Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
I'm sure lots of people think I'm speaking like an alarmist but I can't stop thinking about this. As far as I'm concerned, it's likely that society is entering a new Dark Ages because of a combination of a culture that tries to brainwash people and the progress of technology. What is a way we prove this wrong?
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As archeology and anthropology are proving, the Dark Ages weren't really dark. Essentially, everyone was wrong. The whole King Arthur myth has been debunked. Angles and Saxons did come to Britain, but as immigrants, not invaders or conquerors. Absolutely no evidence of any battles. The evidence shows British tribes and the Angles and Saxons living side-by-side, and more than that, commingling and inter-marrying, adopting some of each other's customs.
Tintagel where King Arthur is claimed to lived was an extraordinarily wealthy society. They drank wine and not just wine, but several varieties of wine, including wine made in Britain -- yes, because of climate change the climate was warm enough to grow wine in Britain and the Romans prized wine imported from Britain, but it's too cold now -- and they drank their wine in glass made in Greece and Rome and had olive oil in pottery jars made in Turkey and Persia.
So, ships continued to sail from the Mediterranean to Britain. Why? Because there was a giant tin mine near Tintagel. In fact, Tintagel might actually mean tin mine in some corrupted language. Tin is scarce in the Mediterranean Region, and you need tin to alloy with copper to make bronze, and weapons, armor and shields were made of bronze, and it was used for other things, too.
That's actually the picture shaping up, thanks to advances in archeology like ground-penetrating radar that can detect the remnants of housing and other structures buried underground by several meters of earth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
Entertainment and pop culture hitting a dead-end
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It's been dead for decades, so it's not like it just suddenly died.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
Media is concentrated by only 5 large companies and blinding people away from the truth
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Admittedly, that's a problem, but it's self-inflicted.
You're not obligated to patronize any of those sources for news.
If you patronize those sources, then you're part of the problem.
You have the internet, so you have no excuse. I recommend
Adevaratul (
The Truth). I realize you don't speak Romanian, but Google will translate the pages for you, just like Google will translate Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, German and French news sources.
Some publications are in English.
Der Speigel is.
So, you have no excuse, other than laziness, and it's hypocritical to complain while patronizing the same sources you decry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
Advanced technology allowing spying and invading privacy, and potentially threatening mass job losses
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There are counter-technologies to bar or mitigate that.
The implementation of AI and automation will be so incredibly slow, that you won't even notice it.
And, it creates jobs, not kills them.
A robot-welder does replace a human welder, but it also creates 1.3 jobs, so you didn't lose a job and for every three robot-welders you install, you create jobs.
Most people's understanding of AI is on a par with a small rock.
AI requires human interface.
How little you all know.
AI doesn't replace humans, it complements them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
Men are no longer men and women are no longer women
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Well, you can thank Liberals for that, but it's nothing a civil war wouldn't solve.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
Nuclear war (or even more deadly advanced weapons) is potentially a looming threat again
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There's no danger of nuclear war, but if the US continues to be the ass-clown of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if it is secretly decided to off the US by detonating three well-placed 450 kt nuclear warheads about 85 miles above the Earth's surface.
That wouldn't kill any Americans. At least not directly.
However, you will know personally the Dark Ages.
Your electrical grid, your telecommunications grid and most of your electronics will be rendered useless from the electromagnetic pulse.
In the first six months, 300 Million Americans will die of starvation, dehydration, illness, disease, accident, injury, misadventure, hypothermia, violence or by their own hand.
Your food supply will be gone in two weeks. You'll have to forage for food, and such a strike is likely to occur in October/November, so there won't be any food to forage until late Spring 6-8 months later.
Your water supply will be gone in 30 days. Once water treatment plants stop working, all your water is teeming with bacteria, and in particular, Typhus, Cholera and Dysentery.
Even with well-water, there's a risk of contamination, unless you cremate the bodies of Typhoid victims, like the NAZIs did.
If you don't, Typhus will leach into the ground-water and even into aquifers, your well gets contaminated, you get Typhus and die.
Your medications will be gone in 30 days, too.
The rest of the world can't help you.
All the cargo aircraft on Earth can only feed 6-8 Million people for 3-7 days.
That's assuming you can rig a system to siphon aviation fuel from the tank farms and get it to the aircraft.
Once the aviation fuel is gone, and it will be gone in 3-7 days, no more aircraft will be landing in the US.
Commercial cargo aircraft are not capable of air-drops, and they're not capable of in-flight refueling.
You don't have enough aerial tankers in the world to refuel what few military cargo aircraft you have, and they could only feed 1-3 Million people, albeit indefinitely in theory.
Ships can't help.
Your ports are very busy and if a ship could find an open slip, and if the captain is so skilled he can dock the ship without the use of tug boats, and if you can rig a siphon system to refuel the ships with diesel oil, then that would be a miracle.
But, short-lived.
Without electricity, the cranes don't work, and their electronics are damaged, so you cannot off-load the cargo containers of food.
So, yes, the few Million Americans who survive will be in a Dark Age and the Stone Age for about a century.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostee
Living is harder because everything is way more expensive and income hasn't quite caught up
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Why would income catch up?
Do you not understand Economics?
Wages rise when there's Monetary Inflation or Wage Inflation.
You currently have neither. Well, you have a bit of Monetary Inflation, about 0.4%.
Wages are not supposed to rise when there's Cost-push Inflation or Demand-pull Inflation.
Cost-push Inflation is 100% you.
You elected the idiots who levied the taxes, laws, regulations and ordinances that drive up the prices of goods and services, and then you have the unmitigated gall to think that you should get a pay raise?
Wrong answer.
You voted for the property tax increase, and now you have to pay more in taxes and have less money to buy other things, and you think you deserve a pay raise?
Wrong answer. That's not how it works.
Demand-pull Inflation is 100% you, too.
The function, the purpose, the
raison d'être of Demand-pull Inflation is to prevent the depletion, over-use or over-consumption of resources, goods and services.
Demand-pull Inflation occurs when Demand for any good or service exceeds the Supply of that good or service.
Prices rise.
Prices rise to protect, to conserve, to preserve and prevent the depletion, over-use or over-consumption.
You have three choices:
1) Stop consuming like a freaking locust; or
2) Seek cheaper substitutes; or
3) Increase Supply to match or exceed Demand
That's all you, baby.
If you cannot afford things, that's great.
That means the inviolable Laws of Economics are working as they should.
Why should you get a pay raise?
What right entitles you to consume like a locust and deplete, over-use or over-consume resources, goods and services?
By what logic should you get a pay raise and continue to deplete, over-use or over-consume like a locust?
Explain that, because inquiring minds want to know.
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