that he just ended up buying X amount of copies of his own book to drive up figures.

Quote from: Orphan81;1122074I believe Pinnacle, creators of Deadlands and Savage Worlds has a very tiny full time staff, and a stable of quite regular freelancers.

And pretty generous licensing for those third parties certainly helps.

Once again - if you want to make a "living wage", find where the market is, work your ass off, produce good product and market the hell out of it. Profit. The formula is pretty well established. Ignore it to your own detriment.

... or you better start lowering your expectations on the results.

Meanwhile on Reddit people seem to have a pretty good grasp of economics (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/exyoz1/twitter_announcement_thread_for_wagadu_an/fge6e2t/).

Quote from: Haffrung;1120962For those of us not on Twitter, is there any screen caps or links to where this is being discussed?

Apparently RPGPundit doesn't do that, unless you say you can't verify their claims, and then they'll call you a liar (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41530-SJWs-Attack-D-amp-D-Charity-Livestream-for-Starving-Babies&p=1122092&viewfull=1#post1122092).

Quote from: Brad;1120982"Creator." That's the same bullshit as "influencer." Some of those morons on Instagram get paid astronomical sums to pose with shitty energy drinks, and some get zero. Should they all get the same amount, regardless? That's essentially the argument here. But as someone in the comments points out, you can maybe have I dunno, five ridiculously paid Instahoes, and thousands of others get bupkis. The same goes with these "creators." I don't think the RPG hobby can support more than a couple of the Critical Role-type shows, but it WILL reward you if you have a superior product and you can possibly replace Critical Role if you're good enough. They're not good enough.

I'm not sure if quality is the deciding factor, but you're certainly right about everything else.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120988Aren't these some of the same people that have told sections of the gamer community that they "literally don't want your money? "

Not necessarily, and we should avoid lumping them together, which I know I've been guilty of myself.

Quote from: Haffrung;1121000They really think they're going to earn a living from this?

To be fair the idea of playing videogames for a living was an idiotic idea not too long ago. The difference is that's cheap. These folks want multiple actors and studio level production values to play a tabletop RPG.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1120979The tweet that started it all. The important thing to realize is that she isn't talking about writing game material like rules or adventures, she's talking about making D&D livestreams. That's why she's using terms like "creators" and is talking about D&D as a "medium".

https://twitter.com/dreamwisp/status/1219793872844292098

Another #Tweet that would have been simple to include in the vid, but why bother when people like you will do all the hard work?

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1121184The main reason why Hitler lost WW2, and why he felt compelled to start it in the first place, is because he was fundamentally ignorant about economics and believed essentially the same thing.

He was right about everything vis-a-vis the Soviet Union -- right about the invasion, going south, dividing his forces in the south believing that the Soviet Union was beaten, and so on. There was however one critical factor about which he was wrong, and could not have anticipated due to his ignorance, and that was the power of the United States. While they denied it publicly, both Stalin (according to Khrushchev in a taped interview) and his marshal Zhukov (in a bugged conversation from 1963, released 30 years later) are on record as saying that without America's lend-lease program that the USSR could not have continued the war. The USSR won because they were zipping around in 363,080 American-made trucks, eating 782,973 tons of American SPAM, and communicating using 956,688 miles of telephone wire and 380,135 field telephones provided by America. In 1942, 63.2% of all military supplies came from America [H.D. Hall, North American Supply (London 1955), p. 430; M Harrison, Soviet Planning in War and Peace 1938-1942 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 258-9; H. van Tuyll, Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union 1942-1945 (New York, 1989), pp. 1956-61)].

You'd think that some of these people would crack open a book and read about the epic failures of history so as not to repeat them, or at least learn basic economics, but apparently not.

The more you know.

Quote from: spon;1121196Globalism started off with good intentions

And it might have better results if the people advocating for it were honest about the flaws in their philosophy.

Quote from: David Johansen;1121201Yeah, they raised the minimum wage here in Alberta a bunch.  Talk to all the people who's hours have been cut to the bone, all the kids who can't get a job out of high school, all the small businesses that it pushed over the edge, all the people who saw their food costs double.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121325Pretty much. I mean nowadays a kid can't legally setup a lemonaid stand. Getting to work at a yoing age is in no way inherently bad.

Quote from: Brad;1121328I mowed yards, sold candy, fixed computers, worked in a firework stand, and did countless other things before I was old enough to get a job working as a cashier (16). Willingly. Because I wanted to buy RPGs and comic books.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1121329Which is a fucking tragedy because through tightening the leash on this type of activity, a vital cornerstone of development and education is being removed as an opportunity for young people.

And it's not much better for adults. Unemployment support is an all or nothing affair,  it often costs small businesses more to fire someone that they get from hiring them, and now freelancers in California can't work profitably anymore.

It's almost as if they don't want you to be a productive member of society.

I just hope RPG.net is not in favour of paying a living wage, cos if so it seems to be contradicting itself with this piracy is generally fine thread. (https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/refusing-piracy-at-the-table-and-expecting-the-same-of-others.859063/) (Although the original post is a stand against piracy, most postings seem to support it)

Quote from: ponta1010;1122147I just hope RPG.net is not in favour of paying a living wage, cos if so it seems to be contradicting itself with this piracy is generally fine thread. (https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/refusing-piracy-at-the-table-and-expecting-the-same-of-others.859063/) (Although the original post is a stand against piracy, most postings seem to support it)

Alot of entry level board and RPG game designers over on BGG have for years been pushing that its ok to steal someone elses game. Some even bitch and moan that they cant steal someones design and sell it while the game is still on the shelves.

Theres even a few wastes of oxygen that advocate that its ok for a playtester to steal a design.

Quote from: ponta1010;1122147I just hope RPG.net is not in favour of paying a living wage, cos if so it seems to be contradicting itself with this piracy is generally fine thread. (https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/refusing-piracy-at-the-table-and-expecting-the-same-of-others.859063/) (Although the original post is a stand against piracy, most postings seem to support it)

Not gonna read the drivel, but I'm not surprised they advocate theft.

Quote from: Brad;1122176Not gonna read the drivel, but I'm not surprised they advocate theft.

It's a typical Big Purple circle jerk, complete with complaining there aren't enough black dicks represented properly.

*reads title of thread*

Haha oh yeah, those people. They pop up again and again. I can only roll my eyes at so much idiocy.

Another thing that pops up ever more often are all the entitled minorities/feminists/what-have-you-other-far-left-wing-group who think that now that p&p (or mainly DnD 5e) is popular (and can be made into money) we all need to just hand it over because as it is now it's bad (racist, sexist, ableist, cultural appropriation, colonialist, not enough diversity, not enough POC etc etc bla bla). And of course they all seem to think THEY know how to "fix" that and make it "better" :rolleyes: Or even better, they think that we, the ones who kept it alive all those years, have to enable THEM. After all, they just want to have it like they want, without putting the hard work in.
Fuck off you assholes, we didn't need you 30/20/10 years ago, we don't need you now.
And NO, that is not gate-keeping. If you want to be a part of this hobby, you can be, but stop pretending like you know everything better after being in the hobby for all of "5 minutes". Come in and be a fucking decent human being for a bit.

Quote from: Marchand;1121796I started off drafting this really verbose and tedious post about how our tiny niche hobby had thrown up this brilliant case study of socialism in action, but decided nobody really needed to read it. So, instead I'll say I came across a video once of Milton Friedman being interviewed back in the 1970s. The interviewer asked him about how unfair the market was and wasn't it better for the state to step in and help people. Friedman's reply was along the lines of, why do you think people will act any more benevolently in a political process than they do in a market? In fact isn't the opposite more usually the case (Soviet commissars vs your average corporate CEO)? An unexpected bonus was how the interviewer was obviously floored. You could almost see the thought process in his head - he just KNEW he was right, because everyone he'd known since college thought the same way as he did, but here was this nasty man with his logic and his facts that couldn't immediately be dismissed.

Let me hurriedly drag that vaguely back on topic by saying the same logic applies to the RPG industry.

One of the the paradigm-changing quotes I read stated an evident truth that no one seems to hear: Capitalism is the one economic system where you are rewarded directly proportionately to how much you serve people in the ways they want.

Or have marketing good enough to convince customers they want to be served what you want.